Topic: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

Highly recommended, on the affordable but very good side of the spectrum, and from people who have always helped comic artists, especially indies : Blambot (it's not a comic font, it is the name of the company).

They support very advanced matters in comic lettering. It would be too long to detail in here, but their site is full of AMAZING info ("ARTICLES" section). A lot of that info will help you make comic lettering in a much more professional way. I have two great fonts from this place. Blambot always offered their fonts free for Indy comic authors (provided it's for an indy comic creation!), which is beyond generous. And those offered, are quite good. Still, the commercial ones, besides that you get a full commercial license, are of very high quality. And no strings attached, no limitations for those. Like the following company, these fonts are very well thought out for printed comics, comics on paper. But IMO, can be very well used for web comics, too.

https://blambot.com

This other company makes exceptional fonts. Quite more expensive but absolutely outstanding. They have sales days (I don't know if it was on Black Friday). I typically wait till those days.. and then I forget.  big_smile . These are absolute high end comic fonts that many of the biggest names in the industry have used. Important caveat: For a web comic, the price goes increasing depending on how many unique visits per month you have (100k visits/month, 200k visists, etc). The previous company, Blambot, not only has lower prices, it doesn't have these tiers per monthly views. But these are of exceptional quality, very well thought out for printed comic books. IMO, you don't go wrong with either company.

https://www.comicbookfonts.com

Yeah, both are great.


And one that surprised me very positively (might become my main font for web comics!) is a font that gets installed when you buy Clip Paint Studio Paint 3.0 (not previous versions!) permanent license or the subscription. I'm guessing obviously so too with 4.x. I have 4.0 EX, now.  From what I read, it comes with both the Pro and Ex version.

Obviously, it'd be expensive to buy an application (which is a gem) just for a font, but in my tests, this was the most readable in small size on screens, and yet looks very stylish for comics.

"Clip Studio Comic Regular"

Those like me, willing to make it sure something is legal to use for commercial purposes, you have some data about it here:
https://ask.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=116188

And mostly HERE (with examples of the font, and license explained. Spoiler: no problems) :
https://www.celsys.com/en/topic/2024031402_es


For those wanting another option for a free comic font (IE, in case of one not making indy comics, so the Blambot free fonts would not be an option (but those are better)) for a graphic design or whatever, or any commercial use, but can't afford the 30-40 bucks of Blambot's, this one might do the job. Even if it's in a very different (lower) tier, it's a gazillion times better than Comic Sans (too much hatred against that font, Comic Sans was designed for screens of eons ago for a certain purpose, not for graphic design, and definitely not for comics):

Komika Text.
https://www.1001fonts.com/komika-text-font.html

A lot of great webcomics can be made with it (and surely are).

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Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

SrPx wrote:

For those wanting another option for a free comic font (IE, in case of one not making indy comics, so the Blambot free fonts would not be an option (but those are better)) for a graphic design or whatever, or any commercial use, but can't afford the 30-40 bucks of Blambot's, this one might do the job. Even if it's in a very different (lower) tier, it's a gazillion times better than Comic Sans (too much hatred against that font, Comic Sans was designed for screens of eons ago for a certain purpose, not for graphic design, and definitely not for comics):

Komika Text.
https://www.1001fonts.com/komika-text-font.html

A lot of great webcomics can be made with it (and surely are).

There are quite a few free ‘Komika’ fonts out there (see https://www.fontspace.com/search?q=Komika) but the ones of interest are those designed by Fredrick Nader, aka. ‘Apostrophe’, for his Apostrophic Lab.

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

Exactly! I had forgotten the name of the original author and the brand. I read back in the day the full explanation that there was once in 1001fonts (not in 1001freefonts, a different beast). And it was quite moving that he did all that work for comic creators to have it for free.

It's from years ago, I don't really remember the story, I will have to read it again... Oh, it's here (one has to scroll down) :

https://www.1001fonts.com/komika-text-font.html

It's the same link I pasted, but I realize now that the full story is still there. smile   8)

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Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

I used to be a font addict.  I bought probably hundreds of fonts.  But, when the Internet became more commonplace, it seems font companies got more and more restrictive as to how you could use their fonts.  So, I investigated and inquired with foundries specifically what I could and could not do, and narrowed down the companies I purchased from considerably.

As the years have passed, so too have some of those individuals and small companies that offered licenses that were easy and flexible, IMHO.

These days, I find myself using more and more open source fonts rather than commercial fonts.

I also "cheat."  I make my own fonts and then I have no restrictions on their use.  I have two comic style fonts.  I also have a font of my printed handwriting which I created a number of years ago to be able to print a letter that looked handwritten but that I could easily edit.

I used to create my glyphs in Illustrator as I was more familiar with Illustrator's tools, and I was told by pro font designers that it was better and easier to do it in a font editor.  Turns out, they were right.  The drawing tools are arguably superior than the tools in Illustrator or Designer.  I have sometimes found myself looking for features or tools in Designer and then realizing they are in my font editor, not Designer.

But, making your own fonts can get addictive.  I have probably over a dozen in progress.

Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

@Twolane and @dcr

Yep, licenses can be very restrictive. I don't have a Comicraft font yet, but I guess that could become a problem for a webocmic unless I'd throw quite some money on it. That said, 100k views/month (it was what a certain software company where I worked at had, and we made some niche but famous products) are a lot of views, the extra licensing cost for that seems reasonable for the money one "could" be making, but webcomics are hard to monetize efficiently. I kind of think that you would have fewer issues in that regard with Blambot than Comicraft(comicbookfonts). When working as a designer, although for most stuff at companies I just used a few commercial fonts that were very safe, very well designed, for less important things, no corporate image, etc, I just often went with free font sites (if you'd set that in the site's search)  like Dafont, 1001font, Fontsquirrel or open source ones like Google Fonts. Another that I am currently digging (no idea of how good it is) :  https://open-foundry.com . (any feedback is appreciated.)

And the font I am using more now for comics is the one that I mentioned, included in Clip Studio Paint since version 3.0, which appears to allow everything I actually need.  Depending on the kind of comic, that or a certain one from Blambot.

I am a graphic designer and illustrator, I have worked in both roles at companies and as a freelancer, but what I am not is a font designer. There is a ton of knowledge for me to learn to become one, I am afraid. But it would be fun to make one solely for my comic art (but not to the level of Comicraft and Blambot, they consider a lot of details and lettering related matters). Yes, a font-designing tool would probably be my choice. Some people just draw the fonts on paper, by hand, then scan, vectorize and import into a font tool... One could go that route.

@dcr Kudos for that.. Kind of makes me envious... Someday I might try that.

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Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

Are you aware of FontCreator from High-Logic?

I have made fonts using FontCreator.

https://www.high-logic.com/

https://forum.high-logic.com/


https://i.postimg.cc/RqLKDc1R/beautiful-calligraphy.png

Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

I will definitely have a look. Thank you, William!

In my memory there's like a tool name everyone mentioned... but it's blurry... Maybe it was called Font Forge. Anyway, at some point I'll do a bit of personal research on the matter  smile

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Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

SrPx wrote:

In my memory there's like a tool name everyone mentioned... but it's blurry... Maybe it was called Font Forge. Anyway, at some point I'll do a bit of personal research on the matter  smile

You’ll be pleased/relieved to know that your memory isn’t playing tricks on you!

https://fontforge.org

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

Re: My two fav companies for comic fonts of all time and "free" options

Oh, it's free and open source!  Donations supported (optional).

Noice.  (as the young ones say now).

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