Speech bubbles before or after?

[Lensing]

My question is pretty much: before, during or after you finished the drawing?

[oceanimity]

I do it after I finished.

[penxpanel]

I always have a rough sketch if were they belong before tge drawing. But the actuall finushed bubbkes (spell check and everything) is the last thing i do.
Mainly causd its my least favourite part and i'm procastinating.

[KevinReijnders]

Before! It's what's going to determine the amount of space you have per panel/page.

[Humbug]

If I were drawing in page format, it would have to be before. I've had so many incidents where the bubble covered so much of the panel that I had modify the already finished drawing in it. That was not fun.

It's the opposite for scrolls because there's plenty of space.

[delladz]

I usually do the rough sketch and then lock in the speech bubbles so I can confirm the size that I'll need/if I need to adjust the sketch to accommodate for the lines! If I need to adjust it later on, my style of speech bubbles makes it really easy to do luckily

[Azifri]

Before. It's too important for the composition to leave room for error.

[CoInkedPath]

normal to forget the bubble and draw the art. so made a change up to the art style choice since its fiefdom not comic. LOL

[ThunderChicken]

Years ago when I actually did comics I’d sketch it out first to get the general layout, then I’d add the speech bubbles. At this stage, if I needed to move some of the art around I still could. Once I got the layout set I’d lightly draw in the speech bubbles just to hold their places and do the art around them. The absolute final layout would be set during the inking.

[Lensing]

Thank you for the answer, but I don´t think I understood that

[Lensing]

I wonder how people do that when they work with writers who don´t put the final dialogue
into the script. Marvel method style. There are many examples of scripts with barely any
dialogue, which is pretty much the opposite of the scripts that I like

[CoInkedPath]

it was that way for a while then the script was just typed out, and place under the illustrated panels on the website.

[Lensing]

I got you, thank you

[Oriflamme]

I mean part of the writing would be working with what you have. If a panel is already drawn, you need to find a way to fit what the story needs into the available space.

If I remember my old marvel comic, these stories are many things, but concise in terms of word count is not one of them. The Marvel method was an assembly line to mass produce consistent comics. I’m certain the artist knew they had to be generous with the amount of empty space in each panel, and it would save them some work.

In my own personal experience, sometimes, I refuse a revision from my editor because the alternate version would take too much space. We then have to come up with a third version of the text that conveys the idea and fits into the space constraint.

[VibrantFox]

i've always found it most efficient to plan speech bubbles alongside the art both to ensure there's enough space for everything but also plan the flow of how each page or panel will be read and it makes sure everything reads clearly.

like when i was/am working on things i do still try to have a script ahead of time so there's a general understanding of how or where a character is going to be moving in a scene but especially by the thumbnailing stage seeing how to spread out dialogue so that things dont feel too condensed or to spaced out but flow naturally and are clear.

coz from a reading perspective speech bubbles filled with paragraphs of text look weird and claustrophobic, panels where the art is covered by the speech bubbles feels cluttered and if bubbles are bouncing all over the place without a clear flow it starts to feel disorganized and messy. so when there's a clear sense of structure and intent in the placement of things it's easier to digest and pulling that off well from the creator side of it just feels really good.

[wolflu66]

I usually just sketch out a rough size for the speech bubbles and add them in after the comic is finished, adjusting their position and size as I go. So, it’s a pretty flexible process.

Plus, my comic often has two or three different language versions, and the space they need varies a lot. Depending on the language, I sometimes have to resize the bubbles entirely. That’s another reason why I leave them for the final step.

[kyupol]

After I do the sketch

[jwabeasley]

I do mine before. Speech bubbles are too important to the composition. I write the dialog in full during the thumbnail stage, and I pencil/ink the text at the same time as the rest of the image. If Bill Watterson did his lettering by hand, I can too!

[justincarbunkle]

I draw them in the storyboard. Then I put text where those bubbles are. Then after inking I draw the bubbles, making adjustments when necessary.

[kitschensyngk]

Definitely after I draw the panels. I can always move the drawings around and resize the bubbles to make them fit.