A wee corner of brain rotage

(disclaimer that I'm not a Comics Expert™ or anything, I'm just using my own art because it's easier and I know my own thought process. also some of this may be stuff you've already seen or know, I'm just covering a handful of things I think are important!)

- the zigzag

our brains usually like to move the same way across a page -- we look horizontally first (for western readers, this is left to right), and then vertically down and back to the beginning horizontally, so our eyes kinda end up going in a zig-zag motion. so if you're having problems with showing the order of things in particular, it helps a lot to try and plan around that zig-zag! it's probably most obvious with dialogue:

that thing that happens first is placed further to the left and higher up than the one that happens second, which is further to the left and higher up than the one that happens third. because this follows the way our eyes go across the page, we read this as the order these things are happening in.

this time the second line is vertically higher than the first, but because the first line is still further to the left, that's still the one we look at first. then our eyes move rightwards towards to the second line; once we finish that left-to-right movement, we go down. so even though the third line is also to the left, because we go left to right and then vertically, we still look at the second line first.

it sound very confusing in words, sorry!! but it can help to literally just. draw a line over your sketch on a new layer that connects the focal point of each panel, and see if you're getting a rough zig-zag direction!

- establishment and consistency

honestly, it is surprising how much you can trust the reader to follow on their own. our brains are good at filling things in! but you still gotta give them enough info to get started. the "rule of thumb" with comics is to usually start out with an establishing shot:

typically this establishes the setting and where characters are placed in the scene. it doesn't have to be a wide shot, but it usually does show a bigger view of the scene, since its purpose is to convey that starting information. then once you've given the reader that info, you can kinda go nuts with framing and closeups and whatever else:

and because the reader's already been told where the characters are, our brains can naturally follow the scene! BUT you need to be careful about consistency; this is why things like the 180˚ rule are important.

if you haven't heard of it before, the 180˚ rule is that, generally, you don't move the "camera" of a scene more than 180 degrees around -- in practice for comics, this means that generally keeping the characters on the same side of the "screen". since we're using the info we got from the establishing shot to keep track of the scene, having a character suddenly switch sides messes with that and can feel jarring:

it's not as bad with a super simple scene, but more action-y scenes in particular can get really confusing really quickly. overall it just kinda interrupts the reading flow, because we have to stop and take a second to re-evaluate our spatial understanding of the scene. whereas keeping the characters on the same side keeps the flow going without us having to think about it at all:

(I used to unintentionally break this rule ALL the time and once I learned it, my comics became 100000% more readable because I wasn't constantly just flipping scenes around willy-nilly. can confirm, there's a reason it exists 👍)

if you need the characters to move around (or want to go from showing them in the front to showing them from behind, or something like that which would necessitate having them on different sides of the screen), you just need another establishing shot to update the info that the reader has:

once again, it doesn't have to be a big wide shot or anything, it just has to be enough to make it clear that, say, "this character is over here now":

then just make sure you're using the new placement of the characters when you continue!

basically just. once you establish something, the reader holds on to that, and you can trust them to -- in fact, expect them to -- continue with that understanding. and you can mess with it for effect! like just for one example, starting with close-ups before an establishing shot can be more immersive; the reader doesn't have any idea what's going on until we get that information panel:

and you can break the 180˚ rule for an intentional effect (I personally am not into breaking it for comics, but I think it can work well in film/animation -- anime in particular tends to do it a lot for a particular stylized effect -- though it all depends on what you're aiming for). the "rules" are mostly there just to facilitate a natural reading flow, so feel free to break 'em as long as you're doing it intentionally!

- establishment and consistency addendum

establishing info isn't just for setting/spatial orientation! it works for most things, including characters! honestly, you only really gotta do a nice drawing of a character once to establish them in the scene, and then you can get away with super simplifying them as long as you give enough info for the reader to understand who these scribbles are meant to be:

I mean, you can keep drawing them nicely if you want to, you just don't have to. and often it's funnier and more suited to the mood of the scene a lot of the time if you don't! being time-saving is just a bonus. :B drawing characters as just Shapes is kind of an extreme example, but hopefully it emphasizes the whole thing about how once you give that initial info -> the reader can connect it to what comes after!

also since this is primarily a fanart blog, I should also say that for the record, you can get away with a lot less establishment with fanart because you can expect the reader to already have most of that context. like for someone who knows the source material, you can easily get away with something like this as establishment (though preferably better-drawn than this):

...but if I were drawing something for an audience that I couldn't reasonably expect to already understand who these characters are and where they are, I'd probably be spending a lot more time and effort on establishing the setting, what they're doing, and so on and so forth. but I do find that sometimes it becomes a little bit of an exercise in seeing how much you can get away with not showing!

- space is time

the more physical space on the page that you give to an action, the more time that action feels like it takes. this:

feels like it's happening at a different pace than this:

which is happening at a different pace than this:

and all of that has a different pace and feeling than this:

there's a LOT you can take advantage of with this, and it's super fun to play around with!! it doesn't have to be copy-pasted panels or just for humor; it's just about how much you show of the action and how long you spend on it. it can be anything you want to feel longer, or more lingering, or whatever. like this:

has a totally different feeling than this:

- the end

uhhh I don't have a good little button to this, sorry! but I hope there's something useful in all that! honestly I'm still learning a lot about comic'ing, and in particular trying to learn how to take advantage of comics as a medium, versus just a series of drawings and/or text. there's some real fun possibilities that open up once you start thinking of layouts as a creative process on their own and not just an Unfortunate But Necessary Step before you get to the illustrating!

one last piece of advice: always watch out for what's lurking behind your panels...