LayoutSplat comic studio

Open File → Templates → Comics & panel layouts for 19 editable designs: two complete sample comics, six reusable panel arrangements, ten guided storytelling starters, and a five-page creator workbook. Open File → Templates → Comic character library to insert original transparent characters anywhere in a publication.

Start a story

The guided starters cover character growth, visual mysteries, wordless storytelling, purposeful dialogue, pacing, page-turn reveals, comic timing, memoir, nonfiction and vertical reading. Each has sample characters, editable panel prompts and a second writer’s studio page with a story seed, a specific creative challenge, a panel script and revision questions. The strip uses a landscape studio layout. Replace prompts with your story; delete the studio page before releasing a finished comic. The reveal starter asks you to replace that page with your reveal.

The six general panel designs also offer editable story-building prompts. All text frames and character pictures are separate, movable objects. The full sample stories remain finished examples, rather than exercises.

The creator workbook develops a premise and character arc; explores genre, audience, format and scope; plans thumbnails and page breakdowns; provides an art/caption/dialogue/SFX script; and explores transitions, gutters, framing, silence, panel emphasis and reading order. Its production and revision pages cover visual consistency, team roles, deadlines, credits, permissions, budgeting, picture-only and read-aloud checks, reader feedback and preparing an edition. These are creative prompts, not automated editorial checks.

Characters and fonts

Eight original characters come in three poses each: Maya, Kai, Nia, Sam, Pip, Dot, Tess and Orbit. Search, filter people/animals/robots and choose Greeting, Thinking or Explaining. Insertion creates a transparent PNG with a description that can be edited, moved, resized, saved and undone. The source SVGs are bundled locally. These friendly people, animals and robots are suitable starting points for school and college projects; educators can adapt their stories to the audience.

Comic templates use locally bundled Comic Neue, including regular, bold, italic and bold italic. Its SIL Open Font License and source hashes are included. Native project downloads containing Comic Neue include the font files and license. FontSplat offers Comic Neue too; use its comic style for titles and sound effects.

The original LayoutSplat characters, scenes, story copy and original prompts are reusable under the included CC0 dedication. Comic Neue retains its own OFL license. The external guides below retain their authors’ rights and are not bundled or relicensed.

Reading credits

These original exercises draw on the supplied PDF Visual Language: Writing for Comics by Anina Bennett and the corresponding Big Red Hair writing guide. They translate its visual-writing, script, character, pacing, transition and revision topics into short editable activities, without reproducing the guide or its examples.

The production sequence and planning activities also reference Brent Fisher’s Comic Book Creation Process at Dauntless Stories. The exercises use original wording; no external guide artwork, sample scripts or proprietary characters are included. Production specifications and submission requirements depend on the destination: check them before publishing.