If your local comic book shop had a comic book featuring you, would you buy it?
Of course you would. It wouldn’t matter if the story was horrible: You had to read it anyway.
If a web site offered that for twenty bucks they would put you (or one of your friends) in the leading role of a comic and print it and send it to you, would you buy it?
Maybe? Could there be a market for something like that?
Of course, making a comic bookwhere the main character has to be redrawn for every single copy, would be very economically irresponsible. But with a few simple settings, you should be able to at least get someone who looks close enough, right?
Let’s say that you go to a website and input some information. First, what kind of story would you want? There should be a small selection. I imagine that something like this could become a popular Valentine’s day gift, so a couple of romantic stories would be a must.1 Also, stories from various popular genres would probably be good: Horror, action, superhero, humor, you name it. The selection would have to be limited as it would be a lot of work to make a comic like this, but still it’s good to have options so that you can decide if the wacky friend you’re making a comic about should save the day or be eaten by zombies.2 And should a large company like Marvel or DC decide to make a concept like this, you could also choose to make a comic where you fight alongside Spider-Man or Batman.
Obviously, we can’t redraw every single person by hand. So let’s instead draw various components of the person and combine them. The user inputs their sex, choose from a set of head shapes, a skin color, hair color, hairdo, eye color, facial hair, makeup selections, height, body shape, and so on. And then, the computer would put these components together to displaying the selected character throughout the story. Yes, this would need a very intelligent computer script, but it’s in no way impossible. Most of it can be done in Photoshop or any program anything like Photoshop simply by drawing the various body parts on various layers, and then combining the correct set of layers. I don’t know if there exists a program which can combine these layers based on input to a computer script, but it’s in no way impossible to make.
The words would also have to be managed by the computer: Most of the dialogue would be the same, of course, but the characters should mention your name every now and then, and they should also know if you are a “he” or a “she”.
These options already exist in video games (the first example the comes to mind is The Sims, but I’m sure there are other examples, too). Okay, I know that the Sims is a very expensive and flexible concept – this would be somewhat expensive, but not as expensive as making a new The Sims 3: This is 2D, and besides, you wouldn’t need to have every single possible facial feature out there represented. The selection in The Sims 1 was pretty limited, but it still was a revolution when it came out, and you managed to get people looking not very far from what you wanted, even though they all had the same basic features.
I think a concept like this could be a very interesting gift idea. And with the right people making this, I would definitely look into buying a couple of comics.
Seven ideas down, ninety-three to go.
- Could one make comics for weddings and proposals and stuff like that, too? Of course. But this is meant to be a cheap solution, and when it comes to proposal, who wants to be cheap? [back]
- Just make sure you don’t click the wrong button and make a Valentine’s day comic for your girlfriend where she’s eaten by zombies. [back]
I vaguely remember a webcomic that had fan-cameos if the fans coughed up some money. I wonder what became of it.
Yeah, that would be a better way of doing something like this: Actually drawing people into the comic by hand. But it takes more time, so it would have to be more expensive, and especially if a person is to be the main character of a 22-page comic. And then we’re not talking about a “valentine’s day gift” any longer, we’re talking “expensive engagement present”.