14 DAY TRIAL // Now that Christmas is long gone and we are left only with a faded image of the holiday, it is time to refresh our memory and take a look at the pictures we took. But imagine pimping them out a little with funny elements and customizing them with cool lettering and building a nice looking album. All this without affecting the original in any way.
Take a look at Comic Life; it is not quite the kind of software you are used to as it takes nothing seriously, but it sure was fun working with it. The application allows you the creation of digital comics in no time, ready to be posted on the web or included in a movie. It addresses both adults and kids for educational purposes (especially if you download the PNG package of images created for Windows users).
There is absolutely nothing complicated about the interface, otherwise it would kill all the fun and all elements you can work with are neatly arranged to the right and lower part of the screen. The vertical strip in the left shows all the pages for creating an album. You can start from a blank page, but using the templates is much more fun as they come in different shapes and allows splitting the main page into different customizable shapes. With six sets of page templates (over 75 choices) you have plenty to tinker with as each template can be changed according to your preference (you can modify all the shapes and their order in the page).
As for creating the album, Comic Life provides a number of sample pictures for you to train with but you can also use any image stored on your hard disk (move to Explorer view) or, if you have a webcam, take instant snapshots of the current environment.
Details tab permit adjusting the shapes in page templates by adding more sides, using panel attributes, or normalize all shapes by applying the same style to all of them (you can choose between 16 different styles) or customize them by using gradients, set the gradient direction and colors (limited to two), change the frame of the shape, make it cast a shadow of a certain color, etc. There are plenty of tweaks you can adjust from Details window, all related to the way the different shapes are arranged and look in the template page.
In the lower part of the application main window, you have a set of elements to be used in order to transmit a message. The speech bubble collection is not a hefty one, but will do just fine for educational purposes. The truth is that there is nothing elaborate available or at least that permits you to reach a more elaborate result. But the best part is that the speech bubbles are flexible enough to be enlarged, add more tails for rendering multiple persons conveying the same message or even make combinations of balloons in order to create new ones.
Lettering benefits from its own set of details completed with styles, gradient usage, attributes like horizontal/vertical spread incrementing, shadow casting, setting the color of the shadow, changing the font, etc. Although there aren't too many options available for this particular element, you can get nice looking results by making all sorts of combinations of font style with color, shape, positioning, etc.
The best part is that you can create entire albums with pages customized to your liking. The result can either be saved on the computer, printed or sent via email to your friends under JPEG format. All the elements added to the comic representation can be arranged in the page by sending them behind other items or clipping, and any newly created page can be saved as a template (truth be told, all templates are colorless and quite dull).
Comic Life addresses any age but I think it is most suitable for children, although adults can create nice looking postcards having as background a specific image. However, there are plenty of limitations to the software regarding the range of styles available and the flexibility of the elements. The price is also a bit discouraging as for $24.95 I would actually expect at least more elements to play around with.
The application is cross platform and you probably guessed by its looks that there must be a version for MAC platform as well. Although its purpose is limited to generating funny results, be they comic pictures or friendly-looking How To documents, it can also be used for creating image collages or for giving the real pictures a tint of artistic look by using one of the many filters available for real images (they are also called styles).
All in all, the app makes for a nice to work with comic drawing software, with a very mild learning curve and plenty of elements to tinker with, although not quite enough. The price is a bit steep for what it can do, but at least you get to have some fun.
The Good
It is extremely easy to learn and the results can be quite a laugh, depending on your imagination and creativity. Comic Life comes with a bunch of templates, frames and adjustments that can create new original elements.
The set of filters is definitely one of the biggest pluses of the application and the page format can be modified to different styles (30, to be more exact).
The Bad
Although the elements it brings are flexible enough, Comic Life fails to deliver a full set of elements to work with if the adult sector is targeted.
The Truth
All in all, Comic Life will raise quite some laughs if used ingeniously and creatively, and it is a highly educational software for stimulating creativity.
However, it seems that the elements you can work with are quite limited and there is no way to create new ones unless a standalone image editor is used.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
