Tall Tale Features, a home to countless excellent webcomics, has just posted a behind-the-scenes look at the making of your typical Imagine This strip. While I’ve been doing my version of IT about 75% digitally, Lucas is nearly all about the traditional, hand-drawn approach. Check out the article to see just how he makes with the magic and what he does to celebrate afterwards!

You thought I disappeared, didn’t you? Well the winter ’storm’ barreling down on the south better be HUGE. I’ll I here about is that this town and that town is going to get snowed in. This is a place that the worst snow in the past 50 years was 6 inches. So the problem isn’t going to be the snow in so much as the idiot drivers who can’t drive in a drizzle but think their SUVs can drive on ice.

Anyways episode 4 brings in a whole new concept then we’ve previously explored before. The most obvious difference is the framing, but maybe it’s the coloring? Either way it’s part of the whole experiment in exploring everything that is webcomics. This change, though, brings to mind many questions about why people choose one format over another. I like to think the laughs you get from reading Imagine This are equal to the jokes we used in Captain Excelsior but we have to admit the delivery is completely different.

The short banner like gag strip immediately puts the reader in the mode for laughing because very few of us can think of a serious comic that uses the one line horizontal layout that isn’t trying to be funny. The full page, on the other hand, is historically the realm of graphic novels, even if it gives artists more room to set up a joke. Your audience may or may not be ready to see some slapstick or witty pun, if delivered 6 panels further than normal.

So what is the better presentation?

David Reddick of Legend of Bill was kind enough to drop us a shout-out and so many of you fresh eyes are spying Digital Strips Adventures for the first time! While the most fun of this whole experience is coming from playing in the sandboxes of the best webcomics creators the world has ever seen, there is a story to this whole experiment and it starts here.

If you’re interested in seeing our takes on the greats thus far, click these links to start our stories based on Captain Excelsior by Zach Weiner and Chris Jones and Rice Boy by Evan Dahm (the titles are our takes, the names are their strips which are highly recommended as well).

Thanks again for stopping by and stick around, because our arc featuring the characters of Lucas Turnbloom’s Imagine This begins on Monday!

After featuring various webcomics characters in this page, I received notices from nearly everyone seeking legal action. However, when I told them that they, too, could be a part of the awesome fun that is Digital Strips Adventures, they all dropped their respective lawsuits and hopped on board!

Seriously though, I got nice words from everyone involved and it’s only right to give each and every one of them a quick shout, as well as link to their respective reviews over at Digital Strips. Enjoy and wish me luck in convincing every one of them to contribute to the DSA project!

Clockwise, from bottom-left:

Man, from Rosscott’s The System (Episode 168)

Nadia from Ramon Perez’s Kukuburi (Episode 183)

Cailyn and Asher from Garth Cameron Graham’s Finder’s Keepers (Episode 179)

Edmund Finney and Sasquatch from Edmund Finney’s Quest for the Meaning of Life (Episode 176)

Ed and August from Pajama Forest (Episode 178)

Robin Hood from Much the Miller’s Son (Episode 173)

Buff Unicycler from Amazing Superzeroes (Episode 51… ok, this was really just one of my own that I wanted to include, so sue me)

Bill from The Legend of Bill (Episode 163)

Clovis from Imagine This, our next participant of Digital Strips Adventures! (Episode 170)

For the time being, Heiko and I have decided to postpone the Finder’s Keepers arc of DSA. While we decide where to slot in the story we have in mind for those characters, you really should go check out the comic itself, it comes highly recommended by not one, but two Digital Strips staff members.

So what strip will come next in the queue? How about none other than the gag strip goodness of Imagine This? Creator Lucas Turnbloom has put together quite the fun group of characters with his comic about a man-child who refuses to grow up and the childhood toys that help him to fulfill that purpose. The script that Heiko has worked up for this is pitch perfect for both the IT and DSA universes and I can’t wait to get started on the sketches for Clovis, Darin, Dewey, and the whole gang!

Just as before, stop by Digital Strips for our review of Imagine This and read through the archives to get a taste of what’s in store when we invade… Darin’s dad’s house? Oboy…