Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Strip Generator

The Rest of It 1: Gimme some BJ
Ah. The fun of life. The joy of living.



Was linked to this site from NTT's blog sometime back when he made a strip about a Tech65 joke.



I've always wanted to go into comics, especially after seeing and enjoying the success of the likes of 8bit Theatre and Ctrl-Alt-Del. I don't have the patience to piece stuff together without actually having to draw, like in 8bitT, much less draw like in CAD. Stripgenerator.com provides a simple solution for aspiring artists like me, with content but no skill. With simple solutions however, restriction is inevitable. I am often irritated by the lack of customizability. It's more like a humungous selection of images and templates to use, rather than how you can tweak these things. You can't even, for example, select what text to bold, italicize, or boldly italicize. Format one, format all. Still, I would say get your ball rolling and your practice going here. Once your engine's spinning smoothly, you can move away towards your own innovative solution.

9 comments:

rajendran said...

Hi,
I write from ToonDoo, http://www.toondoo.com, a free online platform for drag-drop easy comic strip building.
We don't have bold-italic for text-parts either (not yet!), but we do have a lot more features that you'll love, seeing that you are the type who is not happy with too many restrictions on creativity.
Give us a try, and tell us what you think.

Thanks.

Rajendran.
ToonDude from www.jambav.com

Unknown said...

the magic of stripgenerator is in its limitations. You can see users with fantastic results. And community is great 2.

Anonymous said...

I wanted to create a New Year cartoon with a colorful background. Your limitation is not allowing me to create one. btb i'm not an artist to create one too. My time limitation is very shot. Pew.....

Unknown said...

true, but as I said, the limitations are the key of the community. So I am afraid, it will stay that way.

Anonymous said...

sky is the limit for me :-)

rajendran said...

Okay,
Let us look at this from another angle.

What do we want to achieve here? Showcase the creativity of users by placing them in extremely limiting environments and letting them come up with exceptional art IN SPITE OF the limitations? Stripgenerator is THE place to go, it really SHINES in that department! Man, those limitations! They are very heavy! You need to be extremely CREATIVE!

On the other hand, at ToonDoo, we want to provide an EASY TO USE platform to create cartoons (like the original author of this blog said - "have content but can't draw") by dragging dropping on to a scene and adding text bubbles. We are proud to say that we have everything that StripGenerator has and much much more too! We don't want to showcase creativity under extreme limitations, we just want to showcase creativity unrestricted by the inability to draw.

We will let you decide where you want to go, and for those who haven't visited ToonDoo yet, here are a few features that we particularly like!

a) Ability to import photographs, images, from your computer, or directly from the web.
b) Ability to goofify it, true to cartooning style.
c) Ability to create your own character avatar if you are not happy with the hundreds we provide.
d) Ability to bind ToonDoos into a ToonBook.
e) Check same date next month, and we have a surprise package waiting for you!!

Rajendran.
ToonDude from www.jambav.com

Unknown said...

I have tried both Strip Generator and Toondoo.

My take on the tools is this.

Both the tools are cool and very clearly have DIFFERENT AUDIENCE PROFILES.

Strip generator sure has cool characters. I personally love them. But not everyone can relate to them. It is nerdier. It is for those people who have the luxury of time to combine various bits and pieces of objects, characters & props to form a visually meaningful, rich and appealing comic strip.

ToonDoo on the other hand, has a wider range of character styles to choose from; most of which can be customized for color, action and emotion; to which people can relate to. Toondoo is for the masses. Toondoo is for those who don't have the luxury of time to spend and who need an easy, quick, friendly tool to express themselves creatively.

Unknown said...

Vidya, very true. We hope that stripgenerator will continue to please its audience and grow.

Renhao said...

Thank you to all who have commented. This has been a most interesting discussion. I will have to agree that Stripgenerator has a fantastic community, and that there is a place for one's creativity to shine forth in the face of severe limitations. It is hard, however, for me to agree that therein lies Stripgenerator's success. Rather, if one can find sucess in such limitations, how much more with customizability? Also I don't think that Toondoo is "for the masses". If anything, I would imagine that people with no time but an irresistable joke will just throw a few suitable-looking characters together in Stripgenerator, rather than take time to customize backgrounds characters faces clothes etc.

I have yet to try Toondoo in detail. If I move, I will definitely miss Stripgenerator's community. But I do think that Toondoo's customizability will appeal more to my creativity. To each his own. :)