As you arrange your text, it’s important to keep in mind not to add too much text for a single bubble. It’s always good to split things up, especially if you could imagine your character making small pauses while speaking.



Compare the two speech bubble arrangements below: The above one is not as visually interesting as the bottom one. The more visually interesting that even your dialogue is, the easier it can be for people to read!

4. CREATING PANELS

Once you have all the dialogue in there, you can split up the big frame into panels! As mentioned before, the reason I do it this way is to keep a uniformly sized gutter (the space between panels). Start by selecting the “Divide frame folder” tool:

You can set how big you want the your gutter to be in the Tool properties:

Now simply drag the tool across your frame. If you hold down Shift, you can make sure that you are pulling up perfectly horizontal or vertical lines.



Your page might look like this now:

5. THE SKETCH

Now it’s time to sketch! Don’t be afraid to try a lot of different compositions, even if you divided things up differently in the previous step. Try to create a good readability and flow to the page by rearranging dialogue in an orderly manner, and work with the compositions and character action to match the flow.

Here is the finished sketch for the dialogue I’ve previously placed. I’ve added some arrows to visualize what I mean by page flow.



In the first panel, Sammy is looking to the right, which is also the direction the speech bubble is coming from. The composition of the background in the second panel leads directly to Dodger - the source of the speech bubble. Sammy is also still looking at him in this panel, so the viewer has multiple focal points leading straight to Dodger.



For the third panel, I decided to open up the page and scrap the panel border (this is where bleed will come in).



As you can see, I changed things around from my previous arrangement of the text and panels! Nothing is set in stone as you work in comics, and you may even change things after the sketching stage!



These kinds of fluid compositions would be very difficult to achieve if you work on a Webtoon first and then rearrange it to a page. Most webtoons only display one or two panels at once. On one page, you often have between 5 and 10 panels visible at once!



I hope you are able to see why it’s better to first plan your pages, and then your vertical scroll version!

(OPTIONAL STEP: Adjusting the Sketch for Webtoon)

If you’re new to the process of reworking pages into the vertical scroll format, it makes sense to take your finished sketch for the page and rework it. This way, you can move things around more easily and try different compositions for your artwork, without things needing to look polished and perfect right away. It will also help you figure out if there are any panels where you might need to rearrange speech bubbles or artwork!



For some pages, this process isn’t that important. The sample page we’ve worked with so far is one of those cases, it’s pretty simple and unambitious. I’ll show an example of reworking a sketch to the Webtoon format later, so let’s move on for now.

6. FINISHING YOUR PAGE ARTWORK

For reference, this is what the final artwork for the sample page looks like. I don’t want to get into the illustration and coloring process in detail, as it’s not the focus of this tutorial. However, there are some organizational things you may want to keep in mind as you work on a comic for two different formats!



The main thing to know: YOU WILL NEED TO DO SOME REARRANGING.



There’s just no way around it if you want to offer an optimal reading experience on Webtoon in addition to regular comic pages. And if you don’t want to go crazy due to the workload, here’s my number one tip: SEPARATE YOUR LAYERS!



This page isn’t the BEST example for what I mean, so let’s briefly look at a different page!

On the left is the page, on the right is a section of the Webtoon episode.



The last panel of the page was intended as a big, important splash panel that would surprise readers and include fun details. If you want a panel to have more impact in Webtoon, a good way to do so is to make it very tall. This way, readers will have to scroll for a longer time until they’ve read the entire panel.



I have included red borders in the image to signify how much of the comic will fit on a typical phone screen. By constraining the dialogue to one phone screen before showing the scene, I create more of a surprise. The reader has a moment to wonder, what could possibly be happening? And then, they scroll down to see it’s a paintball match!

This WAS one of the cases where I adapted the page sketch for the webtoon format before finalizing the artwork. I already knew that I would need to change the text layouts and even rearrange the position of Dodger and Sammy!



Since I knew I needed to make more changes, I also knew that I had to go with a special approach of drawing ALL of Sammy, even if Dodger is in front of her, drawing MORE of the background, and even drawing some of the other background elements on separate layers, because it would make rearranging things easier later on!



Here is a look at all the elements moved around, so you can see how much of the background I actually filled out:

This is of course, an extreme example, and having to fill in backgrounds behind the characters will only occasionally be necessary.



But even for something more simple (like our sample page), there are some things I would absolutely recommend you do:



> Create separate layers for different characters in a panel

> Create separate layers for different background elements (such as foreground layers, “main” backgrounds and “far distance backgrounds” (such as clouds or skylines))

> Always fill in the art behind where speech bubbles or any foreground panels are supposed to go!



Let me give you an example based on this page:

This is how things are split up:

Notice how I’ve drawn the full artwork behind the foreground panels. This was done because I can separate the foreground panels in the webtoon version. However, I did not draw in the bottles behind Sammy’s pan! It won’t be necessary to move her around, so I didn’t need to do so.



Even if you don’t have to rearrange things, this approach does help keep things organized, and it’s easier to form this habit if you do it for every panel!



One small caveat: If you use many layers, you will definitely need to name your layers to stay organized. This is a good habit to have, especially if you ever want to work with assistants, who will be very thankful for having descriptive layer names such as “Dodger Inks” or “Background Colors” rather than “Layer 0” and “Layer 123”! Even for the rearranging process, which we’re about to look at, it’s a lot easier on yourself to know which layers you’re actually moving around!

Sometimes I even prepare the layers ahead of the drawing process rather than make them as I’m drawing. Separately working on these mundane aspects of making comics is a good way to make progress even if you’re feeling too creatively drained to draw or write.



Here are two more tips to help speed up your comic making process and get organized better!



You may have noticed in previous screenshots that I use the Color Set and Sub View menus.

Let’s look at the Color Set menu first! It makes sense to create one for each recurring character in your comic! To add a new color, select the color in your color wheel first, then press the little Paint Drop + icon (1). The color will be added to your currently selected Color Set. You can now reorder it, rename it, or delete it.

You can also make a new Color Set by clicking the little wrench icon up top (2)! If you click “Add new settings”, you will get a template Color Set that is full of “empty” colors. I personally prefer not having those, so I’ve deleted them and now duplicate existing color sets instead, and rework them.

Second, the Sub View menu!

Here you can load reference images. If you have made character sheets of your comic’s protagonists, are drawing a background from a photo or just want to copy the colors of a finished comic page, this can help you always have a quick reference handy. Simply click the folder icon in the bottom, and load any reference images you might want. You can select multiple ones at once, and then cycle through them. If you are done with a reference, you can delete it. You can also zoom in and out, move through the image, or even rotate and mirror images (3). I personally like having the “Switch to eyedropper automatically” option selected (4). To move the image, I now need to hold down the spacebar, but this way when I mouse over the image, I can immediately pick up any color from it. In a way, this is an alternative to the Color Set, but I like having both, since the Color Set is always more exact!

7. EXPORTING YOUR PAGE FILE

When you are done with the comic page, it makes sense to already export it before you move on. Now, if you publish your comic in page form digitally and not JUST for print, you’ll want to export it as an RGB JPEG file first!



After you have done so, now you need to adjust your page file to CMYK.

To find out more about what CMYK is and what it means, you can visit this tutorial:

https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/909