05 December 2008

FAC Photocomics

The fairly new webcomic The Pure and Hidden Truth may or may not be a literary masterpiece. But, the way it is made is really remarkable. So obvious, yet something that I've never seen executed in the polished work of this comic. You see, it isn't drawn at all. Instead of drawings, it uses photographs with speech bubbles.

Why is this cool? Because it opens up a low cost way to produce a quite sophisticated product without having the specialized skill necessary to draw quality comics.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comic Life is fun and relatively cheap program for doing this kind of thing, available for Mac and Windows. Photoshop, Painter, and others have tools for achieving the painted look of the comic you linked.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I'm Cisco Jr., the creator of The Pure and Hidden Truth and I just wanted to thank you for the nice comments about my new comic.

Photocomics have been around for a while -- mostly of the creator's toys and action figures instead of using actual actors though. However before my comic launched I did discover Dark Red, another photocomic that used actual actors and have recently become friends with its creator!

I come from a film production background (I work as a news cameraman) and basically I took an idea I had for a TV show and storyboarded it with photos before I actually went to film it. I cast my actors by putting an ad up on Craigslist then I realized this would make a great comic book instead and cost me way less to produce. I've heard about the Comic Life program and it was recommended to me after I began working on the comic but it left a lot to be desired in the end. Everything is done using Adobe Photoshop -- someday I'd like to put together a tutorial to show others how its done.

I'm only 23 years old, so not only do I hope to bring photocomics more into the webcomic spotlight but I also hope to inspire others that they really can create ANYTHING from virtually nothing. If I can do it anyone else can! :)

Thanks again!

--Cisco Jr.

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Thank you so much for your comment. I had started to expand the orignial post into an discussion of photocomics as an intermediate step between film and comics (but ran out of time and cut it short to get it posted), and I am delighted that the link is actually manifest with you.