Interactive comics research

Interactive comics are similar to normal comics except as the name says, they are interactive. This means you can chose where the story goes next to a certain extent. This makes the comics far more appealing and interesting to a wider audience.

The first interactive comic I looked at was Hotel. I really like this comic because its unique and the animations used are very effective. It doesn't have much of a plot but still manages to grab your attention, it is also more interactive than the other comics which makes it very entertaining. Hotel is actually a bit disturbing and this can drive people away as well as the randomness of the events. The images are very simple but effective and the use of colour is limited which makes a big contrast. While the background of the comic is made up of solid blocks of colour and looks very digital, the characters look more like stylised traditional drawings, they were either drawn on paper and scanned into the computer to edit or drawn onto the computer with a graphics tablet.

The next interactive comic we looked at was dead on arrival, a murder mystery story. This is far less interactive then Hotel and is set out more like an interactive comic. Its made up of black an white photographs with certain bits left in colour for effect. It uses a lot of zoom and pan effects on some pages for effect which can only be achieved digitally which gives a nice merging of traditional photography with digital effects. The murderer also changes each time and the story can be changed slightly by the reader.

The third interactive I looked as was Meow Meow, unfortunately it only had one page but it had 5 Easter eggs (hidden things) in it. I think these are a really good idea and are fun to find, this is something I may use in my interactive comic.The art style is vector based and is made of mostly block colours, which is different to the Hotel where you can see the characters are drawn traditionally, a graphics tablet may still have been used though.

This comic is called Alice and it only has one page as well. What's interesting about this comic is the contrast between the traditional way its drawn and the digital speech marks that show words when you roll over them. In comparison to Meow Meow it looks far more detailed and the digital aspect is far smaller.