Comic Page Layouts

I was reading David Peterson's blog and he had an interesting entry about how he came about with the square format for his comic Mouse Guard. Showing all of the possibilities for a page layout using the 9 square technique, that interested me.

When laying out what little I have done in comic pages throughout the years, I have never really known if I wanted to make them all square or rectangular or if I wanted to do more odd shapes. Doing something where every panel on every page is either square or rectangular, to me, gets boring after a while. Although when I read others comics who have done this I never notice the panel shapes, only what is in those panels. But with my comics it becomes this annoying obstacle I think a little bit too much about.

And then there is the "norm" of page dimensions. It started to get me thinking about why I have to make my comics in those dimensions and why I'm not making them a size that works for the content of the comic. And since I never intend to publish them I shouldn't be catering to what's easiest for a publisher or printing place.

It's just one more thing to stress my mind over. xD

I think that for Vulture I will figure out various page sizes and make some panel variation charts like David Peterson has and see which one seems more comfortable to me. It seems like an easier way to construct a page rather than wondering how the layout should be and trying to picture it in my head, marking the panels out on the page only to realize while drawing it that one should be smaller while another should be bigger. But then that could just be a problem with my drawing. xD It's possible.