The limited-purpose iPad/iPhone Tf comics thread!

[grahamthomson]

For those following the releases of IDW's Transformers comics for the iPad et al, I thought I'd start a special thread!

Today, Ironhide #1 and Best of UK Prey #2 are released.

[Dave]

Might grab Ironhide as it sounds potentially interesting - and if I'm wrong it's cheaper than a print version.

[grahamthomson]

Much more interesting than the flagship title, to be sure.

[dinogrrl]

Having to prepare for re-presenting my thesis defense for an all day job interview last Friday totally blew away my plans for iPad comic reviews. I will see if I can't take some pics of this terribly expensive thing and put something up tomorrow evening. I'll see if I can get fancy and compare it side by side with my iPod too.

[grahamthomson]

Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

I'm working on a few reviews for the iPad myself, plus I've been tinkering with ways to get Hubris on there as well using Comic Zeal and iBooks.

Hopefully by the end of next week I'll have some freebie Hubris goodness for the iPad!

[Dave]

Ooo touchy Hubris goodness.

Some more iThing comic thoughts:

IDW
Good to see various TF series available and new issues being released promptly. As I noted before there are back-issue gaps but we have Marvel reprints, the main IDW-verse, Movie-verse and Animated. Comics are mostly priced at £1.19 which seems OK to me when compared to the cost of a physical copy and I can certainly see myself sampling stories I'd otherwise leave. Some comics are priced cheaper - I notice Animated and most of the movie stuff is £0.59 per issue.

Repeating myself again but the option of full page or panel view is a welcome one. If I had a Pad rather than a Pod I'd probably stick to the full page view but as it is I go for the other option. I keep refering to it as "panel view" but it's actually an adapted-for-your-iThing view, so you may slide across and get the same panel but with different speech bubbles - a good idea that prevents the screen getting cluttered. There are other changes too and sometimes it's fun to flip between the two views to see what's different. Generally the adapted view works fine.

The exception is the Marvel stuff - though I admit I am basing this soley on US#1. Not possesing textless artwork means some pages have the art split awkwardly to allow you to read all the text (with other stuff the text is often repositioned). Of course there is the full page view (which thankfully you can zoom in on) but it's not as smooth a reading experience as with other titles.

One negative point is that your comics are ordered alphabetically and there is no option to rearrange them how you would like. It's a problem because whilst you will have all your Wreckers or ongoing issues as #1, 2, 3 et cetera other things like the spotlights may appear in a different order - infact were you to buy the four Revelation spotlights you would find parts 2 and 3 swapped around in the list.

Bit annoying that but overall I think IDW are doing a good job.

Titan
The first two issues of volume one are availible as free downloads and your only viewing option is an adapted-for-iThing one which to be fair works well enough. Each issue does contain an advert/YouTube link part way through (for that new TF game) and #2 has an ad for the comic. Can't really complain when they are freebies though.
I also grabbed Wallace & Gromit #1 which I noticed contained some profiles and invention sketches - things I assume were in the print version, but there's nothing extra with the Transformers issues. A pity I suppose but I wasn't expecting anything extra when I downloaded them.

If Titan do start charging it looks like (based on W&G) issues will be £0.59 - I'm not sure if they will or not, but I hope they do release more issues as there was some good stuff in Titan volume 1.

One negative is the fact that whereas IDW has one app to download their comics, each issue of the Titan comic is a separate app which could lead to cluttered screens - although it's not really a problem at the moment of course.

[grahamthomson]

If you flick up on the Titan comic pages that have Autobot symbols on them, you get nifty little trivia scenes! I read that iPhone 4.0 software will let you organise your Apps into folders.

Yeah, the IDW App does need a "reading order" function or something like that. The Spotlights are all over the place!

[Andy Turnbull]

Hubris on Ipad I can't wait.

Took the plunge and ordered myself a 32gig wifi version today. No Botcon toys for me now.

Andy

[grahamthomson]

That's what over-time is for, right?

Let me know when it arrives, and I'll wing the entire* Hubris back-catalogue in iPad-format to you!

*To be fair, I'll have only done one or two issues by then.

[Andy Turnbull]

Splendid. Bizarrely not much overtime going at work, despite being snowed under. I shall pester you to educate me on getting the fanzine stuff sorted so I can get the Turn and Burn back catalogue online as well as some of the convention mags we've done.

Andy

[grahamthomson]

Jun 3, 2010 13:51:30 GMT Andy Turnbull said:

Splendid. Bizarrely not much overtime going at work, despite being snowed under. I shall pester you to educate me on getting the fanzine stuff sorted so I can get the Turn and Burn back catalogue online as well as some of the convention mags we've done.

Andy

Ooh! The Turn and Burn back-catalogue would be ace!

[Andy Turnbull]

Yup, some nice re-lettering on a few bits and a spit polish and we'll be good to go, but only after other things are finished (G100, Cybertronian Times and Escape Velocities to name but three).

Andy

[dinogrrl]

Oo, getting Hubris for the iPad - I would totally buy that! Certainly would save on shipping to the States.

Okay, first off, there is a little YouTube video demonstrating how IDW's comic app works. First thing to note though is that IDW doesn't make their own app, it is done by iVerse, which also does the apps for Marvel and Image, among others.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrQC0R8NiMg

I think the duplication of apps between IDW's main store, Transformers, GIJoe and whatnot is very redundant, but I do have their TF app and the main store app. I don't think much of the 'infinite bookshelf' concept of displaying your comics, it's rather gimmicky. This would work fine with small collections but large ones would be unwieldy. In the OS 4.0 update, app designers will be able to implement folders, so I expect/hope that iVerse will work that into their apps at some point later in the year once the OS update has been pushed to iPads.

There are some stability issues with the iVerse apps - I've had them crash on both reading a comic and browsing the stores. I have issues sometimes with getting the preview images to come up in the stores as well. And yes, the organization of the issues within the stores is haphazard, and issues sometimes disappear and reappear.

That said, one has to keep in mind that it's early days for the iPad and apps, and improvements are always being made. It's probably more pertinent to report issues with the IDW apps to iVerse themselves, given that they are the ones designing it.

Here are some crappy pictures of my iPod Touch, iPad and the actual comic book, for comparison. I apologize for the image quality but my living room is ill lit. The images with flash are making the iPad screen look washed out and dull, but I took some pics sans flash later to demonstrate that the colors are bright and crisp.



The screen size on the iPad is a bit smaller than an actual print comic, but it still makes for a great reading experience, especially compared to the teeny little iPod/iPhone screen.

In portrait mode on the iPad and iPod, you get the full single page display. One thing I don't particularly care for in the iVerse app, is that in portrait single page orientation, the comic book page does not fill the entire screen from side to side, there are thin strips on either side, showing dim ghostly images from the edges of the preceding and following pages. I get the idea with this display-wise, but I'd rather have the page be full screen width, personally.

In landscape mode, the iPod will display the pages panel by panel, while the iPad will display two pages at a time:



As mentioned in the video, even in landscape mode, you can zoom in on panels in one or the other page:

Two pages, no zoom:



Surprise zoom!



And here is a display of the maximum zooming possible in portrait mode:

Full page, no zoom:



Fear the hip joint of Overlord:



At this degree of zoom, you can see the image is slightly fuzzy - this is due to the resolution of the images that IDW chooses to use for their iPad editions. Each iPad comic of theirs runs around 22MB in size.

At a Chicago comic convention earlier this year, IDW and iVerse held a panel about digital comics, and noted that they wanted to keep the size of the comics below 30MB per issue in order to keep them manageable download-speed wise, especially if you're trying to download them over 3G cellular connections rather than Wi-Fi (which I don't recommend, btw as you'll just chew through your data).

Timing of release - Andy Schmidt noted at this comic panel that they aimed to have the digital editions of their comics available within a month of the actual print release. Part of the delay comes from the time needed to prep the images to the appropriate format - this wouldn't be such a big deal with the iPad, but on the iPod/iPhone, sometimes cropping and relocating of speech bubbles is needed. Another time factor is Apple themselves. Every issue of every comic must go through the Apple Store approval process. Sometimes that takes only a couple days, sometimes it inexplicably takes several weeks.

Obviously IDW wants and for monetary reasons, needs to prevent the cannibalising of print issues. At this point they said they haven't seen anything like this happening, even with the rapid growth of digital sales, but who knows when they might reach that point. Although many expect digital issues to be cheaper because of the lack of physical print costs, they still need to pay creators and themselves out of this, so as the print market shrinks and the digital market expands, I would expect digital prices to rise to compensate.

I think IDW's preferred timeline is to have the digital versions out two weeks after the print. Whether they get to stick to that is another thing.

Pricing - this is strongly dictated by Apple as well. They have a step stair pricing scheme starting (in US$ for reference) at $0.99, going up in $1.00 increments and not allowing any intermediate steps, like $1.49 for example. I don't know if this applies to the UK version of the app store, because I can't see that, I only get the US one. But in any case, over here the IDW iPad issues are $1.99 each.

I don't have access to the Titan app material in the States, likely because IDW is the one licenced to reproduce some of that (and has only done so with a tiny amount). But I do have a set of scans of the entire UK and US Marvel run of comics, and will be uploading some of those to the iPad and testing out another app that works for displaying cbr and cbz files that scans are typically compressed into.

[dinogrrl]

Oop, forgot to end with my favourite image:



This will be my wallpaper on the iPad when OS 4.0 deigns to gift us the prize of being able to capture and save images as wallpapers.

[Deleted]

That's an excellent review of the iPad and the comics on it.

[The Doctor]

Indeed. I think I need an iPad at some point.

-Ralph

[grahamthomson]

Great review, Ms Grrl!

If you want to take a screen capture on your iPad, just press the home button and the sleep button at the top at the same time. The screen should flash white and you'll hear the camera sound. The picture will be saved to your Photos to be used as a wallpaper.

The trouble with that is, the iPad ideally needs a 1024 pixel x 1024 pixel image so that the wallpaper works no matter how you have the device rotated.

[Andy Turnbull]

Splendid review. I am anxious to get my Ipad now. It is processing according to Apple, dammit I need it to be shipping!

Andy

[Dave]

Good review grrl. iPad looks nifty.

Jun 3, 2010 12:16:34 GMT @grahamthomson said:

If you flick up on the Titan comic pages that have Autobot symbols on them, you get nifty little trivia scenes!

I'm an idiot.
The worst thing is that's how the bonus material is integrated in to the W&G issue (though they have an arrow rather than a symbol). I saw the random Autobot symbols and tried pressing them but when nothing happened I just assumed they were for show and didn't think to flick up.

[grahamthomson]

You're not an idiot, you just pressed when you should have flicked.

[dinogrrl]

Yeah there are lots of little tricks on the iPad that I haven't learned yet either, such as that image capture thing - thanks for telling me that trick Graham, I never knew I could do that! Certainly would have made for better images than crappily photographing the thing, but still, the first few shots with the comic and iPod for scale were useful.

Fun thing about the iPad is that it is early days and improvements to it will come both from Apple and the talented folks making the apps. I'm no Apple nerd but I have to say it's the best bit of tech I've personally bought.

[grahamthomson]

Jun 6, 2010 6:44:32 GMT dinogrrl said:

Yeah there are lots of little tricks on the iPad that I haven't learned yet either, such as that image capture thing - thanks for telling me that trick Graham, I never knew I could do that!

You're welcome, ma'am!

[grahamthomson]

Out today...

Ongoing 7
Ironhide 2
Prey 3
Reign of Starscream 1

Ironhide 2 has arrived, digitally, pretty darn quick!

[dinogrrl]

Wow, they're really stepping it up with the Ongoing and Ironhide. Still not sure whether I want to bother with Ironhide one though. They don't have the -Ations stuff available, do they? *checks* Nooooo, they do not. I wonder if they'll do that eventually.

[grahamthomson]

It couldn't hurt to email IDW and ask if they'll add Infiltration through Max Dinos at some point.

Ironhide is actually quite readable. And at leasts it's an $8 story on the i rather than $16 in print!

[grahamthomson]

Transformers Ongoing #8 is now available on the IDW App.

[The Doctor]

You poor souls.

-Ralph

[karla]

Ah! I forgot about this app! There are too many.
Though pro-boards have one and makes this forum easier to handle.

Hub app?

[Dave]

A pro-boards app? I did not know. Would have been handy when my laptop decided to go.

In other news: for Ironhide #3 I wait. I worry I may crack and buy ongoing #8

[grahamthomson]

Oh dear Dave, please don't crack.
I've seen that issue, it's really cack.

Karla, I would happily do a Hub App,
But it's far too hard, so I say sod that!