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Pixton lets people connect through cartoons
2008-11-08
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Clive Goodinson has gone from writing a master's thesis on woodpeckers to trying to unite the world through online funnies. Goodinson and his wife, Daina, make up the two-person staff of Vancouver-based Pixton.com, a website that lets anyone be a cartoonist and share what they think of others' comic creations. "We want to create a global community," Goodinson told AFP on Thursday while demonstrating Pixton at a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. "There are not many user-generated comic strips out there. We want to be the best." Pixton has grown to 9,000 members and seen 150,000 visitors since its launch in January. Pixton has evolved quickly from featuring characters with stick arms and legs to providing Adobe Flash-based tools that let people create slick, professional-looking comics. Website users get to rank favorites that rise to prominent displays and have online chats about comics. A glance at the page on Thursday showed a comic dubbed "Advice for Obama" rated to the top spot. The two-panel creation showed a bearded man happily congratulating US president-elect Barack Obama and then turning surly, barking "Now, get to work." "You can make a comic from the ground up, or draw what we call a quickie with pre-set characters," Goodinson said. The website's most prolific cartoonist is an eighth-grader. A woman in Milan has won a following for beautiful single pane works. A syndicated cartoonist in New Zealand expresses himself at Pixton with comics starring talking cactuses. Basic membership at Pixton is free, and the website charges small fees for premium services that include tools for premium-ready images, comic home pages, and character animation. It also has an education package it provides school for a fee of a dollar (US) per month per student. Pixton uses Google translation software to let people read comics in their native languages and be involved in multi-lingual online chats. "We have people from around the world who don't speak the same language becoming friends and sharing cartoons," said Goodinson.
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