Although the Apple tablet has yet to prove itself as fact or fiction, I hope the new speculation about tablets for periodicala will include the thriving comicbook and manga businesses. Websites like Zuda and Marvel successfully translate the comic reading experience to the web but to be honest, the last thing I want to do is read a comic book on my laptop. I want to be able to read them in the bed, in the back of a cab or on a plane. As the seats in planes shrink (or I get bigger) my 13″ Macbook has proven to be too large, while any netbook has too small a screen to be useful.

There’s some pretty cool readers for the iphone like Comic Reader Mobi (above video) but the iphone isn’t really a good medium for reading an entire comic book. Unless the art is reduced to a panel by panel reduction, the screen is simply to small. I haven’t purchased comics regularly in a decade but I can actually see myself getting back into them if I could purchase with the click of a button on a store like itunes. However, I’m not impressed by the stuff Apple is doing with motion comics at all. Comics are comics because they’re printed, animation is animation because it’s animated. Does the world really need an in-between?

WeWorkForFree is a design community that allows it’s members to upload and share their portfolios in order to raise money for international programs that benefit developing nations.

They do this by hosting contests sponsored by donors that need a job completed, but who are also willing to donate money to a good cause. The programs are target small communities in places like Kenya, Uganda and India. Examples of some of these programs include goals like raising money to donate OLPC laptops to classrooms, raising money to send food to Tsunami victims or donating funds to a clinic that shelters refugees from Kenya.

One of the most interesting elements is that artist can apply for scholarships to actually go volunteer for a few weeks in some of the countries where WW4F are established! The idea is to help designers, photographers, illustrators, and other artists get involved in using their talents to benefit the world at large.

The UI of the site will be quite familiar to those of you using services like DeviantArt, CarbonMade and ConceptArt.org with the added benefit of raising money for the people in areas of the world that desperately need it.

We Work For Free is currently in private beta. Click the image below to visit.

This was the original image that I used to zombify myself.

Half-way through the process you can really start to see things coming together!

After a few hours of dodging and burning, the zombie effect is complete!

The final image of myself as a bloody zombie. This didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would but the end result was quite nice. I may spend some more time on it tweaking the decaying flesh but I’m pretty satisfied with it so far!

The End Result.

Visit StarkRavingBlack.com for more.

Visit StarkRavingBlack.com for more.