* Set fill & stroke as desired, making both bubble & triangle have the same values. * Make a triangle using the bezier curves tool for 3 connected line segments enclosing the space. This lets me make bulgy segments between the nodes, to fit my whim. * Make an oval, then use 'object to path'. I make talk bubbles by just using the bubble and a triangle. To give your 'Tail' triangle a sharper tip, raise the 'Join' to about 13 or higher. Now add the text desired and shape until it fits perfectly.ĭuplicate the 'Top' and 'Bottom' shapes and move them together to form a second bubble area. This should make it appear to be integrated into the talk bubble. Move the tail until the open end of the angle or the shortest side of the triangle is tucked between the 'Top' and 'Bottom' object. Set the Stroke to half the Width of the original object. Ensure the 'fill' is the same colour as the object in the 'Top' layer. Using either the Freehand tool ( F6) or the Bezier tool ( Shift+F6) create a 'V' shape or a triangle. In the Layers tool box, click the 'Tail' layer to set it as our working layer. We're not expecting the stroke to disappear entirely. This will make the object appear to have a 1 mm stroke width. With our object selected, click the Fill and Stroke tool box and change the object's Width to 0 mm. However, we now have a copy of our object in the 'Top' layer that we can modify. Use Ctrl+Alt+V to paste the object right on top of itself. In the Layers tool box, click the 'Top' layer to make it our working layer. (In my case 2 millimeters for a final thickness of 1 mm.) Make any other adjustments here such as Dashes, etc.Ĭlick the shape you created and copy it ( Ctrl+C). Open the Fill and Stroke (Shift+Ctrl+F) dialog box, click the Stroke Style tab and adjust the Width to double the desired thickness. In my case, I'll be using an Oval with the help of the Circles tool (F5). The names are not important they're just reminders to help keep our focus.Ĭlick the 'Bottom' layer to make it our working layer.Ĭreate a shape large enough to contain the text necessary. (To open the layers control box, use Shift+Ctrl+L.)Ĭreate 4 specific layers for the talk bubble. If you're working with an image file, add it to the document and set it on its own layer.

Here’s the updated d sequence: d='M180,80 L150,90 Q180,80 180,125 L180,80'.ĥ.) Close off path – Finally, we use the ClosePath action (z) to end the sequence: d'=M180,80 L150,90 Q180,80 180,125 L180,80 z'.Let's create some talk bubbles where the tail, the part that points to the speaker, is flexible and does not need to be redrawn. So, we only need to provide the x and y coordinates for the control handle and the destination node: d='M180,80 L150,90 Q180,80 180,125'.Ĥ.) Create a vertical line to node 1 – We’re going to use the lineTo command (L) once again to draw one more line, returning to node 1. Here’s the updated d sequence: d='M180,80 L150,90'.ģ.) Create a Bézier curve to node 3 – The QuadraticBézierCurves command (Q) only requires 3 points, unlike the CubicBézier command (C) that requires 4. The destination x and y coordinates are also returned using our Bezier function. The MoveTo command (M) requires only an x and y coordinate, so the first part of our d sequence will be d='M180,80'.Ģ.) Create a horizontal line to node 2 – Using the lineTo command (L), we can provide destination x- and y-coordinates to draw a straight line between origin and destination. Steps for drawing the speech bubble tail using SVG’s d attribute.ġ.) Move to node 1 – Starting in the top left on the SVG grid (x0, y0) we want to move to the x and y coordinates returned from the Bezier function in our code. The third set of coordinates gives us the destination node for the curve (node 2). The second set of coordinates indicate the In handle for the destination node. The first set of coordinates indicate the position of the Out handle for the starting node (node 1). The MoveTo (M) command requires only an x and y coordinate, so the first part of our d sequence will be d='M0,50'.Ģ.) Create Bézier curve from node 1 to node 2 – A cubic Bézier curve requires 3 sets of x and y coordinates. In this example, our bubble has a width of 200px and a height of 100px.ġ.) Move to node 1 – Starting in the top left on the SVG grid (x0, y0), we want to move to 0px on the x-axis and 50px to the middle of the y-axis (ie move straight down). Our final constructor will, of course, crunch the numbers for these steps dynamically, but for the sake of demonstration, let’s run through how the calculations work. Steps for drawing the oval portion of the speech bubble using SVG’s d attribute.Ģ) Create Bézier curve from node 1 to node 2.

Comic book speech bubble