Creating Comics with Comic Life



Creating Comics with Comic Life

(for Macintosh and Windows)

Start Comic Life:

This opens a new blank comic book page:

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Working with Page Templates

The first thing you must do is select a page template, which determines the layout of your comic panels.

You can change the appearance of your page template by selecting a Style here.

Inserting and working with images

You can insert images into the panels of your comic page by

selecting them from your iPhoto Library (Mac) or My Pictures folder

(Windows), which show up in the lower right if the screen. Or you can

select them from another location on your computer. Simply drag a

photo from the Album area into one of the panels on your comic page.

Once your image has been inserted into the panel on your comic book page, you can drag it into a different position with your mouse (you have to double-click

The image to select it instead of selecting the containing panel).

You can grab these handles and resize the image.

And you can grab this little purple handle to rotate the image.

And while the image is selected, you can click the Details button

to get access to numerous controls for tweaking the appearance

of the image.

Working with Speech Balloons

There are twelve styles of speech balloons that you can drag into the panels

of your comic book page:

Once you have dragged

one of these onto your

panel, you can type in the text that you want.

And use this handle to change the direction

of the balloon arrow.

You can extend a speech balloon to a second, connected balloon. To do this, drag the Extend icon to the dialogue balloon that you wish to extend and drop it on top of that balloon.

Then you can type the text for this second balloon

and drag it to the desired location.

Working with Caption Text Boxes

To place a caption text box on your comic book page, drag this icon to the

desired location in one of the panels on your page. Then you can type the text that you

want. Then you can resize and drag your caption text box.

As with all the other elements, you can highlight your

caption text box and then click Details to access a variety

of controls for tweaking your caption box.

Working with Action Text

To place action text on your comic book page, drag this icon

to the desired location on your page.

This will open a window where you

can type the text you want as action text.

You can use the corner handles to resize the action text (listen to the cool

sounds effects as you do this!)

Click the Details button to access a wide variety of

controls that allow you to tweak the appearance of

your action text.

Creating new pages for your comic book

To add additional pages to your comic book, click on the Page menu and select one of the choices.

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Saving your comic book project for editing later

If you wish to continue editing your comic book project at a later time, you must save it as a “.comic” file. Select Save As from the File menu. Type the desired file name for your project. And select a destination.

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Click Save.

Printing your comic book

The best way to print your comic book is to print it directly from Comic Life (instead of first saving it as an image file). You will get higher resolution printouts this way. When you are finished with your project and ready to print, select Print from the File menu:

Exporting your comic book as an image

If you wish to save your comic book as a series of images, you can export it so that each page becomes a separate image. Creating JPEG images from your comic book is a great way to share it on your web site.

Select Export from the File menu. From the submenu that pops up, select Export to Image(s).

In the Save As window, you can select the type of images you want

from this drop-down menu.

Click Export. Your images will

be saved into a folder in the

location that you specified.

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You have access to all the photos in your iPhoto Library (Mac) or My Pictures folder (Windows) here. Drag a photo into one of the panels on your comic book page.

Or you can choose an image from somewhere on your computer (Finder) or even capture a photo from an attached web camera (Capture).

Choose a panel layout for your comic book page here. Drag your choice onto the page.

Drag these to your comic page to create dialogue text balloons.

Drag this to your comic page to create Action Text.

Drag this to your comic page to create a narration text box.

If you click Details here, you will have access to numerous settings that allow you to tweak the look of the page template that you chose.

Drag your selected template onto the comic book page to apply the template to that page.

Click this drop-down menu to access additional categories of page templates.

And then use the handles to resize it so the text fits.

Highlight your text balloon and then click Details to tweak the appearance of your balloon.

Then click Place Lettering.

Select this one if you want the same page layout as the current page.

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