New Comic Builder Beta: 2010-06-15

Hi everybody – we’ve just pushed out a new beta comic builder which fixes the emotion saving issue people were having. Please report any bugs you find – thanks!

New Comic Builder Beta: 2010-06-09

Quick update this morning – we fixed the disappearing panel issues from yesterday, as well as proper remix/series tracking issue. Also, the keen observer will notice a few small changes in the library panel – groundwork for a new feature coming soon!

Please report any bugs you find – thanks!

New Comic Builder Beta: 2010-06-01

My fellow Bitstrippers, we have released a new beta comic builder today, version 2010-06-01 (right-click in the comic builder to see the version you’re using). Some of the changes included are listed below:

• Improved saving – within the builder, saving is now a two-step process. Comic data is saved first, followed by the comic image. Saving the data is very quick and reliable and provides a way to recover your comic if saving the comic image (big and slow) fails.
• Panel Fixes – resizing and adding new panels can no longer “break” a comic
• Text Bubbles – improvements to saving their formatting and location
• General memory and performance improvements for large comics.

If you’d like to try to beta comic builder, see this post for more information. And as always, please submit a bug report if you encounter any issues.

New Feature: Flexible Characters!

The original Bitstrips Character Engine featured a combination of gestures, stances and actions which combined together added up to 210 possible poses (multiplied by the 5 character rotations, that’s 1050 different views of any character!).  But, after 2 years and 2 million Bitstrips, we’d understand if you prolific Bitstrippers might start to feel a bit constrained by this finite set of poses.

Which is why we’re excited to announce the advent of the Bitstrips Character Engine V2 – which has magically turned every character into a flexible puppet that can be manipulated into any pose imaginable.  Welcome to infinite posing.

To manually pose a character, just double-click on it – the yellow highlight around the character and faded background lets you know you’re in ‘Pose Mode’, where you can click on any body part and move it independently. You can also stack arms above or below the body or head, to fine-tune your pose – start by clicking the arm you want to move, and then use the ‘Move Behind’ or ‘Move In-Front’ buttons on the lower toolbar.

When you’re finished posing, double-click anywhere else in the panel to exit Pose Mode.  You can still use any of the pre-set poses from the character control panel at any time, for fast and easy posing.

We’ve already seen some amazing results from pose-happy Bitstrippers – like these:

‘Body Language – Without Words’ by OtterDisaster

‘Kung Fu’ by Xinpheld

‘Dance Craze’ by BoomMike

So, if you haven’t already – open up the comic builder and get posin’!

Bitstrips is down… again?!

My fellow Bitstrippers, you may have noticed in recent months the message Bitstrips is down. The message is displayed whenever our servers receive more requests than they can handle and unfortunately it has been happening more and more frequently. Thanks to our incredible growth over the last few months, we have outstripped our server’s ability to scale. What do you do when your server can’t scale? Move to the cloud!

Over the next few weekends we will be starting this transition process. Unfortunately some downtime will result. Currently we are planning for the site to be unavailable from 7pm Saturday February 27th to 7pm Sunday February 28th (EST). We apologize in advance for an disruption this will cause.

Thanks to everyone for their patience over the last few months, and during the transition.

New Beta!

My fellow Bitstrippers, I have some exciting news – today we’ve released a new beta comic builder! A few of the changes in this version include:

• Over 80 new props and assets
• A new “Shape” tab which includes basic shapes
• Improved positioning, stacking, scaling and rotating controls
• Text bubbles can now be scaled and stacked, along with improved controls (colour/bold/size any part of text bubble just by selecting it)
• Larger (taller) panels
• Up to 7 rows per comic (from the previous 2)

Unlike previous beta releases, this beta version of the comic builder does have several issues we’re working to resolve. You can always go back to the non-beta builder by toggling the Beta Builder option in your settings. Some of these issues include:

• Scenes – objects in old scenes will not load 100% accurately
• Old comics – if you edit a comic created with the old comic builder, it will load in the old comic builder, not the new beta builder

And those are just the ones we know about! If you do encounter a bug, be sure to submit a bug report so we can make sure to fix it.

Thanks to all our users for waiting so patiently for this long-awaited update!

Status Updates and You

My fellow Bitstrippers, to all of those who don’t follow the Wrangler’s series, Happy New Year! We’re all excited to make 2009 officially the year of the Bitstrip.

Today we’ve released an update to the right message sidebar you all know and love. When building Bitstrips, we went back and forth trying to decide, “Is it a status message, or is it a way to chat with users?”. One limitation of using it to communicate with other users was that you would have to refresh the page to see any new updates. Not any more! Like all the other cool kids, we now dynamically add new messages from your friends as they appear. We’ve also added an option to review older updates in case you missed any.

We hope you enjoy the addition and as always, please feel free to comment by emailing feedback@bitstrips.com, or by reporting a bug.

More Keyboard Fun

My fellow Bitstrippers, we’ve pushed a new version of the builder out to both regular and beta users this morning – you’ll find the version number is BS 2008-11-13.

Along with several bugfixes, we’ve added a few new keyboard shortcuts:

L key: lock/unlock a character/prop/text bubble-/+ keys: scale a comic asset up and down on its current level

We’re looking forward to seeing what the new levels of creativity the scaling controls unleash!

Left, Up, Down, Right: Bitstrips Shortcuts and You

My fellow Bitstrippers, you’ll find there’s a new beta-builder version this morning, BS 2008-11-11. We’ve included several bug fixes, as well as a new feature that has been requested for a long time – keyboard controls!

Here is a summary of the new arrow-key based controls:

Shift Key – Pressing the shift key, you can toggle ground-lock on your asset. Try it out – press shift while dragging a character or a prop and you’ll see it starts moving along the opposite axis it was moving on before.

For text bubbles, pressing shift while dragging them will keep the tail of the bubble in the same location while moving the words.

Arrow Keys – Assets can be nudged around by pressing the left, up, down and right arrow keys. There are also a few modifiers you can add:

Ctrl + arrow keys – nudge the item by a smaller amount, useful for fine-grained control

Shift + arrow keys – toggle ground-lock while nudging the item

Alt + arrow keys – rotate the item with the left and right arrow keys

Also in the beta – when saving and reloading a strip there should be no visual differences. In previous versions, it was possible for text-bubbles to slide right and left when editing a saved strip. Now, everything should be exactly as you left it. If you can find a situation where things are different, please make sure to submit a bug report.

If you ever encounter an issue with a beta builder, remember that you can go back to the regular non-beta builders at any time and continue bitstrippin’ without encountering the latest and greatest bugs.

New Beta: Buddy’s Hidden Shame

My Fellow Bitstrippers, we felt it was time to reveal one of Buddy’s darkest secrets from his sordid past. In Grade 3, Buddy failed Mrs. Burkes English class. The horror! Buddy has been struggling with logophobia ever since.

It has only been through great personal determination that Buddy has been able to bring you his Editorials – the pain and sacrifices he’s made to properly form his messages to you have taken their toll. That’s why we’re happy to announce a new beta version – BS 2008-10-17! We’ve continued to iron out several text-bubble bugs, as well as one major new feature – spell checking.

The keen observer will notice the red squiggles in the picture above. When typing in a textbubble, misspelled words will be highlighted and suggestions provided when you right-click (or on a mac, ctrl-click) on them.

We’re looking for feedback on this latest beta – when you submit a bug on a beta builder, add “BETA” to the bug form, or when you send us an email, be sure to mention you’re using the beta builder.

Once this beta has been well tested we’ll move it out so that everyone can take advatange of it. We’re loking forwerd to ceeing the best speled comiks in the wurld!

We’d also like to thank gskinner.com for writing a great bit of code – Spelling Plus Library. It’s what we’re using to bring you spell checking and we couldn’t believe how easy it was to set up. Grant, you guys rock!