OK, I tend to hate digital comics, because they're usually either half-assed animation or basically scrunched-up PDF versions of print comics, but this was admittedly a really cool way to use the format.
Really, the last thing I want anyone to do is to figure out how to make digital comics the preferred format, but... this was pretty damn inventive.
I already talked about this a little in a thread on Bendis's board, so I'm just gonna re-post here:
That was pretty cleverly done, but I still don't find these things appealing to my sensibilities. I suppose I'm a fan of the strictures of mediums, and while I see the appeal of blending the worlds of say, comics and animation, as a novelty - like watching an experimental film of some sort - I don't have any particular interest in it becoming mainstream. I like the art of full-page layouts too much, and the ability to instantly jump back a few pages without having to tap-tap-tap a button to get there. Even though the creator correctly points out that the reader does control the advancement of the strip, the reader IS still giving up control. Also, it seems to me that reading a graphic-novel-length story in that format would be a finger-exhausting tapping exercise.
For shorter stories meant to particularly focus on motion and immediacy, though...maybe? Even then it seems a lot of the guys storytelling techniques were just standard manga techniques with finger-taps to jump between panels.
Another guy wrote somewhere, "I just feel like if publishers don't embrace all the digital stuff and make it a focus (although not necessarily their main focus) then they'll die."
Which led me to post...
I wonder about this. I'll admit I'm something of a technophobe, at least compared to my friends, but I look at how the digital world is changing, say, television and film, and there's absolutely changes at work (digital film, TiVo, etc), but the medium itself isn't much changing. TV and movies still look like they did in the 1950s - just clearer and more colorful. The correlation for comics would probably be the use of computer lettering and coloring.
But I'm more wary of hybridizing the medium, which almost always feels like bells and whistles to me, like adding a soundtrack to a book. It's kind of an interesting notion, but in a way I feel it cheapens the core of the medium. Does reading really need to become...flashier?
Which is kind of an unfair way to put it, I realize. Experimentation in any form of storytelling is always a vital thing. I guess it's just that that's all I see it as: experimentation.
It is interesting, though, to see how uniformly positive the response was to the piece in the thread. That DOES suggest a future for such hybrids, but will they only work if they're as cleverly done as this one?
OK, I tend to hate digital comics, because they're usually either half-assed animation or basically scrunched-up PDF versions of print comics, but this was admittedly a really cool way to use the format.
ReplyDeleteReally, the last thing I want anyone to do is to figure out how to make digital comics the preferred format, but... this was pretty damn inventive.
I already talked about this a little in a thread on Bendis's board, so I'm just gonna re-post here:
ReplyDeleteThat was pretty cleverly done, but I still don't find these things appealing to my sensibilities. I suppose I'm a fan of the strictures of mediums, and while I see the appeal of blending the worlds of say, comics and animation, as a novelty - like watching an experimental film of some sort - I don't have any particular interest in it becoming mainstream. I like the art of full-page layouts too much, and the ability to instantly jump back a few pages without having to tap-tap-tap a button to get there. Even though the creator correctly points out that the reader does control the advancement of the strip, the reader IS still giving up control. Also, it seems to me that reading a graphic-novel-length story in that format would be a finger-exhausting tapping exercise.
For shorter stories meant to particularly focus on motion and immediacy, though...maybe? Even then it seems a lot of the guys storytelling techniques were just standard manga techniques with finger-taps to jump between panels.
Another guy wrote somewhere, "I just feel like if publishers don't embrace all the digital stuff and make it a focus (although not necessarily their main focus) then they'll die."
Which led me to post...
I wonder about this. I'll admit I'm something of a technophobe, at least compared to my friends, but I look at how the digital world is changing, say, television and film, and there's absolutely changes at work (digital film, TiVo, etc), but the medium itself isn't much changing. TV and movies still look like they did in the 1950s - just clearer and more colorful. The correlation for comics would probably be the use of computer lettering and coloring.
But I'm more wary of hybridizing the medium, which almost always feels like bells and whistles to me, like adding a soundtrack to a book. It's kind of an interesting notion, but in a way I feel it cheapens the core of the medium. Does reading really need to become...flashier?
Which is kind of an unfair way to put it, I realize. Experimentation in any form of storytelling is always a vital thing. I guess it's just that that's all I see it as: experimentation.
It is interesting, though, to see how uniformly positive the response was to the piece in the thread. That DOES suggest a future for such hybrids, but will they only work if they're as cleverly done as this one?