Hello! I am Infamous Danie and I'm currently running the webtoon "My Daughter, La Catrina" and I wanted to share my thoughts when creating transitions on my comic! ✨

Transitions can be used for different things, so in this tutorial I will be making one that makes the scene stand out, changes between scenes AND establishes a new location. It sounds difficult but is just a matter of creativity!

Let's start with the sketch of the entire thing, I recommend making a square for everything you'd like to emphasize.

 

We have a scene where (1) My character, Cati, falls and creates a fire, (2) we have a close up into Jorgito's reaction to the fire, (3) we see a person trapped into the fire, (4) close up into other character's reaction, (5) Cati fleeing the scene and (6) Cati, on a new location, crying.

As you can tell, in this example, we have different types of panels:

 

Action panels: Where there's something, usually important, happening.

Reaction panels: Reactions of the characters to the action.

 

And one that we are going to add:

 

Location panel: It informs the reader we have moved to a different place.

 

To make the transition fluid, we will be using the action panels (1,5,6) to use as background, and the reaction panels (2,3,4) will be seen on top of it.

Now that we have our potencial background, it's time to start thinking on a way to conect them. Try to find things, or create things, that reference the panel above them.

 

For example, The fire of the 1st panel, will be seen in the background of the 2nd panel, and, I've decided to add bushes that can be used to connect the tree where my character is at the end.

However! We still have the reaction panels that need to be placed! It can be frustrating to have to deal with them, since they can hide parts of the illustration we want to make, that's why it's important to design the transitions with them in mind.

 

Let's play around with the placements until we find a way to conect them.

I decided to use the fire from the 1st panel to conect with the panel of the guy trapped, it helps with the continuity of the scene. Jorgito's reaction will be on top of everything, so it can stand out from the very chaotic scene.

 

Then, as you can tell, there's a break from the fire, until we see it on the background as Cati is running away. We must remember, that adding to much can be tiring to the eye, so we have to add little breaks from all the detail.

And now, we connect the last panel. As you can tell, it is WAY bigger than the sketch, that's because it also has to function as a way to set a brand new location. With the colors and some extra stuff that I'm going to add, it will be very obvious that we are far from the chaos that we saw at the beginning.

Some final tips:

 

• A sky gradient can help a lot in connecting multiple scenes

• Adding extra details that get out of the panel can create a sense of continuation

• Don't fall on a place with a lot of candles and paper