An Ode to Panels

Digital, comic illustration and layout, 2026

An Ode to Panels is a reflective tribute to panels, which are how comics are told! The inspiration behind this was that I used comics before to process a hard life experience. I realized then how we could use this medium to create an emotional distance from struggles, reframing it to overcome the setback, and to heal eventually.

Published by Anino Comics, this book started as just marker drawings on a big watercolor pad with expired paper, that turned into a zine (that reached the 2025 Angouleme International Comics Festival where Anino Comics Senior Editor Kata Garcia saw it!), that finally turned into a published comic book!

Design

I prepared four cover concept sketches, including the zine cover that I made before. The Anino Comics team chose Sketch 2 which what I was also leaning towards.

As for the back cover, we went with the design on Sketch 4 to go with the portal-like theme of the selected front cover. Panels may be small on a page, but they are doors to a bigger world.

Thankfully, I was still able to use the girl who’s wrapped in a blanket and who’s reading a comic book. I took inspiration from how the word panel came from the Old French word panel which means ‘piece of cloth.’ The comic books and characters we’ve loved through the years gave us much comfort like how a security blanket would!

Likewise, I built upon this idea of panels and pieces of cloth and used these as visual elements for the flypaper of the book. The image below, however, isn’t the final layout; the Anino Comics team made the little colorful squares into columns instead. I had an initial layout for everything, but Ms Zoe Monteverde , Anino Comics’ layout artist, made everything more cohesive and better!

For the background, I chose a warm yellow to strengthen the image of how comics bring us comfort.

Illustration

I went with a loose illustration style just as I did with my first graphic novel, Cat Cafeteria. I poured more thought into the words and paneling, which is the main focus of the book. I prepared a colorful but limited range of colors to choose from for each page, so each illustration won’t be too overwhelming.

We also went with a typeface instead of handwriting, so the texts can be readable.

The Panel Playground

Of course, since I love the comics medium a lot, I want to be able to invite others to create their own comics! At the back pages of the book, I made a Panel Playground consisting of pages with varying kinds and sizes of empty panels where readers can draw and write on.