About
Panel is built to expand the comics form.
Comics are as diverse as the people who create and read them. Panel embraces different voices, styles, and forms of storytelling, opening new possibilities through motion, sound, and interactivity. It connects creation, publishing, and community.
Technology and AI are changing how stories are made. Panel exists to bring structure to that change and to create new ways to make, publish, and read comics.
Creators & readers
A shared love of comics. A closer connection.
Panel brings creators, publishers, and readers together around stories they care about. It’s a space to discover new voices, follow their work, and support the people behind it.
We’re building Panel around direct relationships with readers that can continue beyond the platform—helping creators publish, earn, and grow.
AI & technology
Technology in service of creators.
Making comics takes time, skill, and dedication. We see AI as a way to reduce routine tasks and unnecessary work, giving creators more time and energy for their stories. Our priority is easing that workload, rather than generating artwork. Its role is to support the process, while creative decisions stay with creators.
*We won’t use creators’ work to train AI models
The path to Panel
Non-Stop Bar
2014
The path to Panel began when Ondřej Novák met illustrator Vojtěch Šeda at art school in 2003. Their collaboration led to two interactive comic games.
The Non-stop Bar was an early experiment in treating the comic panel as an interactive space—expanding what comics could do while preserving the reader’s pace and the language of comics. That same question continues to guide Panel today.
Recognition & Press
2015 Webby Awards nominee
CANAL+
The FWA
Communication Arts
Creative Bloq
IdN
The Curious life
of Theodor Hoffmann
comic game DEMO
2019
A point-and-click comic demo combining hand-drawn comics with animation, sound, chance, and reader interaction. The story follows a boy through two intertwined worlds, where reality and dreams, people and art begin to overlap.
Credits
Producer and game design:
Illustration and music:
Development:
Sound:
Animation:
Ondřej Novák
Vojtěch Šeda
Pavel Šimek
Jan Richtr
Viktor Svoboda
Martina Chwistkowá
Sergey Gordeev
Founder
Writer, filmmaker, designer.
After studying illustration, Ondřej began working across comics, and film. He founded Optogram, a Prague-based film production company.
His short film Reconstruction premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, was nominated for a European Film Award, and screened at more than 20 festivals. His feature Recognition is in development and was selected for Torino ScriptLab and EAVE Producers Workshop. He was a resident at the Jan Michalski Foundation.
