We recently heard from the very talented Simon Smith, who served as the Assistant Editor on the Channel 4 series UTOPIA, and he alerted us to comics that he had made using Comic Life! We asked if he could elaborate on the process and he kindly wrote this guest blog.
Over the last couple of years I’ve served as the Assistant Editor on the Channel 4 series UTOPIA. Throughout production, I’d make daily comics for the crew using that day’s rushes, which led to me making strips as part of the social media campaign for the series!
It started on series 1, with simple photo montages and usually included production-related jokes …
© Kudos
© Kudos
© Kudos
But when I came back the following year to work on Series 2, Comic Life was also updated to version 3 and had added the “Painted Border” fllter, which made the comics look so much nicer!
© Kudos
© Kudos
I found it amazing that I could make something great really quickly, usually while I was waiting for a video file to export from my edit suite.
The cast and crew loved them, especially if they were featured or named, and they’d get passed around on set throughout the day. They caught the attention of the marketing department too, who asked if I’d make some from the actual episodes as part of the social media campaign.
They were keen that I use Photoshop for these, especially my deliverables incase they wanted to edit them later, with different languages etc. But I stuck with Comic Life and just copied the panel and balloon elements across on different layers, and then maybe touched up some of the outlines and colours afterwards. I find Comic Life to be really powerful, and as it’s purpose built, all the features I’d hope for are included.
© Kudos
© Kudos
They got shared hundreds of times across
Facebook and Twitter, and are now featured on my
website here.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write about your experience with Comic Life, Simon. Going from an internal comic made from the daily rushes to a social media campaign is a great story! Thanks again for sharing!
© Kudos
