Wednesday 20 October 2010

I fought an 8-year-old and the only reason I won is because he fell on a spike


And so to the hilariously imprecise and clumsy way Mr C goes about lettering his shit. Photoshop, as ever, is the main tool here, though I'm increasingly aware of its limitations as well as my own in this particular area. Functional seems to be the word I'm looking for, and considering that's the level of art I'm finally getting to, perhaps that's all I need, since as long as lettering is not aggressively terrible and sloppy the strip should read just fine.
More complex and in-depth discussion of the 'invisible art' of lettering can be found on Jim Campbell's blog, though I warn you the man's an unrepentant goth and must be treated with deep suspicion, caution and disdain.

Watching: Hawaii Five-0 1.5 - ah, man... Wood 'Avon barksdale' Harris, you can do better than this, surely? I like H50, but you can totally do better than this.
The Walking Dead 1.1 - based on the Robert Kirkman comic of the same name, this is fittingly downbeat and slow-paced stuff about the collapse of civilisation due to zombie outbreak, and like most zombie stories, despite the ubiquitous - some would almost say played out - nature of zombies in popular culture, nobody actually says the word zombie and even seem a bit clueless as to what the mythology entails. but it's entertaining stuff, taking necessary liberties with the source material to the point that it can get away with the talky scenes that dominate the comic and drag the pace to a standstill: here, the format supports exposition, but in many places the screen story eschews it in favor of the strengths that come with the moving image, particularly the scenes with the dude's wife instinctively shambling around their home after her death and freaking out her husband and son. It's definately one of the highlights of the new crop of shows this season - yes, even better than Hawaii Five-0 and the travesty that is The Event.
Caprica - So it's mature drama because he's made an anatomically correct sex robot that is identical to his 15 year old daughter? yeah, I'll go ahead and pass on this, thanks SyFy - but you keep on keeping it classy!

2 comments:

  1. Did that Text tool, click-hold-drag suggestion sort out the problem you mentioned with justified text blocks, BC?

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  2. Yes and no, Jim. On one hand, defining the text area first did open up PS's justification options, but on the other, the end results were ugly as sin no matter how I tweaked them, and the only solution was to create a larger text box - which completely defeats the point of using force justify in the first place.

    Thanks for clearing it up, all the same. If nothing else it can be used to mock up newspaper copy.

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