Wolthera.info
So, I got my thesis done, updated the Comic Project Management Tools, and had a lot of time left till I got my thesis results(I did not pass >_> sadly). One thing that was sort of bugging me was that after all the work I did on the CPMT, there just wasn’t much movement happening in Peruse, the KDE comic book reader that can read comic books with ACBF files and make use of the extra functionality.
So, it was time to do some moving myself.
Krita 4.1’s comic project management tools now support 90% of all ACBF features.
Missing are still: Transparent(text-area), Text-rotation, Jump, and Anchor.
Best of all, I managed to get most of the values understood semi automatically.
Those who know me, or at the least know my history with Krita is that one of the prime things I personally want to use Krita for is making comics. So back in the day one of the things I did was make a big forum post discussing the different parts of making a comic and how different software solves it.
One of the things about making a comic is that is a project. Meaning, it is big and unwieldy, with multiple files and multiple disciplines. You need to be able to write, to draw, to ink, to color. And you need to be able to do this consistently.
The big thing I was missing in Krita was the ability to quickly get to my selection of pages. In real life, I can lay down pages next to one another, and always have them in my minds eye. In Krita, getting the next or previous page is always a matter of digging through folders and finding the correct page number.
Adding to this, I am also a bit of a perfectionist, so I have been training myself to start drawing scenes or writing as soon as I have an idea, because any idea is way more useful when you’ve got it down on page. You can append it to an existing story, or just work it in and reuse the drawings and compositions. And this was also a bit difficult to do, because how does one organise and tag those ideas?
So hence I spend the last few weeks on writing a comics manager for Krita.
So, I did two important things recently.
First, I posted my 101 sketches I made with Krita since I started working on it. I made a google+ album out of it, because I didn’t think this server could hanle 101 sketches easily. (Update: google+ died, so now they’re here.)
Secondly, I formally open sourced my little SVG comic reader with GPL 3.0 (which I think is sensible for a web-application.) You can find it on github here: https://github.com/therahedwig/SVG-comic-reader
I actually made it 2.5 years ago, but I never formally open sourced it, more forgot about it, actually. When at the Krita sprint, Boudewijn remarked he really disliked the way how webcomics present themselves, I remembered it again and show it to him and Timothée Giet. Timothée, as a comics creator was interested in using it, and I finally took the step to open source it.
It has quite a few features, so check out the readme at github.
