Dialogue and Speech Bubbles

One of the aspects I needed to consider for the graphic novel was the design of the speech/thought bubbles. Previously in my last project I had used the standard fonts and bubbles that came with the Comic Life software and although the software was quite easy and intuitive to use, I did find find that it was quite limiting is this respect.

For my new graphic novel and wanted to spend more time on aspects such as this, aspects which are often overlooked in comics and graphic novels. Thompson, (2008) explains that though they are a simple feature they are one of the most defining aspects of sequential and therefore should be considered just as integral in their design as the art itself (p82)

An example of good use of these would be in the 2004 film 'Night Watch'. The filmmaker knew that the dialogue is Russian and would be subtitled, but they made an artistic decision that they would not use standard-format subtitles. The filmmakers were aware that many cinema-goers did not like subtitles as they thought they were hard to follow and were intrusive on the film. They therefore decided that their subtitles would be more a part of the film and would interact with the narrative. For instance a scene where a  boy is being called by vampires, the subtitles are blood-red when the boy is underwater and then dissipate with the water when he emerges...

This is something I wanted to explore and utilise in my graphic novel, certain characters speech bubbles would have different styles and fonts to other and would integrate more with the panel if possible.

I created a test panel to give to give an example of how they would interact in my graphic novel...