By Charisse Massay
This website belongs to a cartoonist named Jason Little who uses
the site to advertise his drawings. He is a freelance cartoonist who
has drawn illustrations for Nickelodeon Magazine, spamcop.com, Kaiser
Permanente and others. The page has five major links including 'Splash',
'Comix,' 'Illus.,' 'Info' and 'Email'.
'Splash' is a basic introduction to the website. 'Bee' has just been
released from bigwords.com as they have gone belly-up and there is
description of what 'Bee' is as well as Little-affiliated merchandise
that can be purchased. 'Illus.' are samples of Little's freelance
illustrations; 'Info' includes website news, a brief bio of Little
and press clippings and 'Email' is Little's email address.
'Comix' is a listing of Little's comics including 'Bee,' 'Jack's Luck
Runs Out,' 'Abduction Announcement,' and 'Choking Victim' which is
available in its entirety on a T-shirt. Most of the comics are available
in their entirety on the site except for 'Jack's Luck Runs Out' which
is published by Top Shelf Productions and can be purchased for $3.50.
Little's comics are entertaining and deal with topics known to most
of his readers but definitely a little shocking. In 'Abduction Announcement,'
a single mother receives a ransom letter for a baby that is still
in her custody. This particular cartoon is in 3-D through a stereoscopic
setup which means that there are two frames for each frame of content.
These frames are set off slightly so that when watched properly, they
will converge and create a 3-D image. I thought that this was a great
effect but I found it difficult to get the 3-D image properly since
it was on a computer screen.
Regarding online comics, I think that there are different ways of
utilizing the benefits of the medium. In Little's 'Man Shy', another
online comic, the pages are simply scanned and put on the website;
this causes the text to be very small and difficult to read, enlargements
were not available. Regarding his other comics, the transformation
to electronic distribution has worked fairly well. His panels are
tight within the page but well laid out. I was swept up into Bee's
dilemma and I can't wait for the next episode.