On Facebook, Bitstrips and pieces

The Bitstrips comic app that allows users to create comic strips of themselves has got over one million users hooked.

Remember how doodling on the back page of a notebook was a favourite pastime to deal with boring classes and, eventually, long boardroom meetings? Jokes, plots, sub-plots would all be involved in creating pieces that would crack people up. With all things going virtual, could doodling be left far behind?

Bitstrips application, launched late last year on Facebook, allows users to create their own comic avatar and then use the templates to design comic strips with friends, minus the labour of drawing one from scratch. The app now has over one million users globally.

Twenty-year-old Ruve Narang, a student of fine arts, says, "It is a fun application that allows creativity. The templates and situations are set, but a person can work around with the dialogues that make for really interesting and hilarious strips. The templates also allow users to create a vast array of styles and looks, which can mirror a person in real life." She managed to get her friends hooked on to it and creating virtual comics has become a "new fad for them".

On the flipside, she says, it would be more creative if the app was developed by Facebook in-house. "The templates are wide and vast but you cannot work around with the backgrounds, the environment and the characters. Maybe the makers will do it in the future," she adds.

The importance of social networking as a tool for promoting comics is a huge driver for the team based in Canada, which has created the app. In an interview given to Wired magazine, co-founder Jacob 'Ba' Blackstock said they wanted to do away with the labour-sensitive parts of drawing comics. Founded along with his friend Jesse Brown, the comic app has marked inspirations from the works of cartoonists Dan Clowes and Chris Ware.

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