Page layout ? (need help with pros and cons of different formats + converting to vertical)

[SiriusNights]

Hi guys.
So, I'm considering releasing my comic on Tapastic.

I'm in the process of thumbnailing/storyboarding the ting, and I stopped to think about the vertical format that Tapastic has adopted.
Now, my real dilemma is, that I was planning on make the pages sort of landskape-y (as in wide, rather than long.), because my least favortie thing about reading comics on my computer is scrolling down to see the bottom half of the page. I know the majortiy of people use traditional pages, and it works. As a reader, I just know I prefer the wide pages for computer reading.

Now, with Tapastic this would create a problem. I don't mind rearranging my panels for this site in order to cater to the vertical design, but the problem is that some of my panels will be quite wide and will have to be either scaled down or cut off in order to manage this. Because of that I'm wondering if I should do traditional pages, since those would cause slightly less problems to verticalize.

One thing that does bother me, is that I'm going for a very specific sort of aesthetic in this comic, which will mean loads of landscape shots. Which is another reason I'm considering widescreen. On the other hand, I may have to accept that this comic might just not be fit for Tapastic (or, I just have to be really creative with my landscape shots).

I'm going back and forth on this, and I need to make a decision before I sketch out too many of my pages and have to redo the entire layout. I'm just looking for some opinions, since my pros and cons list hasn't gotten me very far, also if someone has experience with editing their pages for the vertical design, I'd love to hear what kind of challenges you're faced with.

[AnnaLandin]

If you absolutely, positively MUST HAVE super-wide landscape shots, then Tapastic is probably not the best fit for your comic.

However, if you go for the traditional page-style layout - that is, single pages, not double-page spreads - then Tapastic works fine for that. It might be a bit hard to read on mobile screens, but it works well enough, and there are a bunch of people who read on desktops. My main comic laid out as traditional pages, as Tapastic is a mirror for my main site, and I'm drawing it with the intent of gathering at least parts of it together for print, and it's doing pretty well even though Tapastic is mainly geared towards vertical formats.

I use a lot of landscape shots and full-width panels for atmosphere, and since I stick to the classic page-layout, they work well enough. Also, it's certainly possible to do big, sweeping landscape shots in vertical format - you just need to adapt your thinking from left-right panoramas to top-bottom instead, and do the sweeps vertically. It can work really well to have the "camera" of the reader's eye pan from the sky down to the ground by scrolling vertically down your panel - or do a panel that takes up the whole screen at full size.

I've only done a little of this vertical sweep - the first page of the first chapter works a little with this, with the vertical lines of the trees in the first panel leading the eye vertically down the page, etc., and on the first page of chapter three, which is one big panel taking up most of the page, and then a smaller, wider panel at the bottom as a sort of "stop" for the reader's eye to rest on. I haven't done this a lot - like I said, I'm working with print in mind - but you can certainly push it farther, if you want to keep the wide, open landscape feel without having to sacrifice size and readability. Just think vertical instead of horizontal.

[shazzbaa]

I'll also mention that if you think you ever might consider printing your comic, a friend of mine once told me that a thing she really regretted was choosing a landscape format for her pages, since finding a printer who was willing to print in that format was ten times harder than a normal portrait orientation would be.

If it's just that you want to avoid the need to scroll down, Atomic Robo's pages were originally designed for print, but get posted as half-pages -- which would allow you to work with a portrait orientation (stack two half-pages on top of each other and you have a normal page) while still avoiding the scroll-problem online.

Now at Tapastic, the way the website is designed, scrolling down is much easier than clicking "next," so you'd be pushing for a behaviour that the website makes unnatural.
That said,
Tapastic lets you make pages VERY wide -- much wider than I would ever post a vertical page on my own site -- and I could see it working really well to have pages that are meant to be read in Atomic-Robo-sized chunks, just stacked on top of each other. We've talked in other threads about how those of us with print-formatted comics can't make the pages too wide or else you can't see enough of the page at once -- but if your comic isn't designed as a vertical page, that might actually work quite well with the format, since you don't need to see as much of it vertically.

I think it might be a good idea to make a couple of test pages first, and test how your potential format will look. Then, if you or a friend have a cell phone you can look at the pages on, you can see for yourself how they would look at that size, and if you can still read them okay. Trying to make a decision hypothetically is a lot harder than looking at a page and pondering whether it works or not.

[PotooGryphon]

I recommend taking a look at all of @fanyart's series. All of them achieve a sense of vast nature and landscape through vertical scrolling.

I currently do both formats with my series Oops. I have a series for horizontal format and one for vertical. Some readers prefer reading in one format over the other and I've had pretty good feedback about providing both. Maybe that can also be an option for you.

However, there are also other comic platform sites that you might like better, like Comic Chameleon. Their comic reader app is horizontal infinite scroll.

[johndanims]

I have a long horizontal page planned and I'm considering just rotating it 90 degrees for Tapastic. It should work fine for mobile users as when you rotate the app it doesn't adjust itself like some apps do but PC users would need to tilt their heads. Probably not the best idea for full narrative comics though, where you want to keep things flowing for the reader. One offs like I'm doing would probably be fine though.

[SiriusNights]

Thanks. You've all been a big help (:

@AnnaLandin: You're absolutely right. I think I've just had my mind set on a format for so long, that it's hard for me to change my mind now. But I totally understand that there are a lot of advantages to doing the traditional page format, and at least for now I have changed my mind. I'm even kind of excited about thinking vertically rather than horizontally.

@shazzbaa: I'm not exactly planning on going into print with any of my comics. Even so, I guess it's sensible to at least keep that option open if it becomes something I want to explore in the future. I do quite like the idea of doing half-pages, though. I feel like that might work for me, so thanks for suggesting that.

@CyndiFoster: I have read some of those comics on the daily comic snacks, and I don't even know why it hasn't occured to me to do vertical landscapes before... And it's a very good idea to provide both options, I'll have to figure out if that's an option for me.

@johndanims: It's definitely a good idea, but I think I might end up doing it too many times in my comic for it to really work.

Basically, I have decided to try thinking vertical. Not only for the sake of tapastic, but also because it does seem like the better option. I'll probably do some test pages and see what works, but I really appreciate all your inputs. I only have comic experience as a reader so far, so it's really great to get some perspective from a creator point of view.