I was just surfing around the startupalooza website for who’s coming to Portland and I ran across the toonlet site. I remember writing a Mr. Potato head stack in Hypercard many years ago and it was a lot of fun. I’d seen others as well, desktop toys for Windoze and Mac, all along the same line. Well, toonlet lets you give them moods and write captions and publish them for posterity, which is a step further. So I got into toonlet and created Calendargeek, an alterego for myself.
I don’t really have dreadlocks but it was the coolest hairdo that fit the face. Some avatars are what people WISH they looked like, not what they really look like. I built Calendargeek to be expressive, not necessarily to look like me, or look like I wish I looked, and certainly not to be a glamour queen. However, I’m glad I don’t look like Calendargeek. As far as I can tell, toonlet only allows one character to talk per frame. And it doesn’t seem to let you edit the strips once they’re “published.” So given that, and since an awful lot of the time I feel like I’m doing a monologue anyway, Calendargeek is talking to herself and not to any other character, but you can listen in. Unfortunately some layouts cut off the punchline. If the theme of the moment is doing this to you, click the strip and you can see it in all its glory in its own home. Anyway, thanks for your indulgence. Toonlet is a lot of fun. Not sure quite what their revenue model is, but I’ll stay tooned. Groan… sorry, just could not resist that one!
Amazingly enough, it’s not Flash! It’s put forth as javascript, but we all know (OK you probably didn’t know but I did) that what lurks in javascript tags may or may not actually be javascript. However it appears if you “Use the source Luke” on the toonlet website it’s all accomplished with css and dojo.
I have become some what of an expert in this internet thingy and you can edit after it is published, sort of. It’s a little flaky in that regard. Best to make sure you have all your ducks in order before you tell it to finally make a comic. Also you don’t have to go across. You can just use one panel and add another panel and go down, or do like I do most of the time and use 2 panels wide.
yeh, they have improved it quite a bit since I made this toon. I will get back into it when they allow two chars to talk in a frame. without that, it’s just lacking something. you can alternate but somehow it doesn’t quite pack the punch.