Big Nate is a success unto himself – his comic style books a hit with kids all over the world – but imagine your very own comic strip capability, creating your own Nate cartoons using the man himself, his friends, teacher Mrs Godfrey, and Spitsy the dog.
This super cool app is a creative wonderland for kids who like to both write and draw. Gorgeously designed on exercise book paper, kids can create a comic strip using a pre-formatted Story Starter (to get those creative juices flowing) or they can start completely from scratch.
Backgrounds, characters, speech bubbles, close-ups, props and sound effects can then be dragged and added to the comic cells, and moved around to fit the action.
For younger kids or beginners, a third option provides a fully illustrated comic, complete with speech bubbles, that kids can fill in with text.
This app is loads of fun and easy to navigate, with tones of image options. I can imagine any budding cartoonist spending hours creating and saving their own gallery of funny cartoons. There’s also some complete cartoons to help kids get the gist of comic strip writing.
Big Nate Comix by U is published by Night and Day Studios (in cahoots with HarperCollins) and is available on iTunes for A$4.49 (or US$3.99 - once again I am confounded as to why Australians pay more for US-based apps - especially when our dollar is on par or better than the Greenback).
