How I Make Comic Panels in Procreate

Written By Stephanie Broder

I love Procreate. Having it on my iPad was a game changer, enabling me to make the art I dreamt of from anywhere. But if there’s one area Procreate is lacking, it’s comic-making tools.

But just because comic making in Procreate is less intuitive than, say, Clip Studio Paint, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And it all starts with easy panelling. This is my process for quickly and easily making panels in Procreate.

Step 1: In your canvas, add a Drawing Guide

Drawing guide can be found under the Actions - Canvas tab

Step 2: Change your drawing guide to a measuring division you understand. For example, if you are working with an Imperial Page Size (mine here is 8.5 x 11” or letter), try 0.25”.

This menu is found under "Edit Drawing Guide" 

Step 3: Decide how big your outside margin and gutters are. Here, I’ll use a 0.5” outside margin and 0.25” gutters. That means my outside margins are made of two squares on the grid and my gutters are one. Now, with the rectangle tool, put in your first panel and fill it with a solid colour.

The rectangle selection tool pops up as an option as soon as you click the Selection menu.

Fill in the selection of your first panel with a solid colour. Black is a good choice for easy visibility while you work.

Step 4: Continue to use the rectangle tool to fill the page with your panels, using the grid as your guide for layout, sizes and even gutters.

Step 5: Don’t stress if one of your panels doesn’t quite line up. You can always adjust them afterward by re-selecting the panel and using the Freeform adjustment tool.

After you've selected the panel you want to adjust, click the Arrow tool in the top menu to pop up the toolbar to select Freeform adjustment. This lets you adjust the width and height independent from each other. 

Step 6: In the layers tab, tap your layer of panels and choose “Select”

Single tap the layer to pull up the side menu with layer options. 

Step 7: This will pop up the Selection options toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Select “Invert”

Select Invert which flip-flops the selected and deselected areas of an image.

Step 8: Now you have the space between panels selected. Return to your layers tab and add a new layer.

The + icon in the Layer tab adds a new layer.

Step 9: With the spaces between panels still selected, drag and drop a colour fill into that selection.

Don't worry if your two layers are the same fill colour and so aren't distinguishable. We'll get there.

Step 10: Delete (or hide) the original layer that had the panels in it. This leaves you with panel frames that you can put layers behind for art! Even if you draw across panels, the “frames” hide anything in the gutters or margins.

Step 11: The space around the panels can be changed to any colour. White is a nice choice! If you change the panels to white, you may want to slightly alter your background colour while you sketch so you can still see the panels.

That’s it! You are now ready to fill your panels with beautiful art.

Stephanie Broder
Previous

Five Ways to Boost Your Creativity
Next

OC-tober 2024, a Month of Art Prompts