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Now, paneling is not very hard. There are very specific rules to follow with panelling, that should be considered along with flow. Keep these rules in mind when laying out your pages

Now, if you intend to put your manga into a book, you must take into account which pages go where. For example, when you open the book, which page are you gonna have the actual art on first? If you're doing an online webcomic, then this is a little less important.

Now, I want you to grab a manga book. Anyone, it shouldnt matter. Now, open it to any page (preferably one that isnt a title illustration) Now, notice that no art ever goes into the gutter of the book. The gutter is the part of the book where the pages are glued into. now, there are a few exceptions to this rule:

1. art can cross the gutter when the illustration covers 2 pages.
2. when the art is considered to be so shocking or jarring that it covers the entire page. For example: when Scar destroys Edwards arm in volume 2 of FMA, that image covers the entire page.

Basically, depending on which side of the page the art will be on, you cannot cross that line. however, the other sides of the page have different rules.

now, panels can bleed off the page depending on content. for general every day panels where the content is very normal, the panels should generally stay within the page. However, is something of importance happens, you can have the panels bleed off the page. Sometimes you can contain important scenes and keep them from bleeding off the page, but be judicious.

now, when a panel bleeds off the page, flow dictates that the person's eye is also carried off the page. So, its a bad idea to have all of your panels bleeding off the page if you intend to carry the readers eye to the next page. keep in mind which direction the eye reads in.

now, some scenes are not even contained in panel lines. these are either so extreme that they can't be contained, they have something that might not relate to the rest of the art, or in terms of shoujo manga, they are open to have a sense of freedom. the artwork isnt in a box so its considered more free, but the content can range from a poetic scene to something horrifying.

here are 2 pages of mine for examples in these principles.

Left Hand Page
right hand page

if you have any questions, post them here. sorry if this is a little long winded, but I think paneling is very important for magna.

THanks Kupo ^_^

Panel shape depends on content. Most people are familiar with the square and rectangular panels. These ones are the kind that are use most often. when the scene is calm and nothing of extreme importance is happening.

But when an action scene occurs, panel lines can be drawn diagonally so that the scene can have more weight to it. when used along with the art and flow, these panels can be the most memorable. sometimes people do use these kinds of panels as a change of pace, but try to use them for important scenes.

Heres another example of what I mean by slanted panels. you've probably have all seen them, but heres an example anyhow razz

Action!

I think i said this if the flow thread but I'll mention it again here. PLAN OUT YOUR MANGA LAYOUT AHEAD OF TIME. Draw out story boards so that you know what the characters will do on everypage and set up your panels accordingly. That way, you can have a flow, use effective panels, and have a scene that you already know is gonna turn out well. also plan out an entire chapter so you'll know how much content you can fit in there.

yeah! u finally are sharing ur skills with the world.

Alright, you seem to be giving off some good advise, so I'm going to ask you for some. I'm a decent artist, and I've got storylines spilling out of my head, it's so pack. Anyway, my problem is, I can't draw in small panels, well it really doesn't matter the size, it's just panels in general. It's like I freak out, I can only draw what's in my head if I have the whole page to work with like one HUGE panel. So, now I'm asking...What should I do? How can I train myself to be able to draw in panels? Your help would be appreciated greatly. Thanks.

You don't need to fit absolutely everything into a small panel to show that something is happening. Sometimes only a face, or a hand, or a small bit of something else is sufficient. If you have trouble fitting a face into a small panel (as I still do), you can just simplify the face. If you try to fit everything that you usually do in a big picture into a small picture, it will look crowded.

An easy way of doing things is just to use a small pen size, rofl.

Uh... well...
You probably know this, but a general rule of thumb is to place them in the order you want them read. That is, left-right (please don't make it right-left, unless it's in an Asian language... I really dislike that), and top to bottom. You can also do those sorta multiple joined text bubbles if you want your char. to say something a bit longer... it looks too full if you have too many sentences in one text bubble, and tiresome to read. Those multi-text bubbles are also handy for helping you flow from one panel to next, if your paneling is confusing sometimes (like me) if you connect two panels with those multi-bubble bubbles.

Sorry if I confuse you, but this is just from personal experience.

Wow! Planning!

How do you decide what goes on each page? I mean, I know you must storyboard before hand, but how do you make the final decision as to what goes where? Also, how do you decide on how many panels, and the size? I know these are probably really dumb questions, but I for the life of me just can't get it down in my head.