Special Edition Podcast

Make Comics #22 – Be the Letterer

Show Notes

Haas wants to be a professional letterer. How can that happen? After working in indie comics for a while, we talk about the best way to make the jump to the majors and the challenges therein. Plus we talk about what it takes to be a letterer in general. It’s not just knowing Adobe programs. But that certainly helps. There’s invaluable advice for everyone making modern comics, so listen up, and get your kerning correct.

Running Time: 00:15:09


Take note! The Make Comics Podcast is moving to its own feed, which you can subscribe to in iTunes, or here manually.

Andy Schmidt is the founder of the online comic book school Comics Experience, as well as a former editor at Marvel Comics and IDW Publishing. Josh Flanagan has been working on iFanboy.com, talking, reviewing, and thinking about comics for over a decade, as well as writing and creating some of his own.

If you’re interested in going further, you can check out Comics Experience, where there are plenty of classes available in all the disciplines of comic book creation from writing to drawing to coloring to lettering.

Got a question for the podcast? Send it to info@comicsexperience.com and put “MAKE COMICS PODCAST” in the subject line!

Music:
“Dear Justice Letter”
Fugazi

Subscribe

Get Involved

Doing the podcast is fun and all, but let's be honest, listening to the 2 of us talk to each other can get repetitive, so we look to you, the iFanboy listeners to participate in the podcast! "How can I get in on the fun?" you may ask yourself, well here's how:

  • E-Mail us at contact@ifanboy.com with any questions, comments or anything that may be on your mind.

Please don't forget to leave your name and where you're writing from and each week, we'll pick the best e-mails to include on the podcast!

Comments

  1. Some people might also find Manga Studio easier to use then illustrator. Plus Manga Studio is a program specifically designed for comics.

  2. Cool show once again. I think anyone interested in ettering should focus less on the technical tools (i.e.tricks and effects in illustrator) and more on design and typography theory and training. Software is easy to learn. When you get into things like covers, promos, title pages, back matter etc, that’s where you really see who knows their stuff, and who just knows how to use software. A letterer who can hold their own as a professional designer/typesetter is really rare in comics.

    Illustrator isn’t that hard. All you need to know is 1. The Pen tool, 2. Pathfinder Tool and 3. The Type Tool. You can do like 98% of anything you can think of with those three things. With experience you can get really good and fast.

Leave a Comment