Apophenia Stories

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:59 pm

I just received the very first lettered version of the first chapter of Apophenia 357 and I have to say I'm totally blown away by Richard Karandosh's treatment of the story. Absolutely brilliant.

I'll have it up just as soon as I figure the best way out to display the entries.

Swordsman3003 · Post by **Swordsman3003** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 8:05 pm

Slowly but steadily I am lettering the pages. My microeconomics class is where I get most of my time.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 9:32 pm

Crapity crapity crap crap crap. Right in the middle of trying to update the site Webcomics Nation goes down on me.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 10:32 pm

Okay gang! It's all set up. Apophenia Stories is up at http://stories.apophenia-prime.com

Click the table of contents tab to see the stories submitted thus far (which is only one).

And Monday's page is up over at the main Apophenia 357 site.

Enjoy! Richard's submission is really cool.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:58 am

God damn Richard... that was excellent.

Also, did I detect a few Gilbert and Sullivan references?

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:41 am

I'm really hoping that Richard's excellent example will encourage more people to participate. I was getting a little discouraged with the response so far.

Swordsman3003 · Post by **Swordsman3003** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:28 am

I promise Ghastly, I will finish mine. I've lettererd about a little over half the pages.

HoneyNClover · Post by **HoneyNClover** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:52 pm

Ahhh....I wanna see it, but not until I've finished my version...lest I ruin my "creative vision" x3

edit: bwahaha 69 posts x)

Moo Cow · Post by **Moo Cow** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:25 pm

Oh wow, this is so great! *bounces* this guy is mighty talented. He should join us on the forum, if hes not here in disguise...

~Sara

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:09 pm

GreenAdder's version is up.

HoneyNClover · Post by **HoneyNClover** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:19 pm

Ah crap, I broke down and read it ^^;;;

Agh! So good! So much better than the crap I came up with ><;;;

hah..."Oatmeal"...that's priceless xD

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:40 pm

I love that Richard was able to interject so much humour into his script but still leave the story touching and create character you can actually care about. The Zombies crack me up. They're like a Laurel and Hardy sort of comedy duo.

GreenAdder · Post by **GreenAdder** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:13 am

Things I learned lettering Apophenia-

The font "Witzworx" isn't very friendly at small sizes. I punctuated carefully, but at large resolutions I can barely see the periods or apostrophes. I should have just gone with the fontifier.com one that I had made of my own handwriting (the one I used on the cover image).

GIMP 2 doesn't have a word balloon script (yet), so I had to use a word balloon truetype font. A large amount of scaling, stretching, skewing, and rotation, and other alteration was done to make the balloons fit and not step on Ghastly's art any more than I had to.

Layers are my friend.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 4:57 am

If you notice Richard Karandosh reduced the opoacity of his word balloons to make them semi-transpearent. This obscures the art less and makes them less intrusive. Good technique for when you don't want to obscure artwork completely with your word balloons.

I'm not sure what font richard used but font selection is very important too. An anti-aliased font will often show up better at smaller sizes too.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 5:23 am

Gimmie a second and I'll produce a text tutorial because there's a very very simple way of doing the lettering that looks very nice and professional.

Moo Cow · Post by **Moo Cow** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 6:55 am

*grins* yay, another submission!!! *goes to read* *comes back*

Wow, very funny and awesome! niiiice! i like all the religious stuff and the relationship between the schoolgirl and the bride...

GreenAdder, hello, thanks for your awesome storyline and for joining the forum!

~Sara

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:12 am

Okee dokee gang, Here's Ghastly's Guide To Lettering Shit.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:55 am

THAT... is some helpful shit!

GreenAdder · Post by **GreenAdder** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:42 am

Ghastly wrote: I'm not sure what font richard used but font selection is very important too. An anti-aliased font will often show up better at smaller sizes too.

Actually I did make sure to anti-alias both my fonts and my word balloons. I just did an experiment letting the first page of Chapter 2 the exact same way, but with a different font. It makes a huge difference.

For those of you who are still working on your submissions: Blambot.com has a ton of good comic-style fonts (some are free, some cost money). The one that I'm going to be using on Chapter 2 is called "Anime Ace." It's far more legible. "Spectre Verde" and "Webletterer" look promising as well. I'll also be using a good number of the tips from Ghastly's guide.

As far as the rectangular word balloons, I only used them when the goblins were speaking. And I used polygonal ones when the dark elf girls were speaking. I was trying to imply that the non-human species had non-human voices. Hopefully I got that point across.[/url]

Moo Cow · Post by **Moo Cow** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:52 am

Very helpful!

*tucks info into brain just in case inspiration strikes*

~Sara