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Your Town Will Burn (PDAP, Chapter Four, Pages 49-52)
🕑 Added 2024-07-11 16:33:00 +0000 UTCLast week, Sir Edward is confident that the only way to help the town is to go ride for help from the only other town on the island, Barathron. Of course, that effectively means abandoning Alexandra's mother, uncle, and friends to their fate at the hands of Vignelli and/or the pirates.
This week, the Pirate Captain makes a promise, and Ataraxes is let loose on Istoria's roadways.
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Here's a question for you, Dear Reader:
Is it clear what the red-tinted and blue-tinted narration boxes represent?
The intended effect is that Sir Edward and Alexandra are talking over top of the visuals, and this "voiceover" or "offscreen dialogue" is different from Alexandra's usual narration. The red-tinted boxes are Sir Edward, the blue-tinted ones are Alexandra. Read in context, I think the dialogue makes enough sense that it isn't confusing, but I am biased.
I like the voice-over effect, so my first solution would be to put little Dad and Alexandra head-icons next to their voice-over boxes. But if it reads fine already, I don't want to add that unneccessary element.
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Next week: the final pages of Chapter Four!
Until then,
I remain,
a powerful enemy,
TC
Comments
seanwangart
Apologies for the late comment. I tend to sit on a bunch of posts to go through in a bigger batch. Anyway, I think the color coded boxes work well. I think the only thing that it needs are quotation marks around the text. With quotation marks, it reads as people talking off-screen. Without, it possibly reads as third-person narration. I have to constantly remind myself of these little conventions (like italicizing ship names and speech coming in over a speaker, or the difference between -- and ... in dialogue). I found the tips on Blambot extremely helpful for these kinds of comic lettering conventions.
Tony Cliff
I hear you on that point. It would read poorly for someone with some sort of flavour of colour-blindness, too. I'll keep poking at it. Thank you for the feedback!
J Banana
I got the voiceover thing. I missed the fact that one of them isn't the father speaking - it reads ok that way because he's asking a question and then answering it. If you want to make it clearer that it's DD saying that one, maybe change the shape? Maybe slant the box the opposite way, or give it rounded corners, or something so it looks more different.
