Creating Comics
Resources for creating comics on the web:
Consider these questions while you review these resources:
1. Pros and cons of each comic?
2. What is the cost involved?
3. Is the tool intuitive?
4. What grade levels would be appropriate to use this tool?
5. Would using this tool require much instructional time?
BitStrips
http://www.bitstripsforschools.com/
Bitstrips is a fun online comic maker tool which would work great for those who love to read comics, because this tool will give them a chance to star themselves in a self-created online comics. This website lets you create original comic strips from a collection of pre-made characters which can be easily added to the comics. You can then add text in talk bubbles or balloons and create your own story line thus making an entertaining comic strip.
Make Beliefs Comix
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/
Provider: Bill Zimmerman
Students can create fun comic strips using graphics and text clouds with this interactive program. It supports literacy and reading and writing skills. The “educators” tab provides information about using the site in multiple settings. A “story ideas” tab provides a list of story topics. Text can be written, by the user, in several languages with correct accent marks. Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Latin are available. There are future plans for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The program can easily be adapted for Language Arts, English Language Learners, Guidance, Second Languages and Special Education. There is no advertising on the site and user information is not stored making it a safe site for students.
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Pixton
Creator: Clive Goodinson
Pixton is an application intended to give users a way to build comics. The application comes in three flavors. One is intended for fun and allows users to create comic books, participate in discussion forums and connect with the Pixton user community. Pixton for schools provides visual writing tools that cover all major subjects and is aligned with curriculum standards. Pixton for business works as a comic storyboarding tool and can be utilized in marketing and training tasks. The interface is designed for almost anyone, even someone who is not terribly artistic. Users can select facial features, hair and coloration to create unique characters that require little to no actual drawing. Users can also add other elements such as background and speaking bubbles to give voice to their comic characters. Characters can be resized right on the pane and predesigned clothing elements added.
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Comic Creator
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/index.html
The Comic Creator invites children and teens to design their own comic strips. Their creations can be just for fun or as part of more structural learning activities: planning writing activities, before- and after-reading activities, and responding to books. Children and teens create comic strips online by choosing backgrounds, characters, and props. They can also write dialogue using speech bubbles. There is a Comic Strip Planning Sheet, a printable PDF that comic creators can use to draft and revise their work before creating and printing their final comics. When the comics are completed, they can be printed out and shared. The sample comic strip shows a three-pane comic.
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ToonDoo
ToonDoo hits the fine balance between creative versatility and user friendliness, ensuring that the final results look sharp. While there’s still an extensive library of characters and objects to use in your comic strip, there are also tools to create your own touches. The TraitR tool allows you to create custom characters and DoodlR lets you paint freely. If you want to use your own photos or another image in your comic strip, you can manipulate it through the ImagineR photo tool.
Unlike other sites, there’s an option to save your project mid-creation so that you can come back to it later. When you finish a handful of ToonDoos, you can compile a book. It’s easy to embed individual cartoons in a website or share them over networks, and you can buy print-quality images of your favorites.
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Strip Generator
The stoic characters of Strip Generators lend themselves to sarcastic commentary. There’s not a whole lot of opportunity to create a personal style — you need to work with what the site gives you — but that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. The community topic-themed galleries are testimony to this (check out the current theme, “Autumn”).
One unique capability is adjustable frames. If you need a specific cell to be a bit wider or longer, you can just drag the wall. Another stand-out trait is the personal library. When you tweak an image to get it just right, you can save it to use again later.
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Write Comics
Write Comics is a free, simple tool for creating comic strips. Write Comics doesn’t require any registration to use. In fact, registration is not even an option. To create a comic on Write Comics just select a background from the menu, choose some characters, and add some speech bubbles. You can continue adding frames until you’ve completed your story. Write Comics is quite easy to use, but there is one short-coming and that is the only way you can save your work is to save it to your local hard drive.
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Lego City Comic Builder
http://city.lego.com/en-us/comicbuilder/intro.aspx
At Lego City you can create a comic strip that feature Lego elements. To create a comic just select a strip format (one box or multiple boxes in various layouts) and start dragging elements into your comic strip. Elements in your comic strip can be resized to fit the frame and maintain proportions among multiple elements. Your comic strip can have multiple pages. When you’re done creating your comic strip you can save it online or download it to your computer.
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Comic Life
http://plasq.com/products/comiclife/mac
Comic Life is an application for creating not just comics (obviously), but also annotated images, dynamic photo albums, greeting cards, scrap books, story books, and instruction guides and brochures. In the classroom, it is an excellent tool for creating reports of almost any kind. Comic Life allows you to create page layouts with boxes for images and text. Styles can be applied to create just about any type of ‘feel’ for your document. Captions can be created with tails in order to have thought balloons, speech boxes or just additional annotations. Filters are available to turn your digital images into a variety of hand drawn looking graphics to enhance the comic appearance of your work.
Rhonda Altonen 