Comic Strip Generators – The Magnum Arts Review

With the rise of technology, anyone can create their own comic strips, even those who don’t feel confident enough to draw (and if you feel that way, you need to read this post). There are a number of sites that make it easy to create your own comic strip without having to download software; some are better than others. Here is the Magnum Arts review of some on-line comic strip generators to try out.

The sites require you to sign up for an account, and you have the ability to share your creations with others on Facebook or e-mail. Some prevent direct downloading of your creations; I had to do a screen capture in order to show examples in this post. Most allow you to comment on and see comic strips others have created, and build up a series of strips.

Bitstrips

Bitstrips is by far among the best comic strip generators I’ve discovered. The ability to customize your characters is huge. You start out by choosing your gender, and then choose skin tones, the shape of the eyes, face, eyebrows, mouth and hair style. You can fine-tune your character by adding facial hair, blush, glasses, hats, and you get to choose from a variety of outfits as well. You can also choose what kind of body your character has. The process of creating a character takes a bit of time, because there are so many options to choose from.

Below is the interface during the creation of one of my characters, who I named Sharonda.

After creating your character you can drop him or her into a comic strip with a lot of nicely rendered, colorful backgrounds, and the ability to pose your character is pretty amazing.

Using the control panel, you can choose the angle of your character, what direction the head is facing, the poses, and there are a lot of expressions to choose from. You can even control which direction the pupils in the eyes are facing. The hardest part is choosing from all the options.

After creating your comic strip you can share it or save it in a convenient png format to post wherever you like. The amount of customization on Bitstrips is really impressive. I may come back to this site and crank out a few strips just for the heck of it. Here are a couple of sample strips I created to showcase what the finished result looks like.

Pixton

Pixton offers you a limited set of comic strip tools; if you want more you have to pay for one of two premium versions that offer you a lot more options for characters, backgrounds and ways to publish your creations. You do get a pretty good range of options for customizing your character; shoes, body type, clothing, shapes of eyes (including manga eyes, which is a nice touch).

You can choose either a beginner or advanced mode to create your strip; I chose the advanced mode. The interface is pretty rudimentary but you do get options to choose from after dropping your character into the panel; expressions, action poses, etc. A zoom slider allows you to resize your character. The controls take a bit of getting used to, and are not that intuitive, and if you want to download your strip you have to upgrade to a paid version. Here’s a screenshot of a strip I created:

Overall the user experience with Pixton is rudimentary and not all that user friendly, but has enough options to keep you interested. The limits on the free version become apparent when it’s time to share your creation, however.

Toondoo

Tooondoo is another good comic strip generator that creates pretty good looking characters, has enough options to make your character unique and is easy to replicate panels and modify each one to streamline the process of creating a strip. The user interface for creating a character starts with an androgynous person to whom you add hair, eyes, facial features, etc. This is what the interface looks like:

It takes a bit of time to get used to all the options at your disposal, and learning how to drop them into the comic panels, of which you have several choices (one, two, three or more panels). Once your character is in the panel you can still modify their pose, facial expression and other things, which avoids the cookie-cutter, clip-art look of other comic generators.

When you’re done, you have the open of downloading it, sending it to friends or creating another one. Paying for the premium version gets you a higher resolution version of your comic strip. This is a simple comic I created:

Strip Generator

Strip Generator has a variety of simply-rendered, rudimentary characters, and you can swap out the various elements; hair, eyes, etc. The ability to customize the characters and background s is pretty limited, generating comic strips that have a very cookie-cutter, blocky appearance. You can create your own characters using mix-and-match hair, eyes, mouths and body types, and resize every element you put into the panels. The ability to change the font of the text is also severely limited. There is a small selection of background elements you can add, but the overall result is underwhelming.

Here is a sample strip I created:

Red Shirt Fanboy by Magnum_Arts

Strip Creator

Strip Creator gives you more choices of backgrounds and characters, but the choices are still pretty limited. You can choose two versions of each character, either facing left or right, and you can move them around in the panel, but you don’t have the ability to change their expression or poses. The characters sit superimposed on the backgrounds in an awkward manner that prevents them from looking like part of the scene. There is a larger assortment of characters to choose from, but the artwork is uninspiring. Overall, Strip Generator doesn’t provide a knockout result.

Make Beliefs Comix

This strip generator is severely limited, and has very child-like artwork; it is designed for younger children to play with. There are only a few variations of each character, and there is no ability to change the expression, pose or outfits. Additionally, you don’t have the ability to reconfigure the shape of the word balloon, making it hard to squeeze in dialogue without taking up a huge amount of space in the panel. Overall this strip generator leaves a lot to be desired, even if it is for kids. This is an example I created but didn’t bother to write any dialogue; the options were just too limited.

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