Digital Art Friday: Matt Huynh, 2014, ‘Magpie, Magpie’

Magpie, Magpie is a digital comic by Matt Huynh, built with bespoke code and design.

We saw the paper version at Comic Arts Brooklyn in Williamsburg. Huynh told us there was a digital version online that used its own unique code to host precisely what he wanted it to.

When we wrote Huynh for permission to use some detail images from the work for the site, he sent us back some more detail on the technical side of the online work:

I collaborated with Greg Wood from FictiveKin to build a customized display for the comic book. A primary ambition in adapting the printed comic for online was to have an elegant, frictionless display for the work. It’s a no-frills scroller that can show off the brushwork and hand lettering, with animations that aim to surprise rather than show off and hijack a viewer’s experience.

[….]

The panels and artwork made for print had to be re-edited for the screen, inserting some new art, rethinking pacing and reworking all the artwork for the dimensions and back-lit luminosity of the screen. The stark, deliberate quality of the sumi-e brush art and the economy of comics guided the choices and constraints to build a digital presentation that is bold in its simplicity.

Detail from ‘Magpie, Magpie.’ In the paper version, this is rendered as a flip book. (Image courtesy of Matt Huynh)