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When I first began this comic, I decided to hand
letter. That was a mistake. My handwriting is
really pretty terrible, and it was hard to keep it
consistent and straight on the page. All of this is
solved by computer lettering. So instead, I made a
font using my own handwriting (as neat as I could get it).
The first step to adding text is to put the words
themselves on the page. I make each block of text
its own layer and format it to center. I try to
arrange it in a roughly ovular shape.
After that is done, I create a white, ovular ellipse
beneath each block of text, using the ellipse tool.
I try to make the ellipse large enough to contain all of
the words plus a small margin of space all around them.
Then, I need to add the black line around the
ellipse. Luckily, Photoshop has a very simple
feature that makes this part a snap. Just click on
the ellipse layer in your layer listing, and select
"blending options." The bottom check box
will read "stroke." If that box is
checked, it will create a colored border around the
ellipse. Then, all I have to do is click on the
stroke option and select the color black and my desired
line weight. I go with 8 pixels at 400 DPI.
The position of the stroke is set to "outside"
so that the size of the interior of my ellipse is not
effected.
Now that I have the line around the speech balloon, I need
to create the "callout" (the little curvy pointed
thingy that shows which character is speaking). For
this, I use the pen tool. The method is shown below:
  
Starting with the pen tool, I create a long pointed
triangle. I create this layer beneath the ellipse
layer so that the top is concealed behind the ellipse.
I set this layer to have a stroke of the same thickness and
color as the ellipse, but I set this stroke to be
"inside" rather than outside. That gives it
a nice sharp point.
Then, to make the callout curve, I select the "convert
point tool" (another option of the pen tool). I
can then click and drag the little squares that make up the
top points of the triangle to create the desired curve.
Finally, I merge the callout layer to the ellipse layer and
use the brush tool to white out the line between them.
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