Date Published: June, 22nd, 2025

13 Tips For Good Manga Composition & Layout

In today's video, I'm giving you 13 tips to help level up your manga, comic, or graphic novel page layout and composition! There are a few major techniques that can easily help your manga pages to look better and stand out more to your audience, and we will be taking a look at these techniques today. Which techniques are your favourite?

When it comes to creating a good manga comic or graphic novel page the artwork is only one side of the story. In today's video we'll be talking about how to create good composition and layout for your artwork that can help you to present your story in the best possible way to your audience.

Treat Every Page As Its Own Illustration

So let me put that into more context, rather than seeing each panel as its own separate illustration, try treating the entire page as a full composition. In this way you're not spending all your time focusing on every single panel and instead you're treating it as an entire composition.

Divide The Page Into Thirds

When you look at the page as an entire composition I recommend breaking the page into thirds. See your page in stages of thirds and then break it down as though you were creating an illustration. 

Choose the highlight part of the panel where you have the most important and significant part of the page and put your biggest focus into that part of the page. Then spend less time focusing on the other details. While the other details are also important in telling a story, by focusing your main attention on the most prominent part of the page it's going to be a lot easier for you to create a page that really stands out well to your audience.

Know The Reading Direction

When dividing the page into thirds, consider which way your audience is going to read the page, whether from right to left or from left to right. Imagine an invisible arrow going through each panel, showing which way the reader will be looking at the page next. In order to help enhance the reading direction on your page, try adding certain character placement and speech bubble placement in order to encourage where you want your reader to look next on the page.

Use Unique Character Placement

When you want your character to stand out on the page, try bringing them out of the panel, to make them stand out and appear more prominent in the artwork. This should be done sparingly, but when done right, it can help to draw the reader's attention to the character.

Storyboard First Before Finalising Artwork

First storyboard the pages to try lots of different layouts and techniques before you finalise your artwork. Try a variety of styles, before you decide on the page layout you like the most.

Allow Body Language And Expressions To Tell The Story

If it is clear to see what the characters are doing just from their body language and their expressions, then it's a really good page. Try to avoid having all of the information on the page being told only through the dialogue, and instead, try to show what the page is representing through your character's body language and expressions. You basically want to try and tell as much of the story as possible through the artwork and not just through the writing alone.

Prioritise Showing Vs Telling

I recommend really learning how to convey your character's emotions through their expressions and through their body language. The dialogue and the writing should be something that complements the artwork, and it shouldn't distract from it, or be the main focus of the page. It should be something that works alongside the artwork in order to tell the story.

Use Backgrounds Effectively

I recommend opening the scene with a wider panel to express where the scene is taking place. While backgrounds aren't the most enjoyable to draw, backgrounds can really help to set the scene.

Introduce the scene with a background to show where this scene is taking place before you introduce the characters into the scene.

Now keep in mind with this, however, you don't always need to show a background in every single panel and it can get a little cluttered if you're showing a lot of details in every single panel. Balance is key.

Find Balance Between Simplicity & Complexity

I recommend starting off with showing the details of the page and then from there you don't always need to show all elements of the background. In some panels, you might show your character interacting with an object in the page or show your character with a small amount of background behind them to show where exactly they're standing.

You also want to make sure that you have enough details to express the scene but not too many that your scene feels distracting. Highlight your characters in the page and any elements in the background should complement the characters and the artwork you're creating and it shouldn't distract from it.

Change The Shape Of Speech Bubbles

Experiment with changing the shapes of speech bubbles to represent the dialogue in the best possible way. When your character is speaking you can try different shapes of speech bubbles. Always ensure that it's clear exactly who is speaking and who the speech bubble is pointing to. You can also try using jagged speech bubbles when the character is shouting, or wavering speech bubbles when they are whispering.

Make Sound Effects Look How They Sound

Sound effects are also really important to include in the page. When you're including sound effects, try to make the sound effect look exactly how it sounds. In this way, it can feel like your readers are experiencing it like a movie, reading the dialogue and hearing the sound effects along with the artwork on the page. Basically manga and comics are a combined medium of storytelling they combine the artwork and the writing and the sound effects all on one page.

Know The Feeling And Message Behind The Artwork

When it comes to creating a good composition you really want to ensure that at the heart of your page you understand the feeling and the meaning behind it. You basically want to show rather than tell your audience what is happening on the page. With every scene you create, as you're storyboarding, try to understand exactly what message you are wanting to get across in the page and that's really going to help to reach your audience with that illustration.

Plan Ahead For Publishing

I also recommend knowing exactly what you want to eventually do with this page. Do you intend to self-publish it, or do you intend to release it online? There's usually specific size requirements that your page might need, and it may be easier to start with those page sizes first before you compose your manga page, so you don't have to do resizing later.

This also changes the way you might print your manga, because if you intend to print your manga, you may want to leave more space in the gutters of the page, to avoid having artwork cut off once the pages are bound.

When it comes to creating a good manga, comic, or graphic novel page, composition is one of the most important things to focus on. Most of all, it is important to show your character's feelings and emotions behind the page and those emotions will be revealed through the artwork to your audience reading it.