Seven: Layout

Panel size and arrangement are also important. If you’re just starting off, I suggest picking a size and arrangement and sticking with it. Of course, if you’re more experienced, you can mix it up as much as you like (though you should still keep some parts of the comic constant, to make it easier on the readers). When you’re working out a panel arrangement, you need to consider two things: how much space you need in a panel to get across an appropriate amount of action or dialogue, and your readers’ screen resolution. The first one depends on your comic. Generally something between 200 and 225 pixels tall and 200 and 205 pixels high works well. (Many popular comics use 200x200 px panels.) You have no control over the second consideration. Most people use either 800x600 or 1024x768. Generally, you’ll want to limit yourself to something that 800x600 users can see easily. Many comics use an arrangement of four 200x200 panels in a horizontal row, which makes the total comic size 800x200 px. This will just barely fit on an 800x600 screen. If the panels are even one pixel wider, the reader will be forced to scroll the screen horizontally in order to see the whole comic. You want to avoid horizontal scrolling if at all possible; the reader will have to make extra mouse movements in order to scroll, and it feels unnatural (as opposed to scrolling vertically, which usually happens often when browsing). This may sound odd. However, people are lazy, and if your comic takes more work than usual to read, they won’t read it.

Most sprite comics have either four or eight panels. (You aren’t limited to this, though; you can use as many or as few panels as you like.) You can have space between the panels (no more than five pixels, though), or not. I don’t recommend an overlapping layout, however; that sort of comic is difficult to make, and hard to make logically readable. If you want to use larger panels, use a more vertical layout. Use multiple rows of panels, and put fewer panels on each row (Two panels per row works well). Check out the last page for some free templates you can use to make your comics.

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