Storytelling with comics
Last night I met Cris Pearson, CEO of plasq, a small group of passionalte software developers. We quickly discovered a shared interest in storytelling, albeit from different perspectives.
Plasq develop an award-winning software program called Comic Life, which is a program designed to create comic strips or arrange photos into a scrapbook. Mac users may be familiar with the product, which due to its success, it’s now bundled with new Intel Macs.
Cris told me a story about teachers using Comic Life in schools to teach kids storytelling techniques. I wonder if similar techniques could be used by employees to create comic storyboards that communicate product ideas and concepts effectively to stakeholders? Such an experiment with digital storytelling would be a great way of heightening an aptitude for Story (and just as important, having some fun along the way!).
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Daryl – many thanks for this interesting comment,
I’ve been using Comic life since last year to utilise it as a means of preparing talks but also to look at ways that some knowledge management ideas for my personal use.
I note from their web site that they are developing a version for Windows which is currently in beta.
You might want to have a look at Skitch which looks useful in sharing images and can do it via Flickr.
However, last year as a give away I picked up a copy of Curio basic which takes up storyboarding a bit more.
Can I recommend that you have a look at http://www.zengobi.com and have a look at Curio especially the Pro Version as this may extend the concept for you.
I don’t use Comic Life as much now because of Curio but you might want to look at it as a possible option though a little more expensive – about £50.
Another option that I have used is the storyboarding option from the Moleskine diaries as a handy carry around for me to use covering mind maps etc.
Anyway I hope that this will be helpful in extending your concept in this area and I do enjoy your blogs especially in trying to get people to tell stories though it can be a bit difficult with lawyers.
I’ll be commenting this on my blog – but will be sure to give you a hat tip.
All the best Andrew Trickett.
Andrew – very welcome. Cris gave me an impromptu demo of Skitch, which looks fantastic – a really great idea. Thanks for leaving a note with some pointers to other tips and tools.