White Sand: word balloons
White Sand is a set of three graphic novels written by Brandon Sanderson and drawn by various artists. I don’t know who’s responsible for formatting choices like the word balloons.
White Sand generally uses word balloons in a very standard style. (i.e. the comic overall seems to take style inspiration from DC/Marvel comics)
One…. deviation that I have not seen before is White Sand’s treatment of characters speaking different languages. It is represented by different colored word balloons.
I actually really like this idea, in theory. It’s a good way to show different languages (that you want the reader to understand) as equal and different, like real life languages, as opposed to one language being the “base” language and other languages in italics or chevrons, for example.
However.
[image description: a photo of part of a panel. A word balloon that’s very faintly purple says “you’ll see how”. Another balloon, very faintly yellow, says “lord mastrell? I’m sorry to intrude, but you wouldn’t know which room my accolents and I are supposed to meet in, would you?” the first speaker says “ um… No. Why don’t you just use one that’s empty?” with a balloon that’s faintly yellow, connected to the first balloon with a gradient tail.
Next to the purple balloon a blob of purple has been scribbled on, next to the yellow balloon a yellow blob. End id]
The color choice is so…. subtle I didn’t realize White Sand was using this technique until I was two books in. I have put swatches of color next to the balloons for clarity.
So like I said: interesting idea but a poor execution.
Interestingly, I think the color difference is actually clearer in the online comics.Â
It is, admittedly, still pretty subtle, but I think that might be a matter of printing rather than color…or maybe I’m just better at picking it up? Either way, they certainly could be easier to tell apart, it’s hard to pick up on the difference until you see them side-by-side.
[id: screenshot of part of a panel showing two balloons, one is light yellow and the other light blue]
Oh! Thank you for the reference of the online pages! I hadn’t seen those before.
Yes, it does look a little easier to see! I guess this is a lesson on making sure colors print clearly (or a lesson for my eyesight? 🤔 who knows)















