More Thoughts on iPod Reformatting

I mentioned that I'm planning on distributing the Flashback Universe comics via ComiXology, which is by far the slickest comic viewer/distribution application on the iPod market right now. In preparing the files, I've spent a TON of time examining what works and what doesn't on the iPod.

Listening to ComiXology CEO David Steinberger on Comics Geek Speak, he made a point at saying that he really wants the comics on the iPod to make the best reading experience possible. To that end he's spent some time coaching many creators in the proper way to format their comics on the iPod.

From what I can tell, for the most part all of the contributors took his advice and have done an outstanding job converting their comics over to this new format.

However, there are a few that didn't do a very good job. I'm not going to name names, but let me explain a very common mistake I've seen, and show how I've tried to avoid it with our comic.

Too many screen rotation.

A few months ago, Sean Kleefeld commented on another article from this blog about iPod comics wherein he made this excellent observation:

I think any option where a user can only read one panel at a time is inherently too frustrating from a time-spent-between-scrolling-actions point of view. Even the most copy-heavy panels take a moment or two to read before a user would need to scroll/click/slide on to the next panel, meaning they'd have to spend as much time navigating the document as they do reading it. That's the killer for anything done on the PSP or iPhone or whatever. Movies are okay because you hit "play" and let it run. But unless you're running a literally constant interaction with the display unit (as in a video game) the navigate/read/navigate/read is going to prevent current system from being really effective. Users won't latch on until you can navigate/read/read/read/read/navigate/read/read//read.

I think he has a point, but the navigate/read/navigate/read experience feels like a bubblebath compared to the navigate/TURN/read/navigate/TURN/read experience I've seen with some iPod comics (not just on ComiXology but from many other iPod comic vendors.)

While it's nice that the iPod will automatically rotate the page when you flip it, I sure as hell don't want to have to flip it 6 times to read 6 pages (see below).

I say, pick a screen size (wide or tall) and do your best to stick with it. Here's how I reformatted a few Tall Pages. Here is a page from Saturn Knight - Same Time, Next Year

Now both of these panels would be excellent candidates for a TALL orientation on the iPod. However, I've chosen to present the comic in WIDE Orientation, so I reformatted them into three wide panels.

I believe that this will accomodate larger text and an easier reading experience than zooming in and out of Tall panels with smaller text.

In some cases, I've had to crop out or remove elements that proved distracting when the page was reformatted for the 320 x 480 aspect ratio. LIke the page with The Vanguard. Here is the original.

Because The Yeti (the furry white guy in the purple garb) was going to be mostly obscured by a caption balloon, I decided to completely remove him.

The biggest challenge I've had is in adapting the big Splash page layouts Pierre and I like to use for the iPod screen. Check out this page as it originally appeared.

On the iPod, the caption balloons are positioned in such a way that if I just crop in/zoom in on them, the reader won't get a very interesting image. So I decided to move and resize the balloons like this:

All this photoshop manipulation and relettering is time consuming and the question I get a lot of times is: Is it really necessary?

Well, Pierre and I have always prided ourselves on being the first (if not only) guys to specifically design our comics to be read in cbr format, utilizing the wide ratio and transitions to give readers the smoothest reading experience possible.

We could have gone with the traditional Portrait/Tall comic page like I've seen some comics on the web use. Certainly this would make going to a printed version much easier (if we ever decided to do that.)

However, I've never liked scrolling down to read a cbr comic. I understand it's necessary when you are reading comics that were first print comics THEN became cbr comics, but for a NEW comic which is not in print - I just don't see why one would adhere to such an outdated format - unless they ultimately intended to make a printed version.

So, now that we are talking about migrating our content to the iPod, I really want to do the same thing for this format. To provide the best reading experience possible. I think when we are done, it will be well worth the effort! :)

Have a great weekend!

iPod Comic Questions

Last week I mentioned was was spending time re-engineering our League of Monsters comic to work better on the iPod. I never mentioned the publisher, as I have been waiting for them to go live with the application, but I can now. It's ComiXology who I interviewed a while back. They went live Friday at Comic Con and their iPod Comics application/comics store is available for download from iTunes now.

My post about working on the comic prompted several questions from Sphinx Magoo (as well as a few from people who contacted me directly.) I'm going to do my best to answer all of them today...

Q. Would it be possible to have the text balloons animate in some way so that they expand to a larger size when touched?

A. Yes and no. Currently, all of the iPod comic applications I've seen use static images without any type of true animation effects. A few (like genusApps Kamikaze iPod comic application ) have the type of fly out/expanding balloons you are talking about but I think they are just using two sets of images. One with the panel as is, and then one with the balloons isolated and enlarged.



They way the Kamikaze app works is pretty nifty actually, so if you have an iPod, download one of their comics and check it out.

Q. What sizes do you have to convert each of the images to be converted to iPod-legible format?

The iPod screen is 320 x 480 and some iPod comic vendors want all of your images to be that exact size. The beauty of the ComiXology process is that you can use various sizes and aspect ratios, so you aren't as tied down. My general advice is to keep the 2:3 aspect ratio in your head when dividing up your comic so all of your panels will look as uniform as possible.

Q. How do you go from a series of images to something which can be read on an iPod and Is there a way to test your comic on a computer before bringing it onto your iPod? I'd imagine that'd be a bit of a time-saver for making quick edits and such.

I think the question here, is how would your average comics creator put his comic on an iPhone, and the answer to this is not simple.

It's not like the web where after signing up with some web host, you simply tinker with html and post a bunch of jpgs to a web site. No, unfortunately, creating content for the iPhone OS involves Apple's Objective C language and you MUST have an Apple computer to test your application as there isn't a Windows emulator (that I know of) that would allow you to develop iPod applications on a pc.

So, unless you are prepared to learn Objective C AND buy an Apple computer to develop on, this leaves you with two options.

1. You can partner up with a iPod comic vendor to put your comic on the iPod.

2. Or you can subcontract a freelance Apple developer to help you with the process.

I chose option 1, as I felt the advantage of working with a vendor is you can benefit from their marketing support.

Q. So who is the best iPod comic vendor to work with?

Well, I think that's a matter of personal preference. I chose ComiXology because I like the very slick system they have developed which uses Photoshop to help you prepare your files and doesn't necessarily restrict you to the 320x480 screen proportions. However, there are many other companies making iPod comics ( iVerse, Robot Comics, Kamikazee, Clickwheel, etc...) and they all take submissions, so you have lots options.

So, if you are a comics creator who wants to put your comic on the iPhone/iPod I would suggest the first step is to buy an iPod Touch (they are the cheapest of the two devices) and spend some time reading some of the comics available from the iTunes store. That will help you understand the limitations of the format as well as get you familiar with all the various iPod Comic vendors.

Have a great day!

- Jim

iPod and iPhone Concessions

To paraphase Stan Lee, With Great Opportunties comes Great Work, so for the past week, I've been reworking our League of Monsters By Butterfly Betrayed comic into a format that will be better suited for the iPod/iPhone.

It's been an eye opening experience as I've had to change many pages from the way we originally made them. For example, here is the Roll Call Page as created by Pierre:



While I love the heads for each character that flank the main panel, on the iPod, this just didn't seem to be working. So, I felt it was best to break out the text in the yellow box onto a separate page and make a new Roll Call page.



In some cases, the revisions were simply a matter of breaking out panels onto their own...like this page with 3 panels...



Which would look like this on the iPod - making the text too small to read.



Now becomes these two screens...





Sometimes it was necessary to move balloons and add some text to make a better transistion - like in this case with the Blood Vs Butterfly scene



I felt the text was too small so I reworked the page like this:





Sometimes, I just have to completely redesign a page using the existing art to make something we can use. This page with a diagonal panel layout was such a case. It *might* have worked on the iPod, but odds are the text would be hard to read.



So I broke it out like this which I think will work better on the iPod. Not a perfect revisioning, but I think it shows the story better.





So far, this has been a good deal of work, and some people might question why I'm going through all this trouble. Well, the answer is, Pierre and I have always prided ourselves for designing comics to be read in a digital format (CBR) so it would have been a hard pill to swallow to see iPod versions of our comics that were hard to read.

There are several companies making comics for the iPod now (we've been approached by nearly every single one of them) and I just wasn't happy with how those companies were handling the conversion process. Many of them don't seem to care about readability or the user experience.

It wasn't until recently that I was contacted by a company (who will remain nameless for right now) who really had an amazing system to handle the formatting process that I decided the time was right to convert one of comics into the iPod format. Like I say, it wasn't a slam dunk, as I've had to do a good deal of rework. It's been a real learning experience, but in the end I'm hoping I'll understand what you can do in this format well enough to capitalize on it when Pierre and I begin our next League of Monsters comic!

I hope this helps anyone else out there working on an iPod comic.

- Jim

An Interview the Creator of ComicZeal

Today on Caine's Digital Comic Watch, we are happy to present to you an interview with one of the leaders of iPhone Comics Revolution, Emiliano Molina, creator of ComicZeal and ComicZeal Sync!

For people not familiar with ComicZeal, how would you describe it?

Hi Jim, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you and your readers. ComicZeal is a comic book reader for the iPhone. It allows users to take their digital comics with them and use the iPhone's fantastic interface to read comics in a very natural way.

What are some of the advantages of ComicZeal over some of your competitors?

ComicZeal is the most mature comic reader on the app store and we treat customer feedback very seriously. For our customers this means that ComicZeal is simply the most feature rich and easy to use comic reader on the App Store.

For example, we've spent a lot of time working on the behavior of the zoom and are quite comfortable in saying it's the best available. What makes a difference are little details like a double-tap switching between zoom out and the last zoom that the user selected, or maintaining the zoom level between pages.

A lot of users requested customizations for reading manga so we've implemented a feature where CZ detects if you're reading manga or a western-style comic and adjusts accordingly.

Recently we added the ability to take a screenshot so you can use an image in a comic as your iPhone wallpaper. A feature that only one customer ever requested, but it was so fantastic we just had to implement it.

What is ComicZeal Sync?

ComicZeal Sync is a companion program to ComicZeal that allows users to move their own digital comics into ComicZeal.

The iPhone is such a great device that it's sometimes easy to forget its limits. Early in the development of ComicZeal we experimented with moving full-size unprocessed comics to the device but found that it could just not handle the compression and size of those files without becoming unacceptably slow.

ComicZeal Sync processes images, cbr cbz and pdf files and converts them into a format that ComicZeal can easily handle. ComicZeal couldn't be as responsive or pleasant to use without it.

Does ComicZeal come with free content? How much?

Yes, thanks for asking! There are a couple of hundred comics that can be downloaded from within ComicZeal. One collection that I'm sure your readers will be familiar with is your very own 'Flashback Universe', the rest are a variety of Golden Age Comics.

How long have you been developing on the Apple/iPhone platform?

I'd been toying with the idea of developing for the Mac for a couple of years but never got past the initial learning curve. Then I got an iPod touch and was absolutely hooked on the possibilities of the device. So all up it's been about a year now.

How would you describe your experience selling apps via iTunes? Is there anything you would change?

I think that all developers for the iPhone will agree that the application approval process needs improvement. What we need most of all is consistent reviewers. It's very frustrating to submit an application and have it bounced for a feature of graphical item that's been there for months.

What features would you like to see Apple add to the iPod/iPhone devices?

The software update that's due sometime in the next few months is going to address a lot of items on my wish list. From a development point of view I'm very excited about the in-app purchase option which will open up new markets.

The truth is that the developers are still working out everything these devices can do. I'm not as excited about what new features Apple will add as I'm excited about what developers will come up with.

The huge user base of the devices and the obvious willingness of users to buy software for them means that even if the devices don't change, there will continue to be exciting developments for years and years to come.

What do you predict for the future of Apple devices? (An iTablet perhaps?)

Tablet? definitely. Apple clearly has all the components and technologies in place to make the form factor work. I've been predicting a tablet from them for years. I look sillier every year that passes, but it's getting close, my Apple sense is tingling.

The real enabler for that device is the operating system software that they've created for iPhone. The hardware for a tablet has been around for a long time, what has been lacking so far has been the software. With the iPhone Apple has shown that a tablet (even a tiny one) can work, and they've patented the heck out of it so that now it almost HAS to be Apple that delivers a successful device.

Obviously from the point of view of the comics industry, a popular and cheap tablet has the ability to bring millions of people to the format.

How long have you been reading comics?

As an adult, I've only been reading comics for a couple of years. I just didn't realize how many mature and intelligent stories were available only in that format. More importantly, I hadn't realized how many stories could ONLY be told through comics.

A co-worker bought me back into the fold when he brought into work the his 'Strikeforce: Morituri' collection. It took a while for me to get started but once I did I was hooked again.

So much fun, so many great stories.

What are some of your favorite comics recently?

I'v e tried and tried to get into the mainstream Marvel/DC comics but just haven't been able to. Superheroes haven't appealed to me very much.

As a huge science fiction fan I've been very impressed by 'Y: The last man' and 'Ministry of Space'.

All time favorite storyline/comic?

My most enjoyed series is definitely 'Y - The Last Man'. I'm often tempted to pick up the first TPB again but am reserving it for a special occasion. I also thoroughly enjoyed the first issue of 'Ministry of Space' but that's very much to do with the artwork, specifically the design of the ships.

Thank you Emil!

Have a great weekend!

Touchscreen Comics - Format for the Future

Recently I've been thinking about making a comic specifically for a Mobile Internet Device (MID) or SmartPhone like the the iPod/iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry Storm and HTC Dream.

IT pundits are predicting that the growth of these type of devices is going to be huge over the next two years, and I think there are some advantages to designing comics for this platform.

Typically the (touch) screens are only big enough to display a single panel of a web comic at about 320 x 480. However, bigger screens are coming. The BlackBerry Storm is going to have a 480 x 360 screen size and doubt any new phones on the drawing board will have *smaller* screens than what's currently available.

Still, 320 x 480 is a small size when one is used to reading comics that are typically about 8.5 by 11 inches (or larger if you count both pages.)

I think that size presents some interesting challenges and decided to view a few comics on an iPod to see what works and what doesn't work. These samples are from http://www.ClickWheel.net

Some notes about ClickWheel - I will do a full post on the site sometime in the future. There are good things about it and some bad things about it, but I want to use it more before I pass judgement. One of the coolest things is the DO have 2000 AD available for download in CBR format! One of the bad things is the site is a little awkward to use in some ways and is apparently broken in IE 7.

Here's what I downloaded from the site:

Example 1 -here is what I see when I read Judge Dredd on my iPod Touch.

Example 2 - here is a screenshot of Perwell, a fun comic by Chuck Whelon and Adam Prosser This was was labelled as an iComic and seems optimized to take advantage of the iPod screen size.

Example 1 didn't really impressed me as being optimally set up for viewing on an MID because of the way the page is laid out, I have to zoom in too much to read the captions. On the flipside, Perwell was a great iPhone reading experience!

When thinking about how best to utilize this new size/format, one thought has come to me that seems to be causing quite a stir among my other creators I mention it to: I don't think this format is well suited for superhero stories.

Comics in the 40's (like Bozo the Robot left )were more akin to today's comic strips than our current breed of comics. They had lots of little panels and the action was encapsulated in these panels.

However, during the Silver and Bronze age, as the comic book format began to mature, artists started to experiment with both page and panel design. As a result we saw more and more full panel pages.

Now, I love a good full page splash, and have used the heck out of them in Flashback, but such pages loose their gravitas when reduced to a small screen.

You take a *wide screen* type of comic like the Authority and remove the big splash pages from it and you've lost a large part of the appeal of such a book.

Superhero comics are typically written and drawn to take advantage of big splash pages, and for the past 40 years, we've come to expect these type of pages from our superhero comics.

There are quite a number of notable exceptions to this rule, but by and large, a superhero comic that doesn't have it's fair share of wide screen high action full page splashes is usually seen as a boring or (even worse) experimental and deconstructive.

Today's readers want a full page splash of Galactus standing in Manhattan, but how will that look on an iPhone?...

And here is the same page on an iPhone...it sort of loses its impact. Not mention how tough reading it will be.

When the Digital Comic Haters are bitching and moaning about how they hate to read scrunched up type, that is exactly what they are talking about. Hell, if all Digital Comics looked like that, I would have never started Flashback.

So, I'm suggesting that perhaps the comics that will be most successful on this new platform are going to be ones that take their cues from Golden Age Comics and, strangely, Harvey and Disney Comics. Look at how the separate panels in this Hot Stuff comic would fit perfectly on an iPod (dividing the first panel in two possibly.)

Now compare the Hot Stuff on the iPod against the FF example above and see which one is going to be the easiest to read without a lot of fiddling with your views.

Pretty obvious, isn't it?

Bottom line: I think if today's artists are going to take advantage of tomorrow's technology, they are going to have to look to the past for guidance.

- Jim

FlashBack on your iPhone/iPod Touch

A secret about the origin of the Flashback Universe is that I originally decided to begin my time/money investment in the project after using one of the first 5th generation iPods (the ones that could playback movies...) While admiring how slick the videos looked and how easy it was to use, I knew it would be just a matter of time before someone (most likely Apple) developed a device that would function as an all purpose iTablet, where you could watch TV, surf the net, phone friends and listen to music. So, one of my goals for the Flashback Universe was to build comics for that day... and while that day is still just a little ways off, it got a LOT closer when Apple introduced the iPhone.

So since the the iPhone went live last Summer, I've been waiting to see who would develop a cbr (rar) reader for the iPhone (and likewise, the iPod Touch)

So, it brings me great pleasure to present jComix!




jComix is a CBR reader written in Ruby by a talented Australian named Jeremy. It has been specifically tailored to the browser in a iPhone/iTouch.

Features
Support for CBR/RAR archives (requires the unrar command line tool)
Detects JPEG, PNG and GIF images
Portable code (does not write to anything outside of its own folder)
Cross Platform

Now, I suspect not a lot of you reading this blog actually own an iPhone or iPod Touch because currently, they cost quite a bit for what they deliver. However I also suspect that within another year or two, they will be much cheaper and pretty much all the rage amongst the kids in the know. :)

And when that happens, the phrase, "Hey, Kids! Comics!" might just become popular again! :D