A fun way to customise your photos is to turn them into a custom comic strip or cartoon. In this article, we review some of the best applications for making a comic or cartoon on your smartphone.
ComicBook: A Popular App For Making Comics On Your iPhone
On the iPhone, ComicBook is one of the most popular applications for making a cartoon or comic book on your smartphone. Available for £2.29, it has a huge number of built-in filters and stickers.
To make your own comic strip in the app, you start by choosing one of the 105 layouts. Each layout will have a number of slots for you to insert an image (you can choose any photo from your iPhone’s photo library). Once images have been added, you can apply special effects to make it look more like a cartoon. You can also add custom text, speech bubbles, captions and stickers (more than 300 stickers are included with the app).
When finished, you’ll get a comic like in the screenshot below. You can then save this as a new image in your gallery or you can alternatively export it to PDF format. It’s a lot of fun to play with and it’s a highly creative way to edit and compile your photos.
Generally, the ComicBook app is only available on iPhone and iPad. Previously, there was also a special version made for the original Galaxy Note (Samsung’s Android-based phablet with S Pen functionality).
With ComicBook, you can turn your photos into a custom comic strip with callouts and filters.
PicSay: Add Special Effects To Your Photos On Android
PicSay is a popular application for Android devices which allows you to edit images and add special effects. You can do basic photo editing directly in the app (e.g. changing the exposure, contrast or brightness). You can also add custom titles, speech bubbles, captions and stickers. The finished image will be fairly low resolution but it should easily suffice for sharing on social networks (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram).
Many features within the application require a paid upgrade to PicSay Pro (£2.99). With PicSay Pro, you can work with images at a higher resolution (up to 13 megapixels). This is fairly important if you choose to print the finished image – a borderless A4 print will require 8.7 megapixels. With PicSay Pro, you can also crop part of an image to paste it on top of another (e.g. to change the faces in a photo). PicSay Pro also has more powerful tools with regards to colour (e.g. selective desaturation).
The PicSay application allows you add distortions and effects to an image.
StripDesigner: An Advanced Comic Book Maker For iPhone
StripDesigner is another popular app for making comic books and comic strips on an iPhone. At £2.29, it’s priced identically to the ComicBook application. Key advantages include being able to create your own custom layouts (you can use up to 12 photos per page). The app also supports multi-page comics.
For anyone who regularly uses Facebook, StripDesigner has an integration into the social networking website. You can download photos from Facebook in the app to use directly in your comic books and comic strips. A finished comic strip can also be published directly to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
StripDesigner has an impressive list of options for customising your comic.
ComicStripIt: A Comic Book Maker For Android
For multi-pane comics on Android, the ComicStripIt! app is a great download for free. When using the app, you’re able to create your own custom storyboard where images are inserted. After adding your own photos, you can then apply special effects, captions and memes. The app is available as part of Google Play for Education.
For the full range of features, you’ll need to upgrade to the full version of ComicStripIt! Pro (99p). The full version gives you a wider range of options, more special effects and frame sizes for your images.
ComicStripIt! allows you to create comic strips on Android for free.
Halftone 2: Create Both Static & Animated Comic Books on iPhone
Amongst the six apps reviewed in this article, Halftone 2 is somewhat unique in that it allows you to make animated comic books in addition to static ones. Costing £1.49 and available only on the iPhone, it has a clean interface with a tidy and modern design.
When making your comic, there are 30 layouts you’re able to choose from by default. There are also 80 included stickers, 6 inclusive fonts and 50 sound effects for use in your animations. For a wider choice of effects, there are a number of in-app purchases offered by Halftone. For £1.49, you can add a pack with additional stickers, sounds or layouts.
Static comic books can either be exported to JPEG or PDF. Videos are exported as MP4 at a resolution of 720p. As an experimental feature, there’s also a 3D export mode included with the application. With the classic red/cyan glasses, your comic strips can pop out in 3D.
Halftone 2 allows you to create video comics in addition to static ones.
PhotoMic: A Comic Strip Maker for Windows Phone
Finally, if you’re using a Windows Phone handset, the PhotoMic app (free) will allow you make custom comic strips and comic books. Like the other applications on iPhone and Android, you can choose a layout for your comic as well as the images within it. Unfortunately, it’s a more basic application compared to the iPhone and Android rivals but it’s easy-to-use and it’s available for free.
PhotoMic is a Windows Phone app that allows you to make custom comics.
Your Thoughts…
Turning your personal photos into a custom comic book or comic strip can be a fun way of collating and sharing your photos. In this article, we’ve reviewed some of the top applications for making a comic on your smartphone.
Have you ever made a comic on your smartphone? Which applications do you normally use? We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments: please drop us a message below and let us know what you think!
Ken Lo writes about mobile technology and the mobile industry at Ken's Tech Tips.