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KinnoHitsuji — Panel Layout Tutorial 01 of 10
Published: 2010-03-06 19:16:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 34104; Favourites: 554; Downloads: 547
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I'm taking out the "It's magic" part of Panel layouts. ^_^This also has some basic design principles which will be built upon later.
I should note that some of the things like the A4 paper, and making one read left to right, are personal preferences. Take away the principle more than the personal opinions...
Note: These are not hard and fast rules, but general rules for you to understand and correctly abuse later.
Other tutorials on panel layouts: (Because I didn't make this stuff up)
[link]
[link]
[link]
Kyou Mo Ashita mo (by Emura, a mangaka) <-- How the pros do it in manga form. Has tips and tricks that us regular people don't get. So get taught by a mangaka.
You can find the scans online.I'll be adding more stuff than what's listed in the previous tutorials.
Part 2: [link]
Related content
Comments: 55
If you have questions after reading all 10 of them, let me know. And if your paneling improves, I'd love to see the results with a direct link.
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I'm actually trying to make a comic, which I'm not used to doing. Erm, I've made some very easily avoided mistakes (like inconsistent character design), but your tutorial is helping me to think about panel layout.
mylittlealicorn-blog.tumblr.co… is where it is right now (I think I'll upload them here, too.)
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There are 10... so it's worth looking at all of them. They have bubbles, etc explained which might help enhance effects you want with minimal effort.
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This as well as the links in the discription are really helpful. thank you
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Awesome! Very helpful. I like the tips on how to direct the reader's eye. <33
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it's great! thank you so much for making this >v<
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omg i love emura! too bad i can't find the other chapters of kyou mo ashita mo or w juliet II
is she on hiatus or something?
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Kyou mo Ashita mo got picked up by Viz. W Juliet II went in hiatus, I think. (Don't quote me on that).
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aaahhhh i see
thank you
i really want to read them =3=
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You're welcome. If you read it to the last one you get a lot more.
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Okie doke! 
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Thanks for this! Gahh I use Manga Studio Debut 4 and I can't figure out how to delete certain panel outlines either :/
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Thank you so much for putting this together, I've been trying to find a place to learn this. You rock!
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There are 10 tutorials total. 8-10 are not complete, though the text is pretty much written up. (9 is a bit of a mess.)
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nice thank you for this tutorial. Gives me insight on how important it is in making panels and such..Great Tuts
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great tutorial! The information you give is golden. ; ) I've been looking for tutorials on paneling for a while now and this has been the most rewarding one yet.
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There are about 10 of them. 8, 9, 10, are not complete. Most of 8 and 10 are complete and posted, but not quite.
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faving this whole tutorial <3 it's so helpful, thanks! <3<3<3
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No, thank you. If you have any questions or something is unclear, feel free to ask. ^_^
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These are great! out of all the books I read that has paneling it never explained it in such a simple and easy to understand way
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Exactly why I wrote it. 'Cause I couldn't find such a book. I think that many people are also unconscious of the techniques they use when they've been copying other artists.
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yeah its probably something that they develop unconsciously, but thanks again I've been drawing comics for years, its really only now that I've taken a serious interest in developing my skills in it so this tutorial was really helpful
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No, thank you and thanks for the 
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These Panel layout tutorials are fantastic! Ive read them all and ive got such a better understanding! Theres so many things ive never really taken into abount or thought about but thanks to this tutorial set, ive gotta put more thought into the way i do my layouts for pages from now on! Thank you! ^w^
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You're welcome. I hope they are useful in the future. I still have a few more to go. ^_^
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Lol Awesome then ill look forward to reading those too ^^
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Thank you and thanks for the
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Sometimes comic creators study hard to do better art, forgeting the importance of the story.
Thank you for the tut, and the links you provided are really useful.
It's the basics of composition, isn't it? That's inside our lives in more that just comics.
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Composition is merely how you place elements on the page, but this is talking about using principles of design and the psychological impact that has on the reader. In theory, this is a bit more towards where one tries to lead the user/reader by design elements. One does this in website design too.
Once you go there, you are getting a little deeper than merely composition. (Which is using things like golden ratio and margin), but trying to dictate human behavior through things like use of negative space v. positive space and guess ahead of the reader where they will go next and use signals to tell them what they should feel through the course of reading your design. You can even do this through simple spacing on type--which is technically typography more than composition since type is an element, but how one typesets it is typography.
XD My design classes were useful for something. Tutorials 2 and 3 go a bit more deeply into design and the psychology that it has on the reader and *general* rules on what to use when... so once someone understands it, they can properly break it later. I'm working on tutorial 4 which will go into forced flow and changing the size of the frame with a similar action or sequence.
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Your reponse leaved me astonished O.O thanks for the information (I guess I'll have to study more for making a better comic page). Until some days ago I used to make the pages by heart. Reading the other tutorials right away.
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Excellent information and nice tutorial. Thank you for providing some good resources. ^_^
It usually hard to explain these sorts of things, I think that's why a lot of professionals hesitate to really get into a discussion about how they panel. The amount of thought that goes into panels is considerable and should be addressed by more of the manga art community.
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A lot of artists aren't writer types. I see a lot of mangaka saying "What do I say here anyway?" in their writing corners. ^_^
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I must say that there's a fine research, and I agree with most of it. It's an amazing compilation of techniques.
I have 3 manga albums published. At the begining I didn't care about all this. Bout now I must say that I do care about the layout and try to transmit it to other people.
With all young people I see around the web they don't care about panelling or safe margins for instance, they place the speech balloons in the edge of the page they don't thing that that might eventually be printed on and those balloons are going to be cuted off, or will be hidden in the interior of the book.
I also use a small page layout guide (a bunch of double pages) when I'm creating the thumbnails so that I can see what's going to be in the interior/ exterior of the book where I can lace a "tachikiri", or even where I can use a double splash page.
Actually I was writing a tutorial regarding this for a workshop. I think it is extremely important.
Except one this I do different I draw in a B4 size, I draw a lot of landscapes tend to do a lot of details, in a smaller size it would burn my eyes out
Well done!
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i wondering if you could give me some advice i gotta do a finalproject for school and i wanna do it as a manga but i know practicly nothing, i know i cant do poses so i have to act out the scenes myself than tack pics of the scene than change them into manga ish look in photoshop, my biggest problem is i dont know how to start or what to do, so any suggestions would be great.
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Thank you!
I asked at several manga panels and boards "How do you panel?" and when they said, "Give it to a friend, they'll know." I was like... Huh? If you don't know, then how will they know?
I also asked the people over at "How to Draw Manga" to specifically put out a book all about paneling, and they promised, but never delivered. Most of the books cover what goes *in* the panel, but not how to set up the panels to create moods with a specific trick to do so.
I saw a book in a store with paneling tips, but it was in Japanese and I couldn't afford it.
So that pretty left me with one option, read a ton of manga, apply my design studies to said manga reading, take lots of notes and share it with people. Because I don't think paneling is "magic" or all "feel" or has no set of rules or techniques one can apply to make it work. Because no art out there whether it be writing or drawing or acting doesn't have a set structure and foundation to work by...
I'd do stuff like bleed lines, etc, but there is a better tutorial for the bleed info online plus bleeds tend to vary depending on the publisher.
As you said, many mangaka do use much larger paper, like B4 because the rule of thumb is that bigger the paper is the more detailed it will look when it's forced to shrink.
I also noticed that people often place bubbles on a straight diagonal pretty much without mixing up the placement and realizing that bubbles *are* part of the panel layout and *also* create mood just by placement. There are a ton of neat effects one can get by bubble placement. ^_^
I'm working on part 2 and there probably a few parter for bubbles alone.
So I hope this helps the people who read it.
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All right do it, I'll be glad to read it.
I'm always a bit busy hundreds of pages to work on but if you need help let me know
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Do you happen to know if there is a good rule of thumb besides "it looks cluttered" for dropped frame edges of a panel? It's more of a shoujo thing though.
[link] <-- for example, second frame. (though technically this is a zoom stacking. up close-far-up close combo) Emura tends to follow by the book... which makes it easier to read her motivations in her frame designs.
She tends to do dropped frames for the classic zoom stacking combo, to relate a character to a set of actions or reactions, or for scene changes. All valid reasons, but her frame set ups tend to not be as dramatic as say, Skip Beat. (Nakahara-sensei has some really dynamic frame layouts when she's not worn out or tired. She seems to play with them quite a bit.)
[link] <-- Scene changes are pretty much Yazawa Ai's style and reason for dropping the panel line.
[link] <-- dropped frame line here I'm not sure of. Obana-sensei tends to follow more of a classic shoujo panel layout. (The previous two don't do it so much... Emura is very rule-bound and Yazawa-sensei tends to break all the rules and use the line as her margin of event and use the internal structure of her panel work to force it to flow--which does fit with the kind of manga she tends to draw.)
And this is where the dropped panel line... I just don't quite understand the fundamental "Why". But the way that Obana-sensei and Takeuchi-sensei (with Osa-P editing) do it, is a lot more common... I just don't quite get the rhyme or reason... I just know that it "looks" better and seems to "flow" more with the dropped panel lines, I just don't get the "which panel lines to drop" and "Why does it work?" part of that type of frame layout.
i.e. Why Shounen is easier to draw panel-wise.
Got a clue on the third page on the panel line dropping?
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Oh boy! I don't actually know what you are asking me here thou
Shojo is not my area indeed. I don't really read it. That third page is something I woldn't do for sure. It's really confused. I like mangas where we can follow the text with a simple flow. That 3rd page has too much information and text at the same time (a shojo common ting) in that page our eyes go up and down, up and down. Sometimes in many manga pages like that one we have to guess what balloon comes next. (And if you go to the next page in that manga it gets worst).
So I haven't got a clue on that page layout, the two first ones are really simple and easy to follow both text and drawings.
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Ah... outside your field of expertise.
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I draw mostly sci fi things. Cyberpunk or simple shonen. So has I told you before my paneling is a bit diferent
I try to give a more dynamic storytelling playing with large panels to give a larger impact. Small panels for things not so important and close-ups to intensify the drama.
But it's nice to discuss this. Most of my pages are not here in my dA account (I want people to buy the book 
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Most starter mangaka seem to get the size issues of panel layout, but tend to forget things like margin space, bubble layouts, and how to properly do sequential panels, probably because most people weren't taught to look for such things.
Shounen layouts are definitely easier to do overall. Even some shoujo writers tend towards a little more shounen than shoujo when they start out, or even partially revert (ala Takeuchi-sensei after she married Togashi-sensei.) There also tends to be more margins and attention to negative space in Shounen--as well as a lot less screentone. The majority of the shounen I see tends to substitute black ink for the shading portion... (Tegami Bachi uses lots of this in lieu of screentone).
I think this means that shounen layouts have to place a lot more stress on things like bubble layout in the internal structure of the panels more than the actual panel layouts themselves. It's just a theory since I haven't read enough shounen to be 100% sure.
Anyway, I'll get to the stacking actions part in part 3, and then you'll probably be clearer on what I was talking about before...
BTW, You'll probably look at the layouts of Nakahara-sensei (Skip Beat) cross-eyed if what you said is true... Might be worth the research trip.
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My publisher owes me money, so I will do whatever i want with the project, and maybe the next volume wont be published by him.
I have a few old and full of errors pages in this folder here [link]
Well, nice you to speak about Tegami Bachi that's one of those mangas that come suddenly and become a blast! I thing that manga is in between Shojo and Shonen. But i'm loving it
I have a comic book store I don't read a lot not because i don't want to, but because I don't have time
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