The finished sound effects are usually laid in by the letterer, but they can be indicated by the writer or the artist, or both.

If the book is done plot-pencils-script, the penciler might indicate sound effects. The writer may or may not pick up on this when doing balloon placement.*

If the book is done full script, the writer will include the SFX in the script, and, again, indicate them in the balloon placement.

The Computer Age has brought its own variants. Recently I have started using SFX again, and add them to the scanned art in Photoshop.

_____

* Some writers leave it for the editor to do balloon placement. Usually, tho not always, I prefer to do my own.

••

Chris Ryall ran one of my guides on his blog, and a wannabe basher immediately accused me of being a "control freak".

Generally, I try to make the layouts of my panels such that the placement of balloons is pretty much intuitive for the letterer -- but, alas, many "letterers" in the Biz these days are half a step beyond being typists, and have little or no artistic sense. (Several years ago, I sent in my usual balloon placements with a job, and somehow missed one page. It was a splash, with a single balloon on it -- which the letterer put in the wrong place!)

A problem for letterers these days comes from something that is also a problem for the artists: since the lettering is done as an overlay, the penciler has to fill up all the "empty" space, since s/he does not know just how much space the balloons may end up taking, and the inker, obviously, is not going to be able to "fill in" around the balloons as in days of yore. This leaves the letterer confronted with lots of artwork s/he has to cover up, and without really knowing what's "okay" and what isn't. My balloon guides are a way of saying "Yes, you can cover this!" *

(I include detail I know will be covered by balloons and captions, and even SFX, mostly for the after-market. Art collectors get what I consider "unfinished" pages, these days, without lettering or SFX, sometimes without even portions of the art, so I try to make up for that where I can.)

_______

* A big problem with the typists is that they don't know how (or are simply too lazy) to wrap the balloons behind figures. So we end up with characters wearing balloons for hats.

when i was an assistant editor at wildstorm, part of my job was doing balloon placement. sometimes it's intuitive, sometimes it isn't, depending on the artist and on how much wordage the writer has put on the page. it's tough to squeeze 50 words into a panel that's 2"x2" and leave any room for art.

if i'd been working with someone like JB, i would have very much appreciated his attention to this detail. it's not an element most readers notice, except when it distracts or has been done badly, but it's an important one. if the balloons, and therefore the words, don't flow, you'll have a jumbled, incoherent or aggravating time trying to read the story.

there are lots of ways to do it. as writer AND artist, JB has an uncommon capability to shape how the words and art mesh. editors and letterers would be fools not to make maximum use of what he gives them to work with.

••

Thanks! Took me a long time to get there! I look at some of my early writing and lettering jobs, and I cringe! The flow is simply not there.

One of my greater failings, in days gone by, was to have two balloons at the top of panel A, and two balloons at the top of panel B, right next door -- but a third balloon down in the lower left of A that was supposed to be read before B. Makes me CRAZY when I see that, now!*

(There's also an early FF that I scripted with one panel in which, with an acre of space all around, Johnny Storm has a balloon on his FOOT! GRAHH!!!)

________

* Extra frustration: I still do it sometimes!!

••

I spent about a week poring over old issues of FANTASTIC FOUR, studying and even copying the SFX of greats like Artie Simek and Sam Rosen. Same way I taught myself to draw, basically! Ultimately I created for myself a page o' sound effects, from which I clip the ones I use, using Photoshop to tweak them so that the same sounds don't look the same every single time (unless I want them to!).

Once I had the basic shapes of the display lettering laid out, I was also able to build new SFX using pieces from others.