I'm pretty sure the comic page in my previous post, Steve Nash is Full of Great Fury!, was created using a program called Comic Book Creator.
It appears to let you put together comic book pages with various panel layouts (no idea how flexible they are) and then drag-and-drop in sound effects, word and thought balloons, captions, and even clip art. Of course, if you can scan your own doodles into whatever file format the program imports (I'm guessing it'll take the most common formats -- jpeg, gif, bmp), you could then literally make your own comics pretty easily.
As if that weren't enough, they even have a special officially-licensed Marvel Comics version. Hmmm.... ("Civil War II -- in the Mighty Maka Manner: This time, Millar, Bendis, and Brevoort get transported into the Marvel Universe of their making -- and pay the painful, bloody price!")
It's tempting.
Posted by Chris M. at May 15, 2007 8:56 PM
Actually I just made that in Photoshop, but thanks for the link. Ineteresting program, also.
Excellent Photoshopage then, man. Do you have a bunch of bubble and panel objects you made yourself that you can whip out as needed or do you custom-build them for each strip for the most part?
If this Comic Book Creator program is as easy to use as advertised (and the panel size/layout is reasonably customizable), how much easier would it make doing a strip like the "Steve Nash is Full of Great Fury!" one?
CBC is quite easy to use and produces some nice stuff, albeit with some degree of inevitable sameness that comes from using a canned program. It comes with a number of page templates but it's possible to modify them with a third-party utility the manufacturer hosts on their website. They also seem quite dedicated to supporting and improving the program.
(The Marvel version has loads of cool images for make-your-own comics, but said images can only be used with the Marvel package and can't be combined with self-created artwork without a lot of hoop jumping.)
There's a similar program for the Mac, called Comic Life. Apple even bundles it with new computers. It doesn't come with much (any?) clip art. I think people mostly use their own pictures or things horked off the web.
We need one of Willy Tavares putting on a dress. Breaking up a perfect game with abunt is just completely chickenshit.