I'm writing a comic book series. How do I know how to place the paneling?

Question

PLZ! I need to know!

Answer 1

Panels, like any visual part of a comic book, need to work in terms of your storytelling. The good news is, though, if you already are good at drawing out your scenes on storyboards you can afford to let your panels slide *early on* while you learn what works best for you.

Michael Turner, that guy who wrote those Aspen books _Soulfire_ and _Fathom_ and later on did a ton of covers for DC and Marvel comics, he pretty much just did a lot of one-page splash panels (one panel equaling the whole page like a poster) in his early work, and his art was good enough, and *got better still* quickly enough that it didn't hurt. And....if all else fails, you can just stick to the *tried and true* method: Follow the way people *read*, meaning just make a simple grid out and follow it top to bottom, left to right (or if you are trying Japanese-styled *Manga*, you go right to left).

Between those two, the splash page and the simple Top-Bottom, Left-Right Grid, you should be able to at least get started.

Later on, as you progress, you might want to look at some of Jack Kirby's work with Marvel and DC, maybe some work from Steranko, Ditko, George Perez or Carmine Infantimo....a lot of your old-schoolers from the 1960s to the early 1980s had a really *solid feel* for making the action in a comic flow from panel to panel and from page to page, and some of that had to do with clever and unexpected use of panels....

Because in time, you want to get to where you see your individual panels as *camera shots*, and as what conveys a sense of flow or motion to what would otherwise be static sequential art. Meaning, if your main action on a given page, in story terms, is two people walking down a sidewalk, you might want to imagine how the sidewalk would run its course, and lay out the panels in a way that suggests that you are *following them* on camera down the sidewalk in a cinematic way.

Likewise if you are doing a fight in a superhero type of affair, you want to have some idea as to how the fight progresses in cinematic or movie terms--for example, are we talking about a fight that goes down a hallway, through a door, down a flight of stairs (with people who were fighting standing up hitting the ground and getting back up again), to the ground floor, out to and through the lobby of a building and into a busy street that then *blows up* and sends folks *airborne*...?

A lot of that should imply directions to you in terms of panel placement (up, down, left, right) as well as point of view within a panel (zoom in, zoom out, close up, pan around) if you think of your panels as camera shots, in cinematic terms.

If you can go *that far*, ok, you will have *half* of your artists out there beat, because too many of the "hot artists" lately have no sense of flow or motion to their artwork....they follow the Jim Lee school of doing "kick butt poses" that look good in _Wizard_ magazine, reproduce clearly and basically reduce the visual side of storytelling to an incoherent slide show of posed splash pages, only in miniature. :P Not good, in my humble opinion.

But yeah, that would be a good start...I've seen a few other tricks artists used to use, like picking a point on someone's body and following that (like somebody's fist for a few fight panels), but that takes some work and knowledge of *what works* for you.

I hope this helps. :) Really.

Answer 2

If you are not drawing the series, I think you should talk to your artist.

1) Alan Moore worked with tight scripts and sort of laid out how he wanted the panels.

2) Some writers use thumb nail sketches to give the artist the idea of what they'd like to happen on the page (but remember it may not work from a view point).

3) Put your faith in the artist.

Now if you are asking how to use panels I recommend you:

Pick an artist whose stories you admire and see how he/she uses the panels to pace the story.

I like Will Eisner who drew the Spirit (a master of pacing).

Or Jack Kirby (a master of dynamic story telling),

Good luck.