Does anyone know how to make the effect of drawn, oval, comic speech bubbles? I'd even be happy with a "construction set" of a few shaped bubbles, and the little speech tags pointing to the person talking, so I can make my own I've been trying for a while tonight and haven't had anything come up that looks very nice unfortunately (and there I was thinking it'd be simplicity itself to draw something like this) sorry if it's a kinda lame question =) SewerRat

Try Blambot Fonts. He has two packs of speech bubbles available for free download. Paul

Actually it would be a neat thing to do with a primative sphere streched out into an oval with a properly placed and scaled cone for the pointer. Comic book characters having to duck the speech balloons as two people talking walked through a room!

haha Ikyoto =) and don't forget to give it white ambient light so that it doesn't get shaded =) Thanks lobo, checking it out (what would I do without you?) SewerRat

oOOo that site is great lobo! thanks heaps! SewerRat

No problem :) Hmmm, but what would happen if the speech bubbles bumped into some mega-strong hero type. Would they tear? Paul

Hi Folks! Another way to create speech and thought bubbles is to draw them in a vector-based program like Adobe Illustrator and save them as EPS files. Then import them into a 3D modeling program as flat shapes and extrude them to your liking. Infini-D was great for this, and I think RDS also has that ability. Hope this helps. Peter (Dr Zik)

What package are you using for your texting? If you're usuing photoshop here's what I do: 1. Put all text in a seperate layer. 2. Envelope all text with the oval selector as needed. 3. Using the line selector, draw the little pointer tabs to the characters and connect them to each ellipse. 4. Copy the contents of the ellipses to the clipboard. 5. use the edit, fill command and fill the selection area with black. 6. Use the selection, modify, contract command anc contract the area by a few pixels (at least 2). 7. use the edit, fill and fill with white. 8. Paste the text back into the balloons. If you do this all as an overlay layer on you artwork the cut and paste work great. Plus you can change the text all you like and not mess up your artwork.

SewerRat, Are you looking for 2D speech bubbles to use in paintshop etc., or do you want 3d speech bubbles to use directly in Poser?

Compupic, my media viewer of choice, has a word bubble feature. Cost $40. at Photodex.com

Drop me a mail and I can run a few off real quick in cinema and map them.....cinema lets you do this sort of stuff dead easy.........Steve

Sory I meant to say 3d ones if thats what you need..........Steve

Actually I was looking for 2D ones, it's for a comic but if 3D ones look right I wouldn't be loathe to use them Mason: that's almost exactly what I was originally trying to do, but gave up in despair, because I couldn't find the oval or line selector tools in photohop, just the square or lassoo selector, and neither tools seem to have options to change to oval/lines. I'm probably blind (I knew there had to be some simple way). Also, tangental but still on the topic, is there any way to create our own shape selectors? Say I've drawn a comic think bubble or something, can I then select the shape and put that into photoshop as a selection option shape? SewerRat

I have a font I found somewhere that is just word balloons. You pick the one you want and apply it just like text.

any chance of uploading this font legume? thanks heaps guys! SewerRat

Get it here: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Island/5510/c/index.html

Cool stuff there, but not all of the links seems to be working. What's availible is worth it. Thanks Doc.

Sewerrat, the oval is also the square tool. To get it, you have to select the square tool then open then option dialog. Its under the window menu and select "show options". Now on that dialog select the marquee options and select oval instead of rectangle in the list box. You can hold the ALT key down and the oval will grow centered around your mouse click. Other wise it drags like the rectangle. Use SHIFT to add as many ovals as you like. The line tool is the lasso. To make lines, hold the alt key down, then click (without dragging). You'll see a marquee line anchored at the first click point. While still holding the alt key down you can click again and it will make a new anchor point. Three clicks will make a triangle. Again SHIFT works to combine so you can create an oval, then hold SHIFT and ALT down with the lasso to create your talkie arrow. The two can overlap and form the union of the two marquees.

aaaah and I've also discovered if I make a circle selection, then hold down alt and make another one just off it, I can subtract the one selection from the other, making a curved speech arrow thing. Then I add the large oval to that =) cool cool thanks heaps for the help! SewerRat

I still like using primatives. The effect of having a speech bubble cast a shadow is great!