Does anyone ever worry that their panel layouts are too repetitive or basic?

[CursedBeasts]

Yeah I also want to keep my comic as easy to read \ follow so I don't have tiny panels anymore because its hard to fit text of a readable size on those lol

@CttMaurice I didn't really do any changes to my layout when moving to webtoon \ tapas, altho i edited and redid the dialogue and text of the entire prologue to Bestia's Wrath as in its old state it would be unreadable at the image size Webtoon and Tapas require.

@myumyudapao Well, I think many comic artists reuse artwork. Like, I reused backgrounds a lot and lineart if I needed to draw a pose that had a small change compared to the previous one. Honestly backgrounds are probably my biggest weakness.

I agree that story definitely should come first, but I will try to do something fun with the panels once in a while cause sometimes I think it can be an effective help for storytelling.

[myumyudapao]

ohh ohh yeah, backgrounds are my weakness too!, I do that too, like minimal changes and reuse it,

[Legendofgenii]

Yes! But I suppose it's not so bad. I don't think every single panel needs to be an absolute masterpiece right... right!?

I am learning to cheat a bit here and there, although saying that I'm pushing myself out of the comfort zone these next few episodes - I have up the nose shots and everything. Haha!

[SilentHamster102]

Yes, sometimes I feel like my panels are almost the same. Especially in the long action scenes, if the episode is short then I'm not making enough panels to use all angles and so on, but if it's long enough then yeah, it's noticeable.

[liamnaughton7]

I always think there you should have a nice stable format for what I like to call "normal" pages. Dialogue and shit. So that when you eventually break that formula with a "special" page the effect is all the more striking.
I think samey pages are no harm and if you wanna break it up you'll know at the time when and how.

[elyss]

I did until learned about how repetition can help set the pace for readers and help you the author build up to big moments. See here for an example from reddit (if it lets me) https://www.reddit.com/r/comics101/comments/j88ky3/grid_as_a_timing_system_by_frank_santoro/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

[seiraph]

All the time, I usually keep comics and art books by artists i admire on my desk for panel layout and general composition reference.

[Caro]

Nope! I love the basic grid layout and most of the comics i read are pretty basic in their paneling. I think its more legible and i’ve never seen anybody complain about it!

[Caro]

Frank Santoro is so good at explaining ~the grid~ its nice to see folks spreading his stuff around!!

[jcmraz]

mmm that's hard to say. I don't really take that into consideration though honestly. I used to for sure! but these days I use a 6 panel format as my template and then change and remove and modify from there. Having a standard format allows you to focus more on the flow and movement between panels. Having every page look different isn't as important as some people want to think. I enjoy comics that are just a straight 9 panel grid and they can and have been used to incredible effect. These are entire graphic novels with no variation on the panels themselves but utilize the space in them creatively. Panelling is hard enough as is. No need to make it even more difficult.

[Llyrel]

Yeah, well, although I try to change the composition of my panels so that it isn't exactly the same from one page to another, I know that it ain't exactly the most creative one you'll ever see :'D however, I try not to worry about it: so far my main focus is trying to keep up a consistent schedule and art style and to avoid effin' up anatomies too much

I will try to have a few more "creative" compositions in the future, but overall, consistency and readability are my main goals

[NickRowler]

My panels are sort of bland, six square panels with longs panels placed in for wider shots. I set them up that way because it's much easier to write for.
I might create a comic in the future where I play more around with panels. However for now, I just want to make my series look consistent.

[rajillustration]

Yes, I do worry about this a lot. So, what I do is I try and just...keep a note if I've been doing something a little too often and try my best to do the opposite. Especially if I recognize that I can just copy paste one figure into another panel and make just a couple of adjustments--like that's my sign. I gotta get more creative than that.

[CursedBeasts]

@rajillustration Honestly, same.

@Llyrel If it works, why fix it. I don't think I've done anything unusual with my panels other than having a drone thing sort of fly off the page and have a sort of a lightning bolt composition in one of the pages at one point. that one was a pain to set up but I think it looks neat.

@NickRowler I don't really plan my comic with a specific layout in mind, but I try to make mine big enough to fit in dialogue in a fairly large font that will still be readable after squishing it into the Tapas size. And there was a point where I had really crowded pages, and they were a pain to draw.

@Caro I mention it in the original post, but my go to thing when I start doubting myself is to remind myself that Jack Kirby used a very basic grid (at least in New Gods!) and that didn't stop him from telling an awesome story

@Legendofgenii Yea! I mean the panel has to tell a story first, but i still worry sometimes. I try to keep page layouts simple but a bit different from each other.

@SilentHamster102 yeah same. No one's complained about it though so I think I'll keep doing what I was doing.

[ItzaMeLuigi]

Absolutely. Storyboarding takes me forever because I'm constantly changing my paneling in order to make look good and flow well. Sometimes I'll spend an hour just thinking of how I'm going to lay something out and then scrap it because I think of something better.

What's nice is when I get a page where I know exactly what I want to do because it speeds up the process so much.

[Legendofgenii]

I think my problem is I don't think in panels. I'll illustrate the scenes (mainly the characters interacting first, then backgrounds) and then I'm like... crap - now I have to contain all of these somehow!? Not the smartest way to work, but I am no professional.

I follow some comic artists here who just go for it with their panels and I am in love with how they layout everything (check out @Chita work), but I tend to stick to boring (?) rectangles usually.

I'm thinking about experimenting with my next few episodes, as there's some action involved... but I'll probably chicken out at the last second.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I rely on the preset panels from Clip Studio Paint to do all of my panelling.
But the nice thing about them is that with the Object tool I can change the shape and size of them.

A couple ways to spice up variety in your panelling is the find ways to break them up.
You can always have part of a character popping out of the panel, or even use negative space and absence of panels to guide the eye.

As an example, my most recent page.

I start my pages off like a traditional comic, and then make a separate version that I space out like a mobile formatted page. I like doing it in a fusion of both formats.

[RosesnWater]

I feel this problem both ways?? Although I don’t do many traditional boxed in panels, I struggle with making the layout more dynamic and then wonder if I’ve gone too far, making too dynamic so the reader doesn’t know where to slow or what panels to focus on. I think a good comparison for panels would be the use of the word ‘said’ And other descriptor verbs. It’s actually okay to use said a lot, that way the reader doesn’t have to really focus on it and can move on but still understand what the writer is trying to communicate. It also makes it all the more important when a character ‘screamed’ or ‘gasped’. You can’t over use these words and like paneling, you can’t over use being too dynamic. For intense Visual actions or where there is little dialogue it’s good to have expressive and dynamic paneling but for dialogue heavy pages it’s good to have simple panelling that doesn’t take too much time to process because the reader will be mostly reading the bubbles.

I hope that helps or makes sense!

[pilot-obvious]

I'm so worried about that! Occasionally, I'll break it up and have a more abstract experimental layout... but often times it's just a bunch of square and rectangles! haha The vertical format is still pretty new to me. I know the creative layout possibilities are almost endless on vertical comics but I'm used to thinking in a traditional comic/graphic novel format.

[dewarcomics]

Sometimes I worry about it. But I'd rather my comic be easy to read with plain layout than interesting layouts but no one can read it!