Making Comics With Meesh | Panel Planning Part 1 (Patreon)

When designing your comic page, one of the challenges is setting the pacing. Some scenes you may want to feel like things are moving quickly, and other times you may want to slow everything down. Generally, smaller panels will be digested quickly, and larger panels will take more time for the reader to process. 

TRANSITIONS AND PACING

In addition to panel size, there are types of panel transitions that will play a large role in how quickly or slowly the reader perceives the action to be. Action to action and scene to scene are some of the more commonly used transitions.

Above is a series of action to action panel transitions. Quick jumps to the most important elements of the scene, in quick succession. This type of panel transition can be used for anything from scenes of dialogue between characters or a fist fight.

If you want to really highlight a particular action with more subtlety, a moment to moment series of panels can allow you to explore it:

In this example taken from Saga V.1, Prince Robot IV is trying to make love to his bride after coming back from a battle. He's got some mental scars that are preventing him from performing, and this series of panels explains it in an intimate way.

On the other hand, scene to scene transitions show more time passing, or show a change of locale to other characters or points of interest, such as in the example below.

Within these two panels, I've decided that you didn't need to see the character having breakfast, putting on his clothes, or walking to the bus stop. All you need to know is that he has recently woken up, and his mental state is pretty much unchanged between these two points in time. 

Within just one comic page, you could be switching between moment to moment, action to action, and scene to scene. However, you should take care that you're picking the right transitions for the pace and the mood that you're trying to convey.

ESTABLISHING SHOTS

Large panels that take up much of the space on a page have several uses, like establishing shots and exposition. 

An establishing shot is a shot that introduces the scene where your characters or action will be taking place. Movies, television and comics all use this basic technique to visually inform the reader of what's going on. It doesn't have to be a wide shot of the outside of where they are like the example above-- it could be a large panel showing all your characters in the same room together, before they begin a conversation in earnest. 

EXPOSITION

Large panels are also often used for when a character has a lot to say, and the action is more or less unchanged throughout their speech. 

I find that this can be hard to make visually interesting, so it's wise to break these sorts of panels up with smaller panels that show off character reactions or characters interacting with the scene, with props, or anything else to show that they're not just standing there, doing nothing while absorbing all this dialogue.

The following examples are from Akira V.4  (Forgive these camera photos, scanning these wasn't working too well with the artwork so close to the binding)

These first two panels of the page are heavy on exposition. The second panel is it's own sort of establishing shot: We are shown that Tetsuo has sat down in order to listen to Lady Miyako's tale of the Esper experiments decades prior.

Once established, the camera changes as the speech goes on, to show different angles and reactions in order to keep things visually interesting. Scenes of exposition are a great time to play around like this.

That's all for this session of Making Comics With Meesh. There's a little bit more to touch on with panel planning, so look forward to that next time!