Comics have a peculiar superpower: they control time with space. A reader spends longer on a big panel than a small one, and the gap between two panels can represent a heartbeat or a hundred years. Once you understand that panel size is time, composition stops being decoration and becomes storytelling.
Big panels slow time down
A large panel demands attention. The reader lingers, taking in detail, and the moment feels weighty. That is why the emotional peak of a scene — the reveal, the kiss, the punch — usually gets the biggest panel on the page. The extreme version is the splash page: a single full-page panel used for maximum impact, often a dramatic entrance or a sweeping establishing shot.
Small panels speed it up
Rows of small, equally sized panels create a fast, ticking rhythm. They are perfect for rapid dialogue, a quick exchange of glances, or a burst of action beats in close succession. A cluster of tiny panels followed by one large one is a classic setup-and-payoff move: the small panels build tension, and the big one releases it.
The shape of a panel is a camera
A wide, letterbox panel behaves like a cinematic establishing shot — it takes in a landscape, a room, a crowd. A tall, narrow panel emphasizes height and can create unease or grandeur: a towering figure, a fall, a skyscraper. Square panels feel neutral and stable. When you resize a panel in the editor, you are effectively choosing a camera lens for that moment. Striply also lets you change a panel's shape entirely — circles and diamonds can signal a flashback, a dream, or a change in emotional register.
Vary the rhythm
The most common pacing mistake is monotony: a whole page of identically sized panels reads flat, no matter how good the art is. Good pages breathe. They alternate between tight and open, fast and slow. Look at a page you admire and notice how rarely two adjacent panels are the same size — the variation is the pacing.
A popular modern approach is the widescreen style, which stacks a few wide horizontal panels down the page. It reads slowly and cinematically, giving each beat room to land. Contrast that with a dense European or manga grid, where many small panels pack a lot of information into a single page. Neither is better — they are different tempos, and knowing both lets you choose.
Composition inside the panel
Pacing is about the panels; composition is about what happens inside them. Keep the important element — a face, a hand, an object — near where the eye enters the panel, and leave space in the direction of movement so the action has somewhere to go. Remember to reserve room for dialogue: nothing sabotages a beautiful drawing like a speech bubble slapped over the character's face. Planning that space is where lettering and layout meet.
Try it directly: open the editor and lay out the same four-beat scene twice — once with four equal panels, once with three small panels and one large one — and read them back. The story is the same; the feeling is not.