You Too Can Make Crappy Indie Comics

Shelton here, with a hot tip for you that I got from the latest issue of the Stone: www.com-mix.org.

Long story as short as possible, the site basically works like Colorforms, using art presumably donated by a bushel of indie artists. You select the characters, the background, props, word balloons, etc., then paste them all together into one of six pre-set panel selections. Once done, you save it, and the cartoon is stored on the com-mix website for other visitors to see. Here's some of my handiwork, writing gags for artists Fay Ryu (the dude), Sakura Maku (the lady), and Paul Hoppe (the background); click for a larger version:

The selections are pretty limited, and there's a handful of annoying inconveniences (for example, I wasn't able to get the above example to save on the site with the background intact; am presuming it was a strip memory limitation or something), and outside of doing a screenshot, there's no direct way to save a cartoon to your computer. But, worth a visit if you're into such stuff.

No "sa-lute!" for it, though!