Motion comics: the emergence of a hybrid medium

This paper examines the recent emergence of the motion comic as part of a growing relationship between comic books, animation and new forms of digital entertainment and distribution. Motion comics typically appropriate the narrative and ‘static’ artwork of a comic book, which is then manipulated by animation software such as Adobe’s After Effects to create an impression that is similar to paper-cut animation. Early examples of the motion comic form include the episodic web-based Broken Saints (Burgess 2001-2003), as well as Saw: Rebirth (Shuter and Viney 2005). This paper will reveal a number of motion comic aesthetics via a brief analysis of Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons 1986) (Motion Comic Director: Hughes 2008). A number of interactive digital comic narratives are also explored, including Pocom (Emerl.com 2013) and an overview of the ‘App’-based title CIA: Operation Ajax (Burwen et al. 2011).