Thursday, July 31, 2008
Some musings about webcomic layouts
I'm not sure anyone has actually noticed this or not, but each time I've posted a cartoon, each frame has been a separate image. I got the idea 6½ years ago, although from where I don't recall.
I do think it's still a good idea because it facilitates a liquid layout for a comic (the frames only take up as much horizontal space as needed) while allowing for a larger frame. The frames on my experimental comic are 320×240, which are large compared to most online comics, while at the same time, allowing for a very narrow browser window.
I've even put the idea out there and had some positive feedback on it, but I've yet to see any online comic actually implement the idea, and I don't understand why. Perhaps it's not as good an idea as I think it is? Or it's, oddly enough, too constraining? Perhaps Howard Aiken was right when he said, “Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.”
I don't know, it seems like an obvious idea to me.