ComicLife

Thanks for the all the kind Aurora congrats after yesterday's post, everyone!

As I also mentioned yesterday, I have a new MacBook. Jeff spent most of yesterday transferring some essential stuff over from my old laptop, like Microsoft Word, Textmate, AppleMail, Safari and Corel Painter. Everything seems to be running smoothly so far, and Eliza is definitely faster than my old machine.

One app that came with the machine is ComicLife. You can see one of my first experiments below. It's a fun program, but seems to be mainly geared toward those who want to import photos than cartoonists.

Click on the image below to see a bigger version:



You can import images into each individual panel, but you can't use ComicLife to modify an image that isn't in Comic Life format. I created the comic above by creating the layout, adding word bubbles, saving a copy of the layout and exporting it into JPEG format, opening the JPEG file in Corel Painter, adding the drawings of me typing and talking, using the Lasso tool in Painter to copy the drawing in each frame and pasting it back into the appropriate panel in ComicLife, modifying the image in ComicLife until it was the right size and location (you can't do much other image modification in CL), importing the photo of Jodi, Sibylle and Allison, editing the word and thought balloons until they were properly placed, then exporting the whole file as JPEG. At that point, I could probably have opened the file up again in Corel Painter and added finishing touches, like colouring in backgrounds, etc.

Sounds like a major pain, but even as I was going through the process, I realized that it would get easier with practice and experimentation with shortcuts. I'm going to be experimenting more with ComicLife, and will probably use it for the occasional My Life In A Nutshell and Inkygirl comics. Here is my PROS and CONS list so far:

Pros and Cons of Using ComicLife

(I've only played around with CL for a few hours so far, so this list may change)

PROS:

- If you use one of CL's pre-made layouts, it's dead easy to set up panels.

- Lots of choice of template layouts.

- Each layout can be modified and saved.

- You can save styles.

- Easy to set up word bubbles, thought bubbles and narrative blurbs in comic-style with a straightforward drag-and-drop process.

- Easy to do a quick comic, especially using photos.

CONS:

- Word bubble set-up is limited in flexibility. As far as I can tell, you can't join up bubbles, something I find very handy when there are multiple exchanges within a single panel.

- You can't import multi-panel non-CL files. It would have been handy to be able to create the artwork and layout in Corel Painter, then have the option of adding word bubbles or other elements in Comic Life.

- No image editing in CL except for re-sizing and placement.

- It seems to me that you'd have basically the same style as others who use ComicLife. I haven't played around enough with the program to say this with confidence yet, however, so reserve judgement for now.

Jeff says he'll divorce me if I start up another comic. :-D

FYI, my comics so far include: Will Write For Chocolate, Inkygirl, My Life In A Nutshell, and Waiting For Frodo (now complete).

Computer games, Photo Booth and songs about chocolate

My new MacBook also came with some games and Photo Booth. The latter seems to be pretty popular these days, judging from the number of distorted face photos I've been seeing everywhere online these days. Reminds me of the days drop shadows were all the rage (including one incarnation of Inkspot, of course). Hey, and I have a built-in camera! Not sure if I'll be using it much...I used to have a Webcam back in my Inkspot days but y'know, I'm not so keen to have strangers peering at me while I'm working anymore.

I'll probably try out the games but end up not playing them. It's not that I don't like computer games...I just tend to get WAY too obsessed with the ones I like, pouring many hours of my life into them. The last time this happened was with SimPeople. Other of my game obsessions include SimCity, Civilization, Myst, and Rogue (the ascii version). If my tendons were 100%, I'd probably indulge in the occasional game obsession. Now, however, I'd rather spend the "arm points" doing writing, illustrating and doing music.

Speaking of music, I wrote some more of my multi-voice chocolate song for GAfilk on the weekend, scoring everything out on manuscript paper. It's not like anything else I've written (well, except that it's yet another FOOD SONG, of course :-), and I'm having some fun with it.



Livejournal comments