I plan on writing and drawing my comic. As I'm writing the script though, I find myself spending a lot of time worrying about the shape and size of the individual panels.

I fret about making them all boring and similar, or maybe making them so different it's distracting.

Do you guys worry about the paneling at all ?

Do you have any advice on panel layouts?

I'm leaving that for later. I figure it will come together more with the art. I am just planning for how many panels and if like I want one to be larger then the others and to be the focus. Not really thinking too much about the shapes or layout of them too much at this point. That comes more with the art. And with programs like ComicLife you can play with the layouts until you get it the right way and well seeing it will be more helpful for me.

Yes, I worry about panelling. I worry that I've got the wrong number of panels on any given page in my script. Last year, I didn't do any layouts at all. This year, rough thumbnail layouts on scratch paper would be a very good idea.

One virtue of doing thumbnail layouts (somewhat equivalent to storyboards) is that you can play around with your layouts, throw in any number of panels from 1 to whatever, arrange them in any order you want, till you get something that looks like you'll want to use in the final version. That's how I'm doing it.

Oh yes, yes I do. Here is a description from some of the more complicated panelling I've decided to have:

"Four panels, two of which take up the top quarter of the page’s length equally. The third is a quarter width but stretches across three-quarters of the page’s length. The forth takes up the remainder and is therefore much bigger than the other panels."

Mostly, though, it's just stuff like:

"Four panels, each one a quarter of a page."

Not every page is a dissertation on panel layout! Still, I'm thinking about it all the time. I think that's because I'm NOT an artist so won't be drawing it myself and want to make it clear how I envision it.

Right now, mine is 6 evenly spaced panels per page unless otherwise dictated by the script, or rather my vision of the comic.

Donate & get your own shiny halo!

Hey Fal,
I've been scribing comics professionally (clearly my name is a fake one) for years. Some advice. Relax. this is a rough draft. Have in your mind that you can't have a lot of dialog per page. BUT keep it to the back of your mind. This is a rough draft. Get the idea down. Get the story down. Get the action down.
After you have your start, middle and end and have the story finished THEN go through with the knife and edit the dialog. You'll be surprised what you can cut and edit and get the same idea across. Then get your Pacing comb and go over it. Then get another artist friend to look at it and ask hir (him/her) if they would KILL you if you gave it to them to draw. (three years ago I gave a friend of mine a rough script which he didn't glance at before he took to a con not realizing it was a rough. I was so embarrassed because all the artists he was sitting next to thought I was some sort of evil sadist. I still get crap for it to this day.) If they say you're Mad and they start swatting at invisible bugs around their heads.. Go through and cut more. But at this point by having alot of dialouge and things to cut, you're allowing yourself to really flesh out the characters and who knows, maybe if your comic makes it big you can include your original very large comic script as a special feature when they print it as a TBP.
So do NOT let yourself be discouraged. Remember this is 100 pages and the average comic is only 24-30 pages when finished. Keep that "to many panels!!"Demon to the backseat of your mental car.. don't kick him out but don't let him get his hands on your wheel.

Yes, I worry about paneling, but not until I draw a rough (think stick figures) version of the story.

When writing the script, I do it as a screenplay and completely ignore panels. I find it's much easier and better to draw the layout than write it. I sometimes may note down a camera angle or that it's an establishing shot in the script, but nothing beyond that.

Then when I do the rough, I can put it all together and see how it fits on the page and how the panels relate to each other. Some motives work better in tall panels, some in wide and some work better without a border and so on. I find the layout of the whole page to be very important, and it's hard to get a clear idea of that by writing a description of it. I may tweak the dialog to make the whole thing fit better together on the page. I generally try to either condense or extend scenes so that surprise elements happen when you turn the page and not in the middle of a spread. Doing a rough version is very fast, and lets me throw around different ideas as to how to tell the story. It's easier to throw away pages that are not working at this stage, then later on.

I would probably do the same if I weren't drawing the comics myself, as long as I had an artist with a good grasp of storytelling.

So for me the process would be something like: idea, outline, script, rough stick figure, pencil drawing and final rendered version (ink/color/paint whatever). The layout, text placement and angles are all more or less set in the rough version.

That said. I should be working on my script now...only three pages done so far. :)

Thanks. I appreciate all the advice. I'll spend more time writing if I'm not so worried about the ruddy paneling ^_^.
I've got the little prologue and the title page done, that's good enough for me right now as far as thumbnails and rough sketches go.

Thanks bunches, guys.
I need to catch up. Off to write!

ahahaha.
panels are evil.
the best advice i can give you is don't feel bad about copying page layouts from your favorite artists. i do it all the time and no one notices.