Andi's Altered Fates 2

For speech balloons I use Ki comic font almost exclusively. It's free, and you get regular and italic, both in plain and bold. In most cases size 12 works well. For creating my own speech balloons I use a program called Comic Life. To create my covers I first import my original into a program called ColorIt and do basic clean up and modifications there. Then I either use the speech ballons already present or eliminate them and transfer the cover from Color it to Comic Life for speech balloons and text, and then transfer that to Printshop for headlines titles, etc. Then I transfer from Printshop back to ColorIt, save it in .jpg, and when ready post it. I also use the paint part of Appleworks v.6, but that won't work on Mac OSX.7.5 or greater.

I too use Comic Life to create speech/thought balloons and other text, on my covers, and I'll take a look at Ki comic font.

For general image processing, I use GIMP, a free (both as in beer and speech) graphics program which is pretty much the poor girl's Photoshop. Otherwise, my workflow is very similar to yours. A critical thing I've learned, is that when captioning the cover in Comic Life, it is better to use a page size fairly close to the cover image size, rather than stretching the image to fit a much larger page such as A4 or Letter, and then shrinking the captioned image back down later. Too much shrinking introduces undesirable resizing artefacts into the image, especially jagged edges to speech balloons.

All my finished covers are either 7.08 inches wide by 10.23 inches tall or7.08 inches tall by 10.23 inches wide (why? I have no idea!). Most of my originals are 72dpi. If i have to enlarge them, i up them to 200dpi first, (keeping the higth and width at the same proportions) then sharpen them, and then reduce them to 72 again. works great to avoid distortion. Reducing the size of the original doesn't usually distort. My problem is none of the programs i use work on my over OSX7.5 new computer so i have to keep fixing my old one - I call it Confederate Navying it.

Comic Life and Printshop have versions that do work above OSX7.5, but they dont work the same way or as well

By default, my Comic Life is set up to use an A4 sized page (Australia is a metric country) which is fine for a comic page, but much too big for a single cover image. The smallest ISO-standard page size supported by Comic Life by default in v3.5.8 is A6 (105x148mm), so I created a custom A7 page (74x105mm) which seems about right. I experimented with A8, but if you make the page too small, then the font-size increments in text-boxes, speech-bubbles etc. become too coarse in proportion to the page, so you're forced to choose text that is too large, or text that is too small.

After a very long sterile period, I felt my capping mojo coming back. The original was a Charlton comic, so I had a lot of difficulties with the horrible layout*, and resorted to creating a a new comic Altered Nurses. What do you all think? *The original: https://box01.comicbookplus.com/viewer/c6/c679eb491579ada506284d18343e47ef/0.jpg

Altered Nurses No. 32

Great job, Sis, very professional looking. Great to see you back. How are you doing surviving Covid down there? The USA is a mess; each state seemingly going its own way. My wife and I have gotten both doses of the Pfiser vaccine. I'm still churning out Vaingirls as therapy. I had never come across Three Nurses so I went to Grand Comics Database and pulled off a few of the other issues for possible VG use. I hope you turn out some more covers. Hugs Jezzi

AndiJF
Love it!

Another issue of Altered Nurses hits the stands! Wow, nearly a year since the last one... I managed to resist the temptation to place a block of text on the cover, but does the story come over to you?

Altered Nurses No. 161.

Great, Sis. Thanks. You do the quality, I do the quantity. You let the graphics do the talking, I'm a speech and thought bubbles junkie.

Hi Jezzi! I have constantly to beat myself with a stick to avoid adding excessive text.

Once again, I'm playing Doctors & Nurses. Perhaps in this timeline, the operation in Altered Nurses 32 above was a success, and after his lengthy recovery Anne wants to swap back. I was inspired by the suspicious expression on the face of the man in the bed. I was in two minds about the nurse's second speech balloon - would the cover be better without it?

Life is what happens while you're making other plans.

Wow... Nearly three years since I last posted a cover? Yikes. I'm sure scrubs are more practical but the old nurse's uniforms were cuter.
Edit: Somehow I messed up the brightness of my previous posting, Here is a corrected version.

Good one, Sis! Glad to see you back. Hope your healthy and doing well. I turned 80 this year, but I'm still acting and creating Vaingirls.

I'm glad to hear you're well, Jezzi! Time does march on and I'm *cough* years old myself, but still well and moving forward.

My first modded cover for 2025... In her place, would you swap back?

Walk Like a Girl