Star Cross’d Destiny
The DragonPage has brought to my attention Star Cross’d Destiny, an online illustrated novel. Now its not like webcomics are particularly rare or original anymore. But this one is a little bit special.
For a start the artwork puts a lot of “professionally” published paper comics to shame. This is a very professional piece of work. Its also not a comic strip, its a story told in “graphic novel” form. A lot of time and trouble has obviously gone into this.
My biggest problem with it is the same problem I have with a lot of web comics. The format is designed with paper in mind, not computer screens. Now I can’t really blame the guy (ahem, girl), since I believe this is going to be published later this year, but it does make it frustrating to read on the computer when you have to scroll down all the time. It pulls you out of the story and focuses way too much attention on the process of reading.
Someone really needs to sit down and consider the shape of the average browser window, the limitations of the web page format and how best to present a graphic story in that format. I’m sure it can be done.
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
One Comment, Comment or Ping
juno
Working on it my friend. I have a 1200res monitor so that top banner is nothing to me but I realize my design flaws and that setup is one of them. We’ll be going to a more “optimum” viewing design in May after the book is sent off to the printers. Would have done it already but I’m the only one working on this and I honestly, don’t have the time to redo the entire site right now. I’ll be moving the comic to a basic page with just navigation and nothing else so its featured. ^_^ I’m glad you mentioned that - it draws a lot more attention to the webdesign aspect which is something (obviously) I haven’t bee too concerned about. And just so you don’t get freaked out - I found this through my referrers. ^_^ Thanks for the compliments. (and just for the record, I’m a chick, not a guy ^_-)
Mar 5th, 2005
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