What Not to Do with Bubbles

Thought I might upload this here.

Original to compare:

EDIT: And another beauty by TamberElla:

Feel free to disregard my advice, as I'm not the expert on comic matters, but I thought this might help some people.

I did it awhile back as an example for a friend, but basically this is what my pages would look like if I made some of the mistakes with bubbles and fonts that I see some beginners make.

1. Don't use the standard pre-made gradients that come with photoshop for your text.

2. Make the bubbles easy to read. Don't put too much transparency, wacky drawn in squiggles instead of bubbles, or things like this.

3. Don't crowd the text to the edge of the bubble. This is distracting.

4. Pick a good comic-strip style font that is easy on the eyes. I've only seen traditional fonts like Times New Roman look good in a very small number of cases.

Here's some good ones:

[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

More: [link]

5. Don't do that weird slurpy looking text bend thing so much that it makes the sound effects look obviously photoshopped.

6. DO NOT use the fonts Comic Sans or Papyrus. Feel free to disagree with me, but most people will instantly think 'type n00b' the same way people think 'photoshop n00b' when we see lens flares or obvious uses of the photoshop grass brush.

7. Don't make a huge flowery narration of pointless information that you already showed with your panels and artwork.

8. Some people don't have English as their first language. If you want your comic to be successful to English-speakers, you should get someone with grammar skills to go over your work. This actually goes for some native English speakers too.

9. Choose appropriate sound effects. "Bounce" doesn't really evoke a dangerous chase scene.

10. Don't put any type within .25" of the papers edge, and if you are printing don't put any of it within .5" of the edge.

11. Don't right or left justify your text. Make sure it is centered.