Production Method: Game Sandbox Comic

The Game Sandbox method uses open-world games like Minecraft and Roblox to create comics. Players use the world of the game to setup and act out scenes of the comic, then they capture these scenes using still-frame or video screen capture. Once the game footage is captured, they use video and graphics programs to add dialog, special elements, and effects not possible in the game.

A variety of games can be used in this way, but “sandbox” games like Minecraft are the best because they allow users control to create their own amazing sets for their scenes. In the case of Minecraft, game features like Spectator mode can be used to produce cool camera angles and interesting shots.

Example

Juliah, a high school student in Malaysia, produced this variation on Alan Marshall’s The Dog as a comic book in Minecraft.

A couple of important things to notice:

• Fan nods: The artist used quirky game features and crafting methods well known to players to produce small motions and visually interesting elements.
• Maximizing the medium. The finished comic was produced as a video. This created a cool presentation and allowed some interesting moving elements to be included.
• Special effects: The narrator and speech bubbles where added on top of the Minecraft video using graphics or video-editing software. Also, while the main characters are standard skins, the narrator is a custom villager skin who might have been created and composed in a skin editor like Blockbench or Novaskin. Likewise, moving the dog and villager characters might have possibly required using mods for NPCs or special methods to control characters. Without these special effects, the game scenes wouldn’t have worked as well.

PROs and CONs

When consider whether or not to use this method, here are some important things to consider:

Variations

• Mini movie: instead of a comic, artists could create a short movie using a sandbox game as their movie studio.