FoundryInk Academy Academy / Making your work
Making your work

Lettering

Lettering is the stage where words go onto the finished art: speech balloons, captions, and sound effects, page by page. It is one of the stages on a comic's work spine, after Pages and before Publish, and it works on comics, zines and sketchbooks. You can place every balloon by hand, build them from the script you already wrote, or have Muse place them for you from your own words. This page covers the studio, the two modes, the full tool set, and how the words you wrote become balloons on the page.

Read time about 20 min

1What lettering is, and where it sits

Open a comic and the work spine runs across the top: Beatboard, Script, Storyboard, Pages, Lettering, Publish. The Lettering stage opens a studio over your finished pages, with the pages down the left, the page you are lettering in the middle, and an inspector on the right. You place balloons, captions and sound effects on each page, aim their tails, and preview how it reads. Lettering is available on comics, zines and sketchbooks.

A comic's stages row: Beatboard, Script, Storyboard, Pages, Lettering and Publish.
A comic's stages row: Beatboard, Script, Storyboard, Pages, Lettering and Publish.See the full screen
The lettering studio: pages on the left, the page in the middle, the inspector on the right.
The lettering studio: pages on the left, the page in the middle, the inspector on the right.See the full screen
Lettering goes on top of finished pages, so add your pages and their art in the Pages view first. The studio says as much when a page has no art yet. Turning the Lettering stage off never deletes existing balloons; they keep rendering, you just hide the editor.
Pro note
Letter last, over final art. If the drawing under a balloon still changes, you will be moving that balloon again, so get the page settled first.

2Basic and Advanced modes

A toggle at the top of the studio switches between Basic (The essentials: place, type, move, aim, size) and Advanced (Every lettering tool). Basic shows a short Insert strip (Text and sound effects, plus Speech, Thought, Shout, Whisper and Caption balloons), a simple Edit panel, and undo, redo and preview. Advanced adds the full menu bar, the Styles box, every balloon shape and effect, and the Layers, Library, Printed and Checks panels. Your choice is remembered on your account, so the studio opens the way you last left it.

The Basic and Advanced switch at the top left, set to Basic.
The Basic and Advanced switch at the top left, set to Basic.See the full screen
Advanced adds the menu bar, the Styles list and the Inspect, Layers, Library and Printed tabs.
Advanced adds the menu bar, the Styles list and the Inspect, Layers, Library and Printed tabs.See the full screen
Start in Basic. It has everything you need to place and aim a balloon and type into it. Switch to Advanced when you want styles, custom fonts, sound-effect treatments, layers, or the proofing checks.
Pro note
Most pages never need Advanced. Place the balloons, aim the tails, type the words. Reach for Advanced on the one page that needs a fancy sound effect.

3Place a balloon, caption or sound effect

The Insert strip along the bottom adds items to the page. Pick a balloon, a Caption, or Lettering (a sound effect), and it drops onto the page for you to position. Drag an item to move it, drag a handle to resize it, and type its words straight in. A balloon has a tail: drag the orange dot to aim the tail at whoever is speaking, and the red dot bends it. Captions are tailless boxes for narration.

In Basic, the Insert strip along the bottom: Speech, Thought, Shout, Whisper, Caption and Lettering.
In Basic, the Insert strip along the bottom: Speech, Thought, Shout, Whisper, Caption and Lettering.See the full screen
A placed speech balloon, with its words in the Edit panel on the right.
A placed speech balloon, with its words in the Edit panel on the right.See the full screen
A tail should point at the speaker's mouth and stop a little short of it, which is the convention letterers use so the tail reads as coming from the character, not stabbing them.
Pro note
Aim every tail at a mouth. A balloon with a vague tail makes a reader stop and work out who is talking, which is the one thing lettering is supposed to prevent.

4Shapes and tails

There is a balloon shape for each kind of speech. The common ones are Speech, Thought, Whisper (a dashed outline), Shout, Scream, and Caption, with more in Advanced: Radio, TV, Weak, Telepathy, Cold, Robot, Pill, Floating, and a Drawn shape you make with the draw tool. Tails come in types too: a plain Pointer, a Thought trail of bubbles, a jagged Lightning tail, an Off-panel tail butted to the edge, and a Squink.

A selected balloon on the page, its tail aimed at the speaker.
A selected balloon on the page, its tail aimed at the speaker.See the full screen
The Balloon section of the inspector lists every shape, here with Thought picked.
The Balloon section of the inspector lists every shape, here with Thought picked.See the full screen
Each shape sets a sensible default tail (a thought balloon gets the bubble trail, a radio balloon gets the lightning tail), so pick the shape that matches the speech and the tail usually follows.
Pro note
Shape carries meaning before anyone reads a word. A dashed whisper or a spiky scream tells the reader how a line sounds, so match the shape to the delivery.

5Sound effects, stamps, and fonts

Sound effects are their own kind of lettering with a lot of range. In Advanced, a sound effect takes a preset built from a palette (such as Pop Red, Chrome, Fire, Electric, Neon) and a treatment (Outline, Double, Shadow, 3D, Hollow, Glow), and you can warp it into an arc, a bulge or a circle. Advanced also has stamps (impact stars, sweat drops, anger marks, motion lines) and background effects (Speedlines, Motion, Burst, Halftone). For fonts, there is a built-in library sorted by job (dialogue, captions, display and sound), and a studio can upload its own.

A sound effect's settings: font, Size pt, preset, colour, outline and warp.
A sound effect's settings: font, Size pt, preset, colour, outline and warp.See the full screen
The Library tab's Stamps, ready to drop onto the page.
The Library tab's Stamps, ready to drop onto the page.See the full screen
The same font bytes are used on screen and in the printed book, so a custom font you upload prints exactly as it looks in the studio. Removing a studio font later still leaves published editions printing correctly.
Pro note
Pick one dialogue font and one sound-effect font and stick to them across the whole book. Consistent lettering is invisible, which is the goal; a different font every page is the opposite.

6Balloons from your script

If you wrote the issue on the Script stage, you do not have to retype it. Insert can build balloons from a page's script, or from every page's script at once: each dialogue line becomes a balloon, each caption a caption box, each sound-effect line a sound effect, in reading order. The words come straight from your script, so you are placing and aiming, not typing.

Letter from a script: which pages have a script, the script text, and Add to pages.
Letter from a script: which pages have a script, the script text, and Add to pages.See the full screen
Building balloons from the script by hand stacks them in reading order but does not aim the tails, because it has not looked at the art. The studio tells you so, and you drag each tail to its speaker. The Muse option in the next section does aim them.
Pro note
Write the words once, on the Script stage, then pull them in here. Lettering is about placement, and retyping dialogue is just a chance to introduce a typo.

7Letting Muse place the lettering

If your studio has Muse, the Muse panel can place lettering for you. Letter this page (or Letter all scripted pages) looks at the actual art and the page script, then places each line as a balloon, aims its tail at the speaker's mouth, and picks a shape the scene calls for. Get ideas for this page reviews a lettered page and offers specific changes (move this, aim that tail, split this balloon, tidy the punctuation), each with an Apply button. Ask Muse about this page opens a chat for anything else. Every Muse change lands as one step you can Undo.

Muse uses your words only. It decides placement, tails, shapes, sound effects and punctuation; it never writes or rewrites your dialogue or captions. Letter this page needs both the art and the page's script present. If your studio does not have Muse, the panel simply is not there, there is no locked button to click.
Pro note
Let Muse do the first pass on a busy page, then fix what you do not like and Undo what you do. It is a fast rough placement, not a decision you have to accept.

8Translate, and printed text

Two more things live here. Translate renders a page's lettering into another language, one page at a time, filling only the empty slots unless you choose to overwrite, and the language then joins the issue's lettering languages so readers can pick it. Separately, the Printed panel (in Advanced) handles words that are already drawn into imported art, a sign, a storefront, a label, and their translations, which is a different thing from the balloons you place.

The Languages window lists the lettering languages, with Add a language below.
The Languages window lists the lettering languages, with Add a language below.See the full screen
The Printed tab: a text area over words drawn into the art, with what it says.
The Printed tab: a text area over words drawn into the art, with what it says.See the full screen
Translation fills the gaps rather than replacing what you already wrote, so a page you hand-lettered in one language keeps that work when you add another. Printed text is for art you brought in with words baked into the picture, not for your balloons.
Pro note
Offer a translation only if you can check it. A rough machine pass is a starting point; a reader in that language will spot a wrong word instantly, so have a speaker look it over.

9Proof, preview, and one look everywhere

In Advanced, the Checks panel lints a page for the usual lettering problems so you can catch them before a reader does, and Preview shows the page the way a reader will see it. The important thing to trust: a balloon is drawn from one set of geometry, so it looks the same in the studio, in the reader, and in the printed PDF. There is no separate print styling to go wrong; what you place is what ships.

The Checks tab lists lettering problems on the page, each with Show and Fix.
The Checks tab lists lettering problems on the page, each with Show and Fix.See the full screen
Preview shows the lettered pages the way a reader sees them.
Preview shows the lettered pages the way a reader sees them.See the full screen
Because the studio, the reader and the print bake all draw from the same geometry, you never have to re-check a balloon on each surface. Fix it once here and it is fixed in the reader and the print copy together.
Pro note
Run Checks and Preview on every page before you call it done. Lettering errors are the ones readers notice most, and they are the cheapest to fix while the page is still open.

Letter a page

In order. Links into the app. Saved on this device.

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Questions letterers actually ask

Comics, zines and sketchbooks. The Lettering stage shows on those multi-page kinds and works over their finished pages. A director can turn the stage off per asset, which hides the editor but never deletes existing balloons.

Basic shows the essentials: a short balloon set, a simple edit panel, and place, type, move, aim, size. Advanced adds the full menu bar, the Styles box, every shape and effect, custom fonts, and the Layers, Printed and Checks panels. Your choice is remembered on your account.

Yes. Insert can build balloons from a page's script, or from every page at once: dialogue becomes balloons, captions become caption boxes, sound-effect lines become sound effects, in reading order. Done by hand it stacks them without aiming the tails, so you drag each tail to its speaker; Muse aims them for you.

Muse looks at the art and the page script and places each line as a balloon, aims the tail at the speaker, and picks a fitting shape; it can also suggest fixes you Apply one at a time, and translate a page. It uses your words only: it never writes or rewrites your dialogue or captions. Every change is one Undo away.

Because your studio does not have Muse enabled. The panel is hidden entirely rather than shown as a locked button. All of the manual lettering (placing, shaping, aiming, typing, styling) works without Muse; only the automatic placement and suggestions need it.

No. A balloon is drawn from one set of geometry used by the studio, the reader, and the print PDF, so what you place is what ships. Fix a balloon once here and it is fixed in the reader and the printed copy at the same time.

Editing needs an author role or higher on the asset's studio (the same as the other editors), or the scoped review access a print partner is given. Anyone without it can open the studio read-only, with the insert and edit controls disabled.

Words on the page

Place the balloons, aim the tails, match the shapes to the speech, and pull the words from your script or let Muse place them. Good lettering is the part a reader never notices, and the Lettering stage gives you the tools to make it that clean, the same on screen and in print.

Where next?

Write your comic script →Advanced authoring: the full studio tour →Publishing your first comic →