The Editor

Speech Bubbles & FX

Place speech bubbles, action effects, ribbons, and decorative elements anywhere on your page. All overlays are positioned freely over the panel images and can be moved, resized, rotated, and styled.

Overlay types

There are four types of overlays, each with its own toolbar button:

• Speech Bubbles — 53 shapes including dialogue bubbles, thought clouds, shout spikes, and more. Most have a tail for pointing at a character.
• Ribbons — wide decorative elements used for titles, chapter headers, emphasis bars, or caption strips.
• FX — action and impact graphics: explosion bursts, speed lines, impact stars, splatter effects.
• Text — free text boxes for captions, narration, credits, or labels (covered in detail on the Text & Captions page).

Placing an overlay

1. Click the relevant icon in the left toolbar (bubble, ribbon, or FX)
2. A picker opens — scroll through the options and click the shape you want
3. The cursor changes to a crosshair — you're now in stamp mode
4. A ghost preview follows your mouse at 50% opacity so you can see exactly where it will land
5. Click anywhere on the canvas to place the overlay at that position
6. Press Escape to exit stamp mode without placing

You can place multiple overlays in a row — after placing one, you stay in stamp mode. Press Escape when you're done.

Selecting and moving

Click any overlay to select it. Selection shows corner resize handles and a rotation handle. While selected, the left properties panel opens with styling options.

• Move — click and drag the overlay body
• Resize — drag any corner handle (nw, ne, se, sw)
• Rotate — drag the rotation handle (appears above the selection box)
• Delete — press Delete or Backspace, or use the delete button in the properties panel

Styling overlays

When a bubble, ribbon, or FX element is selected, the left panel shows:

• Fill Color — the inside color of the bubble. Click a preset swatch or use the color picker. Default: white.
• Stroke Color — the outline/border color. Default: black. Set to match fill for a borderless look.
• Opacity — 0 (invisible) to 100% (fully opaque). Useful for subtle background overlays.
• Flip Horizontal — mirrors the overlay left-to-right. Essential for pointing a bubble tail toward characters on the other side.
• Flip Vertical — mirrors top-to-bottom. Useful for bottom-pointing tails or inverted effects.
• Rotation — numeric input for precise rotation in degrees, in addition to the drag handle.

Adding text to a bubble

Double-click a placed speech bubble to enter text edit mode. Type directly into the bubble. Press Escape or click outside to exit edit mode.

Text inside bubbles uses the bubble's default font settings. For precise control over font, size, alignment, and color — use a Text overlay instead, placed on top of the bubble.

Layer order

Overlays stack in the order they were placed — newer overlays appear on top. If you need to change the stacking order, delete and re-place the overlay at the desired point in time, or use the z-order controls in the properties panel if available.

Autosave

Every move, resize, rotate, style change, and text edit is saved automatically with a 500ms debounce. There is no manual save needed. When you switch pages, any pending saves are flushed immediately so nothing is lost.