Superhero™ was developed to simulate the handwritten comic book text found in old Marvel comics. The rough versions were developed to allow for text set at larger point sizes, for example on the cover of a comic book, or on a poster.
BRACKETS, HYPHENS AND QUOTATION MARKS
Because comic book text works best when set in uppercase, and because we believe that most Superhero™ text will therefore be set in all caps, the x-height of the brackets, hyphens and quotation marks have been adjusted to appear most pleasingly balanced with the uppercase characters.
BURPING, FARTING and a few HICCUPs
Even Comic Book characters need to burp, fart, gasp and hiccup. The traditional way for a comic artist to indicate that Superman or Charlie Brown was making a non-vocal sound through a body orifice, was to surround the word (which described that sound) with a special set of quotation marks. These special marks are included in your Superhero™ fonts!
For Mac users, simply type option-x and option-y
For PC users simply type alt-0188 and alt-0189
The usual option-x and option-y characters (i.e. the “Approximately Equal” and the “Yen”) are still included in the fonts, but are in character slots which are normally unavailable to Mac users (i.e. the “3 superior” and the “2 superior” slots, respectively). To access these characters, Mac users will need to use an application that will allow modification of character positions (e.g. Fontographer).
PC users must also access the “Yen” character in its new “2 superior” position (i.e. alt-0178).
SETTING TEXT
The traditional way for setting comic book text is to emphasize important words with the bold oblique version of the font, which creates better contrast between the 2 type styles. For increased contrast, you can increase the point size of the bold oblique text by 1 or 2 to points (or even more if you are setting the text at larger sizes). To see samples of the Superhero™ fonts set at different point sizes, please see page 3 of the included PDF file “balloons.pdf”.
See the section “USING THE ROUGHS”, below, for some other text setting options.
USING THE BALLOONS
The balloons in the Superhero™ Balloons are positioned in characters slots which we believe will make it easiest for you to quickly access the type of balloon you are looking for. For your reference, a PDF file called “superhero_balloons.pdf” has been included with your fonts. You can print out this Index document to have an easy visual reference to the locations of all the balloons. It can also be downloaded individually be clicking on “Download PDF” link on the Superhero™ family page on our website.
Here are some basic guidelines which will help you get the most out of your balloon setting:
(1) SHIFT-REVERSE. For all the basic keys on your keyboard (i.e. all the alphabetical letters, numbers, and basic brackets, punctuation and symbols), holding down the SHIFT will produce the same balloon as without the shift key, BUT that balloon will be pointed in the opposite direction.
(2) POINT SIZE. The balloons have been specially sized so that when you use them in conjunction with the regular Superhero™ fonts, their intended point size will be 10 times the point size of the text size. Therefore, if you set your text in 12 pt., any balloon that you use with the text is intended to be set at 120 pt. If the text is 15 pt., then the balloon should be 150 pt., etc. You can set the balloons slightly smaller or larger depending on the amount of text that you need to set, BUT you must keep in mind that if you sway from the 10-times rule by more than a few point sizes, the weight of the balloon outlines will not be properly balanced with the weight of the text.
(2) THOUGHT BALLOONS. The balloons which are like clouds (which indicate a character’s thoughts instead of what the character is saying) are all contained on the top line of your keyboard (i.e. the numbers, hypen and equals sign). Once again, the shift key will produce the same thought balloons pointing in the opposite direction.
(3) TALKING BALLOONS. All of the other keyboard characters contain regular talking balloons, mostly with their pointers in a downward direction. However, ALL the keys on the bottom row of your keyboard (i.e. zxcvbnm,./) have talking ballows with their pointers to the side.
(4) CONNECTED BALLOONS. When your character has lots to say, there are a series of balloons with multiple levels of either 2 or 3 balloons joined together. Please refer to the PDF index document to find out where these balloons reside. Some of the connected balloons begin with a thought and connect to a talk balloon, while others start off as a talk and then connect to a thought balloon.
(5) DESCRIPTION BOXES. These are the boxes which you add to a comic to provide the reader with location and setting details and other background information (e.g. “MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE BATCAVE…”). There are a few included in the balloon font, and they can be achieved by using the keys “option-1” to “option-5” (for Mac users). The addition of the SHIFT key will produce pointers in the opposite direction. PC users please refer to the “balloon.pdf” index document.
(6) WHISPERING. When characters are whispering, or can be seen but not heard (through a closed window, for example) it is customary to use balloons with dotted lines. These can be achieved by using the keys “option-6” to “option-0” (for Mac users). The addition of the SHIFT key will produce pointers in the opposite direction. PC users refer to the “balloon.pdf” index document.
(7) RADIO AND TV SOUNDS. When you need to indicate that words are coming from the radio, television or any other electronic device, there are special jagged edged balloons intended for this purpose.
Superhero™ was developed to simulate the handwritten comic book text found in old Marvel comics. The rough versions were developed to allow for text set at larger point sizes, for example on the cover of a comic book, or on a poster.
BRACKETS, HYPHENS AND QUOTATION MARKS
Because comic book text works best when set in uppercase, and because we believe that most Superhero™ text will therefore be set in all caps, the x-height of the brackets, hyphens and quotation marks have been adjusted to appear most pleasingly balanced with the uppercase characters.
BURPING, FARTING and a few HICCUPs
Even Comic Book characters need to burp, fart, gasp and hiccup. The traditional way for a comic artist to indicate that Superman or Charlie Brown was making a non-vocal sound through a body orifice, was to surround the word (which described that sound) with a special set of quotation marks. These special marks are included in your Superhero™ fonts!
For Mac users, simply type option-x and option-y
For PC users simply type alt-0188 and alt-0189
The usual option-x and option-y characters (i.e. the “Approximately Equal” and the “Yen”) are still included in the fonts, but are in character slots which are normally unavailable to Mac users (i.e. the “3 superior” and the “2 superior” slots, respectively). To access these characters, Mac users will need to use an application that will allow modification of character positions (e.g. Fontographer).
PC users must also access the “Yen” character in its new “2 superior” position (i.e. alt-0178).
SETTING TEXT
The traditional way for setting comic book text is to emphasize important words with the bold oblique version of the font, which creates better contrast between the 2 type styles. For increased contrast, you can increase the point size of the bold oblique text by 1 or 2 to points (or even more if you are setting the text at larger sizes). To see samples of the Superhero™ fonts set at different point sizes, please see page 3 of the included PDF file “balloons.pdf”.
See the section “USING THE ROUGHS”, below, for some other text setting options.
USING THE BALLOONS
The balloons in the Superhero™ Balloons are positioned in characters slots which we believe will make it easiest for you to quickly access the type of balloon you are looking for. For your reference, a PDF file called “superhero_balloons.pdf” has been included with your fonts. You can print out this Index document to have an easy visual reference to the locations of all the balloons. It can also be downloaded individually be clicking on “Download PDF” link on the Superhero™ family page on our website.
Here are some basic guidelines which will help you get the most out of your balloon setting:
(1) SHIFT-REVERSE. For all the basic keys on your keyboard (i.e. all the alphabetical letters, numbers, and basic brackets, punctuation and symbols), holding down the SHIFT will produce the same balloon as without the shift key, BUT that balloon will be pointed in the opposite direction.
(2) POINT SIZE. The balloons have been specially sized so that when you use them in conjunction with the regular Superhero™ fonts, their intended point size will be 10 times the point size of the text size. Therefore, if you set your text in 12 pt., any balloon that you use with the text is intended to be set at 120 pt. If the text is 15 pt., then the balloon should be 150 pt., etc. You can set the balloons slightly smaller or larger depending on the amount of text that you need to set, BUT you must keep in mind that if you sway from the 10-times rule by more than a few point sizes, the weight of the balloon outlines will not be properly balanced with the weight of the text.
(2) THOUGHT BALLOONS. The balloons which are like clouds (which indicate a character’s thoughts instead of what the character is saying) are all contained on the top line of your keyboard (i.e. the numbers, hypen and equals sign). Once again, the shift key will produce the same thought balloons pointing in the opposite direction.
(3) TALKING BALLOONS. All of the other keyboard characters contain regular talking balloons, mostly with their pointers in a downward direction. However, ALL the keys on the bottom row of your keyboard (i.e. zxcvbnm,./) have talking ballows with their pointers to the side.
(4) CONNECTED BALLOONS. When your character has lots to say, there are a series of balloons with multiple levels of either 2 or 3 balloons joined together. Please refer to the PDF index document to find out where these balloons reside. Some of the connected balloons begin with a thought and connect to a talk balloon, while others start off as a talk and then connect to a thought balloon.
(5) DESCRIPTION BOXES. These are the boxes which you add to a comic to provide the reader with location and setting details and other background information (e.g. “MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE BATCAVE…”). There are a few included in the balloon font, and they can be achieved by using the keys “option-1” to “option-5” (for Mac users). The addition of the SHIFT key will produce pointers in the opposite direction. PC users please refer to the “balloon.pdf” index document.
(6) WHISPERING. When characters are whispering, or can be seen but not heard (through a closed window, for example) it is customary to use balloons with dotted lines. These can be achieved by using the keys “option-6” to “option-0” (for Mac users). The addition of the SHIFT key will produce pointers in the opposite direction. PC users refer to the “balloon.pdf” index document.
(7) RADIO AND TV SOUNDS. When you need to indicate that words are coming from the radio, television or any other electronic device, there are special jagged edged balloons intended for this purpose.
(8) EVIL ELEMENTS. Occassionally one of your evil or non-human characters will have to say a thing or two. There are some special balloons for them which have little horns around the parameter.
(9) MASKING BALLOONS. When you set balloons on top of the images in your comics, whether they are hand-drawn illustrations or photographs, you will want to mask the portion of the images which fall beneath the balloons, so that the text wll be legible. You may even want to colour the “contents” of the balloon, or make the balloons white when you will be printing onto non-white paper. To achieve these effects, we have provided a second balloon font called Superhero™ Balloon Holes. Each balloon in the Superhero™ Balloon font has a matching balloon hole in the same character position in the Superhero™ Balloon Hole font. So when you have set any balloon in your comic strip, and you want to place a balloon hole underneath it, simply copy the balloon and change the new copy to the Superhero™ Balloon font, colour it the desired colour and then send it behind the main balloon (but still in front of the comic images). The balloon holes have been created with proper trapping so that the balloon strokes always overlap the balloon holes. If you want to create the effect of poor imposition (as was common in old comic books), simply shift the balloon holes with respect to the balloon outlines.
