Lesson 5: Text
Sprites aren’t very good for silent, physical comedy. At least, not all the time. So, you’re going to need to add text at some point. In Paint, text is a pain because once you’re done with section of text and go on to the next one, it’s too late to fix typos. So proofread your character’s statements many times before you click outside the text box. Speaking of which, make sure you’ve got the box right where you want it because it’s near impossible to move about.
Before I get into the boxes themselves, I want to discuss color and font. Giving each character a unique text color will make it easier for your readers to tell who’s talking, especially if the speaker is not in the panel. For the main characters, I recommend choosing a color from the default palette that matches them closest in color scheme, like Red for Mario, Blue for Sonic, and Green for Link. If you want an exact color match, just use the dropper tool to select a color right from the sprite. Just be aware that sprites usually have shading, unless you’re dealing with 8-bit characters, so make sure you know which shade of blue (or whatever) you’re going to take. If you don’t like the notion of different colored text, you could outline the balloons in a certain color for each character instead. Different fonts might work too, but that sounds like too much trouble to me.
On to the text boxes then. In the English speaking world, we read from top to bottom, left to right. It might get complicated but make sure you arrange the text boxes so that conversations within a single panel read like that. Otherwise, you’ll have very confused readers. When you set out the text box, you can select to type the words on a white (or whatever your background color is) box, which you can’t shrink below the original proportions, or in a transparent box which can be resized, and allows for better, more compact balloon building. After you’ve put in the text, you need to put it in a balloon. I use the rounded rectangle, outline only of course, to make my speech bubbles and the oval for thought bubbles. If you’re going to use the circle, don’t type in an opaque box, and try to arrange your words to make it easier to fit them in a circular bubble. On flat, single-colored backgrounds, you can type on a transparent box, but I recommend the opaque one for textured backgrounds, because you’re going to have to white out the space inside the bubble to make it a bubble.
Size is another factor. Try to pick a font and size where the letters are only a pixel or two thick. I use to use Times New Roman, but my new laptop altered that font so it doesn’t fit my criteria. Now I use MS Serif, size 12. Other fonts and sizes will create letters that when you exit the text box, will contain pixels that are fusions of the text and background colors, which looks kind of ugly in text balloons. If you want big or bold text, type it on an opaque box so the fusions are between the text and white. Use a white line to connect bubble to speaker or to another balloon of the same color if the second balloon is in the way.