Las Vegas, Nevada – Comics can make you laugh, cry, gasp in wonder or shake in terror. In fact, comics are one of the oldest and most effective forms of human communication. Comics are effective because they combine both pictures and words in a sequence to tell a story. The problem is that while we can all write, most of us think that we cannot draw. However, we can all take photos. With your phone and Comic Tycoon you can create comics you will be proud to share.
Comic creation in an easy five step process:
1. Compose – The Wally Wood composition tool helps you line up your photo to create a panel that works.
2. Ink Lines – With your input, the software turns your photo into comic art.
3. Coloring – You choose a coloring system and palate that fits your artistic vision.
4. Lettering – You add your text using software inspired by the professionals at Comiccraft fonts.
5. Paste-Up – You can add clip art like, comic sound effects, explosions, bad guys, and cute kittens to your comic to get the perfect look and feel.
Wally Wood Composition Tool:
Wally Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher. During his career in the gold and silver ages of comics Wood worked at EC, Marvel, Avon, DC, Charlton, Fox, Gold Key, and many more. He was one of Mad’s founding cartoonists in 1952. Wally Wood was the inaugural inductee into the industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Wally Wood selectively gave assistants and those close to him photocopies of comic panels that bore the absolute essence of drawing comic book panels. These panels held the secret to a comic book illustrator’s success, and those who learned from them benefited from the master’s wisdom. We have teamed up with the Wally Wood estate to build a new composition tool that will allow you to take photos that give you the wisdom of Wally Wood.
Computing Ink Lines from your Photo:
We have built, over the past 10 years, a system to produce Ink Lines from photographs. The system is highly parallel allowing for a GPU based implementation. The results are so good that user studies show our ink line images are recognized faster and remembered more accurately than the source photographs. For you all this means great looking comics with little if any computational wait time. (We hate wait spinners just like you do.)
Coloring your Comic:
We are pioneers in the area of computer graphics coloring. There are four shading algorithms in computer graphics, each named for the investigator who discovered it; Phong, Gouraud, Blinn and Gooch. The Gooch shading algorithm, discovered by Bruce and Amy Gooch, is the only algorithm that uses color. The Gooch shading algorithm is widely used for scientific visualization, as well and in movies and video games.
For Comic Tycoon Bruce and Amy have invented a new algorithm that will allow you to easily adjust the color and style of your comic. You can choose between three styles of coloring; golden age, 1970’s, or modern computer shading. You can also alter the color balance of your comic to get effects like, horror, action, mystery, and light hearted fun.
Lettering your Comic:
We have teamed up with Richard Starkings and John Roshell of Comiccraft to bring you Forty five comic fonts. The fonts come in two types; lettering fonts for your word and thought ballons, and sound effect fonts to give your comics that extra punch. All of the lettering fonts are international, and we will localize the in app text, so you can make comics in 10 languages. We are going to use the sound effect fonts to build a separate free app for the creation of comic sound effects. You will be able to use your sound effects in your comics, or become famous by sharing them.
Adding Paste-Up Artwork to your Comic:
Sometimes you just can not take a photograph of the objects you need in order to tell your particular story. This is were Paste-Up artwork, or clip art can save the day. This is also the part of Comic Tycoon were we need you on the Team. We need to know what kinds of artwork you would like to have available in Comic Tycoon, and we need your help to pay a team of comic artists to draw and digitize your ideas for all of us to share.
Funding
Our funding goal will allow us to make between 500 and 1000 pieces of Paste-UP artwork available in Comic Tycoon. (Depending on the size of the art, bigger pieces cost more.) Additional funding will allow us to add even more art, and to port the app over to platforms like Android and Windows 8 as soon as possible.
Insatiable Genius
Comic Tycoon Project
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Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, Insatiable Genius works by the motto imagine, create, and share. The company has found great success in their creativity enhancing products. Their personal curiosity and the urge to share their discoveries with the world result in technically superior, innovatively unique and artistically creative software. Copyright (C) 2012 Insatiable Genius LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
