Motion comics: the emergence of a hybrid medium

Abstract

This paper examines the recent emergence of the motion comic as part of a growing relationship between comic books, animation and new forms of digital entertainment and distribution. Motion comics typically appropriate the narrative and ‘static’ artwork of a comic book, which is then manipulated by animation software such as Adobe’s After Effects to create an impression that is similar to paper-cut animation. Early examples of the motion comic form include the episodic web-based Broken Saints (Burgess 2001-2003), as well as Saw: Rebirth (Shuter and Viney 2005). This paper will reveal a number of motion comic aesthetics via a brief analysis of Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons 1986) (Motion Comic Director: Hughes 2008). A number of interactive digital comic narratives are also explored, including Pocom (Emerl.com 2013) and an overview of the ‘App’-based title CIA: Operation Ajax (Burwen et al. 2011).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.