Starting a comic

You start creating your comic with the New Comic command in the File menu.

This dialog allows you to set the initial layout and appearance of your comic. It also allows you to give the comic a name and give yourself the credit.

You can set up the dimensions and initial number of rows and columns of the comic here. Width and height can be specified in pixels, inches, or centimeters. You can also set the gutter size, which is the amount of space between panels. The gutter will be constant throughout the comic.

There are controls with appearance options affecting the outline of each panel.

The first appearance control is Roundness . This controls how round the corners of the panels are, in pixels. The pixels measure how far the curved corners extend in to the sides before transitioning to straight lines. You can enter a number of pixels in the field or choose a settings from the attached popup menu. There are two special items in the menu: Sharp, which is the same as a corner roundness of 0 pixels, and Fully Round, which means the roundness extends to the full size of the panel and there are no straight lines. This displays as “full” in the field, and you can also enter that as a field value to give the panels that setting.

The next appearance control is Shape . While the basic shape of each panel is initially a rectangle, you can edit it later to be other kinds of quadrilateral. The shape popup specifies modifications that can be made to that basic shape to construct it out of straight lines, more hand-drawn-appearing lines, waves, cloudy bumps, or jaggies.

Weight allows you to hide the lines of the comic panels, or set them to one of four weights from fine to heavy, but you will probably use standard most of the time.

Style allows you to set a solid line or a number of different dashing patterns. The dashing patterns are mostly just for special effects and you will usually use Solid. All of these options are available on a panel-by-panel basis in Panel Properties… in the Comic menu.

As you make your settings in this panel, the structure of the comic will be shown in the window beneath it.

Click OK to complete the creation of the comic document. Unlike most dialogs, there is no Cancel button in this one, but you can close the window it is in.

For a simple comic, like a one panel cartoon or a three- or four-panel strip, this might be all you need to do for panel layout. For a larger comic strip or comic book, see Customizing a panel layout .