Creating Mobile Comics

This is a very brief overview of the ROK Comics platform which enables creators to make comics for mobile or for people to just have fun sending captioned images to their friends. The service is managed by downthetubes owner John Freeman

What is ROK Comics?

ROK Comics gives comic makers the means to create or reformat comics for a wide range of mobile devices. You can simply create comics for fun (Freefall) or professionally (Pro). Freefall strips can be read in full on the ROK Comics web site and you can embed the flash player into web sites and many blogs (and MySpace pages) so people can read them online.

You can also send the comics to your friends' mobiles. At present, professionally published strips are not always free to view online (although many creators simply set them to "free to view") but they can all be read on your mobile if you subscribe to the ROK Comics service, for a small monthly fee. These strips can also be embedded on web sites and many blog sites and MySpace pages.

What Sort of Comics Are On ROK Comics?

ROK Comics features the self-published work of many comics creators including Josh Alves, Vicente Aviles, David Fletcher, Ian Gibson, Rich Diesslin, David Hailwood, David Lloyd, Nick Miller, Keith Page, Kev Sutherland and others alongside a range of licensed content, including several British newspaper strips. Our partners include Egmont, The Daily Express (for Jeff Hawke and Beau Peep) and the Mirror (Andy Capp, Garth, Mandy and others).

In addition to the main web and wap sites, the service also has partner services operating in China, Pakistan, South Africa and elsewhere, as well as providing "white label" comics services to companies to give them what's known as "sticky content" to use on their web sites. (For example, in 2007 ROK created a custom-built comic creator for UK TV channel ITV, to help promote their TV show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here).

Who's Going To Read Comics on Mobile?

The mobile comics market is growing and ROK Comics' parent company ROK Entertainment's unique relationships with key telecoms and handset manufacturers worldwide means it is well placed to expand demand for the medium. Mobile comics have rapidly gained huge audiences in countries such as Japan and ROK Comics had considerable success with material in translation for China, with 30,000 downloads in one weekend. When you hear Marvel Comic executives talking up the idea, you know there's mileage in it in the US and Europe, too.

I'm A Comic Creator - Will it Get Me Any New Readers?

The team at ROK Comics believe mobile comic readers are more likely to be new readers of comics, as well as existing comic fans. "We see comics on mobile as a powerful way to promote a comic creator's characters and strips," says ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman, "and we've tried to make the comic creation process as simple as possible with an easy upload tool (www.rokcomics.com/comiccreator.php) and, once you've created your first "Pro" strip, minimal admin to add more."

For more on what creating comics on mobile involves, check out ROK Comics' brief introduction to the process.

"We think mobile comics have the potential to reach a huge audience," feels John, "beyond the comics community and in places where not only print, but PCs are few and far between.

Is There Any Money In It?

ROK Comics offers a 50 per cent revenue share of net revenues (with income generated from WAP site page views and other revenue streams) and, should a foreign partner be interested in featuring a strip on their services, they are currently covering the cost of translation of strips (several strips such as David Fektcher's Crumb and Mike Colbeert's Crazy Mary have been translated into Chinese).

Full access to sales statistics for professional creators is provided. When it comes to licensing content, ROK usually looks to getting a world but not exclusive license. Their professional contract can be downloaded from here (PDF).

How Much Work Is Involved?

Creating comics for mobile does require some reformatting. ROK Comics strips can run to 12 frames (it's worth making at using one frame to plug your own web site). Panels have to be uploaded at 480 x 480 pixels and they recommend using a lettering size of 18 point. There's a guide to using our Comic Creator tool here (PDF)

"Our comic creator is easy to use, so creators can upload their own strips at their convenience, at a pace of their choosing," says John.

So How Do I make a Comic for Mobile Phones?

Here's a very quick overiew of the ROK Comics creation process, to create comics for display on mobile phones. For detailed information on creating strips using the ROK Comic Creator, download the Creator Guide Help File (PDF format)

When you use our Comic Creator and want to use your own art, you need to upload individual panels as .jpgs at the maximum size of 480 x 480 pixels. They can be colour or black and white. We re-size your strip to deliver to mobile phones of almost every kind available.

Use only lower case file names and do not include _underscores_ or additional stops.inthe.jpg name - these may not upload. Also note that if you are uploading a number of strips at once, make sure all file names are different, otherwise the system will overwrite files with the same file name.jpg

Lettering

Work IN PROPORTION to 480 x 480 pixels for art size. Lettering should be no less than 18 point to ensure legibility on mobile screens. Most of the uploaded strips on this site were created at 480 x 480 size at 72 dpi (dots per inch), and use 18pt lettering.

A good test to see if a strip will be legible on a mobile screen is to reduce the frame size to 240 x 240 pixels and see if you can still read it on your computer screen (The panel on the right from the strip Ex Astris is at 240 pixel size: and below, how the strip looks using the ROK Comics embed tool).

Although creating a strip for a mobile screen size limits the word count in balloons, you can always repeat a frame, but change the lettering.

Use a font that is legible at a small size: there are plenty of comic fonts available from sites such as www.comicbookfonts.com. Please check with such sites for licensing terms regarding the use of fonts for commercial publication.

Frames

The number of frames you can have in an MMS-delivered strip varies slightly depending on whether you create colour or black and white strips. ROK Comic only allows 12 frames per strip to enable MMS delivery.

Rok Comics Contracts and Guides

All these guides are PDF format. You need Adobe's free Acrobat Reader to read them, available from www.adobe.com

Creator Guide

This is the ROK Comic Official Guide on how to use the ROK Comic Creator Toools

ROK Comics Terms and Condtions

ROK Comics general Terms and Conditions document

Freefall Comics: Contract

This outlines the terms and conditions for the use of Freefall Comics

ROK Comics Professional Contract

This outlines the terms and conditions for the use of ROK Comics to create professional comics which could earn you money per download to mobile