Research

Dead on arrival
http://www.dead-on-arrival.co.uk/
                                                                                       

• Pictures illustrate the story
• Page turning devices to further the story
• Speech bubbles tell the majority of the story
• Text captions written in first person
• The music choice created real suspense and the music increased in pace as the story unfolded. In scenes like the hangover scene, the music created a sense of disorientation.
• Click able items give key information for the story plot.

  There are a variety of different devices which help tell the story and the amount of interactivity held the viewers attention all the way through and the storyline was very clear. this interactive comic didn't have much animation but it had shaking screens and some short clips to add to the story very well.

This comic had a lot of interactivity such as; searching for click able items, items would pop up to draw attention to the viewer, text gave hints to what was click able and interactive pans which where gave more involvement to the comic.

All of the above points show the use of interactivity, the use of sound and the best involvement to the comic was that the reader was able to guess who the potential murderer was shows how interactivity enhances enjoyment and these are features which could not be carried out in normal comic books.

http://www.draculacomic.co.uk/

This comic was created on the gadget show in a competition to make the best interactive comic and it involves one of the presenters of the show as Dracula.

http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/videos/challenge/21st-century-author-vs-comic-book-full-challenge

This comic used pictures to illustrate the story and these images also moved and changed colour. The story progressed by moving the mouse to one side of the screen and also clicking the continue, it aloes you to chose if you want to enter Dracula house or not, giving you the option to really control the story. This comic uses sounds but it is mainly for sound effects but it also has background music which gives and eerie feeling. It has text blocks which tell the story and it uses bold writing as the continuing option. This is predominately black and white but with hints of red to show key points which relate to a vampire.

The end of the story is a very smart way to involve the reader, it tells you to escape and you have to pan around the room looking for solutions and then you can chose to RUN or FIGHT. if you wish to fight you need a smart phone and a webcam which brings up a digital image of a cross which you have to fight him with. But if you don't have either of these, you can only run and you get caught.

The above points show great use of interactivity, the use of sound is very intense and the best involvement to the reader was being able to find ways to escape and fight your way out of Dracula castle. Interactivity has really shown great enjoyment and these are features which could not be carried out in books.

http://www.nawlz.com/

This comic uses progressive story telling, you click on buttons which are all over the screen, to progress you through the story. It uses a style of drawing and not pictures like dead on arrival. This comic allows you to chose different aspects of the piece, click on small items which give you pieces of information and also sound box's pop up so you can really relate to what is going on in the piece.

There are a lot of different sound effects for the piece and the story goes on. Theres no background music all the way through the story and i feel this is better as it allows you to focus more on the sounds of the story and the story itself. This story has a lot of interactivity as you can hover over things and they will change and do some form of animation and the story sometimes backtracks on itself as you go into the story to recap you.

This piece is very abstract and the colours used are dark but it has its moments of colour when you get to the right point in the story. This piece is very different to the other and hard to understand the story plot but it could not be replicated in a traditional comic.

http://zark.com/index.html

Argon Zark is a very basic interactive comic compared to the others i have covered but it shows that a simplistic style is some times better. It has a very basic layout and is exactly like traditional comics from the shelves by using speech bubbles and its layout. This comic looks like it is old as the drawings don't look as if it has developed form the traditional comics, but maybe that was the style they wanted to create. This comic has interactivity on nearly almost every page giving you images and information on the current situation which I feel is good. The fact that there is no sound is a small problem, I would have liked to have some futuristic sounds to help this comic along.

This interactivity comic seems very basic and looks like a traditional comic, but excels through its storytelling and the interactivity which gives you extra images and information for the story. This comic has a classic style to it and i feel that this could be the easiest way to turn a traditional story into an interactive comic.

http://www.cartoonmovement.com/icomic/11

This story is also very different to the others as it is almost laid out as a tactical plan and it telling you the times and showing the locations of the piece and how it comes together is very well done. The story is told through clicking through time and watching the progression of the story and hovering over highlighted areas for the story details. The colours are dull and look very traditional for a comic book. There is no sound to help this story along but i feel that this doesn't need sound as it looks like a comic that creates tension. The images are very basic and so to is the animation as it looks like someone has used Microsoft paint to create the animation compared to something like nawlz.

The layout and the storytelling i really well done but i feel this is not the best exa,mple of an interactive comic as it doesn't give as much interactivity for the reader as some of the others. But, this comic shows how interactivity is the way forward for comic books.

http://www.hoteloscartangoecholima.com/splash.html

This comic is like no other when it comes to telling the story, it is one of the most random comics I have seen. it uses dark colours but when you are in the canteen it is sometimes bright and has a lot of interactivity for the reader to keep its attention. There are some many things that go on in this piece and this gives the reader something to think about whilst thinking about the story. These random slides of interactivity are good but distract you away to much from the story. it uses some music and uses a lot of sound effects to engage the reader once more. It tells the story by clicking on the people or on objects and the writing for the comic is normal on the walls or on a separate page. The click able items give no information like the others but make character do things or make things appear.

As bizarre as this piece is and all these different pieces of interactivity and sounds, after getting through some of the episodes it began to bore me but I could not stop reading it as i wanted to constantly know what would happen in the comic. This comic is the best example of what interactivity can do over the traditional comics.

This isn't an interactive comic, but, this webpage is a book designer’s web page and it is very interactive and there is a lot to discover. Although this may not contribute to my ideas for creating a story, this layout and style could be used if I was creating a story from the past or in a classic theme. This style and layout could influence the style of my digital stories. This webpage has the style of the digital comic webpage, “dead on arrival” because of the way you can turn the page by clicking and turning the page. I chose this web page purely because of its layout and how it has a likeness to digital comic, “dead on arrival”.