Thought bubbles

[Assumedfailure]

As we can tell I'm big on text things

I'm trying to figure out a way to do thought bubbles now. I could just make an oval with some smaller circles going down to show who is thinking it, but I'm worried that will look too much like my text bubbles and be confusing. So I wanted to find some way to do cloudy bubbles. I tried to make an oval then see if there was some way to put dents in it, but I didn't have much luck there. How do other people make thought bubbles, I guess they really don't have to be cloud like, I just want something that isn't round.

Any thoughts comments suggestions? (I'm using the gimp, but any ideas from how things work in photoshop are quite appriciated as they usually turn some rusty gear in my mind for how I could do things in the gimp)

Cheers,
Michael

[Joel Fagin]

I just do ovals. Works for me.

Failing that, try making some vector cloud-like thought bubbles so you can resize them as you please.

- Joel Fagin

[Warofwinds]

I had the same problem. What you can do is start with an oval, select it with the wand, then go into that red mask mode (forgot what it's called... the bottom right button on your toolbar in PS) with an eraser brush at 100% hardness, and make it all bubbly yourself. Go back into normal mode, and it will have selected a bubbled area.

I'm lazy, so I don't do that. Instead, I do this half-assed bubbly thing, like in the first panel of this comic: http://warofwinds.spiderforest.com/?comic_id=159 . Starts as an oval, then still using the oval select, change it to a 1:1 ratio and boink it.

...why did that sound sexual? ugh.

and btw, we really need to start a thread devoted to just balloons...it comes up enough.

[Assumedfailure]

I like the idea of making vector shapes. I might look into that if I can avoid making crappy ones that once. The only problem that I see with that is that I'm horrible at placement of characters and such so I would probably end up never being able to fit the shapes that I made.

Ovals are becoming more tempting, particularly after I saw warofwinds stylized ones. They looked quite spiffy. And I would have to agree in lazyness.

As for that sounding sexual, the word "oval" was used many times, so perhaps if one were a geometriaphile...

Thank you both for your help. For now I think I'll try just bluring the oval into the background to make it look more hazy.

[Dr_Destruction]

In Freehand or Illustrator:

Make a star with 12-24 points, more if you feel it warrants it. Make sure that the points are set to Obtuse. Put the slider fairly over to the right. Group it. While it's still grouped stretch it so that it's now roughly an oval. Ungroup it. Then Shift-Selct all the outside points and in properties change them from corner points to curve points and set to automatic. You might have to modify the points on the very edge manually.

[Lloyd]

I use the Gimp also, and what I do is make a bunch of little ovals, one on top of the other. They really do look cloud-like.

Here's a link, if you need a visual...

http://andellon.comicgenesis.com/tutorial.html

The pics with the thought bubbles are down at the end.

[Assumedfailure]

The star idea is pretty spiffy (sorry in taking so long to get back to that response). I also really like the bunch of ovals idea, It's something that would put enough difference between speech bubbles and thought bubbles so that it wouldn't be confusing.

Many options to choose from. Hopefully later tonight I'll get to lettering the comic that I'm putting up on monday, and play with all the different suggestions then.

[Dutch!]

I've only occasionally used thought bubbles, and originally I did as you first mentioned. A speech bubble but with circles floating down to the character getting smaller as they progress. It worked okay but normal speech bubbles were easier.

Lately when I've had reason to show characters thinking (although I haven't done it much at all, I just have them talk and assume the reader knows what's going on), I've done speech bubbles but given them a transparency of 50%. I thought that looked a decent difference.

Mind you...haven't had to do it since, so I don't know whether that's what I do or if it was just a one off. Could still be an idea though.

Cheers.

[Dr_Destruction]

Another thing you can do is play around with the Distort filters in Photoshop. It doesn't end up looking like a classical thought balloon but you can get some interesting effects from a basic ellipse and a few seconds in the filter pane.