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 Art tips and techniques, reviews and interviews from my studio. Archived here and at World Famous Comics. Comics 101 for 08/21/2003 THE IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING - Part 2 3) Clarity in Composition of Panels and Page Give your readers enough information from panel to panel or page to page but do not over do it. Crowded panels and overly worked pages could become confusing or tiresome to your reader. Details are very important and add credibility to your characters or environment but a good balance in terms of pleasing drawing style and pacing of storytelling are just as crucial. Too many word balloons or dialogue boxes can also crowd a panel or page and slow down the story, but it's also just as important to leave a good balance of space from panel to panel and page to page for balloons and boxes. Especially when drawing a story from a script with dialogue in mind to be added later. When panel borders touch,extra border framing (i.e.thicker frames or an extra border surrounding first frame) for one or both panels is a good device to enhance clarity of your compositions within a page. For these three panels I designed my layout to have my panels overlap and create a unity for the scene. The last two panels create a stair-step technique pulling you down off the page to the next one. Since I am working with a detailed background here to establish the scene and am also overlapping the panels, I decided to use extra border framing. Doing this in the second to last panel separates the images in all three and prevents confusion or awkward tangencies in the line work. Also, the thicker, bolder panel frames gives the desired image within that specific panel a sense of more dramatic importance, should it work with the intent of the story. 
4) Use Compositional Devices that Lead the Eye from One Panel to the Next This rule is best applied when used subtly. Perhaps you follow the eyes or hands from a character from within one panel pointing or gesturing to the next consecutive panel (or just moving in the left to right motion. See rule #1). A vehicle, weapon, or object placed correctly or in a dramatic angle in one panel could lead the reader's eye to the next panel also. Even a background composition designed appropriately could be used as a compositional device. Breaking panel borders is another exciting (yet, not too subtle) approach.This approach should usually be used when whatever it is breaking the border is leading the eye DIRECTLY to the next consecutive panel (see rule #3), perhaps even invading the next panel's border also. The use of 'Z' formation should be kept in mind when designing a page (see upcoming Comics 101 in December for example). Compositional devices here may be the use of the concorde jet flying from the left end of the panel, nose pointing to the right in panel one. This carries us back to the left side of the page for panel two. In panel two the Hydra agent in the left foreground points his pistol at Captain America to the right, then moving the eye to panel three. In panel three we follow the direction of Cap's glare as his eyes direct us back to the left for the next consecutive panel. 
In panel one the directional lines of the interior of the plane cabin shoot us forward from the image of the Hydra agent framed by Cap's leg. The lines carry us from background left to foreground right and to the next panel. In panel two we cut to the Hydra agent firing his gun with streaking bullets, a nice directional device, as they aim your eye to the next panel. In panel three Cap is blocking the bullets, hunching towards the bottom left of the corner, and carrying our eye off the page towards the next one. 
Be sure to check back here next week as we continue discussing more 'Important Elements of Storytelling' -Joe Recent Columns:
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