“The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan

Comic strips have, from their inception, been defined by the paper they’re printed on.  From the size of the page, to the frequency of printing, to the type of ink, I would argue traditional comic strips have been defined by these constraints.  For example, it used to be that only Sunday comic strips were printed in color while the rest of the week remained black and white.  Only 14% of the time could a comic strip cartoonist illustrate the color palette of their worlds.  This meant that Jim Davis could only show Garfield’s orange fur once a week.  The rest of the time, the reader had to imagine it.

Artists are still using this line of thinking and most online comic strips today have not yet pushed the creative envelope.  They can only be distinguished from their print counterparts by a few key characteristics:

1. No limits on color means many online strips are vibrantly colorful.  Printing color on paper is expensive; newspapers have been slow to adopt it daily.  Printing color on a computer screen “costs” nothing more than black and white.
2. Limitless publishing means unlimited strips – The cost of hosting a website, and thus publishing to the world, is basically free.  This means that anyone with a computer, an internet connection, and a sprinkling of creativity can have their own strip (you don’t even have to know how to draw).  This has enabled an explosion in the number of comic strips.  No longer do you need a newspaper to have your own strip.  Just publish it yourself and let the world find you.
3. The strip is an engaged community – The social networking net has also caught comic strips.  Most online comic strips have a very strong social network functionality.  Users can comment about the strips, share them with others, and create conversations around them.

That is until we stumbled upon this strip called about DIGITAL COMICS by Balak01 on deviantART:

Screen Capture of About Digital Comics on Devian Art by Balak01

It’s a comic strip where you need to page through each panel.  Think of it as a slideshow where each screen is another panel of the strip.  So instead of consuming the whole strip at once, you must interact with it in order to advance it.

Why is this game changing?  Because it changes the experience of the web comic strip in the following ways:

1. You can’t see the whole strip at once – This gives the artist the element of surprise.
2. You can do pseudo animations – Through clicking the arrows the artist can reveal pieces of the picture.  When used correctly, it will  give an animation effect.
3. The canvas is limitless – Instead of being bound by the limitations of one web page, this “slideshow” style enables unlimited panels.

The about DIGITAL COMICS by Balak01 is especially clever because it does an excellent job of explaining how this format pushes the medium.

What is noteworthy is how its the limitations of the medium creates its unique characteristics.  For example, the fact that you must page through each frame or the fact that it doesn’t have sound, makes this distinct from animation.

While some may think these limitations make it less exciting than video, these very limitations are what gives it potential.  While we all love 30 frames per second experience of a movie, we also love seeing each moment in time captured in a single panel.

What do you think?

This is the second of three reviews where we discuss and demonstrate comic strip generator websites.  The first was about StripGenerator.com.

Pixton.com

Pixton recently generated some buzz at the South-By-Southwest interactive festival in Austin last month.

What makes Pixton really interesting is the amazing control you have over the characters.  Using the expression editor, for example, you can make your character smile, show fear, or express other emotions.  For people like me who can’t draw, this functionality is liberating.  I have made many stick figures in my life but have always fallen short of truly showing angst, hatred, or bliss.  With Pixton, I can do much more and all I have to do is select the words of the expression.  It’s very neat.

Similarly, there are editors for colors, clothing style, skin tone, girth, posture, and many more.  With Pixton, I don’t have to move lines or have any of the technical skills to make my character look fat.  I just do a few clicks and voila, my character is fat.

Although possibilities are limitless it comes at a significant cost of usability: there are so many controls, it was often hard to figure out how to use it.   The learning curve is much steeper than StripGenerator.com. Plan to spend some time with the interface to get used to it.

Another drawback to Pixton is that you are confined to create strips within their design parameters.  In other words, while you can make lots of changes to your characters and your strips, you cannot import your own designs.  Not only does it give all Pixton strips a very similar look and feel, it limits artists that want to push the envelope on the look and feel of their strips.

From a community perspective, however, Pixton excels. You can comment, vote, and share each strip.  This functionality seems pretty robust and up to par with other community systems (read: YouTube).

Overall, Pixton, is a great way for beginners to explore the comic strip creation world.  True artists might hit a wall with their creativity but for the rest of the stick figure drawing world, it gives us new levels of power and control.

Next Up: Toon Doo!

Here at Zingerding, we try to be at the forefront of the web comic strip world. That even means discovering sites that are doing things similar to what we’re trying to do.

This is first of three blog posts where we discuss the sites and demonstrate what they can do.

StripGenerator.com

StripGenerator.com encourages you to start creating your strip right from the home page.  A big orange button labeled “Create your strip!” greets you front and center.  Clicking on it brings you right to StripGenerator.com’s rudimentary, but very usable, strip creation tool.  You don’t even have to log in!

Using a simple drag/drop interface you construct your strip by placing the items on each panel, attaching some type of bubble and putting text in the bubble for the dialog.  The items include Humans, Beings (think animals, aliens, and other weirdness), Objects (TVs, baseball bats, etc.), Shapes, and Bubbles (a wide variety of text bubbles).  The simplicity of the interface encourages you to roll your sleeves up while the potpourri of items gives you a decent range of options.  This, in conjunction with the responsiveness of the interface, gets you going on creating the strip.

While the interface is inviting, you are limited to only objects in StripGenerator, a big drawback.  In other words, if you have your own that you’d like to feature, you can’t upload it into the system.  Not only would this dissuade the “power” artist to use the tool, it makes all of the strips look the same.  Could you imagine if your Sunday comics all looked the same?  While you still may laugh at the words, your eyes might be bored.

Another limitation is that strips can only be three panels or less.  While three panels is certainly common for comic strips, it can be severely limiting.  Would Bloom County have been served as well if there were only three panels to work from?  Probably not.  Creative freedom is key if a an artist wants express his/her ideas.  This includes the number of panels provided.

Promotion of the strips is a bit awkward through StripGenerator.com’s strip blogging.  From the home page, this is a separate link.  While it is definitely convenient to not need a login to to create strips, it also unnecessarily complicates the site if you want to share your strip with the world and engage in a conversation.  While this may be good for the people who prefer anonymity if they want to make a point (especially if it’s controversial), it isn’t for those that want to engage in a conversation.  The very nature of the Internet is a vehicle for conversation: the unexpected give-and-take between content creator and consumer.  This lack of tight integration chokes the flow of that conversaion.

All in all, StripGenerator.com is very good site for those that want to get their Comic Strip chops.  It is so easy to use that it practically invites everyone to create their own strips.  Still, after you get your initial chops, you may find its limitations too constraining.

Next Week: A step up with Pixton.com!

One of the things we are working hard on here in the Zingerworks is licensing of works. One of the main goals is to enable our artists to both share their work with the world and enable them and Zingerding to make money from it. It’s one of the more intellectually fascinating things we are grappling with and we have been doing a lot of research on the subject.

One of the interesting things we’ve uncovered is that in today’s digital media world, copyright law falls a bit short. Copyright law basically says that you can’t do anything with your works unless you have expressed written consent of the copyright holder (the creator of the works). That means that even if you want people to freely share it with the world, they can’t unless you tell them to. The process, by design, is really cumbersome and painful and prevents artists for enabling others to share or even alter their works legally even if the artist wants it.

Creative Commons is the antidote to this ambiguity. Set up by Larry Lessig, a Stanford Law professor and political activist, Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides more options that many modern artists need. Consider remixed songs: altered songs that can provide a new dimension on its original and thus increase the reach of the original artist. Dido, for example, was made into a multiplatinum start only after Eminem used her lick in Stan. While I’m not privy to the actual dealings, I can guarantee that there had to be significant negotiations to enable Eminmen to use Dido’s work. Creative Commons cuts through this “red tape” and provide artists express rights to make new works of the original without needing negotiations.

Creative Commons license are very useful but are not easy to understand.

Fortunately, Creative Commons has recognized this problem and has created comics to help people navigate the licenses. You can check it out here: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works While the comic is a bit cheesy and not the best drawn, it does summarize the whole concept well.

What does this mean for Zingerding? Who knows. Still, it’s interesting to note as we start to dive into the complexities of setting ourselves up.

We’ve all heard about how the Presidential candidates have earned millions of dollars through their websites. Some have even credited Barack Obama’s successful candidacy for the Democratic nomination on it.

But a little State Representative election in Kansas is attracting attention for the Web comic strip that has raised nearly $100,000 for an unlikely candidate.

Sean Tevis, a web designer, created a “stick-figure” comic strip to virally spread the word about his candidacy and the challenges that he is having being Democrat in a very Republican region of the state. Through his inventive strip where he explains how if 3000 people gave him a little over $8 a piece, he could earn the minimun $26,000 a consultant told him he needed to successfully run a campaign against the Republican incumbant. His politically charged comic strip, labeled 3000, he made the callout to the web to get him the money he needs.

The web replied with over 3 times that amount, $96,000, with nearly most of the money coming from outside the state.

Talk about the power of the pen (or strip)!

NPR’s Morning Edition ran this story today.

Any great comic strip cartoonist will agree that “good writing can save poor art – but good art cannot help bad writing“. This is true and you can’t get around it.

Many cartoonists become cartoonists because they love to draw. The instant appeal of comic strips is the art. As a visual medium, it’s the first thing you notice. But the writing is what makes or breaks a strip. You have to think of yourself as a writer before an illustrator.

Do you tell people you “write” comic strips or “draw” comic strips?

The two basic types of humor found in comic strips are situational and character-driven. What does that mean? Simply put, situational humor comes from what happens in a comic strip. Character-driven humor relates to how the characters react to what happens.

Situational is where it starts. This is the basic premise of any comic strip, the core of the cartoonist’s idea. The zinger in the last panel is based on what happens before it. A situational zinger takes the standard form of any joke – the setup, then the punchline. The focus is on what happens or what is said. This is the most common type of humor in comics.

Character-driven zingers are more complex, taking the humor to the next level. This is only possible with well-developed characters. Situations becomes secondary. The cartoonist can place the characters in almost any situation and know how they will act and the humor comes from those actions. This doesn’t make writing a funny zinger any easier but the humor is derived from a more personal experience, for the cartoonist and the reader. The best and most successful comic strips reach this level of humor.

This isn’t to say situational zingers are bad humor. Sometimes they are brilliantly hilarious! They work best in strips without reoccurring characters or at least ones that have that gag-a-day mentality. Where situational zingers falter is when the strip is character-driven but the humor is not. This unfortunately is common as it is more difficult (or just more rare) to write good character-driven zingers than think up funny situations. How do you spot this? When you read a comic strip, ask yourself whether it matters which character did or said what. Or if it matters whether it took those specific characters to tell that specific joke. If it doesn’t matter, the humor is situational. I think most strips strive to achieve character-driven humor but end up situational. The result is often a flat zinger.

Try asking yourself these questions when you next read the funny pages. Are they situational or character-driven? Which ones make you laugh most?

I recently posted about getting to know characters in comic strips. What happens when you know them is that you can predict how they will react in certain situations, especially the ones they’ve been in before. Like when Calvin steps up to the door and announces that he is home while Hobbes is poised on the inside ready to pounce. The situation is predictable and yet it’s repeatedly funny! Or at least it’s supposed to be.

This predictability is quite an interesting dichotomy. One thing about humor in general is the use of the element of surprise which is what happens or is said in the last panel of a comic strip. That’s the way it works. There’s always a punchline, a zinger at the end. But the more you know a character, the more you understand the nature of the final panel even before you get there. Yet it’s funnier that way. Why? Perhaps it reminds you of the first time you laughed at that similar situation. I think it’s like listening to a friend tell a funny story that you’ve heard several times, and maybe the details have changed a little over numerous tellings, but you still like the outcome nonetheless. It’s not only the zinger that tickles your ribs, rather you find humor in watching a friend go through the motions for a laugh. Well known characters do that in comic strips.

Have you ever started laughing before you got to the last panel?