Motion Comics

Motion Comics combine animation and comic books to make a hybid of the two, using manning, voice acting and animation to enhance the art work already there. In some cases, text boxes, speech bubbles and thought bubbles (not that they are particularly used in comics anymore) are removed or moved, if hey are unnecessary because of the voice acting or get in the way of the art. Some motion comics create comics that work well with this medium, whereas some adapt already existing comcs.

Broken Saints was one of the earliest examples of this in 2001, and is pretty much what I expected when hearing the words 'motion comic'. There is panning, the character moves without being animated frame by frame, and text is still there while it is being narrated. This is an easy way to get the story, having both sound and visuals to concentrate on, although a downside is that you can't just read it at your own pace like with normal comics. On the other hand, you can see scenes in the comic as the writer/artist intended, with sounds effects and time to build up suspense.

Watchmen is adapted straight from some of the earlier comics, and while there are interesting effects, I feel like it is too animated. Almost like someone couldn't be bothered animating a full cartoon, so they left it half way. It doesn't feel like enough of a comic to me, using only the style and speech bubbles from the original medium, so it doesn't work quite as well.




Godkiller used original illustrations, making it easier to animate, but also taking a step further away from comics (in the opposite direction as Watchmen). If you could combine the two videos with this level of animation and the style of the Watchmen video, I think it would be a much more effective combination of comics and animation, and be much more interested.



Madefire Teaser Film from Madefire on Vimeo.

Though this is only a teaser film, the idea is very interesting, If the app works as well as the film suggests, it could give an extra dimension to the comics and move the images in a way that fits with the comic rather than just animating on top of a static comic background. It actually reminds me of some video games, specifically for DS. Things like The World Ends With You, Devil Survivor and Phoenix Wright all use a 2D approach for the narrative, moving the characters as the above does, although with a little bit less animation. I think that keeping the panels is especially effective, making it more comic book like, and this is how I would like to watch motion comics.