I think now is a good time to direct you to my comics links page. There, you will find links to some of my faves online. Most notable, perhaps, is the esteemed Scott McCloud, from whom I blatantly stole the idea of trails --that is, lines that lead from one panel to another, steering the reader along. He pioneered this in his Zot! online comic, and it stuck me as such a natural way of realizing the potential of the infinite Web-page canvas, that I couldn't resist using it. I put this idea up there with the first uses of the thought bubble
or telephone bubble ,
or onomatopoeic illustrations .
So, my thanks and apologies go out to M. McCloud!
Now that we've got that out in the open, let us repair to the drawing table with no further ado.
Steal This Web Site!
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Truly words of wisdom, even for a godless unrepentant like myself. Just as I learned HTML by example, and SVG the same way, I urge you to rip off the SVG that I have adapted to display comics. In writing this tutorial aimed at SVG for comics, I've decided to go a step further and construct some free tools to make the job easier... but more on that later. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants, both as coders and cartoonists, so let's help each other along.
Now that we know how to make a simple frame, let's get a bit more ambitious, and make a comic strip. As I mentioned in my first installment, strips are essentially the same as a comic book, but tend to deliver the payoff in bite-sized chunks. Since I can't draw for squat, that seems an appropriate format for me to begin with. Next week year, we try to put some real "art" in the panels!
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