Comic Life

Comic Life has been around on Macs for a while but the Windows copy arrived later. We’ve been trying it out for several months and it’s a lot of fun. Which is more than I can say for any other page layout or DTP software I’ve used.

The idea is to let anyone use their own digital images to quickly make comics and comic strips. The steps are very straightforward:

Choose from a stack of ready-made comic templates
Drag your images into the waiting frames
Select preset comic effect filters
Drag in ready-made speech ballons and pull-outs
Add text to the balloons
Click to publish to print or net

The software is very easy to use and agile within Windows. It is not a ‘wizards’ system like MS Publisher. Instead the remarkably slick user controls/ interface offer a Photoshop like work flow without any complexity. We put together half-a-dozen pages including over 20 Mbs of filtered photos and everything worked fine. Systems with less memory may struggle to cope with loads of pages and pictures. The same happens with Photoshop. The best bet is to save often.

Comic Life is at its best with digital camera images, because of the speed of the workflow from camera to web page, including images and video clips. Of course, the frames, filters and balloons can be used with sketches and scans too.

The range of possible uses for kids, parents, libraries, gamers, businesses . . . include:

Illustrating procedures, e.g. instructions and step-by-steps
Making comics and comic strips
Newsletters, bulletins and magazines
Teaching through visual contexts and visual literacy using media relevant to youth culture
Teaching languages through visual contexts and literacy
Motivating students
Journals, e.g. holidays, shows, gaming conventions and school trips
Fliers, leaflets and posters
Storyboarding and scripting
Designing teaching materials

There are basic online services that will let you make a comic strip. For now these don’t offer anything like the ‘look and feel’ of a comic layout, with comic fonts and ‘instant’ comic art. The prices are very low for what the software has to offer.

The site is HERE.