I have been doing some writing this week, but unfortunately it wasn't for the PV. Some of the guys over at the Thor Message Board have kind of, well, started putting together a comic book.

It started when one poster, RE-man, started sketching some Thor vs Hulk drawings. He then got inspired and began to do up a full on, 22 pager Thor vs Hulk comic. The goal isn't to have Thor pummel the Hulk, it's to show how a fight between the characters should go (with both characters being shown respect).

So after posting a few pages, another poster, Vartha, started inking the pages. The pages were coming out absolutely dynamite, but I noticed that the dialogue RE-man had chicken-scratched into his sketches needed some work. I offered to do the scripting and lettering of the book, and another poster, Mek, has said she will try to do the colouring.

I've never been a part of putting a comic together before, and so far I'm really enjoying the experience. We're doing this the old school Marvel way; the penciller is doing the plot, then the scripter comes in after to add the dialogue. So far I've seen about 9 pages, so my script is still fairly fluid.

I've also been learning how to use Adobe Illustrator to do the balloons, and in a short time I've made a lot of progress (though I still have a lot to learn). I compare the initial rough lettering I did using Microsoft Powerpoint (it was just to get a feel for where to put the balloons) to where I'm at now and it's no comparison. It's also caused me to pull out some comics and really study how the lettering and balloon placements are done; it makes a huge difference.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the 2 pages that I've done in Illustrator so far. I don't have any coloured pages to share yet, but this is getting pretty close to the finished product on my end. At the worst it's good practice using the software.

Enjoy!

~Hat~

Attachments
Page 3 Adobe.jpg (700 x 932)	Page 4 Adobe.jpg (711 x 906)

They put some of the vector based text stuff from Illustrator into Photoshop as well. For the kind of things you're doing, it's probably the easier program to manipulate, if you have access to it.

One of the main things I'd suggest doing if you're going to be using unusual fonts like the Thor one is to manually control the spacing between each letter, rather than relying a uniform setting. I can't quite look at the pages in full size, but at this size that kind of font can get hard to read, so you have to really manage them.

I do have Photoshop, and I'm more used to using it, but I'm not sure which version I've got. I'll have to check it out.




That's good to know. I'm not sure if I'm going to stay with that font for Thor or not; so many different books these days use different fonts for him (I just read Siege #3, Thor #608, and Hercules: Fall of an Avenger and he had a different font in each one), so I don't necessarily have to maintain a look from the printed books.

~Hat~