Pow! Thwack! Klonk! How you can be a comic hero.
Have you ever secretly wanted to be a comic hero? Many of us grew up on reading the famous comics such as Peanuts, Dilbert & Calvin and Hobbes. You can see these plus many more on comics.com if you are up for a flashback to your child or maybe young adulthood. You can also subscribe to Marvel Digital Comics, however, money calls for true and crazy fans. If you Google for comics – it is overwhelming how many suggested links you will get to people’s comic creations.
Yet, many of us are quirky, witty and creative. There is a comic hero that lies deep inside most of us that is just waiting to be developed. Maybe it’s our humanly self-righteousness that makes us prefer to tout our own work before others. Whatever it is, we want to make people laugh, we want tools that help us waste our time and we want to star in our own comic for once!
Recently released Bitstrip, an online comic showcase, seems to be taking quite a center stage amongst users. It contains a nice application for building characters, as you can see the one I created below. It doesn’t look like me at all so the app isn’t exact but that’s ok.
Bitstrip is designed with the social networker in mind. The main page features cool characters, top strips, recently discussed strips and allows you to make friends and build your own comic community. Mashable recently talked about seeing the Bitstrip group at SXSW – check it out.
I started searching for other comic making sites and there are several others that are equally as awesome. The first one I clicked on, Toonlet, had their entire beginning overview and instructions in a comic and I found myself reading the whole darn thing. It was addicting and fun. And, yes, I am going to start making some comics – why not? Toonlet is currently in beta form and offers several options to make your characters unique.
This is YeahMan – I made him on Toonlet.
Pixton is another interesting comic site that is relatively interesting. Many of the comics that I have read on the site so far have been funny. I prefer a bit more flexibility when choosing characters because sometimes the comics tend to look similar at first glance. Pixton appeals to many individuals because if you can’t draw anything but stick figures, this is the best way to transfer your paper sketches into electronic copies.
Comiq is one site that I found to be very cool. The site revealed itself as a way to use ‘comics as a communication tool.’ I think this can be beneficial to bloggers when trying to verbally illustrate a tool, site or application. Comiq allows you to take any photo and add words to better describe or tell your point. I often use Picnik for this, which I still love and just released a completely free version, but Comiq focuses strictly on this tool and does a good job.
Basically, this comic world is really gaining momentum. I never read comics and I enjoy these sites. With as many unearthly creative artists in this world, I don’t think we’ve truly seen anything yet. I look forward to seeing what users create on these various sites and I think there are many hours of laughter to come as well.
If you are a comic book fan, this is an excellent YouTube video
‘Heroes? Countdown? The WORST of 2007 in Comics “
