Story Builder

Story Builder is a comic maker that works like a real drawing board. A blank page lies in front of you with thick black panel borders and halftone shading already built in, and a tray of stickers waits along the edge. Choose one of six page shapes, from a single wide panel to a three-panel newspaper strip to a tall phone column, then give every panel one of twelve hand-drawn scenes: a city street, a park, a classroom, a beach, deep space, a castle, a kitchen, a forest, a stadium, a bedroom, a rooftop at night or a desert.

The cast is ten original characters, including a boxy robot called Bolt and a stripy cat called Miso. Each one has six poses and six expressions that combine freely, so the same character can point while surprised, sit while thinking or run while laughing, and you can swap the colour of their outfit in a tap. Thirty props go with them, from a football and a bike to a treasure chest, a rocket and a very pleased dog. Speech, thought and shout bubbles take whatever you type, wrap it and size it for you, and their tails are a yellow dot you drag to whoever is talking. Twelve sound-effect words in punchy comic lettering, plus motion lines and a starburst, finish the job.

Everything on the page can be dragged, pinched to resize, turned with a handle, flipped, sent behind or in front and thrown away, and thirty steps of undo sit behind it all. Copy a panel when the next beat is nearly the same shot. Name the page, save up to fifteen stories in your browser and open them again later, or switch to read mode and let the page fill the screen, one panel at a time with a tap. When the strip is finished, export it as a PNG and it lands in your downloads, ready to send to whoever the joke is about.