Comics 101- Layout

 In this series of articles, I will give you nearly everything you need to know to effectively create a comic book. We will discuss the art, the writing, the purpose and the advantages that are specific to the art form itself. During this adventure, we will cover the following topics in order”

Defining comics

Story form

Art forms

Scripting

Layout/ paneling

Lettering/ art of words

Printing/ publishing.

At the end of each article will be a series of activities that will eventually get you to do a story from start to finish. Along with ideas to help you find good reading and reference material.

I would argue that ‘layout’ is the biggest topic in comics. Layout changes the way a story is read, adds to the kinds of emotions that are happening, and overall makes it feel like a comic book.

To clarify: since this is a big subject, layout of balloons and other things relating to words will be discussed in the next lesson. stay tuned!

Panels:

Panels are the trickiest part and why when you are writing the script you should also consider drawing a quick thumbnail as to how the page is supposed to look.

To put this in the simplest terms possible, the panels should reflect the kind of action that is taking place in the story at that time. Conversational parts should have rather straight forward grid-like panels:

Whereas parts with a little more action should have panels that are a bit more uncommon.

Note the slanted panels

Panel shape can be changed throughout as well. If the shot calls for showing how big a room is, consider not putting a border on the panel and letting the room breathe outward like so:

The scene continues off the page. when you open
the borders of a panel like that then the readers
imagination fills up the rest of the scene.

If a character is supposed to feel isolated, or something is supposed to feel cramped, you can shrink the panel and put a lot of what we call the “bleed space” around the panel like so:

Note how a feeling of Isolation happens when the character
is surrounded by a very small panel with walls that seem to close in.

Another common practice is to take the border of the panel and change the shape of that itself to match a certain genre. Perhaps your character is experiencing a bunch of news reports, instead of just showing boring panels with the newscasters you might make the borders look like an iPhone or a TV screen.

Bleed space

Common practices with the bleed space. The bleed space is important to the story as it’s the divider that causes the brain to connect the pieces in their mind.

Think of when you read a comic. You have two stationary pictures but chances are that after you see the second picture you automatically imagine the movement transition between the two. That’s thanks to the bleed space. Having a little (or a lot) of bleed space can change the way you understand the pace of movement. A good rule of thumb is that the more bleed space you have between panels, the slower the action is happening (however, this is not always the case. Pay attention to how borders are presented).

It's the bleed space here that makes him feel like he is flying.
your mind connects the dots by it'self when there is a separation like this.

Changing the color in the bleed space allows the pictures within the panels stand out and change. If you have an open panel on the page it is recommended that the picture becomes the bleed space. Black puts more emphasis on the art and white creates a much clearer separation between panels and leaves less to the imagination on how much time you want to have between the pictures.

 

I could go all day talking about this stuff, but I think that should cover the basics of layout.

Application!

Do a 1-page story. It can be any story you want as long as it is a single page. In that page, try to mess around with the panels, shapes, colors, and word balloons and see what you can come up with. Be sure to post your finished project in the comments below.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to like my Facebook page so you don’t miss out on any more lessons and thanks for sharing this with a friend. Remember to always be your best self.