[X] My Assistant

so i wanted to translate some shit in italian and need advice on fonts, reply or you will start seeing stuff in comic sans

to be honest fonts are probably the most varied thing about scanlations. Each person finds and uses fonts that appeal to them.
Personally, I use Wild Words CC and roman and Baddaboom for exclamation text. The rest I work through with changing to italic and bold type.
But then, I know of several groups that use different fonts from everything to thoughts per character changes so it all boils down to your personal preference.

Heh... I dunno, so many people use Wild Words, Comic Sans might be a nice change of pace (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/wink.gif). Anyway, like Terrabane mentioned, Wild Words is the default font of choice for most scanlators. Anime Ace is another one that has seen quite a bit of use. Personally, I prefer fonts with lowercase letters for regular dialogue: Blambot Casual, Mighty Zeo, Comiccrazy, Komika Text. I then italicize for thoughts and exposition and bold/italicize for emphasis. For stuff that is handwritten by the original author, I use fonts that mirror the handwriting: thin fonts like Another, TrashHand, augie for moans and text outside bubbles, big thick fonts like Feast o' Flesh, Crash Landing for screams. I use irregular fonts like Twelve Ton Goldfish for SFX. [www.blambot.com] Blambot.com offers a good selection of fonts tailored for use in comics.

This post has been edited by rookie84: Feb 9 2012, 20:28

Pretty much what they said. But sometimes I might use something completely different depending on the orginal J-font by simply having numerous main fonts. I strayed from Anime Ace to Wild Words (but I keep it for random reasons) and like to use Laffayette Comic Pro for my own stuff. And Digital Comic Strip from outer bubble dialogue like interal thoughts and smaller stuff like Augie, Go Boom!, SF Grunge and the like.

For screaming, I switch it up depending on the type. Most people simply use Mouth Breather which is fine (for me) for like when someone turns comically evil, but I use CCWiccanSpecialInt and Brutal Dude for raging rape screams.

Ooh... that Wiccan font looks good.

Ooh... that Wiccan font looks good.

It's what I used for Tiramisu Tart. It really makes a big difference compared to MB.

thanks for the tips, i just want something to get going. if i won't go back to real life after 2-3 works maybe i'll start getting more into it

Bwa ha ha, you'll be trapped forever.
I'll PM you a list of the fonts I use, in case you haven't started yet.

Bwa ha ha, you'll be trapped forever.
I'll PM you a list of the fonts I use, in case you haven't started yet.

....Or maybe posting a few here, perhaps?... You can never have enough useful fonts (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

I use AR-Cena, Andy and Jing Jing.

IMO it's up to your tastes. For example, I heard that Red Hawk Scans used Basic Comical, but it didn't look right to me. Somehow. So I just scrolled through the list of fonts I had on my computer till I found a nice one. I think installing Adobe Photoshop gave me tons of fonts I never thought I had, I think they are the fonts with "AR" prefixed at the front, all of them look pretty good.

This post has been edited by ranchu89: Feb 23 2012, 07:47

Um...Just notice that this [www.dafont.com] font is "free for personal use"
So...am I allowed to use it for typesetting doujin? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif)

Um...Just notice that this [www.dafont.com] font is "free for personal use"
So...am I allowed to use it for typesetting doujin? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif)

You're free to use whatever the hell you want. You can use [pics.livejournal.com] Comic Sans if it floats your boat.

Hijacking this tread for a bit of assistance...

I've been trying to get around to editing this Bakemonogatari doujin. Unlike TIES' later works, the majority of bubbles in this doujin are exceptionally narrow. In the other TIES works I've done, I usually could get 4-5 characters (using Wild Words) to fit and still have small bit of space around them, but I can't get more than 3-4 without piercing the edges of bubbles in this one.

So perhaps there's a more suitable font to use for unusually narrow bubbles?

You're free to use whatever the hell you want. You can use [pics.livejournal.com] Comic Sans if it floats your boat.

No you can't. If you do, pixies will come and eat your testicles. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

No you can't. If you do, pixies will come and eat your testicles. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Damn, messed up my own joke! XD

(seriously, never use Comic Sans, it's fucking hideous and will probably get you curb stomped)

Hijacking this tread for a bit of assistance...

I've been trying to get around to editing this Bakemonogatari doujin. Unlike TIES' later works, the majority of bubbles in this doujin are exceptionally narrow. In the other TIES works I've done, I usually could get 4-5 characters (using Wild Words) to fit and still have small bit of space around them, but I can't get more than 3-4 without piercing the edges of bubbles in this one.

So perhaps there's a more suitable font to use for unusually narrow bubbles?

I wonder how it would come out if you just put all the text vertically. And from right to left. Like japanese text.

If it would be easy to adjust oneself to read it, for example. Reading japanese vertically or horizontally makes not much of a difference to me, so I see no reason why it wouldn't work the same with english text.

I believe it would be a good experiment. The subject work seems naturally suited to it. And it would look a whole lot better than horizontal text, no matter what font you use.

@Dlaglacz: That's not going to work. Japanese characters are written to fill out a square, so you can naturally go either vertically or sideways. English is meant to be written horizontally, so you're not going to save a lot of space going vertically. Think of letters like "l" or "j" (or "I" for capital letters); they take up very little space going sideways but a lot of space going vertically.

@lightshader: You might try fonts with lowercase letters, they tend to take up less space than all-caps. Those bubbles look thin enough though, that you might have no choice other than to go outside the bubbles or redraw them.

@Dlaglacz: That's not going to work. Japanese characters are written to fill out a square, so you can naturally go either vertically or sideways. English is meant to be written horizontally, so you're not going to save a lot of space going vertically. Think of letters like "l" or "j" (or "I" for capital letters); they take up very little space going sideways but a lot of space going vertically.

True, but that also depends on the choice of font. Japanese do on occasion write vertically with our letters, and they use fonts that neatly fill out squares.

But the point is that lightshader is trying to save space, which you can't do if every letter takes up a whole square. You can get away with that in Japanese because the use of kanji makes it much more compact: for example, you only need two spaces for 発音, while you need 13 spaces for "pronunciation."

True. I'd still like to experiment with it. Possibly by the use of some font which would optimize characters vertically. For example "I" could look like this:

_______________
_______||_______