Motion comic
Encyclopedia
A motion comic is a form of comics
combining elements of print comic book
s and animation
.
.
In 2005, Lions Gate released an animated version of the Saw: Rebirth comic, one of the first examples of an animated comic created to tie into a film franchise. The first major motion comics released, which is also the first use of the term "motion comic," were released by Warner Bros.
, the owner of DC Comics
to coincide with the film premieres of The Dark Knight
and Watchmen
, releasing an adaption of Batman: Mad Love and Watchmen: Motion Comics, adapting the comic book of the same name
.
Marvel Comics
have also begun producing motion comics, beginning with an adaptation of Joss Whedon
and John Cassaday
's Astonishing X-Men
and a Spider-Woman
series by Brian Michael Bendis
and Alex Maleev
produced simultaneously in print comic and motion comic formats. They have also recently announced the addition of Extremis
.
Examples from other companies include Peanuts Motion Comics
, the Dead Space
prequel comics and the "Lucy" element of the ABC News documentary Earth 2100
.
Another example would be a four-part motion comic based on the Uncharted
video game series as a prequel called Eye of Indra, released for the PlayStation Network.
A database of motion comics can be found online at Digital Motion Comics.
with their Godkiller
, which was produced at the same time as (but separately from) the Watchmen motion comic. As opposed to repurposing an existing comic book, Halo-8 created new sequential art that was designed from its inception to be transmedia art for both a comic book and an illustrated film. Godkiller creator Matt Pizzolo
told Bloody Disgusting
"Godkiller was just a slower production than Watchmen because we had to create 200 pages of art and story from the ground up first, rather than starting with one of the greatest comic books ever made as source material. Plus we had a dozen voice performers instead of just one."
Although aesthetically similar to motion comics, Pizzolo identifies illustrated film influences as including Liquid Television
, the MTV
cartoon adaptation of The Maxx
, the Berserk
anime series, Chris Marker
's La jetée
, the motion comic Broken Saints
, and the experimental cinema of Ralph Bakshi
.
According to Comics Alliance, Pizzolo stated "the difference between an illustrated film and a motion comic is kind of the difference between a movie that was shot in 3D versus a movie that was shot in 2D but got a 3D post-conversion. We're not repurposing an existing comic book here, we're building something unique from scratch."
Godkiller also diverged from motion comics with voice performances by a "genre-star-studded ensemble" (according to Fangoria
) featuring Lance Henriksen
(Aliens
), Bill Moseley
(The Devil's Rejects
), Danielle Harris
(Halloween
franchise), Nicki Clyne
(Battlestar Galactica
), Lydia Lunch
, Justin Pierre
(singer Motion City Soundtrack
), and Davey Havok
(singer AFI
).
The 75-minute Godkiller feature was released theatrically in 11 cities before it was distributed on DVD and cable VOD.
Upcoming illustrated films from Halo-8 include Ben Templesmith
's original project Black Sky and an adaptation of Tim Seeley
's Hack/Slash
.
NewTeeVee commented, "This first generation [of motion comics] is admittedly crude, but there is enough 'motion' in these motion comics to keep the viewer’s attention, and so far the music and voice acting have been great. Plus, the level of experimentation and sophistication will grow as more are produced."
Comics Worth Reading asked,
Artist John Cassaday
described his experience with the motion comic adaptation of Astonishing X-Men
, saying:
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
combining elements of print comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
.
History
The earliest examples of motion comics are found in independent creations such as Broken SaintsBroken Saints
Broken Saints is an award-winning, partially Flash-animated film series by Brooke Burgess, Ian Kirby, and Andrew West. First published in 2001, it is one of the earliest examples of a motion comic. Like a comic, characters on the most part remain in static poses and dialogue is indicated by speech...
.
In 2005, Lions Gate released an animated version of the Saw: Rebirth comic, one of the first examples of an animated comic created to tie into a film franchise. The first major motion comics released, which is also the first use of the term "motion comic," were released by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, the owner of DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
to coincide with the film premieres of The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
and Watchmen
Watchmen (film)
Watchmen is a 2009 superhero film directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Patrick Wilson. It is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons...
, releasing an adaption of Batman: Mad Love and Watchmen: Motion Comics, adapting the comic book of the same name
Watchmen
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colourist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form...
.
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
have also begun producing motion comics, beginning with an adaptation of Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
and John Cassaday
John Cassaday
John Cassaday is an American comic book artist and writer, born in Fort Worth, Texas and currently residing in New York City. He is known for having a high level of precision and realism in his work....
's Astonishing X-Men
Astonishing X-Men
Astonishing X-Men is the name of three X-Men comic book series from Marvel Comics, the first two of which were limited series. The ongoing series began in 2004, with its first run written by Joss Whedon and art by John Cassaday. It was then written by Warren Ellis with art by Phil Jimenez. Daniel...
and a Spider-Woman
Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)
Spider-Woman is a fictional character, a superheroine in the Marvel Comics Universe. The character first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #32 , and 50 issues of an ongoing series titled Spider-Woman followed...
series by Brian Michael Bendis
Brian Michael Bendis
Brian Michael Bendis is an American comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim for his self-published, Image Comics and Marvel Comics work, and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics, with his books selling consistently highly for over a...
and Alex Maleev
Alex Maleev
Alex Maleev is a Bulgarian-born comic book illustrator, best known for the Marvel Comics' series Daredevil , collaborating with writer Brian Michael Bendis.-Career:...
produced simultaneously in print comic and motion comic formats. They have also recently announced the addition of Extremis
Extremis (comics)
"Extremis" is a six-issue Iron Man story arc written by Warren Ellis with art by Adi Granov and published by Marvel Comics. The arc first appears in Iron Man #1-#6...
.
Examples from other companies include Peanuts Motion Comics
Peanuts Motion Comics
Peanuts Motion Comics is a series of animated cartoon shorts based on 1964 strips of Charles Schulz' comic strip, Peanuts. The series premiered on iTunes in 2008 with the support of the Schulz estate. The first season consists of 20 cartoon shorts, paired into 10 episodes. The episodes employ...
, the Dead Space
Dead Space (comics)
Dead Space is a 2008 comic book prequel to the game Dead Space: Extraction and to the film Dead Space: Downfall. The video game Dead Space continues where the film ended. It is published by Image Comics and is written by Antony Johnston, who also wrote the game's dialogue, with art by Ben Templesmith...
prequel comics and the "Lucy" element of the ABC News documentary Earth 2100
Earth 2100
Earth 2100 is a television program that was presented by the American Broadcasting Company network on June 2, 2009 and was aired on the History channel in January 2010 and will continue to be shown through 2010...
.
Another example would be a four-part motion comic based on the Uncharted
Uncharted
Uncharted is an award-winning series of action-adventure/platform/third-person shooter video games developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation 3 video game console. The series follows modern-day treasure hunter Nathan "Nate" Drake as he...
video game series as a prequel called Eye of Indra, released for the PlayStation Network.
A database of motion comics can be found online at Digital Motion Comics.
Illustrated Films
A sibling format to motion comics called illustrated films was developed by transmedia studio HALO 8 EntertainmentHALO 8 Entertainment
HALO-8 Entertainment is a transmedia entertainment company specializing in cinema, genre graphic novels, midnight movies, music-driven lifestyle videos, and animation...
with their Godkiller
Godkiller (series)
Godkiller is a transmedia series of graphic novels, illustrated films, and novels created by award-winning filmmaker Matt Pizzolo that tells the stories of human beings caught in the crossfire of warring fallen gods. The core series is a trilogy of feature-length illustrated films beginning with...
, which was produced at the same time as (but separately from) the Watchmen motion comic. As opposed to repurposing an existing comic book, Halo-8 created new sequential art that was designed from its inception to be transmedia art for both a comic book and an illustrated film. Godkiller creator Matt Pizzolo
Matt Pizzolo
Matt Pizzolo is an award-winning film director, screenwriter, and producer. His early works were created in New York City's Lower East Side, where he lived for eight years before moving to Los Angeles...
told Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting is a website that covers horror movies with reviews, interviews and news. It is currently run by Brad Miska, and Tom Owen. According to one source, the site has 1.5 million unique visitors and 20 million page views each month. It is widely considered to be the "world's most...
"Godkiller was just a slower production than Watchmen because we had to create 200 pages of art and story from the ground up first, rather than starting with one of the greatest comic books ever made as source material. Plus we had a dozen voice performers instead of just one."
Although aesthetically similar to motion comics, Pizzolo identifies illustrated film influences as including Liquid Television
Liquid Television
Liquid Television is an Emmy Award–winning 1990s animation showcase that appeared on MTV. The first season of Liquid Television also aired on BBC Two in co-production with MTV. Ultimately, MTV commissioned three seasons of the show, which was produced by Colossal Pictures...
, the MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
cartoon adaptation of The Maxx
The Maxx
The Maxx is an American comic book series created by Sam Kieth and published originally monthly by Image Comics and now collected in trade paperback collections from DC Comic's Wildstorm imprint. The comic book, which stars a character of the same name, spawned an animated series that aired on the...
, the Berserk
Berserk (manga)
is a manga series written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura. Set in a medieval Europe-inspired world, the story centers around the characters of Guts, an orphaned mercenary, and Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the...
anime series, Chris Marker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
's La jetée
La Jetée
La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
, the motion comic Broken Saints
Broken Saints
Broken Saints is an award-winning, partially Flash-animated film series by Brooke Burgess, Ian Kirby, and Andrew West. First published in 2001, it is one of the earliest examples of a motion comic. Like a comic, characters on the most part remain in static poses and dialogue is indicated by speech...
, and the experimental cinema of Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
.
According to Comics Alliance, Pizzolo stated "the difference between an illustrated film and a motion comic is kind of the difference between a movie that was shot in 3D versus a movie that was shot in 2D but got a 3D post-conversion. We're not repurposing an existing comic book here, we're building something unique from scratch."
Godkiller also diverged from motion comics with voice performances by a "genre-star-studded ensemble" (according to Fangoria
Fangoria
Fangoria is an American magazine devoted to horror and exploitation films, which has a number of associated brands:* Fangoria Comics* Fangoria Films* Fangoria RadioFangoria may also refer to:* Fangoria , a Spanish electro pop band...
) featuring Lance Henriksen
Lance Henriksen
Lance James Henriksen is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium....
(Aliens
Aliens (film)
Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton...
), Bill Moseley
Bill Moseley
William "Bill" Moseley is an American film actor and musician who has starred in a number of cult classic horror films, including House of 1000 Corpses, Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Devil's Rejects. His first big role was in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as Chop Top...
(The Devil's Rejects
The Devil's Rejects
The Devil's Rejects is a 2005 American horror film written and directed by Rob Zombie, and the sequel to his 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses. The film is about the family of psychopathic killers from the previous film now on the run...
), Danielle Harris
Danielle Harris
Danielle Andrea Harris is an American film and television actress, best known as a scream queen for her roles in several horror films, four of them in the Halloween series: in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers as Jamie Lloyd and in Halloween and...
(Halloween
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
franchise), Nicki Clyne
Nicki Clyne
Nicki Clyne is a Canadian actress best known for her role as Cally Henderson Tyrol on the Sci-Fi Channel television program Battlestar Galactica.-Early life:...
(Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978, and was followed by a brief sequel TV series in 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games...
), Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
, Justin Pierre
Justin Pierre
Justin Courtney Pierre is a singer, songwriter and guitarist originally from Mahtomedi, Minnesota, United States. He is the co-founder and lead vocalist of the pop punk band Motion City Soundtrack, and is known for his interests and pursuits in film making and production of music.-Early...
(singer Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack is an American rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, formed in 1997. The band consists of founding members Justin Pierre and Joshua Cain , along with keyboardist and moog synthesist Jesse Johnson, bassist and backing vocalist Matthew Taylor, and drummer, percussionist and...
), and Davey Havok
Davey Havok
David Paden Marchand , more commonly known by the stage name Davey Havok, is the lead vocalist of the American rock band AFI and the electronic music band Blaqk Audio....
(singer AFI
AFI (band)
AFI is an American alternative rock band from Ukiah, California that formed in 1991. They have consisted of the same lineup since 1998: lead vocalist Davey Havok, drummer and backup vocalist Adam Carson, with bassist Hunter Burgan and guitarist Jade Puget, who both play keyboard and contribute...
).
The 75-minute Godkiller feature was released theatrically in 11 cities before it was distributed on DVD and cable VOD.
Upcoming illustrated films from Halo-8 include Ben Templesmith
Ben Templesmith
Ben Templesmith is an Australian comic book artist best known for his work in the American comic book industry, most notably the Image Comics series Fell, with writer Warren Ellis, which is credited with pioneering a new format for commercial comics, and IDW's 30 Days of Night with writer Steve...
's original project Black Sky and an adaptation of Tim Seeley
Tim Seeley
Tim Seeley is a comic book artist and writer known for his work on books such as G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe vs. Transformers and New Exiles.-Career:Seeley has illustrated a variety of comics, including Kore, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe vs...
's Hack/Slash
HACK/slash
Hack/Slash is an ongoing comic books series, launched from several one shots of the same name, published by Image Comics ....
.
Reception
Reception to motion comics has been mixed.NewTeeVee commented, "This first generation [of motion comics] is admittedly crude, but there is enough 'motion' in these motion comics to keep the viewer’s attention, and so far the music and voice acting have been great. Plus, the level of experimentation and sophistication will grow as more are produced."
Comics Worth Reading asked,
"When you add camera tricks and a soundtrack to a comic, is it still a comic? Or just a poor excuse for a cartoon, done on the cheap? Are they reaching a new audience, attracted by a new format in more modern sales outlets (that come to them)? Will those hypothetical new readers eventually wind up buying traditional-format comics? Could this be just another way to try and make more money from the same, previously existing content?"
Artist John Cassaday
John Cassaday
John Cassaday is an American comic book artist and writer, born in Fort Worth, Texas and currently residing in New York City. He is known for having a high level of precision and realism in his work....
described his experience with the motion comic adaptation of Astonishing X-Men
Astonishing X-Men
Astonishing X-Men is the name of three X-Men comic book series from Marvel Comics, the first two of which were limited series. The ongoing series began in 2004, with its first run written by Joss Whedon and art by John Cassaday. It was then written by Warren Ellis with art by Phil Jimenez. Daniel...
, saying:
"I'd seen some motion comic animation, and the quality varied. When Marvel approached me, I was initially hesitant, but after looking at some test footage and hearing how committed they were, I knew what direction they were wanting to go."