Free printable templates for comics pages:

I made these so I don’t have to measure out my panels unless I want something really unusual. I designed them for letter size paper, which is smaller than what many cartoonists use but makes them easy to fit on a home scanner. They have the proportions of a half-letter size page (5.5″ x 8.5″).

I plan to post pictures, but in the meantime I hope these text-only instructions work well enough when you have the template in front of you.

Printing

Print on letter size paper at 100% scale (aka “Actual Size”; don’t “scale to fit” or “use printer margins” because it’ll shrink the page). I use 110 pound white cardstock for a bristol-like experience. If you prefer to work larger, you can print on legal or ledger size and use the “scale to fit” or “fit to printer margins” option; it won’t use the space as efficiently as if it were designed for that size, but it’ll give you more room.

How to Use

See the marks around the edge of the page? Use a straightedge to connect a mark to its corresponding mark on the opposite side of the paper, then pencil that line (or the part[s] if it you need). The marks at the corners form the panel borders at the edge of the page; most of the others form the gutters.

The pairs of gutter marks all have dots between them (except for the ones with an “8”); the number tells you how many parts those marks will divide the page into if you use all of them (two dots divides it in half, three into thirds, etc). Note that higher numbers require the lower-number marks they are divisible by. So to divide the page in quarters you use the “4” marks and the “2” mark (that’s probably the only one you’ll use, but if you need small panels then sixths use the “2” and “3”s in addition to the “6”s, and eighths include the “2” and “4”s).

If you want diagonal panel borders, just connect marks that are diagonal to each other (may take some experimentation to get what you want; I haven’t done this much). With a little thought you should also be able to use the guide marks to make “L” shapes and the like.

The single-dot marks near the top and bottom of the page set off a header area for a title and a footer area for notes (or whatever you want to use them for).

I use the “X” marks to reserve a small square in the bottom right corner of the page for an end-of-story symbol (typically an “X”).

When you’re done, remember to erase any extra bits of line you drew while connecting the marks.

Reproduction

If you reproduce your comic on a photocopier you’ll need to white out or trim off the guide marks at some point.

If you scan it into a computer you should be able to crop them out (my scanner software’s preview isn’t accurate enough for me to do this so I have to do it when I clean up the file in GIMP).

Version 2: Numbers Instead of Dots

I’ve left the older version of the template available because it uses all numerals instead of dots, which reduces the drawing area but may feel more accessible to some people.

(If you’re wondering about version 1, it had fewer guide marks — which is fine for many comics but a problem for small-panel comics like Headville — and had the page border in light gray for you to trace over, so you had to remove the segments in the gutters).