AUSTIN, Texas -- No steady hand or even a keen eye is required to create a polished webcomic, thanks to a new, easy-to-use tool that lets users create a comic strip from scratch.
Bitstrips, the brainchild of a group of cartoonists and animators, launched at South by Southwest by inviting convention attendees on the showroom floor to test the service by creating a personalized avatar.
"Comics are usually so labor intensive," said Jacob "Ba" Blackstock (pictured above), who designed and drew all of the art and character components used in the service. "With Bitstrips, we're sidestepping the hard parts."
Inspired by the work of Dan Clowes and Chris Ware, Blackstock and high school buddy Jesse Brown came up with the idea to streamline comic creation while lamenting over the tediousness and difficulty of hand-drawing an elaborate strip.
"We're really creating groundwork for a whole new way to communicate," said Brown, who envisions Bitstrips as a "YouTube for comics."
The team has created a special, embeddable reader so their comics can be easily read on their site or on a blog, and encourage users to collaborate with each other, trading characters and creating new adventures for one another.
"We considered making a tutorial video to show people how to use the service," said Blackstock, one-fifth of Bitstrip's Canadian startup crew. "But when my 65-year-old aunt could use it with no problem, I realized we had something very accessible."
"His mom has one of the most popular strips on the site!" chimed in Brown. "And she keeps humiliating me in it by appearing naked," sighed Blackstock.
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The team members has also been chronicling their adventures as first-timers at SXSW, in a series of strips outlining daily (and nightly) events.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired
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