Cake 🍰

A few things before we start:

I’m working in Canva Pro and using the background remover tool; however, you can also create this effect using the polygon lasso tool and masking. I’ve done both, but I think Canva is probably more accessible for most people.

My “pages” are 1080 X 1920 px, and I find I can fit about 3 images comfortably, depending on how I'm layering things. 

Do background remover tools technically use AI? I think yes (don't quote me), in the sense that they are artificial intelligence, but they are not genAI. You're not scraping anyone else's writing or art. Back when I first learned Photoshop ::cough cough 20 years ago cough cough:: I was taught to do this with a green screen, lol. TLDR: This kind of digital photo editing tool has been around for a long time. Also, can I be a nerd for five seconds and say check out the Science and Media Museum's digital exhibition on the History of Digital Photo Manipulation? Ok, I'm done, I promise.

1. PLAN IN ADVANCE

Boring, I know, but hear me out. I think of this effect as a narrative tool. It’s great for action sequences, when I want to show off motion, or make the reader feel like a bunch of things are happening all at once. If I have a general idea of which shots will be overlapping, and the order I want them to be in, it’s easier to make sure I’ve framed the main subject correctly so I can make the effect without crying. 

Here are the three shots I used for the page above. The first thing I do while taking screenshots is make sure that there is lots of dead (ha) space around the main subject (I have no idea if this is what it’s really called). I think of dead space as any area of the image boring enough that I don’t mind covering it up with something else. 

The “boring” part is subjective and mostly based on the vibes of whatever scene I want to create. In this case, I care more about the zombies than the background, so even though that church is pretty eerie, I don’t care about being able to see it.  

LAYOUT YOUR IMAGES

The next thing I do is lay these images out while keeping the dead space in mind so I can figure out where and how I want each panel to overlap. Generally, I find I need at least one panel as a base layer that doesn't overlap anything else, or the layout gets too busy and therefore confusing. Usually, it's the first panel on the page, but not always. 

Here, I can already see that the dead space for the top two images is on the same side. It’s not “wrong,” but I want this scene to feel like zombies are bursting out of the ground and coming at Wolfgang, Darling, and Morgan from every which way. To fix this, I’m just going to flip the center panel horizontally. 

In thinking about my scene, I realized that the zombie ballerina should be walking towards Wolfgang, Darling, and Morgan, not away from them, so later I flipped her too. This is not an exact science! I always end up playing around. 

Alright, so next, I position the first two images so they overlap approximately where I want. I’m going to end up with some white space. Don’t worry about it, we’re actually going to need it in a minute. 

Once I’ve got the top layer pretty close to where I want it, I resize the image so it fills the white space, and then I duplicate it. 

REMOVING THE BACKGROUND

We’re almost done! 

If you’re using Canva, you can press the Background Remover button to remove the background of the image you duplicated. As you can see, I ended up with a cutout of your primary subject (zombie butler) that I can use to overlap with zombie grandma.

Sometimes it looks a little off-center or creepy, especially if you moved your mouse while doing it. Don’t worry, that’s an easy fix. The important thing is not to duplicate your image until you’ve resized it, because then you’ve got to be a lot more precise about making the images line up and do a bunch of annoying resizing after the fact. 

Next, I’ll just temporarily move the cutout to another area of the image and crop the original image so it’s no longer overlapping zombie grandma. After that, I simply move the top layer in place, make sure it lines up with the OG image, and voila!

You can also do this with the polygon lasso tool if you’re working in a more traditional photo editing program. In this case, you follow all the same steps, but instead of using the background remover, select the polygon lasso tool and use it to isolate the areas of the background you want to mask out. I’m doing this in Behance, but honestly, it should work in most photo editing programs. 

It takes a little longer, and you’ve got to do more of the adjusting yourself, but it’s not terrible. I’ve sped this up a smidge, but really, it took me a few minutes. And I’m not super precise about it. The scene is already dark, and the human eye is not going to catch every tiny imperfection.  

The rest of the effect is just my own embellishments. I like to add some motion lines and descriptive text. I usually pop in a white line to make the “gutter.” I move it behind the top layer, which makes it sort of feel like the main subject is bursting out of the panel. 

You can use this same method to add all sorts of effects. The vampires with their red magic energy? Literally, this exact same process, only I put a haze of red smoke in between the base layer and top layer.