Merrimo User Guide › Lettering and dialogue

Shape and bend balloon tails on Mac

In Merrimo on your Mac, you can direct balloon tails toward speaking characters, shape smooth bezier curves, and pin tail tips to panel borders.

Dragging a tail tip, a joint and a curve control on the Merrimo canvas.

Direct a tail toward a character's mouth

Control who is speaking by positioning the pointer:

  1. Select the speech balloon. A green ring marks the tail tip, and a red ring marks each point the tail bends through.
  2. Drag the green ring toward the character's face.
  3. To curve the tail around artwork, click a red ring. Gray diamonds appear on either side of it; drag one to bend the tail, or drag the red ring to move the bend.
  4. To keep the tip on the same spot while you move the balloon, double-click the green ring. It turns into an orange ring with a dot, pinned to the canvas. Double-click it again to free it.
  1. Selecting the balloon to reveal its tail handles

    Select the balloon to reveal the tip and joint handles.

  2. Dragging the tail tip toward the speaker

    Drag the tail tip to the speaker's mouth.

  3. Bending the tail using the curvature handle

    Pull the curvature handle to avoid obscuring character details.

  4. Fine-tuning the smooth bezier curve

    Fine-tune the curve for a balanced, professional comic flow.

  5. The completed balloon and tail placement

    The tail smoothly connects the speech to the speaker.

Off-panel dialogue and tail pinning

Indicate voices coming from outside the visible scene:

  1. Drag the tail tip past the border of the host panel.
  2. Merrimo automatically clips and pins the tail flat against the panel edge, creating a standard off-panel dialogue indicator.
  3. In the Inspector, adjust tail width and styling to clearly distinguish off-panel dialogue.

See also