When I decided to move from animation back to comic I hadn't anticipated the level of work required in the paneling process. Luckily I was able to make use of the tools provided by clip studio to reduce the level of stress and complication. This is my first attempt at making a finished comic so the structure and tools offered by the program helped to make it a less daunting process.
By using their provided panel templates I was able to build a very straightforward progression from storyboard to comic panel, however, that is not to say that the process was easy. Deciding on the appropriate panel size and shape required a lot of pre-planning and double-checking, I also often had to manipulate the templates slightly to achieve the desired outcome.
When deciding on panels I had to balance the goings on in the individual scenes. I found that connecting action to action & to a lesser extent, subject to the subject was good for montage, allowing me to establish scene setting and to move through inconsequential detail quickly. In this way, the routine activities from the storyboards were used heavily in the beginning sections to draw the reader in.
More focused scenes or important details required panels that connected moment to moment. They slowed down the action, raising the tension and ensuring that important details and key moments were not glossed over. It created the effect of the world seeming to slow down. I used this for scenes of high intensity.
One example can be found early on when Hilda is paying intense attention to catching the moth. The paneling here followed her mental focus, she experiences every second vividly, and so should the readers.
Routine activities done on autopilot or activities that one may not remember doing moment to moment could be shown as a single image, the reader doesn't need detail, only the result matters, Dishes are on the table, she presumably got them out of the cupboard, and put them there, we do not need to see every single step of this process, the reader can extrapolate.
In some scenes, I made use of the paneling to drag the routine actions out far beyond a normal level. This created an unnatural sensation that heightened the tension. It suggested that something out of the ordinary was about to happen.
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