Hey Frazer, I was wondering if you could offer any advice for panel layouts and styles? I saw in your Modern Masters interview you seemed to experiment quite a bit, in Childeater and Man Who Learned to Fly for example. But in the Xombie series you stuck to

I musta missed all these questions! That or Tumblr has been coy.

The simpler layouts began with Klarion, when I decided to restrict myself by insisting that I used gutters as often as possible (to better control time) and to use less overlapping panels or gimmicks (this was a new audience for me and I was unsure if my weird 2000AD approach would complicate the reading). The odd thing was, it worked a lot better for me than I had intended. It meant that when I did use a gimmick, it stood out more, and I could test my tricks better than if I was aiming for the wow factor on every page. It also made me consider the drawing more closely, now that the flashy layouts were less dominant something else had to pick up the slack.

The splash pages are usually set by the writer, but the times where I’ve overruled that decision or been left to decide myself I’ve tended to pick a moment where I want time to slow down for a beat, where I can create an illustration that requires a lingering eye. It’s not an exact science, and the more I draw the more variations I see possible. In fact, a lot of the early stuff I did looks horrifyingly naive in places now due to the alternatives that I can now imagine. As for bleeds, I mostly use that now when I want a panel to represent a setting, with the other panels operating within that setting, tho that can change as the story requires it. 

Thesedays I’m somewhat anti-flashy panels as I find it works against the storytelling nature of comics, but making those mistakes and owning the lessons they teach you is all part of the process of becoming an illustrator! Have fun!