| Posted: 20 August 2019 at 7:02am | IP Logged | 11
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The way you’re using speech balloons to move us around the page is just brilliant, chief.•• Want to take a moment to comment on this (and say thanks!). When I started out at Charlton I was doing my own lettering--a kind description!--and I gave little or no thought to the actual placement of the balloons and captions, Didn't really even think about them when I was drawing the panels. I had a standard rule in those days: don't put anything important in the top third of the panel. Most of the copy went there. Even with that, tho, I made what I now see as boneheaded mistakes--like having copy in the top third of two adjacent panels, but in the first also having dialog in the lower left corner. The eye would instinctively read straight across, and that additional copy would often be missed. Even rereading my own stuff I made this goof. Slowly I began to think of the balloons and captions as PART of the art. That their position on the page was, as you note, intended to guide the readers eyes. This would allow for some fairly complex panel layouts to be rendered easy to read, as the balloons and captions acted as roadmarks. One of the reasons I got especially annoyed when editors moved my balloons and captions without checking with me.
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