COBBLE The Digital Comic Book Reader

IAKM 61095 - Spring 09

Preface Comic books have been popular amongst children, teenagers, and its ardent readers since its introduction in 1930s. Comic books were first introduced in US in its original

format back in 1934 with the publication of Famous Funnies. Since then United States has been the leading producer of comic books, with only the British and Japanese manga as close competitors in terms of quantity of titles. The majority of all comic books in the U.S. are marketed to young adult readers, though titles are also produced for young children as well as adult audiences.

The Golden Age of story books is generally thought as lasting from the introduction of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman in 1938 until the late 1940s or early 1950s. During this time, comic books enjoyed considerable popularity; the archetype of the superhero was invented and defined, and many of the most popular superheroes were created.

While comics as an art form could theoretically extend as far back in history as sequential cave paintings, comic books are dependent on printing, and the starting point for them in book form is generally considered to be the tabloid-sized The Funnies begun in 1929, or the smaller-sized Funnies on Parade begun in 1933. Both of these were simply reprints of newspaper strips.

The more recent advent in comic books came with web comics. There are several differences between webcomics and conventional printed comics. With webcomics, the formal restrictions of the traditional newspaper or magazine format can be lifted, allowing artists to take advantage of the web's unique capabilities. Scott McCloud, one of the first advocates of webcomics, has pioneered the idea of the infinite canvas where, rather than being confined to normal print dimensions, artists are free to spread out in any direction.

Other comic artists have also experimented, still, many if not most webcomics take traditional forms. Other webcomics are presented in the same manner as traditional comic books, manga and graphic novels. These comics, such as Fred Gallagher's Megatokyo come in a page form rather than a strip form and tend to focus more on story than gags. However, even after all these changes; the medium of comics as such has not „really‟ changed. With the world getting digitized and technology being at the stage that it is now, it is surprising to note that the Comics has remained almost the same.

Our argument with our prototype – COBBLE, hence is:

The issues that Cobble tries to tackle are as follows:

Carry thousands of comic book in your pocket and read it anywhere. No more getting tired of holding comic books for a long time Turn pages with a touch! Buy/download books from the convenience of your home

Break free of devices such as iphone or a personal computer to read comic books Create your own comics View high resolution images No more comic books getting torn or lost!

Motivation

The Media lab at MIT recently came up with a breakthrough in the field of tangible computing by inventing the technology of siftables and as they describe in their words this technology is all about making the digital physical. Cobble-The Comic Book Reader is based on this “Siftable” technology.

As taken form www.siftables.com “What are siftables?

Siftables are cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them - piling, grouping, sorting - to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications.”

We have used this prototype to design our tangible comic book reader – COBBLE.

Proposed Solution

Siftable Comic Book

This Digital Comic Book Reader uses siftables as its basic building blocks. These blocks are half the size of the standard comic book page so a user buys two siftables to create one page of a standard comic book.

Cobble Explained

A pico-projector

A clock that converts the master cobble to a clock in idle mode calculator & digital photo display (in Idle mode)

built in software to convert pictures into cartoon characters

design studio to create your own comic books Bluetooth for comic book sharing Backlight display that automatically adjusts to the surrounding lighting Voice based interaction capability

Ways in which Cobble can be arranged

User Profile

Three friends, two young boys (aged about 12 and 11 ) and one girl, aged 11 (Ryan, Kevin and Nia) are friends. Extremely fond of reading comic books Like doing things together

Use Case Scenarios

Share a Comic with friends (enlarged display)

Ryan buys a new comic book. Nia and Kevin drops in his place while Ryan is reading his new comic book. Ryan suggests that Nia and Kevin read the new comic book with him (of course they could not do this before Ryan bought himself Cobble comic book reader). They all agree.

Ryan was using two siftables to read his comic book before Nia and Kevin stopped by. Now that Nia and Ryan were also interested in reading the book, Ryan joins two sidekick siftables to create a comic book which is magnified x 2 times. He can even add six sidekicks to the master cobble and create a bigger display.

Ryan can either drag the comic book to make the screen display one scene or separate scenes. Upon magnification the experience can be very similar to watching a movie with friends.

Read at your own pace/Take a Cobbler with you

Share and read new comics at the same time. Ryan, Kevin, and Nia were reading the comic book with the 1 M + 5 S setup. Kevin‟s Mom wants to go to the mall and asks Kevin to come with her. Ryan detached one 2 cobbles form the setup and gives it to Kevin. Kevin takes the cobble and off he goes with his Mom to the mall. He reads the comic at his own pace while on the way.

Storyboard 3: No Hands!!!

Project comic on the wall/ceiling and relax, sit back, and enjoy. Kevin is feeling particularly tired today and doesn‟t want to hold and read the comic book anymore. He wishes that he could lie on his back and comic book floats in the air in front of his eyes and he can keep on reading it like that. Guess what! With Cobble, he can now lie on the bed and put the master siftable on the bed and actually project the comic on the ceiling and read it like that without having to hold the book in his hands. In fact he can project the comic book on any flat surface using the built-in pico-projector.

Storyboard 4: Backlight Display

With cobbles soft backlight that adjusts to the surrounding light by adjusting the brightness of the display, Kevin can read his comic book even at night when e is tucked in bed. If his Mom comes to check on him, all he has to do is stack the cobbles up and it turns to a clock.

Storyboard 5: It’s all digital, No wear and tear!

Now Ryan is 20 years old and Spiderman is still his favorite comic. Ryan has read it back to back for about 200 times but it still won‟t get torn because of everything is digital! He even buys volumes of the book, collects different editions and shares it with friends.

Other Scenarios

Support for the Visually Impaired Users

Cobble can read the comic book to visually impaired cobble users.

Tell the Comic Book Reader to turn the page - why use hands, when you can use voice?

Trick parents, teachers and your annoying neighbor kids into believing you are doing your homework.

Create Comic Books

Do it for fun, for a hobby or to develop some serious skills: Kevin not only enjoys reading comics but he tells everybody that when he grows up he would like to create them. So why to wait that long when we can have Kevin get started right away. Children can be very creative and artistic so this Comic Book Reader provides all tools to them to create a comic book of their own and the functionality to share it with others. It comes with a camera to capture friends, objects etc and other software tools to turn those pictures into cartoon characters, add text, voice etc.

Project Deliverables

Based on our research and analysis of the problem domain we have described the solution to the problem at hand using the following project deliverables:

a. Project Report

b. Physical Prototype

Open Design Challenges

1. Comic Books of Standard Size vs. Comic Books written for siftables of varying sizes 2. How can animation and sound be effectively used for mood/scenario setting and as a powerful aid for our

imagination in context of digital comic books?

Future Work

The possibilities are endless – few that we can think of are:

3 D projection (hologram) of comics Converting videos to comics, etc. Based on the work of Drew and Marie Cobble-The Digital Comic Book Reader can be further integrated with a

bar code scanner to scan comic books purchased from a physical store for serving the purposes of an avid comic collector.

References

[1] Siftables-Making the digital Physical. Retrieved May 12, 2009 from, http://siftables.com/

[2] Digital Comic Book Reader for the Avid Collector, a design project by Drew and Marie Human Information Interaction course, IAKM at Kent State University Spring 2009