Original subtitles

Alright, now it's time to add speech

bubbles to our panels.

But before we get into that, let's talk

about the different types of speech bubbles.

Speech bubbles come in a lot of shapes

and varieties and they really help

deliver the emotions of the character

and help us understand the tone of

their speech better.

Here I present to you six of the main

types of speech bubbles.

The first one is the most default one

you can say.

It's just a normal circle, indicates

normal speech, so you can say that it's

used majority of the time.

But for a speech bubble that looks like

a cloud, it represents the inner

thoughts of the character.

A rectangular speech bubble can be used

for the narration of the story or for a

monologue of the character.

A spiky speech bubble indicates

shouting or screaming or a loud voice

in general.

A streamlined speech bubble with lines

going towards the center presents sort

of tension for the character and

usually it's used for monologue, not

for dialogue.

And finally, the cloud slash gauss kind

of borderless or boundless speech

bubble represents kind of dark thoughts

or despair or kind of a low mood.

Of course, these are not the only

types, there can be countless speech

bubble types.

The more you read comics, the more you

get exposed to more interesting stuff.

But I would say these are good for a

starter pack.

Now that we've covered the types, let's

get started and add speech to the

chapter have at hand.

I usually put all the text and

lettering into one folder to keep

things organized so I'll create a new

folder on top of all the layers and

I'll call it text and on the left side

here I'll go down to this balloon tool

and once I click on it I'll see

multiple options.

For each subtool of these there are

settings under the tool property.

You can change the shape the speech

bubble, the brush size, the default

colors and how pixelated or soft you

want the border to look like and you

can even change the brush shape from

over here.

There are so many interesting varieties.

What I usually do for my dialogues I

use the last subtool which is a rounded balloon.

I choose a rectangular figure and make

the roundness of the corners to be 100 %

and set my line color to always be

black and the fill color to always be white.

Unless I wanted to change them then I

would do that manually.

So with this selected I'll go ahead and

draw the speech bubble.

And once I drew it I can still edit the

settings again by using the object tool.

So from here I can edit the border size

and the fill opacity.

I usually set my fill opacity to be 90 %

so that it's not completely covering

the artwork so we can see a bit beneath

it and once the speech bubble is added

you can add a balloon tail and again

play with the settings over here for

example I have mine set to straight

line with the width of tail set to 100

but I can also use a poly line and this

is how you can create a longer tail for

the speech bubble or I can also use a

spline which is how to create those

curvy tails for bubbles.

There is also the thought balloon tail

over here which you can add thought

bubbles to your speech bubble or you

can use the balloon pen to draw your

own balloon bubble by yourself.

For example in this scene I don't want

it to be a perfect circle because I

want to include some sense of fear so

it's gonna be a hazy bubble.

For my balloon pen I used the default

settings except that I changed only two

settings to better match my I'll show

you these settings right now, but by

the way, you can change any subtool

settings by clicking on the wrench icon

over here.

So once you click on it, you'll see

this menu.

There are all kinds of settings, and

these come for every single tool in

Clip Studio Paint, so try to get

yourself familiar with it.

So what I changed is, under brush size,

I clicked this arrow over here and made

the minimum value of the pen pressure

to be 20 or 21 % so that I get this pen

pressure effect when I draw.

And the second thing is under

correction I set stabilization to be 50

% because when this is low the shakiness

of the hand is gonna show up so I'm not

always desiring this very shaky look.

That's why I set mine to be 50 % and by

clicking the eye over here I enabled it

in the quick access over here so that I

can change it quickly whenever I want.

And you can do also for any setting you

can enable or disable any of the

settings you want to have in the box

over here.

I changed my mind and I'll draw it with

a lower stabilizer to make it more shaky.

Now if you look at the layers panel

you'll see that we have a balloon

created and it's outside all the

folders so I'm just gonna drag it and

put it inside the text folder so that I

have my speech bubble I want to adjust

it just slightly as you can see there

are some additional stuff over here so

I'll go again to the correct line tool

and I'll delete the extra points.

Speech bubble borders are also vectors

and the same operations apply to them

so we can play around with our speech

bubble and adjust it to how we like and

remove any excess control points that

we like.

I'm gonna change the opacity to 90 % so

that I can see what's beneath it.

Now after the speech bubble is added,

to type our dialogue we go to the text

tool over here and click on the speech

bubble and start typing our dialogue.

Notice how I introduced the new lines

behind every word to match the shape of

my speech bubble.

I'm gonna use the object tool to drag

it and center it the speech bubble.

But I want to introduce an important

note about text.

When you write your text inside your

speech bubble, make sure it follows the

shape of the speech bubble.

For example, now if I see like the

edges of my text they're kind of giving

a circular shape.

So always try to go for circular shape

or diamond shape.

Something that starts small at the top

and then gets bigger and then gets

smaller and then ends.

That makes your speech bubbles more

pleasing to the eye.

Now the text I added was immediately

joined with the speech bubble layer.

That means that now when I move them

around, they are on the same layer and

that makes it so easy to change the

location of your speech bubble.

Now for the text tool, you can save

your settings in different subtools so

that you don't have to change your type

and size every time and you just

immediately apply the settings.

For example over here I have a

monologue so I'm just going to select

everything and click on the monologue

subtool that I created over here and

once I click on it the monologue text

effects have been applied.

I'll just reduce the size a little bit

to match my speech bubble and I'll also

make it italic to make it more

impactful and also to double indicate

that this is monologue it's speech.

Now how do you save the settings?

Basically just right-click any text

tool that you have and duplicate it and

name it anything you want.

Let's call it dialogue and after you

set your settings of font size and

other stuff click on the wrench icon

over here and click save all settings

as default.

It will ask you on a message like is it

okay to replace the current settings

just to click OK, and there you have it.

You have very easily created the

default settings of your tool.

So for me I have one for dialogue, one

for monologue, and one for narration,

and I could add more later if I saw a

necessity, and that's what I would

advise for you to do as well.

Another handy tip is that you can

create a list for your comic fonts so

that you don't have to scroll through

all the list of fonts available on your PC.

For example, these are all the fonts I

have on my PC, but I created this comic

list that only has a handful of the

fonts I personally selected that I use

in my comic.

And the way to do that is by clicking

on this gear icon, and on the left side

under font list, click on this icon to

create a new font list, name it

anything you want.

And then, while clicking on the list,

you can scroll through your list of

fonts and tick the ones that you want

to include in your list.

Once you're done, click OK, and when

you click the drop down next to Font,

you'll see it added over here so you

can quickly access your fonts.

As for the fonts I use in my comic, I

mainly use Comica fonts, which are

royalty free fonts that can be used for

both free and commercial projects so

that I'm on the safe side and there is

no worry of any legal liabilities when

using the font.

They come in many varieties and I find

them very handy and expressive in comics.

But if you still want other fonts to

search you can search on this website

1001fonts.com and the way to search for

fonts that can be used for commercial

purposes is by clicking on this button

over here so that all the results that

show up will be to use in commercial projects.

Now why am I mentioning commercial projects?

Because this is a big project you're

making and you might consider

monetizing your work so that you get

some payback for your efforts.

So it's very important to be on the

safe side when it comes to copyrights

and stuff like that.

But there is also a website that's

called the Blambot which they make

fonts exclusively for comic creators.

As you can see they have so many

interesting fonts and like they are the

default that is I think generally used

in the comic industry.

When it comes to the fonts of Blambot,

they support independent creators,

that's why their fonts are free of

charge for indie creators or personal

creators who do not belong to companies

or don't work with mainstream publishers.

So it should be okay to use their fonts

if you are working on your own, you

have their license granted for you.

Alright, let's come back to our file.

Let's say you had another speech bubble

over here, and you want to connect the

two speech bubbles so that there is

continuation in speech.

You can do that by simply using the

balloon tail.

You can either use it as a straight

line, or as a polyline, like we showed

earlier, or even as a spline.

This kind of connection would be

especially great if your speech is

across the comic as you scroll down, so

that you provide continuity in the speech,

so the speech connected as you scroll down.

But in my current chapter I don't have

such conversations so I removed them.

Let's talk about customizing the speech bubble.

Through the object tool you can change

the line color for example to red and

the fill color for example to black and

for changing the text color you can

change it by selecting the text and

changing the color.

So you can do a of customization.

You can even create a new layer and

clip it and maybe add a gradients.

The possibilities are really endless so

the more tools you'll learn in Clip

Studio Paint the more creative

combinations you can come up with.

Now on this page I have two other

speech bubbles over here so any speech

bubble that I'll add can be on the same

layer of my previous speech bubble or

on a separate layer.

Usually I keep everything on the same

layer and that is done making sure that

under the subtool settings over here

under how to add make sure that you

have add to selected layer selected so

that they come on the same layer

otherwise if you want every speech

bubble you create to be on a separate

layer then choose create a new layer so

I'll keep it on selected layer and I'll

add more speech bubbles here and adjust them.

For this character I decided to reverse

the speech bubble color to be of black,

full and white outline, because this is

an antagonist and is a dark character,

so that gives a more scary feeling to

the character.

The same thing for the font, I used a

creepy looking font to give that scary vibe.

Another important thing to note is

that, make sure that you break down

your speech bubbles into multiple

bubbles, so that you don't make it into

one big chunk of text that would be not

so pleasing for the reader to read.

The shorter the text bubbles are, the

easier it would be for your reader to

follow along, and it also gives more

dynamics to your chapter.

Finally, let's talk about the other

speech bubble types that we discussed earlier.

So far we've only dealt with basic

shapes, but sometimes we want to use

other speech bubble types, like the

panel I have here for example.

The character is raising her voice, so

I need a spiky speech bubble.

While I could certainly draw it with my

hand through the balloon pen, I don't

always to do that because clip studio

paint comes with a lot of materials for

comic creation and it comes with a good

variety of speech bubble shapes we can

access them by going to any of those

windows over here and clicking on it

you'll see that the materials window

will show up there are all sorts of

materials here whether it's brushes

poses image materials we'll talk more

about the others later but for now

let's head straight towards the speech

bubbles so go to manga material and

click the arrow next to it and then

click on balloon and then over here

you'll see different types there is

dialogue there is feeling there is

narration usually I use the dialogue

ones so for example over here I can

simply drag this jaggy curve over here

and once I drag it I don't know why it

goes straight inside the panel but for

me as I mentioned I keep my speech in

one folder above everything.

So I just drag it and put it over here

under the text folder and I'll resize

it, rotate it a little bit and I'll

type the speech in the same manner that

we did earlier.

I'll change the brush size a little bit

and I saw that doing the text this way

is better.

It's okay to put the question marks on

a new line.

It looks fine and still conveys the

same meaning.

Now let's say I want to play around a

little bit with the of the border.

While I can do that through the control

points that I showed you earlier, there

is also this tool called correct line width.

Over here we have multiple settings.

You can either thicken your lines, so

by choosing the appropriate brush size

I can brush over the border and see how

the thickness is increasing.

So I can either do that or I can choose

the narrow one and I can also play with

the ratio of how much I wanted to

narrow it down or So I'll choose the

narrow one and I'll play a little bit

with the thickness in the middle to

give that pen pressure feel.

So as you can see, we made this peach

bubble look more interesting than just

having uniform border thickness.

So Clip Studio Paint comes with those

shapes, but sometimes they might not be enough.

The good thing is that you can download

so many stuff from the Clip Studio

Paint assets.

For example, I downloaded these extra

speech bubble options and I'll show you

how I got them.

So when you're on your Clip Studio

window, go over here and click on Clip

Studio Assets and you can search here

for anything you want.

Speech bubble, for example.

And now you can see so many options

coming up.

Or you can just click on the Detail

button here and click on Balloon and

then you'll much more options because

you're seeing the whole category of the

balloons and it's very interesting the

more you look at the stuff the more you

want to download more stuff.

Over here you can check the newly added

ones or you can check the popular ones

which are usually the most downloaded

ones so under the popular ones you'll

find this smooth speech bubble flash

set which is the collection I just

showed you and really these are all so

to use.

While there are so many assets that are

free on Clip Studio assets, not all of

them are.

Some of them are paid.

So if you want to see only the free

results, again click on detail and

click on free under price.

This way you don't have to check

whether every item is free or not.

All the items we're seeing right now

are free.

So do your search and see what

interesting things you can download

based on your needs.

And anything you download from Clip

Studio Assets will show up under

Download here, so you can easily drag

stuff and drop them on your canvas to

add them.

So that's it for this lesson.

In the next lesson, we'll talk about

adding sound effects to your panels.