About Digital Comics

While surfing through the site Deviantart.com, a popular art-based image hosting community, I came across an entry that had been featured as a work of note. Made entirely in Flash by Yves Bigerel (account name Balak01), the work discusses the storytelling potential of digital comics. Apart from a few grammatical errors (English is not the artist's native language), the information presented in it provides a newer way of seeing and appreciating comics in a digital format. In the comic, two characters go over the pros and cons of the medium, mainly by having one of the characters beat up the other as a way of demonstrating how the storytelling can be controlled. As artist points out, digital comics allow artists "new ways to create time with space," mainly in controlling the arrangement and size of the panels, have panels spontaneously appear to set up surprise viewers with content they may not have expected, control the passage of time within the events of the comic to create a slowing effect, and so on. The tone of the explanations is similar to that in the publications of Scott McCloud, who wrote and drew Understanding Comics and other books on the subject, an aspect that the artist acknowledges.

Due to the fact that we have been working in Flash, I the felt it was appropriate to discuss the work here. Mainly in, as the characters note, how the artist can control what the viewer sees as they progress along the comic while the viewer can take their time in absorbing the information in the comic or go back to catch something they may have missed. It is this type of interactivity that I find interesting, mainly in the equal control given to both the artist and the viewer. What also made it stand out to me was the fact that it talked about sequential works, a topic that never fails to interest me. As such, I may try my hand at creating a digital comic at some point in the future.