affinity publisher Title page for comic story -- Lettered using Publisher

[CartoonMike]

Here's one page of a short (15pg) story I've been working on.l Originally used the Publisher Beta to begin with and now using the released Version. I'm following the lettering techniques for Illustator from the ComicCraft tutorial I saw on Lynda.com. And i works, even better using Publisher with the Designer persona used when needed. 

The art was hand drawn on paper, real old-school. Will be finishing it up (pencils, inks and colors) in Clip Studio (would like to use Designer, but I like CS for pixel drawing/inking and painting a bit better).

this is a WIP, so as I wrap things up, I'll update this thread as i can. One nice thing is that having a link to the file, rather than embedding, allows me to letter rough penciled pages and see If I need to move things around in the roughs to make the panel "read" better as a visual composition. Yeah, it's a comic thing. This is something that most comics don't do, as it's so production-oriented. Y'know, if novelists can do a second draft, why can't comics. And Publisher allows me that flexibility and freedom. Thanks Serif and Affinity!

[GarryP]

Thanks for sharing that.  It's looking great so far.
It inspired me to make my own version of your text, just to see how I could make it. I’ve attached the result.
I haven’t got a hope of getting as good as you on the cartoon front so I try what I can. It was a nice little exercise.

[Alfred]

Nicely done (as usual!) Garry, but I think you need to do as Mike has done and avoid discontinuities like these:

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Nicely done (as usual!) Garry, but I think you need to do as Mike has done and avoid discontinuities like these:

I don't see that as a discontinuity. I see it as a stylistic difference...

[CartoonMike]

What I did was to make 2 copies of the text, group them. Then I made a jagged line and duplicated that and then made one copy a rectangle with the bottom edge being the jagged lined and the other had the jagged line as the top side. Both of these had NO fill and NO stroke. Then  from the layer palette I dragged one set of the title text into the "upper" shape and  the other into the lower shape. Since the Jagged line intersected the text and AD treats shapes like a mask when you move things into it -- all I had to do was to rotate the Jagged shape (NOT the text) to get the results you see. 

A little bit of adding layer FX for the shading and it's done. I like what you did, GaryP, was it similar to how I did it? I like the method I used, because the title went through a few changes and the text remains editable.

If this was unclear, give me a few days to do a "proper" tutorial.

BTW, the font is "Friend or Foe" from the Blambot.com website. I like BlamBot as it has dozens of excellent fonts that's free to use by indie comic artists and others. Friend or Foe is a paid font, though. It's quite reminiscent of early 70's title lettering in Marvel Comics of that era.

Edited August 24, 2019 by CartoonMike
added font info and corrected a name call-out.

[MikeW]

1 minute ago, CartoonMike said:

... I like what you did, MikeW, was it similar to how I did it?...

Wasn't me...that was GarryP.

I was just pointing out to Alfred I don't see what GarryP did in his treatment as discontinuity.

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, CartoonMike said:

Since the Jagged line intersected the text and AD treats shapes like a mask when you move things into it -- all I had to do was to rotate the Jagged shape (NOT the text) to get the results you see.

That’s interesting, Mike! When I zoom in, it looks as though the ‘verticals’ are truly vertical in the top half but very slightly rotated in the bottom half.

[CartoonMike]

17 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Wasn't me...that was GarryP.

I was just pointing out to Alfred I don't see what GarryP did in his treatment as discontinuity.

I claim early-morning-before-coffee excuse. Thanks for the correction and I've edited the post to have the correct name.

[CartoonMike]

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

That’s interesting, Mike! When I zoom in, it looks as though the ‘verticals’ are truly vertical in the top half but very slightly rotated in the bottom half.

Damn, you have a great eye Alfred! That's what was eventually chosen, as having the bottom half being the only "off-center" bit of text made the entire word look more broken than having both halves rotated. 

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, CartoonMike said:

I claim early-morning-before-coffee excuse.

[Smee Again]

Coffee is always a good idea! Want me to pick you up one while I'm out making groceries (Cajun for "going to the store")?

[GarryP]

Alfred: Thanks. The darker – thinly-outlined – text isn’t an extrusion its a kind of ‘backboard’ to the other text. In the real world it would sit a half-inch or so behind the main text (and offset to the bottom-right a bit). This is why it’s at different angles when broken because the backboard has also broken away from the main text. My example doesn’t show this very well.

CartoonMike: I used a similar technique but I used an Erase blend mode within a grouped layer to ‘cut off’ each half of the text. My text is also editable but you need to do the same edit a few times. The font you used looks great but I only use free fonts as my stuff is mostly only for my personal experimentation and learning.

[Alfred]

Thanks, Garry. I understood what you were doing, and I was simply pointing out that it wasn’t quite the same as what @CartoonMike did.

50 minutes ago, GarryP said:

The font you used looks great but I only use free fonts as my stuff is mostly only for my personal experimentation and learning.

You might like to take a look at Das Modern, a similar font which is free for personal use.

[GarryP]

Ah I see. I probably had a different goal to CartoonMike. I was just playing around to see what I could make.

Thanks for the font link. I had a nice one on my old Mac but I can’t remember what it was called. Maybe I’ll boot it up again someday and find out.