POW! BAM! Comic Life Makes Life A Comic – iPad App Review

By Lory | May 5, 2011 | No comment yet

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Being that I am a comic collector, I was pretty excited to find out about Comic Life by plasq. I love the idea of turning my own life into a comic adventure. Not only will this app appeal to fans of the comic book format, but scrap-bookers looking for a new way to display their digital photos as well. Heck, it will appeal to anyone that wants to do something interesting with their photos.

The app comes with its own comprehensive user guide, but I was too excited to waste time learning. I needed to get started on my comic book. Using photos of my vacation to Disneyland, I threw together a three-page adventure with what might otherwise be considered boring photos to friends and family. The end result was a clever little story that all members of my family laughed at, including the real-life Grouchman.

It took a while to finish the three pages, but keep in mind I didn’t read any instructions. Most of the features are fairly easy to figure out. There are probably a lot of additional things you could do to make your comic really shine, but I have yet to experiment with all of the extras. From messing about with the app, I have discovered that you can put borders around your photos, alter the type of word balloon you use, change the font you use and move pages around. There is so much more to explore with this app that I just didn’t have time to find out about it all.

The app did crash on me once, and at times it will run really slow, but I believe the bugs will work themselves out in updates. The developers promise to add more features as they work out the technology.

There is already a Mac Store app for Comic Life that is a supercharged version of the iPad version, or actually, the iPad version is like the baby brother of the Mac Store version. Although this app doesn’t offer as many features, it is still a creative and fun way to share your memories, and it has plenty of templates for you to work with.

While the app seems like it is for photography only, I could see it being an easy way to actually write a comic. As long as you can get your artwork into your iPad’s photo library, you can import it into Comic Life. With your original artwork, you could easily incorporate it into one of the many templates and before you know it, you’re the next Stan Lee!

You can email your creation or post it to Facebook. You can even print it out if you want to show it to Grandma and Grandpa but they don’t know how to use that new-fangled technology that the kids are playing with these days.

What I liked: This app allows you to use your creativity to produce an interesting and fun photo display that is easily shared with friends and family.

What I didn’t like: You have limited ability to position your photos. You can create from a blank template, but you can’t skew your photos or word balloons. The app also needs those few bugs to be worked out.

To buy or not to buy: If you take a lot of photos, especially while on vacation, and you are always forcing your friends to watch your slide shows, get this app. It will make everyone happier.