How To create comics on iPad with Comic Life

While there are plenty of photo-related apps around, we can’t think of any that manage to present your photos in such an original way as Comic Life. You can add photos or sketches to any of a huge selection of comic templates, add text and speech bubbles, and save the whole comic. What makes it really great is the polished user interface. The wood effect of the bars along the top and bottom is great, and everything feels incredible intuitive. The app uses multi-touch brilliantly, too, allowing you to zoom in and out of areas of your comic, and rotate your images or text boxes using a two- finger twist motion.

Creating a comic is both extremely quick and ridiculously easy. Choose a design you like and you will see an opening page. You can add photos, edit the text and move everything around, then add a new page. You have a choice of boxed templates, like classic comics, or templates that fit the design you have chosen. Each is different and each design has different effects. Playing around with this is great fun and with sharing options like emailing, adding to your Photo Library and sending to Facebook, you can impress your friends with your great comic-book designs.

1: Templated

There are selection of templates built into the app, each with a different style. You can swipe through the templates and select the one you want with a tap to have it zoom, straighten and fill the screen.

2: Basic editing

At the bottom are extra assets that you can add to your template. Drag a speech bubble or new area of text onto the page to add it, or you can use the tab to slide the tray away to the bottom of the screen.

3: Add shapes

Click the Image icon at the top of the screen to see shapes to add to your comic. There are only a few basic shapes available, but you also have the option to draw your own and see it added, which is great.

4: Alternative templates

The default template is a ‘Cover Page’ with a large title. As you add more pages, you can choose from a selection of templates based on your theme, or more standard layouts in the rightmost tab.

5: Set up your document

Go to the Settings menu to edit the document settings. You will be taken to a blueprint-style screen where you can change the border widths or edit the comic’s orientation and paper size.

6: Add photos

Tap the Image icon at the top to browse your photo albums; or, if you know where you want the pic to go, tap the icon in the frame. You can then resize, move and rotate it using multi-touch gestures.

7: Speech bubbles and zoom

You can pinch to zoom in on a certain area, and then add a speech bubble. You can edit the size of the bubble as well as the length and path of the tail coming out of it with a simple tap.

8: Add a page

The Document menu offers you not only a quick way to flick through your pages, it also allows you to add new pages with the touch of a button. Touch, hold and drag to rearrange your pages.

9: Change your style

Depending on the style you choose, images will be treated differently. For example, in this black and white template, the images are given a comic-book- style effect to make them stand out even more.