Comic Books for the Masses?
I like to draw and have often thought of creating a comic book. My character skills are still a bit underdeveloped and getting a consistent result from frame to frame takes a lot of time. Using Flash as a way to build reusable characters to pose and render out as static comics (or with some animation like moving clouds, exploding panels etc) has been on my mind. I imagine the standard library building techniques would be great for this and once built, could speed up the process - what do you think?
| Ryan Simmons at CartoonSolutions, who I interviewed last year, has created a series of Comic Book Products. These include comic book page templates, action sounds, word and thought balloons. All of these can be used with the background, prop and character packs.
All the products are pretty inexpensive so I decided to put together a quick page. Here is what I did in about one hour (click to see a larger version) …
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I actually think that it would be interesting if there was more ‘off the shelf’ artwork that could be used as is, or with minor modifications, to speed up production and reduce costs. This might allow small studios and independents to be able to compete.
I know that many shows have unique styles -and we really don’t want to lose that- but I think it is possible to create art that could work on several shows. Not sure if this sounds muddled but I think there is something there.
I know some of the purists will put their noses up at this. It’s human nature. When I programmed with Visual Basic people claimed it wasn’t ‘real programming unless it was C or assembly code. When I learned HTML people swore that your were a sissy if you didn’t create all your code by hand. Guess what? That’s a crock. Some of the reasons that Visual Basic,web editors, clip art, and even fast food are popular is because they can save time and are accessible to more people.
I’m guilty as well. I use to think that Poser art wasn’t ‘real art.’ It seemed that all I saw were lots of hormone driven males creating endless rendering of semi nude women in impossible poses. Yet, over time, many artists have embraced it and produced some truly amazing work.
Now where was I … sorry, I had a senior moment and went off on a rant. I’d love to know what you think about using Flash libraries as a way to create static comics and books. For the record I know that Ryan has these files available in Photoshop psd format as well.