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Comics like McCloud's 1998 comic My Obsession with Chess were vertically scrolling comics that when completed would be the equivalent of sometimes as much 140 feet if they were actually printed out My Obsession with Chess was nearly 20 feet in length. In this respect, the printed versions of these comics wouldn't resemble books at all, but in fact scrolls. This was a major step towards the development of online comics. Another area of interest for McCloud in the world of digital comics was interactivity with the reader. McCloud's first experiment with interactivity was in a comic he did called '95. In this comic the reader, in order to be able to see the entire comic, had to click on images of closed windows in order for them to open up, like window blinds, and reveal another panel. This comic was just an experiment but McCloud feels that there is a greater potential for interactivity in digital comics. It was also now possible to enhance the experience of reading comics with things such as animation and music. Now, I know you're probably thinking, "Aren't comics with animation and music simply cartoons?" Well, the kind of animation that McCloud and others are experimenting with is not the non-stop animation that you'd see in a Saturday morning cartoon, it's the kind of animation that runs in a short loop or cycle. Cartoons such as the Flintstones used to use this type of animation for backgrounds. Remember seeing the same tree and mountain over and over again as characters were walking? Well, that's what McCloud is talking about. Although, to be fair, McCloud wasn't fully convinced himself that animation would work in digital comics, until he saw what cartoonists like Cat Garza and Swiss creator Demian5 had done with it. Both creators used cyclical animation in their comics and used it well. Demian5, for example, used animation to show the passage of time and also as a way to show movement, even though the character actually doesn't move on the page[click here for an example]. Next Page

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