Tips on Word Balloons (the Shouting kind)

[VermillionWorks]

I was just wondering, does anyone have any special tips on drawing the 'shouting' type of word balloons? How do you go about it? I just feel like I'm doing something wrong with them all the time. I mean, I can usually make them look decent enough, but I'm just never that satisfied with them and hate how much trouble they cause me sometimes.


(Pffft, these two images together make me laugh, but oh well, just examples. XD)

I draw them in by hand usually and add in a 'Stroke' effect for the black outline. Trying to use the pen tool or something doesn't seem much easier or quicker...unless I'm doing it wrong? They often look messy, wriggly and just...off, and then it takes me a long time to fix them up if I'm lucky enough to get them to look right at all. It's especially a pain to get them right when it's a balloon for a particularly long scream ('AAAAHHHH' ). XP

Right now I've been sticking to putting in word balloons in Photoshop as a last step, but I also use Manga Studio 5, just FYI.

[keii4ii]

Stroke may look awkward because the thickness is so even, while the lineart in your art has that thickness variation. Why not just draw the outlines by hand?

[VermillionWorks]

Hmm, good point that may help with some of the wriggly/awkwardness. XD I sill have trouble getting the overall shape of the balloons right though (as in getting them not to look...weird. Like a 5 year old drew them or something.)...a lot of it has to do with my unsteady hand, I think.

[UzukiCheverie]

a lot of it has to do with my unsteady hand, I think.

Don't worry about going slow with it as you draw them! Do it nice and quick, because then the strokes will come out a lot smoother than if you drew them slowly. Some things are better to do quicker, and drawing curved lines and shapes like these is one of those things.

And don't be afraid to take the time sometime to open up a new canvas and try practicing the different shapes for yelling balloons. I hand-draw my own balloons as well, and they are something that you get better at drawing as you go along. It just takes a bit of work to get the movements down. Just be quick and nimble with it, don't worry about making the strokes look absolutely perfect, and you'll be drawing awesome yelling balloons in no time

[Kamikaze]

This is a really good question. On our comic, we don't using any stroke for our bubbles, but we still have the problem of making them look right. I will say perhaps doing the 'stroke' effect on the layer might not be the best option? Maybe if you used the pen tool to create specific anchor points you'd have better control. From there you just stroke the path with whatever size brush you'd like and it's not as chunky.

[Menbung]

I've noticed that in manga (the traditionally drawn ones) word balloons aren't perfectly done, I mean if you look closely at the nib strokes, lines are shaky, not perfect. And that's what I like, it just looks organic. I've seen pros draw balloons as a 5 year old, like you say, and that's fine in my book, those perfect MS speech bubbles aren't quite appealing in my eyes.

A personal opinion here, if you're doing a scream balloon, a fear balloon, don't focus on the shape or lines too much, do a shapeless "balloon". Traditionally you would draw it more triangular, with spiky edges and all, but the thing is, if you draw it freehanded and using all the shakes and iterruptions of your stroke in order to create a more organic line, that line can convey better that feeling of fear, and nervousness that you're character is feeling. A balloon that represents that uneasiness the character is having. If you draw it with perfect straight lines it may create a little disturbance in the force (drawing).

That's just what I think Oo.oO

P.S: Also, checking some horror or guro mangas (if you're into that, like I am, cough) may provide awesome examples of those kinds of speech bubbles.

[scythe]

I actually think they'r working reasonably well. You may have too many peaks though. Experiment with less. You could get away with just 5 or 6 peaks on the bubbles you showed.

[VermillionWorks]

Okay, thanks a lot for the tips, guys! ^_^ Gave me a few things to think about and experiment with.

Though here's one other question related to this, to those who draw them by hand - Do you draw the balloon by drawing a line, stopping, drawing a line, stopping (basically building the shape little by little)...or do you try to use as few strokes as possible? Like more a couple big swoops of the hand and BAM, shape's done. Uh, hope that all made sense...

[Menbung]

That would depend on the size and shape of the bubble, more or less it would go like this:

• Spiky/triangular ones/big or small: I usually build em', the line is built, meaning "drawing a line, stopping, drawing a line, stopping".

• Rounded/oval ones/ small: "a couple of big swoops of the hand and BAM, shape's done".

• Rounded/oval ones/big: I build the shape.

I liked that BAM, gonna shout it when the shape's done from now on ^^

[VermillionWorks]

Thanks! And yeah, I didn't mean to sound like Emeril Lagasse but...

[scythe]

For me, each line is a new stroke. I then go in and clean any extra bits.

[AnnaLandin]

I have SUCH an unsteady hand that I usually rely on Manga Studio's speech-bubble tools to help me, but looking at your examples here, I can see one thing in particular that stands out to me: all the little spikes are the same size. In the lower panel, it's possible to tell with one is the speech-balloon tail - it's the one at the top, going towards his mouth - but all the other little jags are pretty much identical.

Varying the size and length of the spikes will go a long way towards making them look a little more natural. Also, you might want to either up the size of the balloons, or shrink the size of the text; leaving a bit more air between the text and the edges of your balloon will also help make it look less crowded.

[yvettegustafsson]

I draw them in by hand usually and add in a 'Stroke' effect for the black outline. Trying to use the pen tool or something doesn't seem much easier or quicker...unless I'm doing it wrong? They often look messy, wriggly and just...off, and then it takes me a long time to fix them up if I'm lucky enough to get them to look right at all. It's especially a pain to get them right when it's a balloon for a particularly long scream ('AAAAHHHH' ). XP

I took the liberty of doing a workshop for myself using your image and playing with the word balloons, I hope it's OK! won't use them anywhere else, of course. It was just to help me think out an answer

I did these in Manga Studio (Clip studio paint) using the pen tool, because it has pressure sensitivity. When it's regular speaking I use the word balloon tool because I want a steady line, but when shouting I want a more "alive" line so I used the pen tool. I always have a hard time deciding what to do to make the reader know from whom the bubble comes from, that's why I put it so close to her face in the top panel and opened it up towards her skin. I also removed a bit of text there, because stressed out people usually use fewer words. It's my opinion anyway, not a rule or anything The lower one was harder and I'm not completely satisfied but maybe it's something to work with.

And the last part, writing long screams are fun to play around with as images in themselves. They don't always need a bubble, like in this weeks episode of GamerCat for example.

Hope that was helpful!

[VermillionWorks]

Nice one @yvettegustafsson, I do like the way your word balloons look more than mine.
From what eveyone's said I think I just need to use less peaks, make them less uniform, a bit more spacious, and draw them in with my own lines - no more stroke effect. As for getting the shape right, well, guess I'll just have to play around with them more, hopefully I'll get the hang of it.

Thanks again, everyone!^^