Thread by @h0lysarthole

Continuing on being picky (because I'm VERY picky with paneling), square panels are best avoided too. They look sad and undynamic. Your pages will look nicer without them.

Man, I haven't even started on the ART that goes into the panels for the sake of composition yet. That'll be coming up in a moment.

This page below is bad for a number of reasons. The shots are SO similar! Each character is drawn mostly the same size, same crop, same angle... You want to mix ALL of these aspects up as much as you can.

Something I see all the time and dislike, but hardly ever see being criticized is when a character keeps appearing in the same place vertically on a page. I find character stacking so distracting! If you agree, then try to avoid it when you can.

Tangents are when things line up. Tangents are BAD! Tangents distort how a thing looks to us, leads our eye in the wrong direction, and is overall a big distraction. (You might be picking up that anything that distracts and takes the reader out of the reading experience is bad).

You don't HAVE TO have a background in every panel, but I would say one per page is a minimum. It doesn't even have to be a big fancy background, but just something to ground the characters and keep them from floating in the void.

In a white space with a black dot on it, the eye will be drawn to the black dot. On a black page with a white dot, our eyes will be drawn to the white dot. The same holds true for comic pages, too.

(I oughta mention that I didn't invent all this stuff outta thin air btw. A lot of people have taught me and helped me learn, such as @BluandRedWires and @DerpTree, and Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' taught me a few things too).

In comics read left to right, the motion of 'left to right' is progress. Someone advancing and moving ahead should ideally be shown waking in the direction of left to right. Also, vigorous actions such as a punch seem more powerful if punching torwards the right.

Utilizing black and white is important for drawing the eye and creating visual interest. You don't want a 50/50 distribution, but you also don't want something like a 90/10 distribution. Either way can look too boring. Mix things up!

Speech bubble placement is VERY important, as it's the main thing that will guide your reader's eye around the page. Eyes are lazy, they want to jump to the next nearest bubble, regardless of what you want! Bear this in mind and don't bring people out of the reading experience.

The shots you choose for your characters have different connotations about the mood of the character and scene. You can use them how you like and play with it to get different effects, it's something worth thinking about.

Where the speech bubble is placed in relation to the character also makes a difference, and is something to be considered.

The 180 rule is a classic in comics and similar alike... It's kinda hard to explain for one such as I, but I'll try in this example. You CAN break the 180 rule when necessary, but be sure to make it very clear what's going on when you do so.

There's a lot more to say, but it's not coming to mind right now... Maybe I'll add more later. Hopefully I've made it apparent though how much there is to consider, so the planning phase of your comic pages is SO important. Also, as requested, here's some of my thumbnails :>

Incidentally, those are some of my real thumbnails that I used, not made for the sake of being examples. Filled black areas and speechbubbles weren't drawn, because I knew where they were going to be (I've made a lot of pages lol). I recommend including them in your planning :>

(I'm gunna add tips as I come across them) Make sure your speech bubble tails aren't in cluttered areas. Having to hunt for a tail to see who's speaking takes a reader out of the experience. I made the mistake here, wanted to show you guys afore I fixed it.

I thought of a few more things! This one's pretty specific, but it's sure an issue I had a lot in the past haha. For those drawing anime hair, be careful of your bubbles being on top of it. It can make where the bubble tail is confusing!

Also, I forgot to mention why I do my pages in double batches. This only really matters for print o' course. If your panels line up from one page to the other, it looks like they're meant to be read together.

Incidentally, there are MANY ways to panel. Every artist has their own ways of doing it and their own things that they think are important. Which is good! Your comic should reflect you and what you value in storytelling. I just think these are things worth thinking about.

I'm real pleased people have been enjoying my comic layout tips =D Here's one regarding bleed panels. They break outside of the confines of panel borders and can be used for many different effects. You can trust your gut for when is most appropriate, but here's some examples.

It's a good idea to not stack similar elements atop each other on a page, as it can make it look lopsided. This one might seem obvious but it's also very easily done by accident, so it's good to watch out for.

There aren't actually any hard rules in art (afaik). There's a time and a place for everything. A general good composition rule can be broken, if you've got a good reason for it or want to convey something in particular. Don't feel too constrained!

I read once that every good panel should have a foreground, a midground, and a background... EVERY panel sounds a bit too much to me, but if you want a nice way to spruce your panel up, consider it! It adds a sense of depth to your artwork.

I see in quite a few comics characters just stood in the centre of panels, touching the sides as little as they can... That's fine for some cases, but don't be afraid to crop to what's important! It helps in varying up the content of you panels a lot too.

Thumbnailing is good for getting your planning self to FORCE you to draw things you wouldn't normally, or even things you think you COULDN'T normally. Scribble out what you KNOW will tell the scene best! ... Worry about pulling it off later.

My friend reminded me that some people struggle with drawing their panel borders digitally, and have to try line up rectangles they've drawn... It's true, I used to do that too. Here's a method for getting your panels drawn! There's other ways I'm sure, but this is what I do.

Time passes over the course of a page, but it can also pass within a single panel. Events happen in the order that your eye moves over them, which can be a problem, or used to your advantage. It might not be an issue often, but it's another thing to bear in mind.

Here's a tip to save a little time! If your characters are having a conversation, don't always feel the need to draw panel after panel of the characters talking as the conversation bounces back and forth. Often you'll need to, but sometimes you can cram it all into one panel.

It's easy to get lost when staring at a blank sheet of paper, wondering how to portray your scene, where to start with your panels. The best thing I find to do is picture how you want at least ONE panel, and then work around that.