I haven’t done things I’d meant to do this morning, all because of Cathy Moore and the in-beta-for-Windows Comic Life software from plasq.
Maybe I need to add a ‘proof of concept’ tag (or a ‘messing around’ one). For what it’s worth, as I type this sentence, it’s 90 minutes from when I began downloading Comic Life.
Yay, another Comic Life fan! Welcome to the clan. Is the Windows version easy to use? The Mac one is, except it can be a little slow as the files get big.
“Easy to use?” The only thing that holds me back is a series of definitions remembered from long ago:
Easy to learn = Hard to use.
Easy to use = Hard to learn.
Easy to learn, easy to use = Won’t do what you want.
(This is NOT true of Comic Life.)
I started downloading the Windows version at 8:50. It took me 80 minutes to reach the finished comic, and that includes time spent searching for the no-royalty images in the bottom two panels. The remaining 10 minutes were two exports, then two resizings of the image (which I think is why my text doesn’t look that hot).
I didn’t consult the help file (this is an admission, not a boast) until time came to export the result, so there are things I wanted to do but couldn’t figure out through trial and error. I would have liked a sort of comic-strip-background for the third panel but didn’t see an obvious way to color the background.
I also couldn’t find a way to manipulate both ends of the word-balloon tail — for example, in my first panel, I’d slide the root of the tail to one side of the main balloon.
Lots of fun, and I’m likely to pay for the software when the beta period ends.