Transcription
You might feel confident knowing how to draw single standalone illustrations, but that's not enough to make a great manga. You see, what makes pro mangakas stand out is how they can masterfully tell a story through sequential art. And one of the biggest elements to that is the paneling.
From our experience, we've seen multiple beginners make similar mistakes. Boring, repetitive panels, overcrowded pages, confusing layouts, weak scene delivery. Are you guilty? If you want to avoid these mistakes and learn how to properly do the paneling for your manga, then make sure to stick around until the very end because in this video, we're discussing manga paneling basics. From understanding different types of panels and layouts to deciding how to properly convey emotions through your paneling to pro mongaka tips to help you level up your paneling game. Have no fear, student. By the end of this, you'll know how to create better, more impactful paneling in your manga that can really grab your reader attention.
If you've always wanted to share your stories, make an impact, and inspire other people through your manga, then we invite you to join our online manga drawing program. We help beginner mangakas go from feeling stuck and frustrated to feeling confident and empowered by giving you an exact road map on how to create your own manga. We'll teach you how to design amazing characters, how to write compelling stories, how to put together a storyboard, how to draw stunning backgrounds, and basically all the skills and knowledge that you need to create your first oneshot manga. You'll get to work with pro-Japanese mangakas who have over 50 years of experience in the industry. They'll give you feedback live during our weekly Zoom sessions. Plus, you'll be in a supportive community learning with fellow aspiring Mongakas who are just as awesome and passionate as you are.
If you're curious what our students say about their experience, you can check out their testimonials through the link in the description. If you think you're ready to transform your manga journey, then make sure to book a free consultation call with us to see if you'd be a good fit to work with us. Are you ready? The link is in the description.
P.S. We're only taking on students who are at least 18 years old and are out of high school. If you're still below 18, then make sure to subscribe to our channel and learn from our free manga tips and tutorials. Keep working on your manga and we'll talk to you in a few years.
Japanese manga is so unique from other comics because pro-Japanese mangakas aren't just masters of storytelling. They're also masters of paneling. Their dynamic compositions, effective use of space, and control over pacing and timing in their panels gives manga its own distinct visual storytelling flavor. Mangakas are constantly experimenting with their paneling techniques and breaking boundaries for visual storytelling.
Did you know that in post-war Japan, manga was highly influenced by Western comics and media? At that time, manga looked a lot like western comic strips. The panels were in a uniform grid layout. The god of manga, Osamo Tzuka, also created his earlier works following this uniform grid layout. But what made Tzuka sensei's work so revolutionary was his use of cinematic techniques. He would change the perspective of his scenes and it would feel like you were watching a movie. Then as Tizuka's career continued into the 50s and 60s, he used more polygonal shapes to heighten the action in his scenes. Does it look familiar? This is the same technique that you now see in a lot of Shaunen manga. Moving into the 80s and '90s, manga evolved even more with less uniform creative panel layouts. But one thing stayed pretty much the same. There were so many panels. The average number of panels on a page back then were 8 to 10. Not going to lie, they looked pretty crowded. But now, moving later into the 2000s in modern manga, mangakas like to use up more space. That means bigger panels and more spreads.
Although manga continues to evolve and mangakas continue to come up with more creative ways to make manga, one thing has always been certain. What makes a good manga is how seamlessly the story flows. The reality is that beginners have a lot of trouble achieving the right flow in their panels. Your manga could end up being too boring and slow or too fast and overwhelming. In manga, how well a story flows largely depends on the page layout. In Japanese, this is called kawari. Manga panels are called comma. And kawari refers to the layout as a whole and its flow. On a page, the story is laid out in comma or panels. It flows from right to left, top to bottom. Panels give your manga structure and direction. You could say they're the building blocks to a good foundation for a manga story.
Now, let's break down the parts of a manga page layout. First, you have your panels. Panels contain your scenes. They literally carry and frame the story and drive it forward. A single row of panels is called a tier. Next, the gutter. Panels are separated by these gaps in the page called the gutter. Vertical gutters are thinner than horizontal gutters. This helps viewers group rows of panels together for easier reading. And then you have other visual elements like speech balloons, manga effects, and sound effects. Make sure to remember these parts.
Now, let's talk about the dos and don'ts when making your page layouts. Do use varied panel sizes and shapes. There are different types of panels in manga. Horizontal or rectangular panels, vertical panels, diagonal panels, and inset panels. They can all be drawn in larger or smaller sizes. Using different panel sizes can help emphasize key moments, control pacing, convey emotion, and build atmosphere. Larger panels can highlight important scenes, while smaller panels can create a sense of urgency or rapid movement. Let's analyze the master of horror manga, Junzi Itito. He uses a variety of panel sizes in his work, and he does it so effectively. Check these out. He uses larger panels and even spreads for the most disturbing scenes. He gives them so much space and it's basically the only thing you can see. It sticks to your brain and it haunts you in your sleep. Junjiito also uses smaller panels to pace his more dialogueheavy scenes. He uses them to drag out a moment or a reveal, really draw the reader's eye to the horror unfolding on the page. Itto Sensei likes to use close-ups to emphasize horrific moments like this. Smaller panels allow him the space to really go into detail. Other than his gruesome art, Itto sensei's masterful paneling techniques are what makes his mangas so successful in terrifying his audience every single time. You just cannot look away.
Don't overcrowd the page or use too many small panels. Too many panels in a single page can make it look cluttered and hard to follow. Our pro mangaka mentors Nawi Zawa and Rena always encourage our students to give their panels more space. Space lets your manga and your readers breathe. Too much panels and info in a page could overwhelm your reader and worst case scenario make them stop reading altogether. So, how do you properly space out your panels? In manga, the number of tears in a page should be three or four. Any more than that and the page could look overcrowded. Mangakas nowadays usually don't draw more than three tiers. Some pros draw four, but they can still make it work and flow well. However, since you're not a pro yet, we recommend sticking to working with three tiers when you're practicing. The average amount of panels in a single page should be six to seven. The more panels you have, the smaller they get and they become harder to read. What we've observed from our students is that beginner mangakas tend to overthink and cram too much stuff into a single page. You have to understand sometimes you don't need all of your scenes to make a point. Here's an example. A guy is walking and sees something shiny on the road. He picks it up and he's amazed because he's never seen anything like it. This whole sequence took nine panels. But actually, you can simplify this to just four. Even though we've brought it down to less than half the number of panels, you still get the point, right? You still understand the flow of the story. You have to learn how to edit out scenes or adjust them as necessary to improve the pacing of your story. If you want to work with a publisher in the future, sometimes you don't get to choose the number of pages for your manga. Someone else decides that for you and you just need to make it work. You need to be strategic with how much space you dedicate to your panels.
When pro mangakas arrange their panels, their purpose isn't just to arrange the sequence of events in their story, but to guide the reader's eye smoothly across the page. Always remember, when you're making manga, you're making it for an audience, for someone to read. Readability is one of the most important factors for what makes a manga successful. I mean, you don't want your readers feeling confused and frustrated trying to figure out which panel comes next, right? When arranging your panels, you have to make sure that your reader's ey line can easily follow the natural manga reading direction. Make sure that characters and dialogue are clearly visible and easy to follow.
Let's do an activity. Look at these two examples of a manga page showing an argument between a mother and a daughter. For both pages, it's the same argument, but what's the difference? We'll give you a moment to compare. Tell us what you noticed in the comments. Ready? The biggest difference between these two pages is the character and speech bubble placements. Now let's see how someone would read these pages without the dialogue. There you see that line that goes through the entire page. That line represents the reader's ey line. It's also the line that shows you how the page flows and connects the panels. Notice how the ey line for each page is different. As you can see, character and speech bubble placement can make such a huge difference. Do you see how the line connects the speech bubbles and the focal characters? That's how you make sure your readers can follow through the story without missing any details like dialogue or character expressions. That line has to connect. One trick is to first lay out these elements during the storyboarding phase so you could see how the ey line flows. It'll take you some practice to get a hang of it, but once you do, your scenes will become way more effective in telling your story.
One of the most common pitfalls we see in beginner mangakas is that they draw a lot of head shot or bust shots in the same front-facing or side view angles and barely anything else. There's usually a lack of context, like where's the scene happening? How are the different characters positioned from each other? Your visuals have to show the story. One way to effectively do this is by adding establishing shots. Establishing shots give you more context like time and location and tone and mood. For example, here's an establishing shot of Mocktown from One Piece. This is where Luffy first met Blackbeard. You can see that the buildings are a bit rundown. The people seem pretty rowdy, and the whole scene just gives off this kind of chaotic vibe. Seeing this, the reader has a clear idea where Luffy and his friends exactly are. We've mentioned before that when you're creating your manga, you have to answer your five W's and one H. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. You want to have this kind of establishing shot at the very beginning of your manga to answer as many of the five W's and one H as possible. For example, here's the first spread of One Punch Man. Seeing this, you already have an idea of the what, when, and where. In a peaceful city right in the middle of the day, there's a sudden loud explosion that destroys the houses and buildings. Intriguing, right? That's it. I must know. Yes, we already get quite a bit of context.
Besides your establishing shots, you also want to make sure you clarify how your characters are positioned from one another. Here's a sample scene. In a warehouse, there's a bad guy pinning down a character and pointing a gun at his face. Another character in sunglasses witnesses the scene. Let's just assume he's the main character. Just as the bad guy threatens to pull the trigger, the MC jumps into action. In this example, there are a few things that are unclear, like where is the main character in relation to the bad guy and his hostage? It seems like the MC is taking action in the last panel, but what exactly is he doing? Here's a redraw of the page. If you adjust the scenes to add more background and clarify where each character is in the warehouse, then your reader has a much clearer picture as to what's actually happening. Like our MC is actually witnessing the hostage scene from higher ground. And in the last panel, he jumps from the second floor to stop the bad guy. Everything makes so much more sense. Now, we're going to be honest here. To create these kinds of scenes, you have to learn how to draw from different angles and perspectives. In our last example, the artworks weren't exactly Yusuke Murata god tier level good, but it was good enough that you could understand what was happening.
Overall, paneling is one of the most challenging elements for a beginner mangaka. If you don't want to get stuck struggling to figure this all out by yourself and you want to finally get your manga out there within the next 6 to 12 months, then we invite you to join our oneshot manga drawing program. We'll give you an exact road map on how to create your own manga. Don't worry if you're not confident with your drawing or writing skills. We'll teach you everything from scratch. You'll get to work with pro-Japanese mangakas who have over 50 years of experience in the industry. They'll give you feedback live during our weekly Zoom sessions. Plus, you'll be in a supportive community learning with fellow aspiring mangakas who are just as awesome and passionate as you are.
If you're ready to transform your manga journey, then make sure to book a free consultation call with us to see if we'd be a good fit to work together. What are you waiting for? The link is in the description.
P.S. We're only taking on students who are at least 18 years old. If you are still below 18, then make sure to subscribe to our channel and learn from our free manga tips and tutorials. In the meantime, you can check out this free training on how to create your first oneshot manga.