So you want to turn your handwriting into a font.

Since I’ve started trying to digitize my comics, I’ve realized that one of the most annoying parts of the process is redoing the text after I’ve already scanned and colored everything in. Yeah, I can write out new text, scan and copy + paste it into photoshop, but even typing that out makes me just want to leave it the way it is, awkward phrasing, misspellings, and smudges oh my. It doesn’t help that when I’m writing the text for the speech bubbles, I am concentrating on making the letters legible, which leads skipping over important words/ drinking.

So, I set off to turn my handwriting into a font. There are plenty of services and software that probably do a great job, but also cost money. As a perennially unemployed person, I am looking for free. I decided to try myscriptfont.com.

The process seemed easy enough. Print off a template, write in the letters, scan, upload, and it spits out your handwritten font.

Since I’m always trying to make simple things take a long time, and since I don’t own a scanner anymore, nor a printer for that matter, I had to do tedious, repetitive photoshopping. If you upload a photo of the filled into template that was taken on your phone, the font doesn’t turn out well at all. I guess the lines have to be straight, go figure.

So, I magic wanded each letter, copy + pasting it into the template, while watching futurama on netflix because of attention span.

If you’re in the same not having a scanner- boat as me, make sure to save an unflattened copy just in case the kerning of your font doesn’t turn out right and you need to make adjustments.

I uploaded my filled in template and downloaded my handwriting font.

Behold, my handwriting that I typed out onto a computer. It’s not perfect, but it will make the comic editing process a whole lot smoother. I am now one step closer to fully automating my hand drawn comic making process.