Creating a Web Comic on Xtreme

[Thatch]

Let me just be the monkey that throws his wrench into this one....

There are a number of reasons that newspapers have comics in the standard cell format. The biggest being that it allows editors to easily break apart the comic to fit various layouts. As such it as become rather standard practice to create comics this way but the great ones, from Bill Watterson to George Herriman bucked that and created frameworks that added to the comic itself instead of just framing it homogeneous boxes.

You, unlike newspaper comic artists aren't bound by any editors demands. You have no compelling reason to maintain a hard and fast structure to your comic and I would suggest you think about the content of your comic in much broader terms than just making a 3 or 4 panel standard cartoon. Strong action might dictate a sweeping landscape panel, tense emotion might imply a narrow hard vertical layout, you might pass objects from one panel to the other, break the boundary of the panels, layer panels one on top of the other or even do away with panels all together. Point is you should use your layout to help tell your story.

If you are going to have a reoccurring comic and you use a standard template you comics will soon become very similar, very familiar and ultimately very boring for the reader. Think outside the box (or panel in this case).

While I am FAR from an expert on this I do try to play with layouts some. I'm at work and only have a couple of partial works to share as an example of some very simple ways to address sequential art layout. Wish I had some better examples to share.

Good luck,

J