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Right to Left

Welcome to Madinkbeard. If you enjoy this post you could subscribe to the RSS feed to receive upcoming posts or browse the archives to see past posts. I also create a twice weekly webcomic called Things Change: The Metamorphoses Comic
November 24th, 2008
Categories: Comics

Mykx pointed over to this comic by Joseph Lambert. Of particular interest to me are two pages where Lambert forces the reader to follow a right to left path through the page/panels. This can be a tricky endeavor for readers trained to go left-right, left-right, left-right down a page. Lambert uses an reverse-L shaped panel to get the read from the end of one strip down to the next strip and moving left.

In this example from page 2, he uses word balloons which cross over the horizontal boundary from one strip to the next. This leads the reader from top to bottom and then the man’s figure starts the reader moving to the left. This is an interesting layout, but it also seems unmotivated. Why force the reader to read in an opposite direction for this sequence?

In a similar lay-out in page 5, he uses blue wind lines to move the reader down and across the page, aided by the placement of the figures. This one is even more effective because the contrary movement fits with the content. The character’s are being blown back to their starting point.

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