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Lensing
Feb '24

I´m putting together a onomatopopeia / sound word list.
There are lists on the internet but they are just the sound words
put in a list and there are no categories like:
-Animal sounds
-Nature and Elements
etc.

Here are my questions (for those who use onomatopopeias)
would you use a list like that for inspiration?
what sound words do you use in your work?

and the most important question:
what categories would be important for you?

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    Feb '24

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    Feb '24
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CarltonIsaac
Feb '24

Action and impact sounds are the most I use in my comic series. inspired of course by some of best in the business. -

moontokkym
Feb '24

This would be so useful because onomatopeas differ from language to language, and I read mostly french, Japanese and Korean comics so I have NO IDEA what the English equivalents usually are.

I think useful categories would be like:
- animal sounds
- elemental sounds (rain on different surfaces, thunder, wind, storms, fire, etc)
- general character foly (footsteps on different surfaces, clothes textures crinckling or squeeking like leather or raincoat material, also human noises like coughing, gasping, breathing heavily, whistling...)
- interior foly (doors squeeking, home care sounds like vacuum cleaners, dusting, hammering nails into walls, creeking floorboards, water and steam pipes settling...)
- exterior foly (trees rustling, city soundcapes, sea waves...)
- fight sounds (a load of sounds used for impact during fight scenes because you can only use "pow" so many times)

I kind of improvise with mine so there's a load of "FTOM"s for punching, some "clang"s, a lot of "wheeze"s, and a couple of "froosh"s because I didn't know how to make the sound of someone sitting on a bed with one of those crinckly sleeping bags on it.

Leyelle
Feb '24
1

I use the well known ones, or use words in the place of one "metallic scream" rather than "screech."

Other times I invent ones, like "squooze."

theamazingiris
Feb '24

interesting topic. i like the idea of making a list of it, never thought of this before.
as a meme influenced being, i sometimes add "* le" in front of the sound or thing that's happening, e. g. "* le bark" or "* le loud noise".
sometimes i don't use onomatopoetic sounds, but use rather descriptive texts for i think this is better or makes it even funnier.
i would not recommend other comic artists to use the "* le" thing in every comic because i don't think it fits in every comic style or story, but in short comics with only a few panels, i think it does fit and adds some humor to it.

AmysGames
Feb '24

Honestly, I use onomatopoeia pretty sparingly, because most of the time I don't need it to get the point across. I also find the text to be a little distracting in most cases (maybe because I don't have a great selection of sound effect fonts :stuck_out_tongue: ).

When I do use them though, I can usually just use well-known ones like "whoosh" and "BOOM." Failing that, I make something up on the spot based on what I think it sounds like.

That being said, I have that luxury because I grew up reading English comics. Like @moontokkym pointed out, if you're used to different languages, it can be a lot harder—which I can vouch for, since every time I try to translate something into Japanese, I get very lost on what to do with the sound effects. How do you come up with onomatopoeia for a language you don't speak?

So yeah, I think a list of stock sound effects would be useful to have, especially for people who aren't as confident in English. Although, from my experience looking up Japanese onomatopoeia lists, I wonder if there are some sound words that you can only understand the nuance of from seeing them in context.

9 days later
JoshRaed
Feb '24

Reminds me of seeing "thrust" as an onomatopoeia in a comic during a sex scene and a comment pointing out how funny it is that this is the thing you see in batman comics.

Also jacksons diary has a character scream gasp to communicate that they're gasping, which is kind of like an onomatopoeia.