Square Comics

I've been frantically completing sample pages for,  'Tooth and Nail'. One of the decisions I made quite early on was to go for a square page . This is unusual for comics yet quite common in children's picture books. When it comes to laying out your page it throws up some challenges compared to a conventional  comics page. Some of my layouts weren't working as well as I'd have liked and a lot of solutions used your typical comic don't quite work.

I got some advice from Dan Berry and he suggested using a grid to figure out how to best use and layout the page. This worked wonders and solved the majority of the problems I was having. A couple of weeks back I resolved my media and am pleased with the result.

SO! After working none stop for a couple of months I gave myself a couple of days off. I popped down to my local comics shop and browsing for some inspiration found not one but two square comics sat happily staring at me from the shelf.

Both were a great read and I will be hunting down the rest as I came in a little late to both series. As far as the panel layouts go, I will be stealing from both of them. It's great trying something new and a real comfort when you find others are exploring similar territory. Here's to the square comic!

If your interested Davis Petersen creator of, 'Mouse Guard' has and interesting post here about the square comics format. I wish I'd seen that 3 months ago. Aieee!