On Facebook,Bitstrips and pieces

Bitstrips application,launched late last year on Facebook,allows users to create their own comic avatar and then use the templates to design comic strips with friends,minus the labour of drawing one from scratch. The app now has over one million users globally.

Twenty-year-old Ruve Narang,a student of fine arts,says,It is a fun application that allows creativity. The templates and situations are set,but a person can work around with the dialogues that make for really interesting and hilarious strips. The templates also allow users to create a vast array of styles and looks,which can mirror a person in real life. She managed to get her friends hooked on to it and creating virtual comics has become a new fad for them.

On the flipside,she says,it would be more creative if the app was developed by Facebook in-house. The templates are wide and vast but you cannot work around with the backgrounds,the environment and the characters. Maybe the makers will do it in the future, she adds.

The importance of social networking as a tool for promoting comics is a huge driver for the team based in Canada,which has created the app. In an interview given to Wired magazine,co-founder Jacob Ba Blackstock said they wanted to do away with the labour-sensitive parts of drawing comics. Founded along with his friend Jesse Brown,the comic app has marked inspirations from the works of cartoonists Dan Clowes and Chris Ware.

The founders,who are graphic artists and comic designers,have tweaked the idea to also include socially-relevant strips like anti-bullying campaigns that can be used to promote the cause while having fun. Brown also states that they envision Bitstrips as a YouTube for comics.

Rohit Valecha,another student,says he finds the application pleasantly addictive. Who would throw a basket of cats on their friend? Even for a comic,it takes time to develop artwork and lettering for it. Here,a few clicks get you on board to do that. Some of the templates are downright hilarious. Having a food fight,or pulling pranks on friends can all become funny if the words for the strips are chosen carefully. More than that,real life incidences can also become a part of the jokes you share with friends on the virtual world, he says.

The Bitstrips website,though a bare-bones site,has marked community guidelines stating that since cartoons are a very powerful socio-political medium,people need to treat others using it with respect and dignity. National award-winning filmmaker Tathagatha Singha,who too has recently started using the app,agrees. Yes it is fun,but that doesnt mean you insult friends and people in public. The virtual world is powerful enough to disrupt life in the real one. There is this element of caution too and a fine line between being funny or sarcastic and downright degrading,which people need to tread carefully, he says.