Talking Balloons and Blue Lines!

Recently I did a strip that required a lot of talking balloons in one single panel. I had to plan it out so that it could be read and understood properly and that there would be room for the characters as well. It took some fussing around and I ended up scoring the entire height of the panel with blue lines!

Since I don’t use a computer for lettering, once I place something I have to commit to it. In the past cartoonists would often blue line their whole strip and I’ve seen Lil Abner strips that were scored from top to bottom regardless of how much text there was! This was often done by an assistant. In my case I was surprised to get to that point where I actually had to do it for practical purposes. Pretty neat! You can see the inked panel here.

I was pretty happy with the end result, especially in the last panel where I had to use some white paint for the snow effects!