Creating dialog balloons and other text

Text in comic strips is usually inside a shape called a text balloon. The shape of the balloon indicates something about its purpose and helps accentuate the mood of the text inside it. Text balloon objects in Comic Strip Factory have a variety of attributes for shaping the balloon, and graphic attributes that contribute to the message being conveyed as well. Balloons used for speech or thoughts usually have a pointer attached to them to indicate who is speaking or thinking, and they can have more than one. Balloons used for narrative don’t typically have pointers, although they can.

There are two different command in the Objects menu for creating balloons: New Text Balloon and New Narration Box . These two commands create the same kind of balloon object, but with different settings appropriate to their intended use.

New Text Balloon creates a balloon that has been set up for use as a speech balloon. It uses a Rounded Oblong shape and a Speaking style, and it has a pointer. It is positioned in the upper middle of the current panel, and its text is centered.

New Narration Box creates a balloon set up to provide narration. It is set up with a plain Rectangle shape with no pointer, it’s snugged into the top-left corner of the current panel, and it’s text is left aligned. Despite looking like it is fixed in position, it can be moved and resized, and even restyled, just like the speech balloon.

Text Editing Mode

Both styles of balloon are created in text editing mode, and are ready to have text typed into them right away. Their default text is selected, so it will be replaced by what you type.

You can also enter text editing mode by double-clicking a text balloon or by selecting one and choosing the Edit Balloon Text command in the Objects menu. You can exit text editing mode by clicking in the comic outside of the balloon being edited.

When you enter text editing mode, a formatting panel appears on the right side of the comic view. This has two sections, Balloon Properties and Text Properties.

Balloon Properties

The balloon properties in the panel control the style and shape of the balloon. Style has five options, used for (and named) Speaking, Whispering, Thinking, Shouting, and Outbursts. Speaking is also used for most narrative boxes. Shape also has five options, Rounded Oblong, Oval, Rounded Rectangle, Rectangle, and Fitted. The shape selected is modified by the style selected, so there are fifteen different combinations available. The Rectangle shape is most commonly used for narrative boxes. All the shapes can be used for speech and thought balloons. What you choose is a matter of your comic’s artistic style and aesthetics. You may choose to use shapes consistently throughout, or you may decide to vary them to make the best use of space or to be more expressive.

Note that there are other balloon styling properties available in a Balloon Properties item in the Objects menu, which brings up a dialog, but that Style and Shape are the only properties available during text editing. Shape and Style are also available when you are not text editing through submenus in the Objects menu.

Text Properties

The most common text properties used in comics are available in the text editing mode panel. A full set of standard Mac text editing commands can be found in the application’s menu bar, particularly in the Format menu but also in the Edit menu and the Show Ruler command in the View menu.

The Text Properties in the panel begin with the Font Family popup button. This contains a WYSIWYG font menu (meaning each font name is displayed in its own font) which has a special section at the top for favorite fonts. Most fonts look out of place in a text balloon, so Comic Strip Factory makes it easy to provide a special place for the fonts you will want to use the most. A set of built-in font families is in this section initially. If you acquire third party comic fonts, some of them will appear here automatically. There is a Fonts pane in preferences that allows you to edit the set of fonts that appears at the top of the menu.

Underneath the Font Family popup is a Font Style popup. The styles available in this are determined by the members of the currently selected font family. There may be only one, or there may be several. Under the Font Style popup is a selector for three common styles, Bold, Italic, and Underline. Whether Bold and Italic are available depends on the members of the font family. The Bold and Italic parts of the selector are shortcuts for choosing some members of the font family. Sometimes Italic will only be available in combination with Bold, and there may be other limitations. Underline is always available, in conjunction with any font family and style combination.

Next to the Font Style popup is a set of controls for font size. There is an edit field allowing you to type in any size you want (from 5 to 100 point), a popup menu for more commonly used sizes, and a set of little arrows for incrementing and decrementing the current size.

Under the size controls there is a color well. To edit the color of your selected text, click this control. The control’s frame highlights and a floating color panel appears. Editing the color in the color pane changes the color of selected text. The color panel remains linked to your text selection as long as it remains open and text is being edited, even if you select different text.

Underneath that is a selector for paragraph alignment. This allows you to make your text flush left, centered, flush right, or justified, and it applies to the currently selected paragraph or paragraphs.

At the bottom are three rows of controls for line spacing. The first set of controls affects the space between every line of text. It is expressed as a percentage of what the font designer set as the natural spacing between lines for the selected font. The other two lines of control are for adding space before or after paragraphs, and they are expressed in points.

Editing Balloons in the Comic view

When a balloon is selected, but not active for text editing, it displays two handles used for adjusting its width and other handles associated with its pointers.

Dragging the two width handles left and right adjusts the balloon’s width (the width in which the text will wrap). You cannot directly manipulate the balloon’s height; it is determined by the width and how the text flows.

The pointer base handles, the circular blue hollow handles, control the location of the pointer. Dragging these handles drags the entire pointer.

The other pointer handles are for reshaping the pointer.

You can add a pointer handle, to add curvature or an angle to the pointer, by positioning the mouse over the dashed line between the pointer handles and clicking and dragging. The shape of the pointer, and how the handles affect the shape of the pointer, are different for different balloon styles.

You can delete a balloon pointer by holding down the Command key and clicking on it. To delete the whole pointer, delete the pointer base handle or all of the regular handles.

To add a pointer to a balloon, choose Add Balloon Pointer from the Objects menu.

Setting the fill and frame

To set the fill and frame appearance of a balloon, select it and choose Balloon Properties from the Objects menu. The dialog that appears allows you to set a color and line weight on the balloon’s frame, and a color or a gradient for the balloon’s fill. Balloons use named colors from the Comic document’s own color set. See Choosing and using colors for more information. Note that balloons can not be drawn with transparency, so if colors or gradients that have transparency are applied to balloons, opaque equivalents will be used instead.

Making compound balloons

Sometimes you want to show a multipart conversation in a panel, or just put a break in a long statement. For these situations, cartoonists connect multiple balloons together.

A comic with compound balloons.

To do this in Comic Strip Factory, you select two or more balloons in the same panel and use the Merge Into Balloon Group command in the Objects menu. This works just like the Group command, except it creates a group that can only contains balloons, and it modifies how the balloons are drawn to make them appear as a compound balloon.

If you want to make Merged Balloons into separate balloons again, you can do that with the Ungroup command.

If you want to edit one of the balloons, or move them relative to each other, or change the connections between them, you can double click the balloon group or select it and choose Edit Group from the Objects menu.

The balloon group editor allows you to edit balloons in a balloon group without ungrouping.

This editor is like the group editor, except it enforces that all the members of the group must be balloons. Inside this editor, the balloons in the group are all drawn separately so that you can more easily manipulate them as separate objects. Balloons in this view can be edited just as ungrouped balloons are in the comic editing view.

If you are in this view and need to be able to see other components of the comic (for example, so you can aim the balloon pointer accurately), click the Background popup in the toolbar and choose Context . Or choose the same option in the Background submenu of the View menu.

The balloon group editor with the Context background view option shown.

When you are done editing balloons in the balloon group, click Comic in the editing level control at the top to return to the comic view.