Comic making applications for mobile devices

I've been playing with a few comic making applications for my mobile devices. With a mobile application, you can leave out having to use a computer to make a simple comic and you can do the entire process from taking the picture to uploading the finished comic directly from your smartphone. The main drawback is you can't make spiffy special effects like you could on a desktop so the comics will need to be simple compared to what you can produce otherwise. However, for those who don't need snazzy effects or just need something quick and simple, this can be the ideal method of making comics without having to spend a whole lot of time. The above two comics were produced using My Comic Photo Free and My Comic for Windows Phone 7 on a Lumia 710.

My Comic is about as simple as it gets. You get a choice of a few word balloons/boxes and a couple of font sizes and that's it. You only get one panel and it leaves a watermark in the lower right corner. But it's totally free and supports both landscape and portrait.

My Comic Photo Free is the free version of My Comic Photo. It has much more variety with support for different layouts featuring multiple panels as well as different word balloon types and fonts. Some of the features, especially most of the word balloons, are locked but even then you can make a pretty decent looking comic. The main negative for this app is a surprising lack of landscape support.

The above is made using ComicBook! for iOS on iPod Touch 4. ComicBook! is probably the best comic app I've tried. The only problem is that the iPod Touch's camera really sucks and is a far cry from my Lumia.  The app itself is fully featured with support for different layouts, fonts, landscape/portrait, and also image stamps to post sound and image effects with support for importing your own image stamps. I'd be using this a lot more if the iPod actually had a half decent camera. The image used above isn't even from the iPod's camera and would actually look far worse if it was. :p

Main reason I've been playing around with those software is because I've come to the ugly realization that I lack the time and energy to make comics like I used to due to my current job. I still have an interest to do photo comics but I have to change the direction I take for future comics since long winded stuff is pretty much out of the question. Keep it simple, I should.

Zombie Cafe videos

Now, for something completely different! I made a couple of videos showing how I trap and use Sumo Wrestlers in the game Zombie Cafe. Since my Touch isn't jailbroken, I can't use the 3rd party screen video capture app they have for them.

Zombie Cafe for iPhone

Ouch, it's been a month since my last update. For the past few weeks, I've been hooked on a social media type game for the iPhone called Zombie Cafe. I've never been hooked on those types of games before so this took me quite by surprise and sucked the time away from everything else I was going to do. I was eating, browsing the net, and going to the bathroom while playing this game. It was ridiculous. I've kind of got it under control now so hopefully I'll finally get around to getting some content out again.



Long story short, you use zombies to help run your cafe. You recruit zombies by infecting your customers and use them to run your cafe as well as attack rival cafes nearby. You start off with a broken-down cafe but as you get more money, you'll be able to pimp it up a bit. The main draw is the recipe system. When you raid rival cafes, you'll sometimes get recipes that aren't already in your recipe book. You can add them to your recipe book and them trade recipes with friends by cooking them up and delivering it to them. Different recipes have different benefits such as either having more servings, yielding more profit, or giving more experience points. The game's a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it's loaded with bugs and some of them can completely ruin your game if it hits, not something I'd fork over money for. However, this game is free for the iPhone so if you have time to crunch, give this game a try. :p

Crunchyroll app for iPhone

Yay, Crunchyroll has a streaming app! For those who don't know, Crunchyroll is a legal anime streaming site as in they have the official backing of the people who make the anime that's available on their site. As such when, you pay for their premium service, some of that money actually goes to the makers rather than some guy who's ripping you off for content you can get for free. Seriously, don't pay any money to any site that tries to charge for providing anime/manga content unless you can verify it has official backing of the original makers of the product (and even then be wary). Enough of the soapbox, I haven't had time to verify it but if the app works as advertised, it means you can stream QUALITY anime streams to your iPhone/iPod Touch. The caveat is you have to use wifi and you need to have an account (free for non-premium members). I'll try it myself when I get a chance but I'm kinda busy and there are other apps I need to find time to try out as well.

Link to the app webpage is here.