Day 3: Comic Creating Advice #1 - Composition: Focus and flow
Note: this post is a little long but completely covers the advice I’d like to give so please bear with me.
If you’d like an example of what I will mean (in the application form) by composition within comics and illustrations - to help you understand, here are some example panels that I created for a collaboration comic that was cancelled. I’d like to analyse them to show how they have a reasonably strong composition - They are perhaps not perfect but they were created by me so it’s convenient to use them.
In American comics, the page reads left to right (as will be in the ‘My Comic Academia’ zine), and so the flow of the reader’s focus is, in general, from top left to bottom right.
Note: When I talk about the reader’s eye/focus, I am referring to where they are looking.
First panel:
Here is a ‘full page’ panel. The focus of the piece is the building and it is centred and enlarged so as to emphasise its large scale (the purpose of the panel is to show the building as foreboding - a key point here is that everything should have some purpose). Smoke from the top of the building is a point of interest and will start the reader in looking at the top of the piece, then the previously mentioned flow of the comic will bring the reader’s eyes down to the other point of interest, the bell-ringing and the group of people align the bottom.
Blue is the general comic page flow and red is the flow created by this specific panel.
The panel shape is also important in creating an effect here. The building bleeds off the page- they are not constrained by a panel border and this makes the building appear even larger. The irregular shape of the inner panel emphasises the contrast between the looming atmosphere of the building and the sharp sound of the bell.
An extra tip: I mentioned before that I centred the building to be the focus of the reader’s attention. I can do this as the building is such a large part of the panel. However, this is not always the case and splitting any panel into nine equal parts will help you identify points of focus that the reader will automatically look at - no comic reader systematically reads a page like a scanner! This is where it is best to put points of interest.
Following the lines or putting objects directly in the crossing point is a good idea.
For example, let me show you a pretty well-composed piece by the mangaka of My Hero Academia himself, Kohei Horikoshi:
I picked something out at random. You can see pretty easily how the most eye-catching parts of the image follow the lines of the grid. Iida’s expression is important and placed right on a crossing point. Also, Izuku and Todoroki are both closely aligned with the two vertical lines.
Features don’t have to be exactly on the line to work and I doubt he used an actual grid in composing the panel, so it wouldn’t be perfectly aligned.
Plus, the flow I described earlier is present! Manga reads right to left and the first focus of the piece (Todoroki’s group) is facing in a right to left direction towards the second focus (Izuku). The importance of this will become much clearer in a moment.
Second panel:
This panel has a different purpose to the full page panel I displayed earlier. This panel fits at the top of a page of multiple panels and has a flow that is just left to right rather than focusing on a top to bottom flow. Additionally, this panel needs to lead the reader onto the next panel. The direction that characters face and the direction of lines are important in this part of the comic. The floor pattern foreshortens towards the door, which is the direction that the narrative will move (ie the characters will move towards the doorbell - this panel comes first in the sequence).
Furthermore, the walking of the character on the right matches the flow of the comic to bring the readers eye across the door and to the second character. This character’s body faces left and so brings the flow back left to the next panel below.
If this panel was at the bottom of a page and I needed to bring focus right and to the top of the next page, I would turn the body in a slightly more right facing position, but keep the head in a similar position (ie looking at the approaching character).
A key tip: The body is a much better indicator of flow than the face. This means it’s alright to have characters facing each other in a conversation as long as body language and position creates movement instead.
In fact, you don’t always have to follow these rules perfectly, if you want to create a one-time effect to surprise/create a jarring effect on the reader.
It may seem complicated but these aspects are not difficult to implement. Very often, it only takes knowing what to consider, a couple attempts at the page and then the drawing will ‘feel right’. Looking at the work of good comic artists will help you get that feeling as well.
Hope that was adequate and I wish you the best of luck!!
- Moddo