Anybody converts pages to scroll format? And how?

[DualDragons]

I want to eventually convert the Square One pages to scroll format (atleast for tapas & webtoon, I'll just make separate files for them). But I have zero experience in scroll format and I don't want to draw them over again if I don't have to do so.

[faisalhussein394]

If you want to know the width and height of the scroll page its here: Width: 938 - Height: 4000

Here is the difference between my original page and the scroll page:

Width: 1838 - Height: 2907

Width: 938 - Height: 4000

Every time I updated these scroll size pages, they split it into two and compressed its quality.

[DualDragons]

Ooooh yeah that's true, tapas does do up to 4000 px of height for one file. So just make the panel layout more vertical?

[faisalhussein394]

Yes, though make sure the width limits at 938.

They made those scroll page size for people to read on their phone through app.

[darthmongoose]

My solution is really pretty basic. First, I make a page using the standard A5 page template in Clip Studio...

Then I "export as single layer" as a jpg at 940 px wide, and open it up in Photoshop where I: Duplicate the main layer, make another layer under it filled with white. Then I use the rectangular marquee or polygon lasso to select all the panels I want to move and literally just hold shift and press the down arrow a few times to nudge them all down the page. On pages with a lot of panels, I may use the crop tool to extend the canvas down a bit too so there's space. Then I add in speech bubbles a bit bigger than the print version and...

I draw pages in batches of two and just make sure that page 1's last panel doesn't bleed off the bottom, and page 2's doesn't bleed off the top to make it easy to stack two pages into one update. For Webtoon, I have to add panel borders and extra border space into some top and bottom panels to allow for stacks of 4 panels, which is a bit of a pain, but it works.

[tactical_anxiety]

Okay, I had to chop up my traditional pages into scroll format for a recent portfolio review with Webtoon, and I gotta say, it was the most miserable experience of my life. While it worked out, and the chopping was not discernible, I still had zero fun.

I imported my psd files into Clip Studio Paint first. I have every panel in its own folder of lineart, flats, colors anyway, so all I did was copy and paste those panel folders into another csp file with the proper Webtoon dimensions. Then once everything was all spaced out and neat, lettering the “pages”. And csp’s lettering interface SUCKS.

Needless to say, my chopped pages were still passable, but I’ll probably never cross post.

[Llyrel]

I also convert my comic to vertical scroll format! Took a while to figure it out, especially because I tend to have quite a bunch of horizontal panels and I don't really like the idea of rotating panels, soooo... here's what I do:

1 - Like others above, I make my comic in page format first. Mine is on an A4 sized canvas at 300 dpi, which then gets resized at 940 x 1330 pixels for ComicFury and my own website:

The lettering for this version is done in Clip Studio Paint, save for sound effects, which are usually done in either Photoshop or Affinity. At the same time, I make sure to also save a full size version of the page WITHOUT balloons:

Since I'm going to re-letter the whole thing for vertical scroll format, having a lightweight file with no balloons makes it easy for me to copy and paste the panels

2 - Vertical scroll conversion! For this, I use an 800 x 5000 px canvas in Affinity Designer. I use 800 pixels as my width because that's the maximum Webtoon will allow, and since I don't want to clutter my pc with too many versions/sizes of the same page, I just upload my comic at the same width on both Tapas and Webtoon. As mentioned above, this version gets its own lettering. Pasting balloons with the original lettering would cause inconsistencies in font size when resizing the panels, so I prefer to redo the whole thing from scratch instead. This also allows me to ignore some of the constraints that the print version requires, like balloons going out of the panels:

Basically: I select the panel without balloons, paste it into the vertical format page, then redo the lettering. If a panel is too wide, I tend to split into into multiple panels. For example, this panel here:

Looks like this in vertical form, with the long horizontal panel split in two:

I don't do a whole lot of gradients to connect panels unless it's pretty easy to include (e.g. the original panel already includes a view of the sky or some magical effects):

And sometimes, I use lettering/effects to connect one panel to another:

It IS a pain in the butt, but... doable, I guess?

[rajillustration]

I highly recommend checking out this pdf that Webtoon put out a while ago that talks about formatting for vertical when you're used to scroll (you have to scroll to page 13 to see where it starts) https://webtoons-static.pstatic.net/creator101/en/pdf/Creators-Resource-Handbook.pdf?dt=2021040801 because it talks about things like "what size should my font be" and expectations that your readers will have, like readers don't like to see more than 2 panels at a time. You don't really think about that when you do page format and you have 12 panels on a screen at once, but eh scroll format doesn't do that. Also things like "don't do more than 3 bubbles a panel" or "don't put panels closer than 200 px near eachother"

Like rules are easily broken all the time and it's fine, but it does tell you audience expectations, so I would check it out. Also if you are converting page to scroll, page uses a lot of horizontal panels, while scroll really can't. So it's helpful to break them up into pieces, maybe having it cropped and zoomed in, and then shown from farther away, and then zoomed out in full so they can see the whole horizontal panel--so you get to use the same panel 3 times really.

I follow this comic called "Midnight Furies" who does such a good job of formatting in scroll, keeping it really action packed and fun, but it comes from page format beginning. Both look amazing when she does it. So I'd give that comic a peek to see how she crops her panels and still keeps it feeling like it was always intended to be scroll.

[system]

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