I’m actually doing a work up on the combination of music and webcomics for (possible) inclusion in the next Webcomics Examiner. There have been a few ideas discussed that I think bear further investigation.

It’s kind of like having books on tape. It’s still the same material but the presentation is different. You have someone else reading the words to you, someone else putting inflection into the words, maybe even someone else’s idea of moode music in the background.

The other point I would make is that part of comics being so-called “sequential art” is that the images are presented sequentially on the page. I know, animation can be thought of as a kind of sequential art too but this is not the definition I am using here. Sequential art means, at the most basic, two images side by side that create meaning by their proximity. By rendering the whole “comic” in a single panel and running through time instead of space, we create animation and, thus, move away from what a comic is.

I have one simple rule for what makes a comic and what makes an animation: The reader controls their progress through the images. When I Am King used a number of animations, but they weren’t used to… um… move panels (for lack of a better term)… They were there to basically act as a punchline.

An example, Broken Saints was not a comic, but a very slow animation because I didnt control my progress. At least the stuff I had the patience to sit through was like that. And while I like what Cat is trying to do (because, without guys like him, webcomics would be more dreary and one-note than they are now)I agree that his latest prsentation stepped past the line into animation.

Maybe that’s the point. I’m not him, I have no idea.

http://butternutsquash.net/assets/pages/bns-comic73.html

but if I had to silence my browser all the time it would piss me off.

The other point I would make in response to this is that it’s good to have a formal definition for what comics are and are not, so we can make a meaningful distinction between animation and comics, we want to careful not to decry anything that doesn’t fit into that mold. It’s worthwhile for people to try and fuse the comics and music and animation because it’s how the medium grows and cuts new ground.