Online Comic Creator Tools
• See also: Online Strips
• See also Creating
WebComics - A Brief Guide
Comic Creator Tools
Comics creator tools comprise software and online tools for the purpose of
creating cartoons or comic strips, either for print or online or mobile phone
publication.
Several companies have developed creator tools, while some online companies
and TV channels use them as "value added" services to enhance their
web sites. Many online services employ Flash to but some use Scalable Vector
Graphics.
Desktop Comic Creator Software
Comic Book Creator
Link: www.mycomicbookcreator.com
Windows Software
Comic Book Creator 2.0 is a toolkit for self-publishing, whether you're
making photo comics or classic comics from your scanned artwork or video game
screenshots. The company has created various editions themed to TokyoPop,
Marvel and other characters.
"Comic Book Creator has become the software of choice for
Social Network and user generated content creation and personal media syndication,
according to Planetwide Media, publisher and developer of this creative software.
Comic Book Creator is a media creation tool that allows you to easily create
your own stories utilizing digital photos, music, sound effects, videos and
animation. Your creations can printed in book form or published at your own
blog or at www.HyperComics.com.
The retail version is available for $49.99 US.
Video gamers are encouraged to create a professional-looking, high-quality
comic book to immortalize an important battle scene or dramatic encounter within
their game play. Comic Book Creator lets gamers add in text bubbles to their
digital screenshots, as well as classic comic book features like powerful action-word
graphics that emphasize their game play.
To create a comic, you need to select
from one of the 500 unique layout and design templates, drop in your captured
digital images and insert text bubbles, icons, captions and clipart to bring
to life whatever story you can imagine. Comic Book Creator will work with any
JPEG, BMP, or GIF digital image and will allow users to share their masterpiece
with friends.
Various 'skins' have been created in partnership with gaming companies and publishers
such as Marvel.
Comic Life
Link: plasq.com/comiclife
An award-winning bit of Mac software that lets you create astounding comics,
beautiful picture albums, how-tos... and more. The easy-to-use interface integrates
seamlessly with your photo collection or iSight. Drag in your pictures, captions,
Lettering text ('ka-blam!') and speech balloons and your work is done!
Doozla
Link: http://plasq.com/
Doozla is the easy-to-use drawing application for children - it is what your
kids have always wanted. It's the creation of plasq, who also make Comic Life.
Online Comic Creators
Note: Most of these are flash-based, like ROK Comics
• The Beano
UK publisher DC Thomson's flagship humour weekly provides the tools
to create comics based on Beano characters. This is a nicely designed
comic creator -- probably one of the best from the comics that provide one --
although lettering is a bit fiddly - you choose whole words to add to balloons
rather than add your own lettering. Everthing including lettering, is treated
as an object, which means you can rotate, scale all items etc. Like many online
creators from commercial companies, there's no option to save - just print out
your comic.
• Blue Peter
A comic maker from the BBC. The Blue Peter engine is accompanied by
a talk through from presenter Gethin, and you have to create the strip from
the ground up, designing characters (if you want) then you can create a simple
three frame strip which prints out on A4. There's no option to save it and
the interface uses the same format as the Beano's, clicking and dragging key
words to the stage. The stage is a bit small but it's quite a nice design and
works quite well.
• Boy's Life
This utilises the same style of moving and deleting objects as the Kabam! site
(see below) - you click the command (eg Move) first, then the object or character
you want to alter. There's no facility to save just print, but this service
on the US Boy Scout site does let you click and view the three frame strip
as one frame, so you can see how it's shaping up and how each panel looks compared
with the others.
• Captain Underpants
Found on the Scholastic Canada web site. It's a very simple comic maker providing
fixed phrases and a limited number of characters, props etc to choose from,
and not clever enough to realize you've missed out a frame when you create
a story.
• Comic Sketch
This SVG-based comic creator enables to you create freehand comics and turn them
into a strip. The creators are working on a
new comic strip editor (beta at
) for Comics Sketch (that
will also be the next core of their calligraphic widget InputDraw).
The builders say the main goal of the new version is to empower artists to
be able to create real professional comics on the site and allow them to reuse
parts/characters/objects of their comics in new ones. It will be SVG standard
at its core, aiming for a subset of SVG that is close to the one supported
by Firefox or Safari.. or even better and less buggier. This new version is
being developed using ActionScript and Flex.
• Comiqs.com
A new website that allows people to create comic strips based on their own
photos. The Flex based editor allows users to easily add captions and text
to photos that they upload. It is also possible to link it to your Flickr account.
There's also a community based around these comic strips - with lists of top
rated and top viewed comic strips that have been created.
You can dive straight in and create a comic based on the photos already uploaded
or add your own, without having to sign up. The interface is still in beta
and is not instinctive and a bit fiddly, in my view, but there's some interesting
implementation of "Web 2.0" themes.
• Disney's Comic Creator
You need to be a member Disney's Club Blast to use this tool.
• Doctor
Who
The official BBC Doctor Who web site offers a moderated comic
maker enabling users to create comic strips based on Doctor Who using
monsters and characters from the TV drama. It's over complicated and the flash
is very slow to load, and moderation takes at least three days. Not very impressed.
• Garfield Comic Creator
Surprisngly, this is also hidden away on the National
Heart and Lung Institute web site (well, I say hidden, but it's actually
got a better search position than the official
Garfield web site location!). It's exactly the same engine
as the Scouts and the Kabam!
Disease control comic maker - print only with no option to save.
• Gnomz
Multi-lingual comic tool requiring sign up before you can create comics based
on pixel art designs. The service appears to have some 85.000 members and has
been running since at least 2005.
• ITV's I'm A Celebrity Get
Me Out of Here
Flash-based comics creator using celebrity images and scenery from the ITV
reality show. The design is similar to the service offered by ROK Comics, who
built the tools in 2007 for the show's sixth series as part of a number of
mobile promotions. You can either view the completed strip in full or have
it delivered to your mobile. There is a charge for mobile delivery.
• Kabam! Comic Creator
Part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a bit limited
but one nice touch is limiting the number of words per balloon, so it can't
get too big - also, lettering is automatically centred within the balloon.
This avoids the problem of over large balloons some comic creators have where
the text is embedded into the balloon object, like ROK Comics.
• Make Beliefs Comic
Simple web site utilising comic characters and props to create three panel
strips. The creation of Bill Zimmerman with art by Tom Bloom.
• MashOn
MashON is
an interactive online software platform that lets anyone create their own personalized
digital comic books or graphic novels. These digital comic creations can be
created and shared online by emailing, posting them to your favorite blog or
social network, and posting them to the MashON's gallery.
The company works in partnership with Platinum
Studios, owners of the Drunk
Duck web comics site, offering DrunkDuck.com fans the abilitycreate their own
comic stories using their favourite DrunkDuck comic characters. MashON, a next
generation online software application company announced today that
Platinum
Studios controls an international
library of more than 5,600 comic book characters and signed an agreement to
license the MashON online platform in July 2008.
"MashON's Comic Book Creator platform is ideally suited for the comic
book fans on DrunkDuck.com to create their own user-generated comics," said
Philippe Benoliel, CEO of MashON. "We look forward to seeing what kind
of digital comic books DrunkDuck.com members come up with."
"By Platinum Studios' licensing the MashON platform for DrunkDuck.com,
the MashON Comic Book Creator now interactively takes our non-comic creator
users to the next level," said Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Chairman and
CEO of Platinum Studios.
"We have always wanted to allow DrunkDuck.com users to be able to be
interactive with their favorite characters and create their own comics, and
now they can," said Brian Altounian, President and COO of Platinum Studios.
• Myths and Legends Story Creator
Resource for schools utilising imagery based on British myths and legends.
• Patent Place
Very slick Flash site based on Patent's Place the everyday story of Biotech
folk.
• Read • Write • Think
ReadWriteThink is a partnership between the International Reading Association
(IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon
Foundation.
The Comic Creator is designed to be used in a variety of contexts (prewriting,
pre- and postreading activities, response to literature, and so on). The organizers
focus on the key elements of comic strips by allowing students to choose backgrounds,
characters, and props, as well as to compose related dialogue. This tool can
be used by students from kindergarten through high school, for purposes ranging
from learning to write dialogue to an in-depth study of a formerly neglected
genre. Once you have finished your comic you can print it out.
• ROK
Comics
Edited by downthetubes' John Freeman
This service lets users upload their own comic frames and photographs to make comic strips and provides speech ballons special effects and a number of characters and 'props' with which to create comic strips. Professionally-published strips earn revenue share but users can also publish strips for free and have access to embed code which can be inserted in web sites and some blog services. Sign up is required before you create a comic and the professional service is moderated.
• Strip Creator
Stripcreator is a website that allows users to create and
save their own comic strips. It officially went in January 2001. The site is
donor supported: donors get to use more features than casual visitors. Registration
is required. Comics can be read on the site or in the site's Read My Damn Comics
forum (http://www.stripcreator.com/forums/listthreads.php?forum=14), where
the regulars are most receptive to people who are polite and funny.
Stripcreator works best in Internet Explorer 6. It also works in Firefox, though
there are some glitches. "I've heard that it works in Opera and Safari
as well," says creator Brad, "which would just be luck."
• Strip Generator
Hailing from Slovenia, set the benchmark for Flash-based comic creator tools
and is now on a 1.3 model. The creators of Strip Generator created a simple
to use flash based application utilising online charcaters, props and balloons.
The service has gone through several upgrades, and has been used in some very
successful projects, like for BAR TV reality show and for using it for political
online cartoon creation for a US newspaper.
Stripgenerator is free of charge project created to embrace the internet blogging
and strip creation culture, helping the people with no drawing abilities to
express their opinions via strips.
• Telltale: Sam and Max Comic Creator
Now you can give everyone's favourite canine shamus and hyperkinetic rabbity-thing
the power of speech from the comfort of your own home or office. It's easy!
Just drag the panels you want into the empty strip. Then type funny things
in the speech bubbles. (If you leave a bubble empty, it will disappear when
you submit your comic.) Site claims copyright on all strips created.
• ToonDo
ToonDoo offers more robust features with a twist of social networking sites
similar to myspace or friendster. It offers a huge range of cartoon stock graphics
and emotion icons for you to add with your photos or you can just use the characters
to make up your own. You can get yor comics reviewed by other members, embed
the cartoons on your website, and even add the toons to your favourite bookmarks
sites.
ToonDoo offers nearly 400 characters, props and backgrounds and the ability
to create one, two or three-panel comic strips. You can also customize characters,
props and speech bubbles and upload pictures and photographs, then share, mail,
recommend and bookmark your comic strips.
The editor interface does not have the ability to tune digital photos and apply
filters.
Registration is required to use the comic creator which is Flash based.
• Toonlet
Another relatively new service. Rather than focus on photos like comiqs for example,
toonlet puts the focus on character creation, and features a powerful avatar
tool so you can make characters that look authentically hand-drawn. Tour at:
http://www.toonlet.com/tour.
They're looking for creators to contribute "art
packs" based on downloadable
templates.
• TOXIC
UK publisher TOXIC has a "Monster Maker" that is part of its online
comics suite for members of the TOXIC club. While not strictly a comic tool
the elements are certainly comics-inspired.
