While it is true that all the information you need to create and maintain a Webcomic is available on the Internet, finding the stuff can be difficult. For example, finding character design sheets and comic storyboard sheets can be quite challenging, not to mention the problem in finding a Manga A4-to-A5 Layout Board that you can actually get to print on your inkjet printer without losing the edges! We have brought together these various elements and put them on this page to make your life a little easier.

The downloads below are divided into three sections: fourteen design, plotting, and storyboard sheets to help the artist and writer create their characters and plot and organize the stories they intend to tell; seven Comic Art-boards used in the Comic industry today, both in Japan and in the U.S; and six comic-book layout sheets (also called signature ladders) to help you fit your comic into the appropriately-sized book.

Comic Art-boards

Comic Art-boards are designed with specific goals in mind. First, they are always much larger than the finished product you see in print. For professional artists working with physical media for printed publication, production art size is critical. Most professional artists like working at least twice the size of the final publication, creating highly-detailed products that would be almost impossible to do if the art were created at the finished size. This larger size also hides flaws and small imperfections in the artwork that might be quite noticeable otherwise.

Second, the boards mark off those areas on the page where your artwork and text are completely “safe,” anything you place in this area is not going to be cut off in the printing process.

Third the boards mark off the “trim” lines. These lines mark where the paper is actually going to be cut after everything is printed on the page. In printing there is a slight left-right-up-down paper movement of about one-eighth of an inch (.125" -- 3.0 mm), so text and graphics placed in this area might be trimmed or cut off in some books. Thus, while your artwork could be perfectly centered on the page when it gets to the trimming machine, the page itself could have shifted one-sixteenth (.0625") of an inch to the left, the following page could be one-eighth (.125") of an inch lower relative to the first page, and the next could be perfectly centered. There is no way to predict this drifting, so any illustrations or text that extend into the area between the “safe” and “trim” lines could be cut off in that process. If you have important art or text that you absolutely must have on the page, do not put it in this area!

Finally, for those situations where you want the illustration to go completely off the page, there is a a third line about one-quarter of an inch (.25" -- 6.0 mm) outside the trim line. This line is called a “bleed” line. Any illustration or text that you want to run completely to the trimmed edge of the paper must extend to the “bleed” line, which leaves room for the slight movement of the paper as it goes through the printing process and prevents a white border from showing. We recommend that no straight edge borders, rule, or text be placed within .25" (6.0 mm) of the trim edges.

Comic-book Layout Sheets

The comic-book layout sheets allow you to visually see how the pages in your comic line up in a book format. This can be important if you are planning to someday make your comic available as a book. Phil Foglio (Girl Genius), for example, has said that when he went to make Girl Genius into a printed book that all the double-page spreads were split across two sides of the same page (i.e., instead of being pages even-odd where you could see both pages at the same time--such as 20-21--they were back-to-back, that is pages 19 and 20). He had made an error in calculating how the pages would fit in a book while drawing the webcomic. This required that he re-draw a single page into two pages so that the following pages were properly paginated. After that experience he always makes sure the pages fall where he needs them in the printed book before deciding on putting up a double-page webcomic.

When planning a book you need to be aware of the how printers create books. All books are laid out in what are called signatures. The simplest is the 4-page signature, which is just a single sheet of paper folded in the middle.Thus if your comic book is formatted with 8.5"x11" pages, it is actually printed as four 8.5"x11" pages on a single 11"x17" sheet of paper. Knowing where your pages are going to be when printed on this sheet of paper is important. This also means you must pay attention to how many pages are in your comic. If you decide on a 38-page comic-book you are going to have two blank pages at the end (38/4 = 9.5 sheets of paper). Additionally, Flying Chipmunk Comics Press requires that the last page of the book be blank, no text or graphics. We put a bar-code on that last page so it can be matched to the book’s cover. For a color comic book, which always uses 4-page signatures, the easiest way to do this is to make sure that the page count is divisible by four and that the final scene in the comic book is a double-page spread, which will automatically leave the last page blank. For a black-and white comic 6"x9" and smaller the signatures are 6 pages each, if the comic is larger than 6"x9" then the signatures are four pages, just like the color comics.

To make it easy to layout your book, we suggest that you print a thumbnail of each page of your comic and paste it into the appropriate place on the layout sheet.

The Files

All the aids and boards on this page are designed to print in non-reproducing blue ink (RGB values - 164, 221, 237) and are in PDF file format. You print these boards and use them as the starting point of any page or you can open these in a digital environment and place them on a layer underneath your comic. When you are finished, turn off that layer, save the comic in the format you use on you website, and your comic is ready for the internet. Don't forget to also save the original in a high-resolution format so that the artwork is ready for publication when you decide to produce it in book form.

Which art-board you use depends on your plans for publishing. As long as the ratios of width and length reduce to the proportions you want to use in your book, it really doesn't matter.

You are free to use these aids and boards however you wish, but please do not give them away to others, we are making them available here for free as advertising for our services. You can, if you want, provide a link to this page from your website. If you know of any other aids that we should have here, please drop us note at “editor (at) FlyingChipmunkComicsPress (dot) com”.

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Comic Planning Aids -- All sheets formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper
Character Design Sheet (Horizontal). Front/ Side/ Back views plus description and detail areas with a “head” ruler on the left.	Character Design Sheet (Vertical). Large image area plus room for description and details.	Chibi Design Sheet (Horizontal). Front/ Side/ Back views plus description and detail areas with a “head” ruler on the left.	Concept Sketch Sheet. For your characters, their accessories, equipment, vehicles,and anything else you might want to sketch out for your comic.
Story-Arc Issue/ Chapter Plot Sheet (Vertical). Short notes and descriptions, chapter- by- chapter -- 6 panels.	Chapter Outline Sheet (Horizontal). Columns for Setting/ Characters/ Plot/ Theme descriptions.	Page-Panel Script & Description (Horizontal). Plot the page for your artist, panel by panel -- 6 panels.	4-Page Comic Book Storyboard (Horizontal). Arranged as two 2-panel spreads, with room for notes beside each page.
2-Page Comic Book Storyboard (Vertical). One above the other with room for notes beside each page.	1-Page Comic Book Storyboard (Vertical). Room for plenty of notes on layout and dialogue.	1-Page Comic Book Storyboard (Horizontal). Same as above, but with a larger sketch area.	Single American Daily-Comic-Strip Storyboard (Vertical). For sketching ideas and making early placement notes.
Single American Daily-Comic-Strip Storyboard. (Horizontal). Same as above, but with a larger sketch area.	Dual American Daily-Comic-Strip Storyboard (Vertical). One above the other with room for notes beside each page.	4-Koma (Yonkoma). Comic Storyboard (Horizontal). Full-page for two strips side-by-side, or a single double-wide.

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Comic Art-boards -- Paper size as indicated
American Standard Comic Art-board -- 11" x17" paper size. An 11" x 17" board that uses 67% reduction to get to the printed comic size of 6 5/8 × 10 1/2".	A4-to-A5 Manga Art-board --- A4 paper size. A 21 x 29.70 cm (8.26 x 11.69") board, it uses 70.7% reduction to get to the printed comic size of 14.8 x 21.0 cm (5.83 x 8.26").	A4-to-A5 Manga Art-board -- 8.5" x 14" paper size. Same as above, but will print on Legal size (8.5 x 14") paper without cropping.	B4-to-B6 Manga board -- B4 paper size. The Japanese professional size, 25.7 x 36.4 cm (10.12 x 14.33"),uses an 80% reduction to get to the printed comic size -- 12.5 x 17.6 cm (4.9 x 6.9"); but a 67% reduction will result in an A5 format: 14.8 x 21.0 cm (5.83 x 8.26").
Tokyopop Art-board -- 11" x17" paper size. Although Tokyopop no longer publishes manga, they set the standard for American Manga books, using a 5 x 7.5" finished format that was a compromise between the A5 and B6 formats used in Japan. This board is 11 x 17" and uses a 50% reduction.	4-Koma (Yonkoma) Comic Art-board -- 8.5" x 14" paper size. Based on the A4 page size, the 4-Koma (Yonkoma) Comic is a 4-panel vertical comic that is as popular in Japan as the horizontal Daily Comic is in America. It is frequently used in Manga at the end of regular chapters as non-canon “bonus” material.This Art-board prints on Legal size paper (11x14") and uses a 70.7% reuction.	American Daily-Comic-Strip Art-board -- 8.5" x 14" paper size. A 14 x 6" ( 35.5 x 15.3 cm) board, prints on Legal size paper. Newspapers differ on reduction of artwork, between 5 7/16" (42%) and 6" (46%) is typical. The title of the comic is added by the syndicate/newspaper to the top of the strip.

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Comic-Book Layout Sheets -- All sheets formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper
Staple-bound 16-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet. 16 numbered page-blocks so you can see which pages are available for double-page spreads.	Staple-bound 16-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet (un-numbered). Un-numbered page-blocks for comic-books with more than 16 pages.	Staple-bound 24-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet. 24 numbered page-blocks so you can see which pages are available for double-page spreads.	Staple-bound 24-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet (un-numbered). Un-numbered page-blocks for comic-books with more than 24 pages.
Staple-bound 32-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet. 32 numbered page-blocks so you can see which pages are available for double-page spreads.	Staple-bound 48-Page Comic Book Layout Sheet. 48 numbered page-blocks so you can see which pages are available for double-page spreads.

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