The layout pens are a group of Creator Canvas pens for drawing a comic's layout: panel borders, speech balloons, stamps, tails and caption boxes. They do not lay a line of ink along your stroke; each one builds a whole filled shape from the stroke, with an outline and a fill, and overlapping shapes meld into one clean outline. They suit a laid-out page and a long vertical scroll alike. This page covers each shelf of pens, the meld behavior, and where the pens live.
In the pen Library there are five layout shelves: Panels, Balloons, Balloon Stamps, Tails, and Captions. A layout pen draws a filled shape, not a line: it paints an outline in your stroke colour and a fill in the fill colour, and composites them so shapes meld. Two overlapping balloons read as one balloon with one outline; a tail reads as part of its balloon; crossing panel gutters make clean junctions. Each shelf shows a one-line hint above its pens, because a one-stroke balloon does not behave like an ink pen.
A Panels pen paints a gutter and both panel borders appear at once: drag along where the gap between panels should go, and you get a clean border on each side. Overlapping gutters make tidy T and X junctions, so a grid comes together from a few strokes. The border weight stays fixed as you draw, so it reads the same whatever width the gutter is. The nibs give you the border style: round, square, soft square, slant, jagged and cloud, each with finer and bigger variants.
A Balloons pen makes one whole balloon per stroke. The drag from start to finish sets the balloon's length and direction; the brush size sets its height; and a near-level drag snaps flat so your balloons sit straight. There is a wide set of styles: oval, capsule, round box, cloud, a puff for thoughts, wave, rough, thorns, a spiky yell and scream, a dashed whisper, and more. Pick the style that matches how the line sounds and draw it in one go.
A Balloon Stamps pen drops a ready-made balloon. Tap to place one at the current brush size, or drag a box to set its exact proportions corner to corner. The catalog covers the common ones: oval, speech, whisper, bead, double oval, sketchy, rough, burst, scream, spiky, cloud, sparkle cloud, heart, stacked box, and a shadowed speech stamp.
A Tails pen points a balloon at its speaker. Start the stroke inside the balloon and pull toward the speaker; the tail joins the balloon with no seam, as one shape. There are solid tails in a few widths and shapes, and thought trails (dots, bubbles, a heart trail) for a thought balloon.
A Captions pen draws a narrative box with the same one-stroke gesture as a balloon: the drag sets the length, the brush size sets the height. The styles cover the usual narration looks: a plain caption box, a rounded one, a double-rule box, torn paper, a scroll, and a game dialog box.
A layout pen has two colours: the outline and the fill. When a layout pen is selected the Colour panel lets you set both, and offers a no fill option for a hollow shape that lets the art show through. The default fill is white, because a panel gutter and a speech balloon are usually white. The meld is the point of the whole set: a shape's outline draws behind what is already there and its fill draws on top, so overlapping balloons, a tail and its balloon, and crossing gutters all read as single clean shapes, whatever order you drew them in.
The layout pens are part of the shared brush library, so they are in both canvas editors: the page canvas and the animation canvas. You can also tune or build your own in Brush Studio, which has a section for this pen type where you set the kind, the nib or shape, the outline mode, and the proportions. One place they are deliberately not offered is the lightweight quick pad on strips.ink: it has no fill-colour control and no separate layer, which these pens need, so for layout pens use the full Creator Canvas.
Two systems make balloons, and they do different jobs. The layout pens here draw balloons and panels as artwork: painted shapes on a canvas layer, with no text in them. The Lettering stage is separate: it places balloons as typeset text objects you can re-edit, restyle and translate, rendered on their own layer for readers and print. Use the layout pens to draw the layout, and the Lettering stage to put the actual dialogue text in.
A normal brush lays ink along your stroke. A layout pen builds a whole filled shape from the stroke: an outline plus a fill. That is why one drag makes a complete balloon or a pair of panel borders, and why overlapping shapes meld into one clean outline instead of stacking.
Each shape draws its outline behind what is already on the layer and its fill on top. So two overlapping balloons look like one balloon with a single outline, a tail looks like part of its balloon, and crossing gutters make clean junctions, no matter which you drew first. It re-draws identically on reload and in print.
With the Balloons pen, the drag sets the length and direction and the brush size sets the height. With a Balloon Stamp, tap to drop one at the brush size, or drag a box to set exact proportions corner to corner. A near-level drag snaps the balloon flat.
They are left out of the lightweight quick pad on purpose: the pad has no fill-colour control and no separate layer, both of which these pens need. Open the piece in the full Creator Canvas and the layout pens are there.
Yes. Select the balloon pen and choose the no-fill option in the Colour panel. A hollow shape draws only its outline and lets the art underneath show through, which is useful for a balloon over a background you want visible.
No. The layout pens draw balloons as artwork, painted shapes with no text. The Lettering stage places balloons as typeset text objects you can re-edit and translate. Draw the layout with the pens, then put the dialogue in on the Lettering stage.
Gutters for panels, one stroke per balloon, a tail pulled from inside, a caption box for narration, all melding into clean shapes on their own layer. The layout pens get a page or a long vertical scroll blocked out fast, ready for the art and the lettering.
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