Hurrah! We’d like to thank the Academy, and all of the people involved. Especially the little iPhone elves who do all the coding for us.

We’ve had some questions about how content can be submitted and what we’re looking for:

There are two ways to handle it:

1. Keep art as is and use pinch & zoom - and double finger swipe to reveal each layer - this would be cool, but not a great reading experience - as the pinching / zooming experience is great for examining things but not great for reading.
2. Edit the art to make it readable on the small screen. This is our preference to maximise the storytelling.

In terms of editing, we can do that; our feeling is that the right number of screens is what ever the story fits in, so you’re probably looking, for a 22 page comic, around 80-150 screens. We can add chapter markers where appropriate to make the reading experience much smoother, as well as backup material (for example, we can maybe add some of the big splash pages as full images on the reader)

The editing would be done by PJ Holden, a professional comic artist who’s worked for 2000AD, Image comics and fantagraphics.

We’d need large images in order to maximise the quality of the editing experience (around 1000pixels wide).

If you have an idea, send us some email, links to samples and let’s get talking!

Firstly, we’re pleased to say that EyeCandy #2, “Beatnik High” is available on the App Store for the bargain price of 59p ($0.99) and features an all new toy which should tickle you pink with it’s features. Our focus group of children found it to be incredibly engaging - when they could wrest the comic from their parents! It’s addictive to all ages.

Other than that we’ve been working like ants in order to bring you the latest and greatest comic technology. EyeCandy #2 will knock our socks off (daddio!) and what we’ve planned for EyeCandy #3 will amuse, inspire and delight! We promise!

As well as that, the busy beavers at Infurious Towers HQ have been working on something so super, so secret and so fabulous that we’re bursting at the seams to talk about it! Add to that some upcoming content deals that will make you gape in wonder and we’ve got a fabulous quarter ahead of us.

So…watch this space. (and buy EyeCandy #2!)

Matt Johnston, one of the infurious three (FREE the infurious THREE!) gets interview by www.touchtip.com, you can read it here.

We LOVE reviews. Phil Barnett, has written a great review of our first comic (number 2 is coming!) and here it is: 

Review of Eye Candy: Masked Marshal #1 “Mah Pony Must Be Punished”
By Phil Barnett, aged 12 (writer of Finland, Finland, Finland)

 So the Masked Marshal. It’s a very good and funny comic. The artwork is amazing and very well designed for theiPhone. (My dad’s iPhone 3G anyway.)

 

 The software via which you read the comic is amazing, especially that with a flick of the finger up and down, you can change the panels between pencils, inks, and full colours. This would help children who are artistic, children who like drawing ‘sausage people’ can copy it off the screen and see how the characters and the panels develop from rough planning to full coloured panels. I’d love to see even more stages shown between blank page and finished panel.

 The extras are as brilliant as the main comic. The idea of being allowed to recolour the comic is genius! (But it would be nice to be able to save the drawings you create [a fix is coming! - PJH].)  How could I not mention one of the greatest extras (I feel): the ability to make the pony’s eyes go wibble wobble just by shaking the iPhone. [Shake it harder - it'll neigh! - PJH]

 That’s all the good things.

 Now all the bad… honestly, I couldn’t find any! The comic is better than I could have thought of.  In all the hoopla of how good the software and format are, please remember that it’s a very funny comic.

 For future updates I wouldn’t mind seeing a animated version of it. Or under the extras could be a quiz about the story. Also a little bio of the creators and characters.  Or even a link to the creators’ websites.

With the painting, it’s very easy to go over the ink lines and an option for younger children to keep the colours inside the ink lines would probably make it more enjoyable for them (and for adults who can’t do it without that option. No names mentioned, of course, eh Dad?).

 To finish my review of this brilliant comic, I think it’s a very good app and is perfect for younger children.

Yeah! Thanks Phil - we’re all happy you like it - if anyone else wants to send us a review (and there’s some crackers on the iTunes website) we’ll be more than happy to print them. Not only that, but if you see anything you think could be better - we’ll do our darn-tooten’ist best to try and make it better!

-pj 

So, the BICS (Birmingham International Comic Show) was this weekend. It’s taken me a couple of days to claw back the sleep that I had to forgo to really enjoy the event. 

In lieu of an actual report on what I did, here’s a couple of links:

Paul Cornell (writer of Dr Who, Captain Britain and MI:13 and more…)

Said this: 

But most importantly, and I really think this is some sort of breakthrough, and something that kept making people go ooh and ahh all through the convention, if you have an IPhone or an IPod Touch, I’d like to direct your attention to this on ITunes:

http://tinyurl.com/4qjr4p

This being P.J.Holden’s [..] comic for children, on the IPhone, for 99c a go, or the British equivalent. The oohs and ahhs (and P.J. got serious people from various serious organisations I shall not name coming over to have a look at his phone as word of mouth spread) were because this is the first comic project that I’ve seen that really takes advantage of the mobile form. 

 

John Reppion and Leah Moore said this:

The main buzz at the table, and the con in general was the Eyecandy iphone application created by PJ Holden and written by Al Ewing which is so innovative, and cool and fun to use, it made everyone at the con immediately start thinking of things to do for them. Download the first issue for 99c (0r 50p)here, and watch them like a hawk in case you miss a second of their meteoric rise to fame and stardom!

TouchTip writes about EyeCandy

This week, Infurious released EyeCandy Issue One - Masked Marshall, an interactive comic book featuring content to appeal to broader audiences, especially kids. Comic book aside, the Infurious comic reader platform takes advantage of the unique iPhone and iPod touch to deliver cool interactive features that we just love.
…pick up EyeCandy even if you don’t have kids. It’s totally worth a buck, just to check out how some creative thinking can leverage the iPhone into a new kind of interactive reading device. We’re looking forward to future comic titles from Infurious.

Wouldn’t have put it better ourselves!

I’ll be one of the guests at BICS this year. I’m sure I’ll be wearing one of the patented Murderome T-Shirts (though maybe not the same one for the entire con…)

I’ll be getting in at 9:00pm on the Friday (not ideal, but the bloody airline decided to change my time to this later time) so you’ll all be getting drunk by then. But don’t be afraid to say hello and ask if you can see ‘Murderdrome’…

See you there…

In answer to this and this

The handing out of t-shirts were NOT a protest (silent or otherwise) - we just thought it’d be kinda neat to hang out with everyone queuing at the opening of the new Apple Store in Belfast and to give out some free t-shirts (and, heck, we’re Apple nerds too - we wanted to see the new place). A jolly time was had by all, we passed out t-shirts, we showed off EyeCandy and we had, generally, a good laugh. 

Now back to your regularly scheduled stuff.

Oh: re the t-shirts, we have no more, but we’re looking at getting some new ones printed up, we’ll get them up asap…