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Jun 2018

I was working on some pages today and I started to think about which fonts to use for sound effects when I realized... I haven't seen sound effects in modern comics in a while. So I ran to my bookshelf and picked a pretty recent comic I bought and I was right, no sound effects, and I checked some other ones and sound effects are so few and far between now.

This got me thinking, are sound effects necessary anymore? Are sound effects obsolete? Do you use sound effects and do you think they are beneficial or harmful to comics today?

Personally I will stop using majority of them because I really find them taking up the space or getting in the way of composition for panels. I also find writing out actions (like "grabs" or "turns" or whatever) to be so... redundant? Like... I'm reading the comic... I can see what is going on, granted sometimes I can see why the creator would use them but writing "grabs" when the character grabs something is just overkill for me and I always roll my eyes when I see something like that.

What about you guys?

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    Jun '18
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    Jun '18
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I agree with you that the use of descriptive sound effects, like "grabs" or "opens" is pointless. The action should be obvious from the art. Though, I do believe these type of sound effects are remnants of creators learning to use manga sound effects, which are a whole thing on themselves but don't translate well to other languages, especially not English.

However sounds effects that form actual sounds are still viable and very useful in my opinion. Sound effects may not be in the style of 60's Batman but explosions still use BOOMs and guns make BANGs. I think they can also be an art form in themselves, since with good typography sound effects can be made part of the art. They can also be used to indicate the direction of the sound or the type of the sound. A bloodcurling scream as a sound effect works much better to show terror than if it was placed in a speech bubble. I think one of the reasons modern comics may not have many sound effects could be that they don't need them. A story that doesn't include any necessary sounds, don't require sound effects either.

All in all, I think sound effects are important when used well. They are a skill on their own and I think they require more effort than just slapping some text on a panel. I personally do use sound effects but I always try to incorporate them into the move of the action or the flow of the panel. I still have a lot of work to do about learning fonts and how to best use them but in my mind that's an imporant part of learning how to make comics.

I say sound effects are an art in themselves that can make a comic a lot more fun! Especially when it's big, bombastic, colorful letters. They really add emphasis to something like a punch or an explosion, and they don't have to be written two-dimensionally across the panel. For example, they can be made to follow the movement of an object or character, and decrease in size with distance. And who can forget classics such as "Bamf!", "Pow!", "Thwip!", or "Krakathoom?"

Not so sure my lettering is effective as more typical examples listed above (ha, Krakathoom?? who thinks of that?) but this page in my comic uses two examples of stylized lettering to represent different things.

The small TWANG creates a juxtaposition to the piercing REE! the creature in the different dimension is making. I (hopefully) believe that it serves two purposes. One is to serve as sounds that add emphasis to the art that simply could not exist in a bubble such as using line weight and font size to describe how loud the sounds being made is and the stylization that gives the sound a texture like a band being tugged to its limit or a scream that causes your ears to bleed.
The other is to contrast the different dimensions to emphasize the threat that the monster and its environment possesses while highlighting how placid the new environment one of my main characters finds itself in.

Just thought i'd show an example of one of your contemporaries taking advantage of lettering for sound effects :stuck_out_tongue:

Sound effects arent used as much in modern comics- I'm still a bit old school and will use sound FX from time to time. The thing you want to keep in mind is finding the font that matches the sound effect that you you want to express.

I think sound effects were really useful in action scenes specifically. But there’s really not that many action scenes in even action comics anymore:/ plus the sound effects kinda take away from visual storytelling in a way.

I use sound effects when I’m lazy:3 like instead of drawing a car driving away I just put “vrrruunnnn”. Or if I feel that my art is crap and no one will understand it, I’ll just put what they are doing as if it’s a sound effect like “look” or “realize”:3
Sound effects are really just to the creators discretion as to how they use them:3

I agree with the need to sometimes have a sound effect to add a little flavor when needed. For example:

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The Kaboom at the bottom is hand lettered, not a font.

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The dripping of the rain and the Kaa-ing of the crows.

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This one has the squawking of the birds in the background of the panel instead of the foreground.

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I think here the "thunk" adds a comical effect. The effects here are a font, not handlettered. The crisp lines of the font fit better with the type of story. (super hero)

I think this is a really good point too. I tried to do that in this page:
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The "Splash" indicates something is happening off screen, then in the next panel we find another character soaked. The WOOOSH follows the movement of the dummies.

So maybe the questions you might ask are: Is the sound effect necessary? Does the sound effect add to the page in a meaningful way? Is it distracting?

And then just sort of use your best judgement. Personally I only have sound effects when I feel I really need them, most of the pages of my comics are totally devoid of effects just because it isn't necessary and doesn't add anything.

Sound effects are so important to me T~T ! It makes me a little sad to see them fall by the wayside, but as has been mentioned in this thread, I think because a lot of comics can be dialogue-heavy or normal life stories and not action, people think... I don't need them. There seems to be the thought that if it's not POW BOOM superhero stuff that it's unnecessary. :,(

I've always liked manga's liberal usage of sound effects, especially in silent panels. I've had to learn more to use restraint, because as I'm drawing a scene, I can imagine the sounds of leaves rustling, people walking, outdoor noises, people noises... I think it makes a work seem more grounded and realistic to have more noise. I will often add sound effects for people grabbing each other or moving when they stand, things like that.

I'll definitely say it drives me crazy when people use non-sound verbs in place of onomatopoeia though- "stand" "sit" "leave" etc, aren't... sounds. I use some actual English SFX, but most of mine I just make up. I just try to say a sound similar and then spell it out, why not? English just doesn't have enough of them, in my opinion! I use "grm" and "fwaa" and "tmp" pretty liberally.

As for making them fit the story- over time I've come to hand-draw all my SFX rather than use a font. Fiddling with a font has always been cumbersome to me, and slowed down my process a lot. So I just write out all my SFX, so that they fit the page and my art style well enough. Here's a few examples from the comic I do the art for Bang! Bang! BOOM!11 (even SFX in our title ohohoho)

I'm not an artist so I don't have much to add but I will say I prefer comics to have sound effects. It gives that extra flavor and a possibility for greater depth visually. I have a lot of fond memories working as a translator on manga and having to find ways of representing very unconventional sfx.

No sfx and I think of The Mummy trailer lol

Agree! I think sound effects are cool when something significant happens, like a huge explosions or a scream, or something that the artist would like to sound a specific way, etc, but not for every. Single. Thing. I just come from the school of thought that's like "okay, I know these people are punching each other, I know what that sounds like, I don't need to read it." It's like reading a book and imagining the sounds, the writer could be like "the sound of raindrops on a tin roof" and you immediately know what that sounds like they don't have to write tick tick tick on the page for you to know what it's like. In comics I am showing you what's going on, the reader can make their own noises in their head.

That's true! Sound effects ARE useful in actions scenes but they ALSO take away from visual storytelling if done badly. I have a bunch of action comics (Not Marvel or DC) and they barely use sound effects. Even the horror comics I have keep sound effects to a bare minimum, no squish when people get ripped open or anything like that. I think they feel more mature when there are less flashy words flying through the page because it forces the readers to imagine the scene in more detail, you know?

Same here, I guess I started to change my mind when I was adding effects to almost everything and I was like "do I really need to use ALL of this?" But I do agree significant events, or things you want to highlight should have a some sort of sound effect to accompany them.

@deltastic AWESOME art!!!

@Croik that trailer... can't be real, right? I didn't even watch the movie because... it looked like a hot mess! But anyway, I think sound effects are COMPLETELY different in film, you NEED audio when you have scenes like those, even in scary movies when all audio is gone there is a slight hum in the background. When it comes to visual storytelling I don't think films and print media compare on that aspect, like obviously one would be boring and terrible if it didn't have sound effects at all, the other can be passable without them. If we are to compare both we could talk about silent films and comics because they really did play like a moving comic with text cards when the director wanted to let the audience know something important was going on or was said, just like sound effects, sprinkled here and there, but not for everything.

Honestly I just wanted an excuse to post that trailer, it's one of my favorite things. :slight_smile:

A comic without SFX isn't nearly as jarring as a film without, but when used effectively, I feel that most comics benefit from SFX.

my rule of thumb is: show, don't tell.
a lot of sound effects can be distracting if not implemented well/creatively.
so the best thing to do is just... moderation? only make sound effects where it matters?

i only use sound effects when the framing of the scene relies on sound, like if you were to hear the character before seeing them onscreen

i also prefer to handwrite them, but i did experiment with fonts in some earlier pages

I use sound effects only when absolutely necessary, such as the sound is either drawing attention to something happening, it might be part of a scene introduction or a direct effect of an impactful moment. Essentially whatever isn't white noise. I also just try and figure out what sounds it would likely literally make, rather than using word descriptions of a sound/ action. Because, well, it's kinda cringey to do stuff like "turn", "grab" "fall" etc. I think authors should consider the theme of their comic because the latter only really works for something hyper abstracted/ cartoonish.

To me, sound effects are a necessary evil. They often get in the way of my art and undermine serious events...and sometimes an onomatopoeia doesn't exist for the sound you want to convey, so you have to make up your own and hope it doesn't look stupid...>_< I really wish I didn't need them...But in humorous scenes, I have to admit that they can be fun to use~

I'm honestly a big fan of the silly descriptive sound effects like "PUNCH!" and "STAND" now and again, but it's gotta be a humour thing, rather than a "I'm not confident you'll understand that this person is standing up" thing.

I also use "nod" a lot -- it's a small action that's tough to really convey through pictures, but it's extremely important for a comic where several characters don't speak verbally. If you just have the lil action lines to indicate nodding, and you don't have room to give the nodding its own panel, it tends to get glossed over as art rather than read as a nonverbal contribution to the conversation.

but in general, I use sound effects when I feel like they need to be there. If I draw a panel and find it's missing something and a BAM!!! would give it that extra punch, then I include it. I don't really like.... look for places to add sound effects unless it feels like they're needed!


(and yeah, agree with stnmaren about offscreen things!)