Hello, all. Does anybody know if there's a program out there that will let you create an interactive comic book, something where you can create something in comic book panel style, but has interactivity so that when you click on a panel, a short animation could pop up? Thanks in advance for any leads.

There are several such programs: Director comes to mind immediately.

not an answer to your question but have you seen the Marvel.com online comics? They are similar but do not run animations, when you click on a panel it zooms into the panel for better view and so you can read the captions. Very cool.

Very simple - presentation software like Powerpoint and Astound have all the features you need to do this, with the added advantage that you can package the finished work and have it useable by non-powerpoint or Astound owners.

Thanks, but actually what I was wondering is there any specific software package out there for making interactive comics--something that might have customizable templates with fonts, balloons, SFX, that kind of thing. For example, some years ago there was a program called Comic Setter for the Amiga that had templates for everything that you could arrange Colorforms style, and import your own images, too. It didn't have animation capability, but it made it very easy to build your own comic books. Is there anything like that out there, that anyone is aware of, for the Windows world?

Does the 3D Comic Collective have a forum? If so, that would be a place to ask.

Yep... the 3dCC has a forum... Just go there and sign up for the Yahoo Group... www.3dcc.com but I'll save you a trip... I can't think of any software that targets exactly what you want to do... but Director or Flash can both do what you want. (learning curve ahead if you've never worked with anything similar) Check out www.officetails.com (and the current strip.. interactive version) for a sample of some flash work I did real quick. Doug Sturk

I came, I rendered, I'm still broke.

I remember the old Amiga Comic Setter. I still have it, and an Amiga, actually. It's been pretty neglected, but it's still set up and useable. I'm almost starting to feel nostalgic about it. I may visit it again, in the near future. If the Amiga hadn't been run into the ground by ineptness at all Exec levels, it would still be viable and alive today. I really loved my Amiga. Cloanto has put out a program to port the Amiga setup to a section of the PC. I started to work on it, but I had a major melt-down on my PC disk. I still haven't totally re-covered everything yet.