Somehow I missed seeing Round Robin in 2008 – a group of comics artists got together to create a story, adding one frame after another; from the site’s description: “Round Robin” is a game where one person starts a story and then others continue it by adding a piece at a time until the tale is complete. Our version involves seven British comics creators. Between us we will make a comic book, a panel at a time. Our page grid is divided into three tiers… or ‘plates’. Each person adds a tier to the ongoing story, which may be as many panels as they can fit into that plate.”
(a stand-off in Who Killed Round Robin, artwork by and (c) Dave Taylor)
“Nobody knows where the story will go but there is one element that remains fixed: it is a murder mystery. So whatever happens along the way, we know where it has to end. A solution must be found!
Who killed Round Robin?”
I’m surprised I never came across this before – contributors include Colin Fawcett, D’Israeli, Mr Phoenix (could that be Woodrow Phoenix?), Nigel Parkinson, INJ Culbard, Dave Taylor and Craig Conlan. Kenny noticed it and sent me the link and, as he commented to me, the standard is pretty damned professional (both the art and the colouring) considering this is something that the artists are enjoying for a bit of fun (although that said I suppose you could also see it as flying the flag for their talents to both readers and potential future publishers, which is fair enough).
(some panels from D’Israeli)
As you might expect the art style varies considerably given that there are seven different brush-masters creating it (as you can see from just the couple of examples here), but its all rather good-looking stuff. I’ve seen some SF writers collaborating online to create a story while the readers watch it coming together (which is quite interesting to anyone who is fascinated by how a story is created and a good use of the web as a medium where this sort of experiment can be both conducted and read easily), but I haven’t seen comics creators doing something similar until now. Who Killed Round Robin finished on December 31st, so you can now read the entire thing (something I intend to do when I get home) and, even more good news, they have just embarked on a brand new online Round Robin collaboration, Huzzah!, which you can pick up on right now at the beginning.
(the first page of the new round-robin collaboration Huzzah!, art by INJ Culbard)
Tue, Jan 6, 2009
Comics and cartoons