COMIC ARTIST GUIDELINES

1] When more than one person speaks in a panel, always arrange the person who speaks first on the left of anyone who speaks after, unless it's impossible to do so. The dialogue will flow much smoother and more intuitively. The letterer will not have crossed ballons. Think of word ballons during layout stage and where they might fall.

2] Always show every character who speaks. Unless the script specifies an "off-panel" balloon, every speaker needs to be in each panel, in context. With their head, of course - a foot, hand or ass cropped on to the edge of a panel is not enough for a speech balloon to attach to.

3] Always keep the flow of action moving from left to right, the direction of the readers' eyes move, left to right then top to bottom. Avoid averhang panels that force the reader to go right to left. Avoid tall panels on the right that span several panels on the left, the readers will intuitively move into the right panel first and skip the lower left panel, then have to come back to it right-to-left, all very awkward.

4] Avoid too many close-up shots, they make the visual narrative disjointed. Avoid too many heads-shots even during long relatively uneventful conversations. A good comic page should have different angles of characters in different pull-ins and pull-outs.

5] Include at least one good deep background on every page AND on every new setting to maintain visual context.

These few basic rule should keep your comic flowing nicely.

So i think, now would be a good time to start looking into the finer details of why goos artists render their work the way they do. I'm sure they have their reasons and in fact, most follow the above criteria.

Enjoy drawing comics all....

... sori la aku copy paste lagi, tapi aku rasa mende ni amat informatif utk aku dan juga pejuang seni komik diluar sana...