» The Joys Of Speech Bubbles: Lesson Two (Making 'Em Work...Without Layers)

Welcome back!

In our last issue, I talked about the necessity of using Speech Bubbles. Today, I'm going to go ahead and share a quick and easy way of handling them. Because the world of art programs is basically divided into two groups, I have divided this tutorial into two halves. The first half, which you are reading now, deals with creating speech bubbles without using layers.

Please Note: This is by no means the only way to handle this. However, it is what I use when I am using a program without layers. It is simple and effective.

Ok, First off, let's say hello to our angel and devil, who are already having another conversation:

Hmm. Not exactly the nicest conversation, but that's ok. We're going to take their words and bubblefy them.
Our first step in this process is to realign the words. The easiest way to do this is to imagine what type of bubble you want, and arrange them in that shape. For example, as I will be using rectangles, I'm going to want them to be as together as possible. If I was using circles or ellipses I would aim to have the middle lines be longer than the top and bottom ones (center the text in that case). It will help, for this method, if you can record exactly where you put the line-breaks in the text. You'll see why later.

That looks good. Now it's important to preserve the order in which the words are spoken. Since the Angel is on the right, his words are going to be on the right as well, but we still want to make sure you read them before the devil's, therefore we will put them near the top, center them slightly and place the Devil's response underneath them.

This follows the natural reading path of the english written word. You must always remember that the eye reads left->right, then top->bottom. However, if aren't properly placed in relation to each other (for example, if we put the Devil's words too far to the left), then the reader would naturally be confused. Though he wants to start from the Top-Left, his eyes will want to grab on to the words in the Middle-Left. Nesting the Devil's words under the Angel's will help clear that up.

Excellent. Let's check to see if we can draw our text boxes. The easiest way to check is to take a selector tool (usually looks like a dashed-square or a magic-wand) and draw a selection box around it. You can also just try to draw the text box. Be ready to UNDO your selection though, cause...



Crimany! The Devil's words are positioned in such a way that, if I drew the boxes now, I'd cover up part of his head. Sometimes that's unavoidable, but usually a little tweaking will make it all better. If you can, you can simply move the text. Otherwise, delete it and place it again a little further to the right, like this:



Beautiful. No conflict now. Let's draw our text boxes.

As I said earlier, I prefer squares. They're simple and they work. Set your shape to have a solid outline and a filled in middle. This is to eliminate any unnecessary background interference which might obstruct your text. If you don't have a background, this really is a waste of time. However, it's still good to know.

Now then, draw your boxes over your text, covering it up completely. Use the text itself as the guide for how large to draw your boxes. This avoids the problem of having boxes that are too large or small. The downside, of course, is that you now need to go replace your text...



However, since the text box was based on the text, the text will fit perfectly back inside:



You're almost done, and it looks fantastic. Or at least, it looks decent. Ok, maybe it just looks, but that's good enough for now. The last bit is drawing the lines. This can sometimes be the most difficult part if you have a complex background. One good system is, if you're using a dark background, draw some thick lines in white (or whatever color your text-box is filled with), then draw the outlines around them. For this image, though, we'll just draw a pair of lines and fill them in with white.



Now, take your normal paint brush, and eliminate the intersecting lines and:


YOU'RE DONE!

Hazzah!
See? That wasn't so hard.


Next time I'll show you how to do text-bubbles using layers, a process that's much easier and also much more complicated.
Thanks for reading!

-The Bitter Joe