With my digital comic finally coming out of the pre-production stages, I'm stuck on how to actually present the dern thing... maybe fans of the media can help with their opinions? ^_^ While the comic will be available in both online and offline versions, what would be the most effective way to layout an action-oriented comic? 1) Single, stand alone panels (1 panel = 1 image file) 2) "Simulated" comic book pages, with multi-panel layouts (x panels = 1 image file) I find advantages with both. With single panels, I could give a wide-screen effect to each shot and it would seem like you were flipping through movie stills. Of course, several panels laid out on a single "page" would give a better sense of action and motion... what do YOU prefer??

A single panel in a central frame works well, with "Next" and "Previous" buttons under the panel.

This is something that should have been addressed before beginning. If you present single panels only, then you'd be much more limited in terms of breaking borders, panel interaction and direction of the eye within the page. If you have not done any of these, then your work is already a bit more conducive to single-frame presentation, and you don't really gain anything visually by presenting a page. Too, different users will have different screen resolutions, and you need to have something condusive to even the smallest browser. There's nothing worse than having to scroll down AND to the right -- and sideways scrolling is an awkward browsing experience, and would make your pages seem to laborous to read. Keeping it within 640 pixels wide (a good rule of thumb) will be much easier for a single-frame presentation. The advantage to full-page presentation (not including the inter-page art composition issues mentioned above) is that a reader can read more per click, and not have to turn the page so often. He'd have to click and wait for a page to load 24 times, as opposed to (6 x 24 average) 144 times. For slower connections, the waiting for images to load will be intolerable. If you have a good amount of webspace, you may want to make both versions available so that slower viewers will have this option. If not, the single-frame approach may win out, but not by acclamation. One approach I saw that helped slower browsers was a single-frame comic in which the "Next" and "Back" buttons didn't call for thumbnails, but were in fact the actual frames, but with reduced sizes specified in the IMG tag, so that they appeared as thumbnails. What this meant was that while a viewer was reading frame 3, for example, frame 4 was already loading onto his/her computer. This makes for a much faster experience, and reduces the toil of that many "page turns."

It will sure be nice when connection and server speeds reach the point when these things will no longer be considerations, hm? Incidentally, an interesting approach for a Flash-based comic was at www.arqangel.com -- one of a few webcomics already demonstrating innovative thinking (although some aspects may still be awkward), and possibly a source for inspiration re: presentation.

Attached Link: http://armageddonpress.com

I ran into the same question as I planned out my comic, which isn't done yet. For me their was no easy solution. Bandwidth v/s mouseclick, different resolutions.I also dislike the classic comic pages that I have seen on the net for some reason they don't work well. I have settled on this. 2-480x360 panels per page. For low bandwidth people I will probably make each issue DL able after the next issue is out. In the future I will move into the flash areana. Here are some links to poser comics with different layouts, they might give you some good ideas on how different things look on the web: http://www.weirdass.net/ -does three panels on a strip per page... nice stuff. http://powerheroes.com/3d_comic.htm -Liberty Girl! One large panel, divided up as needed. http://heresy3d.web.com/ -nonstandard but cool. Theere are many other too look at over at http://www.3d-cc.com/cbsc.html Good luck

Attached Link: http://www.starforce7.com/darkangels

I decided to make my Dark Angels comic into 8x10 pages, 1 per web page, with "next" and "back" buttons. It worked out well and was surprisingly readable online - and it's printable. Also, KenS made his comic "Jack" downloadable as a .pdf - whihch eliminates the browser issues altogether. --silver

I have to say I don't find the single panel thing as effective. It is meant to be sequential art and how they interact on the page is as important as the story in some ways. Single panel on a page is illustration. Not that anything is wrong with that (I am an illustrator) but it is much different than sequential art in some aspects.

I use the full page layout for Americana and my other comics. My pages are 960x1280 in res. I like the full page over the panels since you can play around a lot more with composition. A hard action panel can be half a page while slow chatty panels can be small 1/8th size panels. One suggestion would be to take a look at some manga pages and look at their layouts. Some of them can be very effective. The layout is actually an important part of a comic. The old Batman serials in the newspaper were all the same 3 panels making the stories quite boring even though the action was hot. Liberty is an awesome comic but the panel idea doesn't work well for me. Some story elements need large panels while others need small ones. One method I saw was to thumbnail all the panels and show a low res page. When the user clicked on the panel, the high res version came up. This allowed perusing the comic very fast since the thumbnails were small then you could click on a particular panel to get a full screen shot.

Also, another thing I notice is the lack of styles when making panels. Everyone renders like they are doing family photos. Try some silohettes or off colors or extreme closeups etc. Again, varied panels on a page work quite well. Single panels don't handle this.

Well, I replied to this on the Comics forum here, but... 1) I forgot to mention Hat Check Kelly (sorry, don't have a URL, but I'm sure it's linked to something already mentioned here...) - that uses a very innovative style with no frame borders. Sometimes its confusing and can be jarring, but it works. 2) I still say the best way is to combine these ideas. Create a set image size for each page, and use it as the story/scene dictates - either a single "splash page" or a standard "nine panel" page or some hybrid. Either that or research all the other online comics, and copy the style that looks most functional/appealing to YOU. If your reader's don't like it, they'll probably tell you; if they do they probably won't unless you ask!

Oh one other thing you can look at trying if you have flash or shockwave. www.marvel.com checkout the presentation of the Ultimate X-men. The basically have a lo-res comic page then you click on the panels to bring them up to read them. Very nice, except for the dang ads...

Attached Link: http://www.chemicalstudios.com/jack

I think what it mostly boils down to is what you the artist is most comfortable with. Myself, Ive been reading comics since 7 or 8, and collecting them since 1982(you should see the size of my collection) Im alot more comfortable with the 'classic' layout, using several panels per page. But thats obviously not the only way to do it. Ive seen some very ingenious online comics that use flash, preloading, and sinle/mulitple panel comics that have all worked great. My comic Jack, I have both a online version and pdf version. The online version, raders can follow along with what I have, then when I finish the issue, I compile to pdf for those who would rather download the entire issue and not wait for the next page to be finished. Ive gotten alot of great feedback for doing it this way. One of my good friends refuses to read it online, just becuase he doesnt like to keep going back whenever new pages are added and would rather sit down and the entire issue from start to finish. Ken

Attached Link: http://www.powerheroes.com

Here's one site to check out. Alternate single panels with multi-panel "pages"

If I wait 30 seconds for each new page to load (because of a slow server, or giant image files) then I will probably quit reading.