1. Intro

Pages are more than just a blank pieces of paper!

They consist of main drawing area, gutters, panels and can be assembled into a double spread!

Page

Page consists of:

Main Drawing Area

This is where your most important elements are, such as:

• Text
• Character faces
• Points of Interest
• and anything important that you don't want readers to miss!

Bleed

Space which printing shops use for easier cutting, anything inside this area is in serious danger of being cut. Also, if your art extends until the end of the page (which often looks nice), make sure to fill this area up with art too, so if, by chance, it isn't cut, you don't get left with unfilled piece of white paper.

Gutters (Top, Bottom and Side)

You should be careful what you put in these gutters, because, when printed, some stuff

Gutters (Middle)

Middle gutters are another thing which you should plan around during your storyboard

Margin

We talked about Gutters which are spaces around drawing area, well margins are white spaces that go in between panels. They divide one panel from the next.

Spread

Spread consists of two pages. This should be your default way of planing out where panels, text and characters go.

‼️Important! Never plan out a page on it's own! When storyborarding your manga, always look at the two pages as a whole, even when not drawing a double spread!

This way you can plan out where the readers eye should move to next (eye flow), and it will lead to better reading experience.

Panels

This is where your art should go! Most common shape for panel is rectangular, but if your whole comic consists of only rectangles manga can feel stiff and old fashioned!

In the following chapters we will discus more about panels, how they impact feel of the manga and the moment in the story itself, how they lead the readers eye, and more about the composition of the panel itself!

Text

Text in manga should NOT be an afterthought!

It should be considered as the part of the art itself! Try to integrate Speech Bubbles and SFX (sound effects) at the start of storyboarding, so they don't look out of place!

They should follow the rules of composition to the same extent as the other elements!

Speech Bubbles

There are all kinds of different shapes and types of speech bubbles which you can use. And depending on the person speaking there are some unwritten and tested rules which work to this day!

For instance:

• when the Narrator is speaking it is often in a rectangular box
• when you wanna show someones thoughts you could use a cloudy Speech Bubble
• when character is shouting we often use Speech Bubble with jagged edges to show high emotion and volume!

SFX

And speaking of Sound Effects (SFX), I think that Japanese manga artists (mangaka) do a much better job of integrating it with art than their western counterparts. And i wish for you to find on the internet some untranslated Japanese manga and look for yourself how they integrate their SFX into the art.