We are delighted to offer a beta of our upcoming Comic Life Magiq 1.0.3 update.
It has numerous stability and significant performance improvements over 1.0.2.1 - so we would love previous users to download and let us know if you come across any issues.
A free update for Comic Life Magiq is available for all users.
Identical to 1.0.2c in all but version number, which has been changed to ensure 1.0.2 users are made aware of the 1.0.2c update via the menu: Comic Life Magiq > Check for Updates...
This 1.0.2.1 update is recommended for all 1.0.2 users and fixes a serious saving issue introduced in 1.0.2 that caused images to be left out of the document.
If you're already running 1.0.2c (v10939) you can "Skip This Version".
Head to the plasq downloads page to get the 1.0.2.1 update or update from within Comic Life Magiq.
Comic Life is great for sharing those funny little moments from school, in the office, or while on worldwide progressive-rock-legends tours.
Robert Fripp and Tony Levin have been sharing the day-to-day stories of touring within one of the most influential prog rock bands - on King Crimson’s 40th Anniversary Tour.
Ever wished you had the fun of Comic Life handy at all times? Ever been out at a party, family gathering or on public transport and wished you could add your 'comic touch' to a photo? Now you can!
We're giggling with glee to announce Comic Touch for iPhone and iPod Touch. Add various speech balloons and captions to your photos. Choose a fun special effect to warp and bend your family and friends, then email the results to them!
Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 04:25Hi, plasq -
Just found out about Comic Life from CDM, and I'm absolutely giddy. I love comics, wrote a couple of titles for Marvel way back in the Pleistocene era, and this is the most fun EVER. I can't wait to use it to make comics for my kids, travel comics for my GF, snarky comics for work colleagues, etc. Brilliant idea, brilliantly executed.
Which brings me to my one criticism: the price. Unless you're a professional comic publisher (in which case you're using more heavy-duty software), Comic Life has to be considered a consumer/pleasure app for occasional fun use. As such, the price seems pretty steep. I can see people paying $18.99, even $24.99 for this app and feeling great about it. Once you get up into the $40 range, though, people feel they should be buying something they're going to use all the time, rather than just now and then. If you consider dropping the price, I bet you'll make it up in increased sales.
(That said, I'll probably cough up the $39.99 because I'm uniquely suited to use it frequently.)
Finally, my tech question: I've been having some problems with images previewing in their panels one way, then printing differently. I created a comic from one of the standard templates. I resized some of the panels, and re-sized the photos to fill the space. But when I print, the photos don't completely fill the panels, leaving small white gaps along the edges. Further tinkering cleans this up, but there's no WYSIWYG way to do it, because Comic Life's view makes it look like everything's fine. Am I missing something, or is this a wee little bug?
Re:Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 05:17Hi Adam,
Thanks for the feedback - glad you like the concept and implementation.
Pricing is such a black art. Some products seem priced too low, others too high - rarely are some just right. In our survey of beta testers and other users people were all over the place on the value. Some were like you saying keep it cheap. Others were of the opinion that if it was too cheap then people won't take it seriously.
But we're still listening and definitely want to know if we're pricing the product out of the market.
So to any others please feel free to use this thread as a pricing discussion and let us know you're thoughts on what you think a fair price is for Comic Life.
On the glitch front. I think it's an issue of the image looking like it's abutting the panel on screen but it actually isn't at high res. We'll look into adding an action that'll fit the image to the panel. But in the meantime grab the image resize handles and make sure they're outside of the panel (unless you don't have room - then you can use the "Arrange->Align" menu to precisely align the image to an edge of the panel. Thickening the border of the panel might help too.
Re:Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 05:39I too am a comic book lover (Over 16,000 boxes and bagged) and I have to agree that the price is a bit steep. $25 would be about right.
What you really need to think about is the education market. Lab pricing/multiple license discounts. You should be getting this into the hands of the people at Apple Education. This is a natural for storytelling at all levels. I can see middle schoolers and highschoolers really taking off with this.
Contact the people at Tech4Learning. This might fit into their product line for schools.
Re:Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 06:36I think I would agree that pricing is a little too high. I would say $29.95 would be just right--not too expensive, but not so cheap as to appear non-serious.
I have to second Rick's remarks about the value of this software for the education market. I say this as a university professor who teaches Japanese popular culture. In my line of work, I am constantly coming into contact with students who aspire to become online manga artists, or simply wish to experiment with using forms of visual culture as an alternative path toward creative thinking and expression.
As soon as my seven-year-old son saw me dabbling with Comic Life last night on my laptop at home, I was immediately preempted. My son proceeded to play with it for over an hour and had great fun arranging family photos into meaningful narratives and supplying interesting captions. He told me he can't wait to create more "manga stories" after school. It's an excellent pedagogical tool that works on many different skills simultaneously, including narrative composition, spatial concepts, and design.
Re:Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 09:54Robert wrote: Pricing is such a black art. Some products seem priced too low, others too high - rarely are some just right. In our survey of beta testers and other users people were all over the place on the value. Some were like you saying keep it cheap. Others were of the opinion that if it was too cheap then people won't take it seriously.
But we're still listening and definitely want to know if we're pricing the product out of the market.
I'm certainly no retail expert, but here's my personal idea of "fair pricing" guidelines:
$5-10 Shareware and simple "single function" utilities. $10-25 "Fun" software for occasional use; Education titles; Simple (or older) games. $25-45 "Serious" Home/Consumer software (Quicken, iDVD, etc.) that becomes a regular part of my computing universe. Major games. $50-100 Secondary business/professional programs (iWork, OmniGraffle); Consumer "suite" software with multiple indispensable functions (iLife). $100-200 Vital business software (Word, Excel, etc.); Operating Systems $200+ Productivity suites for corporate use (MS Office); high end specialty software for professional use (Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, AutoCad, etc.)
By this standard, I'd expect Comic Life to fall somewhere in the high "Fun" or low "Serious" range. It's not a program that most people will use every day, like Quicken or iTunes. People are more likely to have a single use in mind, such as a friend's birthday, an office joke, etc. If you price it attractively for them as an impulse buy, it'll be easier to justify buying CL for this kind of "one-off" use. (After they buy Comic Life, they may be pleasantly surprised to find themselves using it more than they thought they would, but that's good too -- it means better chances of future upgrades.)
That's why I think the sweet spot for Comic Life would be between $18.99 - $24.99. I think you'll sell more units as impulse buys, which will more than compensate for the reduced price. (FWIW, if you'd pitched it at $24.99 you'd already have my money by now...)
Re:Praise, Criticism and Tech Question - 2005/04/14 10:47I'll throw in on this thread...
I've just now purchased this s/w at the listed price. I would't call it cheap nor steep. Forty bucks for an inspired piece of work!
I'm not into marketing, but I do feel that to put a quality piece of software out there, provide support, and continue to improve development, it must provide reward to the developer. Consider folks, there is not anything out there that comes anywhere close to quickly anwering to the need that this s/w answers.
I will use this software when it serves my purpose. It is enough for me to pay the asking price. My congratulations to you, or your guys!
Though I have had a repeated problem with "Quick Comic". I've imported different iPhoto albums and have had them hang about half-way through the import. I left one hung on page 25 of 40 for over an hour, when attempting to "Cancel" the "Beachball showed up. I waited till it came time to "Force Quit" and did so.
As I can find a work around for this, I can live with it until the developers find a fix, or I'm gonna find out what I've done wrong.
