Friday, September 26, 2014

Sound Effects in Your Comic

Something that needs to be used more often are sound effects.

Sound effects were extremely popular in the action-heavy comics of the 1940s to 1950s. They started falling out of favor in the 1960s, and virtually disappeared by the 1990s. There are a number of good reasons for them to have disappeared; they were pretty silly, they took up visual space that could be better used for pretty much anything else, and they felt a little anachronistic, a throwback to an earlier age. For webcomics, too many illustrators simply didn't learn how to do them, as their education was usually in a different field. This is not to say that they have completely disappeared, just that few comics take advantage of them.

Not only do they make an excellent way of adding a little visual flavor to an otherwise staid strip, but they also add something fun. You can either have the sound effect as somehing extra in the panel, or as the panel itself. Software has advanced significantly so that you can have some real fun with the effect. If you really want to have some fun, multiple sound effects in the same panel or string it out among multiple panels.

I know it's a little weird for most strips. Nonetheless, I would really like to see some more sound effects in comics. I think it would make some strips really fun....

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