Panels can be a wide variety of shapes and sizes. A large panel that covers most of the page can be used to establish a setting or to bring emphasis or climax to a certain point in the story. Small panels are used for quicker, fast-paced parts of the story where lots of things may be happening. Combine small and large panels on a page to give your reader a variety of things to look at. Panel shapes can also range from standard rectangles to irregular quadrilaterals of any size and orientation! Straight lines are used 99 percent of the time, but experiment with as many fun and different shapes as you’d like for your own storytelling.

When action or drama strikes your scene, you can communicate a change of pace by shifting from horizontal and vertical panels to diagonal panels and layouts. These give the reader a sense of movement and urgency that help dramatize action sequences.

Word balloons don’t just contain the words a character says. They also aid the reader in understanding the tone and emotion that was used by the character. Avoid using too many different kinds of balloons on one page, as that can distract from the characters and the scene. Also try to limit word balloons to one to three sentences. If you find yourself writing too much, then add more panels to spread the dialogue out!

The shapes of the word balloons vary to show whether a character’s speaking voice is relaxed and casual, happy or excited, angry, or trembling. In manga, they either have a small balloon tail or none at all.

In manga, sound effects are written out using onomatopoeia. Most of these phonetic sounds are self-explanatory, but occasionally you will come across sounds or situations that may be harder to describe. When this happens, get creative! Just as each manga artist has a unique art style, each person can describe sounds differently in their stories.

A feature of sound effects that is almost more important than the word itself is how the word is written or drawn. A soft tapping of shoes on the floor should be written small, but an explosion should be large with thick letters and could include patterns or color. Bring life and different meanings to your sound effects by making sure the way they are written matches the sound volume in the story.

The finishing stage of creating a manga, after lining it all, is adding manga screentones. Screentones are a semi-transparent, adhesive film with different patterns on them that you cut and stick onto your manga to add shadows, textures, gradients, and atmosphere. Depending on where you live, it can be hard to source screentones, as they are predominantly sold in Japan. If you don’t have access to screentones, an alternative is to use pens and monochromatic markers to re-create similar effects and shading. Here are four popular screentone overlays used to give a scene a distinctive atmosphere and feeling.

Apart from character poses and page layouts, there are other ways you can add a bit more dynamic action into your scenes.

On this page, the character sees the fireworks begin at a Japanese summer festival.

Now that you have practiced how to make characters and objects look like they are in motion with dramatic, action-packed scenes, try drawing your very own action scene! This will be a battle between the hero Kira Moon (see here) and villain Kaze Moon (see here). This manga page is laid out in the traditional Japanese reading order of right to left, beginning at the top, right corner panel.

There is a big difference between copying another artist and using their work to help you develop your own style. Both of the sketches below were created using the image on the left-hand page as a reference. One is a bit too close to the original to call it a brand-new piece (left), but the other became an original work (right).

Often there is a stigma around tracing, but it can be a great way to speed up practice sessions and for your hand to acquire muscle memory for some things that may take longer to figure out without it. In the image above, for example, the traced image is different from the original drawing pictured on the opposite page, including the facial expression and some of the clothes. When used in this way, tracing can be valuable practice. (The key word here is practice. Of course, you should never claim traced art as your own work.)

You can also collect images that you like to use as reference for new drawings. The character above was also created using the same reference image from the opposite page. But the reference image served as inspiration for an entirely new piece. This new drawing doesn’t look too similar to the reference image, as a variety of references were used in its creation. Collect all kinds of images that you can use to help you draw.

If you aren’t yet confident with your drawing abilities, don’t give up! Keep practicing and experimenting, and you will see progress. For example, here is my progression over many years, which may encourage you.

Now that you’ve reached the end of this book, you may be wondering, “Now what?” One of the most common questions asked by emerging manga artists is, “How do I get noticed?”

You are your own best advocate. No one else will be with your art as much as you will, so if you want others to know about it, you need to show it to them! Make a social media art account and post your art for the world to see! Ways to increase your exposure is by entering competitions, participating in “draw this in your style” challenges that other artists host, and connecting with other users who share the same passions as you do. Instead of basing your art’s worth on follower count, think of social media as a way to gain connections and possible exciting opportunities in the future. For those of you who want to pursue manga art as a side gig or career, after you establish your social media, you can try moving on to whatever you are interested in, whether it be selling art, creating comics, or getting into digital animation. The most important thing is never to stop creating!

Continually grow your style and your storytelling. If you do this, no matter what happens, people will start to notice. They will notice the passion in you and your characters and art. And once that happens, the sky is the limit. So why are you still reading? Get to drawing!