A random comment about my panel pacing made me rethink everything

I was posting some pages from an indie book I do for fun, just sharing process stuff. Someone pointed out that my action scenes had way too many panels per page, like 8 or 9, and it made the fight feel slow and choppy. They said to try 4 or 5 bigger panels and let the art breathe. I mean, I thought more panels meant more detail, but really it just clogged things up. Over the last month I've been going back through my older pages and cutting them down, and honestly the flow reads way smoother now. It's weird how one throwaway comment can stick with you. Has anyone else gotten feedback from a stranger online that actually improved their comic work?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia7001mo ago

Did you try cutting them same way you would if someone told you in person, or did you go panel by panel with a ruler and timing each one? I always wonder if strangers see stuff we're too close to notice, like how we read our own pages with our own rhythm already in our head.

the_claire1mo ago

...and that's the thing, I think strangers are better at spotting rhythm issues because they don't have the script stuck in their head. I went through my old pages with a timer on my phone, just pacing each panel like I was reading it fresh. Took about an hour per page, which sounds slow, but it showed me exactly where I was holding too long on small moments. Cutting from 8 panels to 5 felt like losing weight from the page, the fights actually hit harder now. The weird part is that commenter probably forgot they even wrote it, but I'll remember that advice for years.