Just came across an interesting online graphic novel, Broken Saints thanks to a article in Slashdot. It's an extensive (24 chapter) story done in pretty beautiful comic-book style drawing and enhanced by using some of the neat tricks that Flash animation avails you.
It is a little slow... the makers opted not to record a voice soundtrack so you're stuck reading comic-book style "captions" and it's kinda artsy in its narrative so, well, it can be a little slow. But the production value is really nice and, hey, it's available for free via the Internet.
What I like about it is that it's a rather high-quality project that was done by three or four people in their spare time. It's also a gradual evolution of a comic book medium without being gadgety. I've always been fascinated by media, their differences and evolutions ever since I took a course "Principals in Visual Literacy" during my undergrad at Pomona College. (In my opinion, the more horrendous screw-ups in film and television come from people who don't pay close attention to the media they're working in, but that's another rant althogether.)
Anyway, I just thought I'd pass this on. Interesting project. Damn I miss doing artistic stuff.
UPDATE: Here's a piece of advice for viewing Broken Saints. Download it to your hard disk instead of playing it over the web. (They let you do that on the site, thanks people!) Unpack the zip files (one per chapter). There's a .swf file in each archive. Open that swf file with the Apple Quicktime player (yes, works on Windows as well!) and then do the "Present Movie..." option to full screen.
It beats the hell out of watching it in a tiny tiny flash window and a lot of the Flash stuff (the captions, some of the non-pixmap) scales perfectly so it's not as grainy as you might expect. In fact, it's a pretty nice viewing experience.
Posted by Murray Todd Williams at November 16, 2004 07:39 AM