Hey. Lately, I've been using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to draw my comics. While I can draw fine using it, I can't find a way to create text bubbles. So, I've beem saving comics and exporting them to Corel Painter X to make the bubbles. Unfortunately, I hate Painter, so I need to find a way to create text bubbles. I've heard some people mention Adobe Illustrator as being used to create said bubbles, but I ran away in terror as soon as I opened that program. So, does anyone have any suggestions or tips?

here's my tutorial
http://www.drunkduck.com/Subcultured_Tutorials/index.php?p=187968

Thanks for the help. It turns out that I learned part of your trick right before reading the tutorial. I found that you can use the elliptical marquee tool to create bubbles by making a selection using the tool, right clicking, and hitting Stroke, then filling the insides white on a layer beneath the bubbles. A bit more work than your method, but it was before I remembered to read your guide. Thanks for your help, though. I appreciate it.

I made one for making speech bubbles in MS Paint (mostly for sprite comics) a long time ago, I figured I'll share it here since this thread's stickied.
http://www.drunkduck.com/Final_Fantasy_VI_The_Real_Fantasy/gfx/textbox10.png

this is prolly the third post about speech bubbles...so i'll sticky it for now so there won't be any multiple threads in the future

I used to do speech bubbles in Paint, but Paint has a horrible tendency to fuck up JPEGs. Whenever an image is saved as a JPEG in Paint, the quality of the image is horribly lowered. That's why I started doing bubbles in other programs in the first place.

That's why you save as PNG, it doesn't fuck around with it. And like I said, it's intended for sprite comics.

I use the elliptical marquee tool and select around some already-placed text. Then I right click the layer that the bubbles are on, click Blending Options. Go down to 'Drop Shadow' and bring the 'Spread' slider to 100. Bring the 'Opacity' slider to 100. Bring the 'size' slider to 3 and bring the 'distance' slider to 1. Gives a good effect, methinks.

curved corner rectangle tool. 'nuff said.

you could also make your own CUSTOM bubbles just to show off how much you kick ass.

I hand-draw my comics and then photoshop them. I just write the text in for size and hand draw my speech bubbles... it really depends on the style you're looking for. If you want a more distinctive and organic style, like I use, hand-drawing is easiest.

here's the way i make textboxes
http://www.drunkduck.com/Ultimate_Mario_Brothers_V1/?p=194070

Here is how I do texts in Photoshop CS:

1. Input all texts needed, in their own layers
2. Create new layer in which I'll put the speechbubbles and textboxes.
3. On the blank layer, make bubbles on respective texts using elliptical marquee tool.
4. Add speechbubble tails using polygon mask or lasso-tool mask on respective bubbles.
5. Still on the blank layer, fill the masked areas with white. Use Edit-Stroke to give enclosures.

6. Deselect the area.

Now you have nice speechbubbles on one layer and texts on other layers.

Hints for advanced techniques: Masked areas (area made by marquee tools) can be expanded or contracted. Just click Select-Modify-(expand/contract).

I make a circle and a stem on the same layer and add a stroke around it.
I also have manga speech bubbles as a brush file so I can select which one I want when I get to lazy to create one. You can see any example on my comic here.

NOTE: It's now May of 2009, and it had been a while since I had reviewed the availability of these url addresses for these tutorials. As it turned out only one source had moved BUT it also turned out to be the largest and most useful source of all. Isn’t that the way these things go?

So I have regretfully eliminated a great deal of material for this segment. All the remaining links should be up to date again at this point. I hope that these tutorials do prove useful for some of our forum members.

Charleyhorse

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Okay, here is a cross section of tutorials aimed at teaching the same bit of information from different perspectives.

Why?--because you never know what person will deliver just exactly the right bit of information in a certain way that will blast through your mental blocks and lead to that perfect bit of epiphany allowing you to make progress.

First up are tutorials on making speech bubbles and adding text to the same. I don't know about you, but this was a real sticking point for me, and the difficulty of learning how to do this with an art application about made me pull my hair out until I finally encountered that one tutorial on the subject that WORKED for me. Here's hoping that one of these fine tutorials will similarly work for you.

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Making Text Speech Bubbles

First the Photoshop tutorials of our DrunkDuck regulars:

Our own Eunice P's tutorial
http://www.drunkduck.com/Comic_Tutorials/index.php?p=28017

Subcultured's [Jess Calcaben]tutorial
http://www.drunkduck.com/Subcultured_Tutorials/index.php?p=187968

Skookmunkee's intermediate level tutorial
http://www.drunkduck.com/Comic_Tutorials/index.php?p=33815

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Now for a Gimp tutorial on making speech bubbles from a DrunkDuck regular:

Gigatwo's tutorial
http://www.drunkduck.com/Gimpage/index.php?p=41840

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Now for Gimp tutorials on text speech bubbles by non DrunkDuck people: [By the way, these people do not produce better tutorials, by any means, but it's often helpful to look at the same information as filtered by the perspectives of different experts.]

From Gimptalk.com [using Gimp, obviously]
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/Comic-Talk-Bubbles-1259-1.html


Here's a Wikibook site on creating text speech bubbles using the Gimp
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GIMP/Add_Speech_Bubbles_to_a_Comic_Strip

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Professionally, Illustrator is used for lettering because its made with Vectors which are Clean to look at and easy to manipulate.. but most importantly because you cant have clutter or problems that gets in the way of the text.


Here are several tutorials on how Comicraft does the lettering in comics, in that site you can find several pro comic fonts as well (not free thouh).

"As you read these pages remember, please, Computers don't letter comics. People do."
http://www.balloontales.com/tips/

Vector-based graphics programs can produce speech bubbles very easily. I recommend Flash, because it's ridiculously easy to work with.

I've started incorporating mouse-over pop-up speech bubbles in my webcomic - adds a bit of flavor and interactivity.

I agree that vector based programs are one easy way to make speech ballons with. I use Adobe Illustrator or just do it the old-fashioned way... hand draw them into the original page. What stinks about Illustrator is that it is expensive. I heard that some people use the free Inkscape program http://www.inkscape.org/index.php?lang=en but I've never used it yet.

I use Adobe Illustrator, but that kind of figures, because I make my comic entirely in Illustrator.

But don't just think about the text balloons and such. Put a little thought into choosing your font. This is my own little pet peeve, but I think a lot of comics use fonts that are hard to read or don't seem to go with the comic. So pick your font with care!

Once I made the transition to shading on the computer, I found this method easiest for me.

1. Create text on a layer above the art.
2. On the art layer, use the eliptical marquee tool to surround text.
3. Using the shift+polygonal lasso tool combo, create stem of the word balloon.
4. Use the Edit>Fill command to fill in the selection tool with black, or color of choice.
5. Use the Select>Modify>Contract command to shrink the selection by 2-3 pixels (or whatever thickness fits your style and size).
6. Use the Edit>Fill command to fill in the selection with white.
7. Enjoy your work of art.

By using the shift+Eliptical marquee tool, you can create overlapping word balloons, or even thought bubbles.

Yes this tutorial is really great ...

Hummm.... i know you can download some bubbles online some were but i don't bother. I just hand draw them. WAY EASIER.

I have downloaded speech bubbles because I don't like the look of handmade ones. I dunno, I just find them easier to work with/manipulate. Thought for my comic I mostly use boxes anyway. XD

I use illustrator; elipse tool then run the "scribble and tweak" filter on it. It gives it a neat blocky look.

As usual, I use Photoshop...

I select the shape tool (usually by hitting the U hotkey), and make all the speech bubbles in white on their own layer. I then right-click and hit "rasterize layer", put a 1pt black stroke on it, and use the polygonal lasso to fill in the tails.

HEY how do I get paint.net is it free or do you need to buy it , same goes to photoshop

Photoshop you need to buy. If you get a wacom tablet, photoshop elements comes with it free.
Paint.net, well, I don't know what that is.



And are there any suggestions about balloon placement? I'm ok with how I make balloons- I'm just lost when it comes to putting them.

I suggest putting them in a space where the bubble won't interfere with the art too much- somewhere where there's either a lot of empty space, or background.

I googled comic speech bubbles or something (don't remember, it was a long time ago) and I found a huge png of like 20 different types of speech bubbles... then I would copy and paste them but then I decided that was WAY too much work so I now draw my speech bubbles in before I ink and scan it. It's WAY easier and I don't like the perfectly round speech bubbles anyways XD

First I put in my text in Photoshop and place it where I want it. Then I use the elliptical shape tool to put an ellipse (white with a black outline) over the top of the text to make sure its the right size. Then I go to the layers menu and place my text layer on top of my ellipse layer. Then I add a pointer in the background layer and merge layers. I haven't found an easy way to do thought bubbles though.

I don't think Painter is a great way to create text and/or balloons.

Here is a very worthwhile site on lettering with Illustrator:

http://www.ninjalettering.com/

Plus, it's a really cool name for a site.