AMA: How Do You Layout Comics?

Cap E. Bara writes:

"Your comics are so good storytelling wise and beyond the style, coloring, and “lighting” (which I truly think are incredible), your compositions are just so good. Often when I read comics I feel like I am lost or unsure what part of the scene I am looking at or where I am looking from or can’t map some panels to the others and they feel disjointed. But yours always seem to make sense and look good/right. But when I try to come up with panel composition it feels like options are literally infinite.

How do you come with what each panel should look like and what each scene should look like? Like the angle of the "camera", the distance from characters, width of the shot, etc?"

This is a fantastic question, and one that really drives at the heart of making comics. Comics are a unique medium of storytelling that combines words and pictures, and it is in the combining of the two that you find that special sauce that makes comics what they are. It's very easy to confuse a reader because unlike television or movies, the audience literally doesn't see everything that happens. Actions take place between panels in the gutters, and the reader has to fill in the unseen events stitching panels together in their mind into a cohesive visual narrative. Making that narrative clear for the reader, while also visually interesting is the core skill of a comics creator. So how do you do it?

Step One: Have a script that flows

A good script will do a LOT of heavy lifting in comics and make every other step that much easier. While you're writing, try to visualize how the scene will go and aim for a smooth transition of events. This does not mean that you need to show everything. If in one panel a character is picking up a jacket and in the next panel they are wearing the jacket, the audience can easily infer that they put it on. You don't need to show them putting the jacket on for the audience to understand that's what's happened. But if there's no jacket to be seen in one panel, and then they're wearing one in the next it's too big of a jump, and you run the risk of confusing the audience. Figure out the transitions in the script. You can worry about what they look like later, but make sure you have written into the script a reasonable progression of events.

How big is too big a transition between panels?

There's no simple answer to this one. You can completely change scenes, locations, planets, time periods, universes between panels and with an appropriate establishing shot it's not confusing at all. But something as simple as leaving a room can be confusing if you don't make it clear in panel one that they're in one room with a door and in panel two they're in a different room with the same door. Sometimes you even want the audience to be a little lost and confused, if that makes them understand the character's emotions or scene better. But do that sparingly. Ultimately, you just have to experiment and find what is too confusing for you as you re-read the script in editing. But I would err on the side of clarity.

Don't try to do too much in one panel.

Generally speaking, I strongly recommend having ONE THING happen per panel, with perhaps a secondary less important but related thing happening. If you try to have too many important actions happening in one panel, you run the risk of confusing the audience and you make it waaaaaay harder on yourself (or your artist) to clearly draw what you want happening in that panel. Pare it down. Find what's important in the panel and have that happen. Don't worry about the rest.

Step Two: Block it out

Once you've got a script that reads well without any obvious jarring moments, it's time to thumbnail your pages. You know how many panels you need to fit on a page, you know who speaks and in what order, and you know what has to happen in each panel. Now you need to pull it all together into a cohesive image.

Panel layout is its own art form, and you can get pretty dang creative with how panels go on a page, but the two things you must keep in mind is "left to right" and "top to bottom." Unless you're creating for an Asian readership, chances are very good that your audience reads in that order. Left to right. Top to bottom. Put your panels in that order. If you need arrows to point to the next panel, you've fucked up. Go back and do it again.

You'll probably have to try multiple layouts before you settle on something that has a clear reading order and gives you the space for each panel's contents. Don't stress if it's hard, there's lots of elements to juggle. The more you do this, the better you'll get it.

Speaking order matters

Word balloon layout is just as critical (if not more so) than panel layout, so you'll want to figure out where those balloons can go at this stage of the process. Remember, "left to right, top to bottom." Your word balloons should follow those principles, just like panel layouts. Unless you have the same person speaking first in every panel, you'll want to change the camera angle or character position to avoid crossing word balloon tails (a cardinal sin). But you want to be clear that's what's happening. If characters A and B suddenly swap places between two panels it gets confusing, so consider showing character A moving behind character B to change up the speaking order without muddling the scene.

The 180 Rule

One of the common guidelines for helping maintain clarity in your scenes is borrowed from cinema and it's called The 180 Rule. Simply put: don't move the camera more than 180 degrees without a cut away shot. So, if character A is on the left of character B in one panel, they should remain on the left in subsequent panels no matter where you move the "camera." This helps ground the scene and avoids confusing the audience. You can, of course, break this rule but you should do so sparingly. If you need to break the 180 for some reason, try having an interstitial panel that shows a high or wide shot before coming back in on the opposite side of the characters.

Step Three: Know the room

When you get to the drawing phase, you need to make some choices about the environment and stick to them. Decide what's in the room, how big it is, where stuff goes, and think about how your characters will move through the environment. All the important set props that need to be in the environment should be noted in the script. Everything else is up to you.

Some artists build 3D models of environments (especially reoccurring ones) but even if you don't go to such an extent, having even a rough mental image of the whole space helps. When you can think of the environment you're drawing as a 3D space, you can mentally pan your camera around and know what should be in the shot. And establishing this before you start drawing a scene can help make the whole thing feel more consistent.

Step Four: Draw those backgrounds

You need to use establishing shots. It doesn't have to be the first panel in a scene, but you do need to make it clear at some point early on where the action is taking place.

Don't be afraid to use partial backgrounds in subsequent panels. Even just a line establishing the corner of a wall can do a lot to help clue readers in on how characters are moving through spaces. It doesn't have to be a lot, but every now and again you will want to have a more detailed background. Doing so helps maintain clarity and visual interest.

Backgrounds are your friend. Don't be afraid to use them.

Study and Practice

If I make it sound like there's a lot to consider and keep in mind to achieve good layouts, it's because it's true. You can, of course, make it as simple as a couple of talking heads back-and-forthing, and that's fine, but too much of it gets boring to read. You'll eventually want to change it up.

You can always crib from others

Study how other comic artists set up a scene. Watch movies and tv with an eye on how they cut from one person to another. One scene to another. You might be surprised by what you notice once you look for it; and then use those same techniques in your own comics.

Set arbitrary rules

Sometimes the infinite possibilities of the blank page are too much. So, go ahead and limit yourself. For instance, I made a rule for myself working on Star Power that each page would have one panel that would fill the gutters of the rest of the panels "on top" of the prime panel. There was no reason for this rule other than it gave me a framework to go off of. Every page of Watchmen was laid out on a 9-panel grid. You don't have to be fancy with your layouts. You can keep it simple until you get the hang of things.

Make mistakes to learn not to make mistakes

You'll probably make some pages that don't read as clear as you'd like. That's ok. That's part of the learning process. The important bit is to learn why those pages didn't work, and then do it different. Goodness knows, a lot of my early pages were rough. But if you apply your focus and creativity, you'll get better and then you'll find yourself making amazing comics.

-Garth