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!
'Chocolate & Chat: Writing for Teens and Young Adults’ tour!
plasq is proud to announce that we are sponsoring authors
James McCann and
kc dyer on their 'Chocolate & Chat: Writing for Teens and Young Adults’ tour.
The tour will go through Western Canadian Rocky Mountains from July 7-15th, 2008, with stops in Banff, Calgary, Red Deer, Cochrane, Kamloops, Salmon Arm and Kelowna. Click here for tour dates.
If you live nearby make sure you go along and say "Hi" for us! You may also enter a draw to win a copy of Comic Life Magiq or Comic Life Deluxe at each stop!
You can follow the authors travels on their websites - James McCann and kc dyer - where they will be doing a comic for each stop when they have a chance, using - you guessed it - Comic Life!
I've been a long-time Comic Life user, and just upgraded to Leopard specifically so I could try Comic Life Magic. It's a wonderful app with much promise. So, after just a few hours of poking around, I thought I'd offer my initial comments.
STRENGTHS
- I love the snappiness of the app. I particularly like how much more "stretchy" the Lettering effects are.
- Love the ability to stretch and warp just about anything, including balloon outlines and stems.
- I like the dark gray "pro" interface - it feels like Aperture, etc.
- I love the "quick snip" feature. Combined with "Pop Out," it's a wonderful, addictive little trick.
- I can copy and paste lettering effects directly into Keynote and Pages now! Whee! (I use this as a quick cheat to make logos and titles in Keynote... but it always required a complex trip thru Illustrator first.)
WEAKNESSES
That said, the UI does feel a little undercooked in this 1.0 release. Here are a few quirks I'd like to see cleaned up in the near future:
- Documentation. CLM is a little more complex than its predecessor, so it'd be great if there was a simple tutorial video that walks thru the app's major features. (The current sales demo doesn't actually show you how to use any of the features.)
- Styles. I like the ability to quickly save/modify styles. But where is the huge list of pre-made "starter" styles we came to know and love in Comic Life? There actually seem to be quite a few styles scattered around the different templates, but there doesn't seem to be one place to view/use them all.
- Balloon/Font Styles. It seems that when I save a balloon style, it saves only the shape... but not the font. This means I have to manually change the font every time I create a new balloon.
- Balloon Word Wrap. Very weird right now. CLM breaks lines in the middle of words, apparently for no reason. It takes a bunch of balloon manipulation to get the "stranded" letters to rejoin the rest of the text.
- Image Editor. I don't mind the oversized palette (but I have a big screen). However, it would be really nice if we could resize the image frame. And is there any way to get to the image editor apart from those goofy little floating buttons around each image? Speaking of which...
- Those Goofy Little Floating Buttons Around Each Image. Apart from their being completely undocumented (it took about 20 minutes to figure out that this was the only way to get into the image editor), there's another problem: if a picture is too close to the edge of a page, the button on that side disappears completely! There should be a standard menu item -- or a toolbar button -- to launch those effects in addition to the floating buttons.
- Wandering Menus. The "Selection" menu (bottom right side of screen) has a tendency to drift off the bottom of the window, and I have to keep pulling it up. (I think this only happens when I open a new comic document or relaunch CLM.)
- Tool Tips, please! (Iconized elements like the Style tabs are really hard to figure out without some text support.) Speaking of which...
- Style Tabs. These require a lot of clicking around to format a single element. In Keynote and Pages, we can open multiple Inspectors to alleviate the problem, but there's no such option in CLM.
Whew! Guess that's enough for now. Sorry about the long post, but I'm excited by CLM and want to see it improve quickly. Keep up the great work!
Post edited by: ajbezark, at: 2008/06/02 04:43Adam J. Bezark The Bezark Company www.bezark.com
Thanks for your great feedback! Glad you are liking Comic Life Magiq thus far!
Documentation...it'd be great if there was a simple tutorial video that walks thru the app's major features
We do plan on releasing some key videos on key features in the near future. So you have something to look forward to there You can also get all the key help in the Help > Comic Life Magiq Help documentation. It is searchable!
- Styles. I like the ability to quickly save/modify styles. But where is the huge list of pre-made "starter" styles we came to know and love in Comic Life?
Comic Life Deluxe styles will come with version 1.0.1 as a Template option
- Balloon/Font Styles. It seems that when I save a balloon style, it saves only the shape... but not the font.
Hmm, it should save the Font style - but not any shape bending that you might have done to it.
- Balloon Word Wrap. Very weird right now. CLM breaks lines in the middle of words,
Thanks, we plan to improve that in a future release.
- Image Editor.... it would be really nice if we could resize the image frame.
That is going to be difficult with the way the Magiq window is created. We will look into it.
is there any way to get to the image editor apart from those goofy little floating buttons around each image?
Goofy? Aww, I wouldn't say that. They are helpful. Format > Image > Magiq Edit... that will be activated in 1.0.1
- Those Goofy Little Floating Buttons Around Each Image. Apart from their being completely undocumented
They are documented in Help > Comic Life Magiq Help.
if a picture is too close to the edge of a page, the button on that side disappears completely! There should be a standard menu item
We hope to work on that a bit, but Format > Image > Magiq Edit... will be activated in 1.0.1 so you can use that once that is released (very soon).
- Wandering Menus. The "Selection" menu (bottom right side of screen) has a tendency to drift off the bottom of the window,
Thank, we will take a look at that.
- Tool Tips, please! (Iconized elements like the Style tabs are really hard to figure out without some text support.)
Thanks for the request. I will add it to the list
- Style Tabs. These require a lot of clicking around to format a single element. In Keynote and Pages, we can open multiple Inspectors to alleviate the problem, but there's no such option in CLM.
Thanks for the feedback. We didn't want to use floating windows because this can cause confusion and make it even more confusing. We will take it on board and keep that it mind.
Thanks again for all your thoughts and suggestions. We really appreciate the support!
Have a Magiq time! Kramy | plasqNews, hints and sock puppet antics - Sign up to our mailing list: http://plasq.com/register
