How to Draw Comic Characters Who Have Thinking Bubbles
Thinking bubbles, or thought bubbles, are variants of the speaking bubble used to convey a comic book character's words. Thought bubbles show the character's internal thoughts, which aren't being voiced to the rest of the characters. Drawing them is fairly easy, though it requires some expertise to convey properly. Like a lot of art techniques, it gets better with practice, and the more you work at it, the more effective your thought bubbles will become.
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Instructions
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Write down the dialogue you intend to use on a piece of scratch paper. That will give you an idea how much space it will take up. Comic dialogue should be brief and concise, limited to just a sentence or two if possible. Try to arrange the words in an elliptical pattern--with the center lines of dialogue slightly longer than the top and bottom lines.
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Draw the image to which you intend to attach the thought bubble. The character doing the thinking should have his mouth closed in most cases, and you should include enough white space above or around his head so that you can comfortably place the thought bubble on top of it.
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Rewrite the dialogue into the white space above the character's head, making sure that it fits in the location without overlapping any key parts of the image.
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Draw a cloud-like circle around the words, using circular puffy embellishments along the surface of the circle. That will differentiate it from speaking bubbles, which consist of a straightforward oval shape. The circle should completely encompass the words, and none of the surrounding artwork should intrude into its space.
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Draw three or four tiny circles stretching from the bottom of the circle you just created to the character's face or mouth. Like the large circle, they shouldn't obscure any details in the background image and need to be completely white on the inside.
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Ink the edges of the circles to cement it in the image, then fill in the background details of the surrounding image in any white space left over.
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Repeat the process as necessary with any additional thought bubbles in the image. Sometimes, multiple thought bubbles are necessary to convey a particularly long line of dialogue (though you should probably cut the dialogue down to an absolute minimum before doing so).
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Tips & Warnings
The thinking bubbles described here are for western drawing techniques. Asian manga uses a different technique: a speech balloon with spike edges to convey thought.
If you're drawing a thought bubble on a computer program such as Photoshop, you can use a shortcut to create the cloud-like effect of the bubble. Create a new working layer, then draw a white oval as a basis. Use several sizes of white circular brushes to dot the edges with bubbles, creating a nice cloud effect. Group the image together, then write in the dialogue on top of it.
