Loom's Paneling Musings 02: Stepping Down

Musings on Paneling
02: Stepping Down

*_* More Thoughts. Hopefully is ADD friendly. I hope it is approachable and leaves every viewer feeling free to do with the general ideas what they like. This one uses staggering panels and also bleeds to establish hierarchy of reading.

Stepdowns can be great to lead the eye. Likewise, they can step-you-up. Like a transformer! You can "step-up" to the next panel or page in a book, and I see other manga/comic artists use this method a lot! You can use it in all sorts of ways if you wanna explore it! It's really a matter of hierarchy (and it lets you shake things up every once in a while!)

Interesting enough, the manga I find easiest to read usually use stepdowns and stepups a lot, especially the last panel of a spread (YuYu Hakusho, Please Save My Earth, Rurouni Kenshin, Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto). Mushishi by Yuki Urushibara manga uses a variety of stepdown/stepup techniques VERY effectively... Takahiro Arai who I came across in the library uses this well. A lot of people use it well. Skip Beat by Yoshiki Nakamura uses stepping a hella lot.

Again, it's not something people will use all the time (some people forego this especially in collage/overlay types). The most varied panelist I've ever read is Kyoko Ariyoshi, who seems to use and mix every damn godly paneling technique known to mankind. *_*

Finalized, Unmarked Reference Page Used Can be Viewed Here.


Vampire Fetish Sample Page (c) *LOOMinate