cartoonM!ke
User
plasq hed
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Comic Life: the next level - 2007/01/07 06:03
Comic Life came bundled with my new intel Mac and after futzing around with it for a bit, really came to like it and upgraded to deluxe as a show of support for this program.
I think that as a niche application, CL could really rock the digital comics production line. I really like the idea of Stylesheets and think that it could be expanded and become a way to make a very good program to help with the production of comics in addition to the Fumetti style of comics that it excels at now.
I could see myself dropping a C-note or so on a "Pro" version of Comic Life if it...
Has Stylesheets that can be shared between saved files. This would allow one to set up options for an Ongoing or Limited Series, a Graphic Novel or Web comics. This stylesheet could be loaded from the User Settings dialog when a new file is created. In the top level of this Stylesheet, is the settings for the series itself, you can specify if the series is Ongoing (infinite number of issues), Limited (specific # of issues, usually 3,4,6 or 12), Graphic Novels (which are self contained, but could have Parts and/or Chapters). Here is where the Numbering would be set. Page numbering would be either Self contained, continued from previous issue/part/chapter or omitted. This would really help in keeping multiple issues of a series looking consistent.
Within the templates, one could have images that can be placed in specific spots in the individual Issues, such as a Series Logo that could be on the front Cover and then put on the inside front cover and be scaled down and set to be a black and white halftone of the original logo (using the graphic FX that CL has).
Next are Panels. Currently, each panel is a self-contained object. It would be great if there was some option to keep the gutters consistent when the panels are moved. Maybe keeping within an object-orientated paradigm would make more sense?
For instance, There's a Page. A page has settings for a Frame (the area that has artwork), Bleed and Trim. Bleed is the area between the Frame and the acutal cut of each page. In a Page you could adjust how large you want the Frame to be and how large the Printed page to be. And then, you could adjust the width of the Panels. Panels are the next step below a Frame.
You can still select a Panel arrangement like you can with 1.2, but you can also do things like "merge panels" by shift-selecting mutliple panels or split panels when you can drag a line to split one panel into two. You can click and drag on a gutter to resize two adjoining panels -- keeping the gutter the same width/height. Or you can start off with one page spanning panel that you can use the split tool to 'cut' into individual panels.
A Panel could be set to be a bleeder, where its borders are extended to the bleed/trim area and a bleeder panel would be stacked below "non-bleeding" panels.
Another level within stylesheets would be where the templates could be accessed. The templates could include specific ones for the Covers, Inside covers, Splash/Title pages and interior pages. This is where you can set up the defaults for Panel Borders, Captions and Balloons.
One more thing would be the option to export the CL file as a Digital Comic file. These are either Zipped or RAR compressed files with the extension CBZ or CBR, respectively. Since the Mac OS has Zip compression "built-in" (so to speak) a way to automagically export a CBZ file should be easy to do. This could enable better sharing of comics between user and reader. FYI, an indy comics publisher, Slave Labor Graphics, now sells some of their comics as CBZ/CBR formatted downloads that they charge under a buck a piece for.
Have more points of deformation on the "Lettering" text, than the 6 it has now. And if each word could have its own fill style, rather than the one-style fills all it has now.
I think that Comic Life has real potential and this is just the tip of the iceberg of ideas I have for it. I'll be glad to elaborate on any of these suggestions. I would love to see Comic Life become the standard for Comic Lettering and Digital Production.
thanks for such a great product!
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