Comic Chat

 

Abstract:

"Comics have a rich visual vocabulary, and people find them appealing. They are also an effective form of communication. We have built a system, called Comic Chat, that represents on-line communications in the form of comics. Comic Chat automates numerous aspects of comics generation, including balloon construction and layout, the placement and orientation of comic characters, the default selection of character gestures and expressions, the incorporation of semantic panel elements, and the choice of zoom factor for the virtual camera. This paper describes the mechanisms that Comic Chat uses to perform this automation, as well as novel aspects of the program’s user interface. Comic Chat is a working program, allowing groups of people to communicate over the Internet. It has several advantages over other graphical chat programs, including the availability of a graphical history, and a dynamic graphical presentation." [1]


Authors:  David Kurlander,  Tim Skelly,  David Salesin

 



If you are interested in reading about the origins of comic chat from the authors themselves, download the paper described in the abstract  here. You will need  Adobe Acrobat Reader  to open this file.

 

Microsoft Chat (Comic Chat)

Summary

"Microsoft Chat, formerly known as Comic Chat, was initially released on Internet Explorer v3.0 in 1996, and was developed by Microsoft Researcher David Kurlander together with the Virtual Worlds Group.

In Microsoft Chat, your online conversations are the beginning of an interactive comic strip that unfolds in real time. Like other IRC chat clients, you type in the text to communicate. Comic style balloons display your conversation, and gestures generated by conversation semantics give your character a variety of emotions and movements. The character you have selected, along with other comic characters, comes alive panel by panel. The Microsoft Chat program interprets key words and symbols to draw your character and integrate it into each panel. Microsoft Chat offers a variety of original comic characters and backgrounds, created by comic artist Jim Woodring." [2]

 

 

 

 



Jim Woodring  is the Seattle artist whose original characters brought Comic Chat to life. You can visit Jim's home page  here.

Jim's art is very distinctive and if you look at some of the work on his site you will find some images very reminiscent of the work he did for Microsoft Comic Chat.

Recently, Jim was profiled by Regina Hackett, an art critic. Her discussion, in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, can be found here.

 

The Frog

 

 

[1]  Kurlander, D., Skelly, T. & Salesin, D.   ACM SIGGRAPH  1996, pp. 225-236, New Orleans, LA.
Retrieved May 3, 2004, from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=237260&dl=ACM&coll=portal

[2]   SOCIAL COMPUTING GROUP    Summary of Microsoft Comic Chat.
Retrieved May 3, 2004, from http://research.microsoft.com/vwg/projectsheets/comicchat.htm

 

 

 

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