Like it says up top, this is a short and easy tutorial about how to divide a row (or “tier” as it’s sometimes called) on a comics page into three equally-sized panels. Why am I writing about this? Because I was really surprised by the fact that a Google search for how to do this didn’t yield a quick tutorial on it… so hopefully this’ll get indexed and folks will find it useful.
Some background: The nine-panel grid, based on a grid of three rows of three panels each, used to be a pretty standard comics page layout back in the “golden age” of comic books. Look at an old Superman page and that’s pretty much what you’ll find. While superhero books have largely dropped this as their basic grid, you still see it used in “homages” like Watchmen, and in other genres of comics. For example, my first book for SLG, Farewell, Georgia, was entirely based on the nine-panel grid. Chances are at some point, no matter what type of comics you do, you’re going to need to divide some area into thirds.
Dividing an area into two panels is easy both mathematically (measure and divide that number in half) and on the page (just make an “x” from corner to corner, and the center is at the crosspoint). Dividing into thirds, though, can be trickier because of us Americans and our back-asswards insistence on measuring in inches, which don’t break down fractionally into thirds very well. Even using centimeters, you often wind up with things not dividing evenly. So what to do?
If you don’t mind drawing on that cheap paper that’s got a light blue panel grid already printed on it, you can use that; I think it’s got thirds marked on it. Personally, I’d just as soon try to draw on a Kleenex as use that stuff. So, usually what I do is work in a page area that’s designed to be easily divisible into both halves and thirds. So, for Midnight Sun, I worked at 12″ x 15″–both those measurements being easily divisible by two and by three. (Midnight Sun has an unusual trim size. For a “standard” comics page shape, I do 12″ x 18″ which also works well.)
Sometimes, though, you just gotta deal with an area where the measurements just won’t cooperate and divide equally. Here’s how you do it:
First, here’s our area I’m going to divide into thirds, shown in light blue dotted lines.
1) Take the area you want to divide into thirds, and divide it into halves using an “x” drawn from each of the corners. Make a vertical line at the center-point, dividing the area into halves.
2) Now draw a diagonal line connecting each bottom corner to the top corner of each half-area you created in step one. (Works in reverse, also obviously.) Draw a vertical line at the points where these new lines intersect the lines you drew in step one. The three sections you’ve created by doing this are equal widths.
3) Finally, give yourself some gutters and you’re done! (Technically, the center panel will now be very slightly thinner than the two outer panels because it’s had a bit lopped off from both sides to create the gutter, whereas the outer panels have had only their inner-facing sides docked… but, hey, it’s close enough for me.)
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