I haven’t seen this pop up on my wall yet – mostly because I have classy friends. International Business Times touts that its popularity is on the uptick.
Cool, isn’t it? This Bitstrips app is a Facebook mobile app that is lending its Facebook users a cool sketched avatar. It allows the users to turn themselves into a cartoon avatar and news feed into comic strips. People are using it to update their friends about their mood and activities just the way they used status updates. This app has altered the look of Facebook for the smartphone users.
Kill. Me.
I haven’t seen it pop up on my wall despite my classless friends.
I loathe Bitstrips. During school visits, I’ve seen the software used by a number of elementary classes for storytelling & art projects. Bitstrips offers “polished” stock art for manipulation. I can’t help but view it as a crutch for those teachers who feel they lack artistic talent of their own. Worse, it only encourages an entire generation of young artists to copy-and-paste, rather than create.
My advice to those teachers? Encourage your students to draw with their own hands and imagination. I mean, really, we’re talking about KIDS here. Who CARES if kid drawings look like kids drew them. How do you expect them to improve if you avoid the activity altogether? … Let them doodle. Let them daydream.
And to our province’s Ministry of Education, who pays the software license so that ALL schools in Ontario can use the software… You’re not helping.
If the idea is to encourage digital media literacy and creativity, I’d rather see our tax dollars spent providing the computer labs with drawing tablets.
I’m seeing them everywhere. It’s another low in the history of the art form. And I totally agree with what Mike Cope has to say. It’s yet one more thing that keeps an entire generation form actually being creative.
hahaha, you guys overreactions to Bitstrips are funnier than any of the Bitstrips could ever be. Lighten up, it’s goofy fun (I know the concept of goofy fun is hard for cartoonists to grasp but I thought I’d advance the notion regardless)
What Mike said.
Didn’t the iOS app just come out, hence the sudden surge in popularity? I think it was Android-only before, though I haven’t done any real research on it.
I know people are only having fun, but I did have to post on Facebook how the Bitstrips hurt me. They hurt me so. In my little heart.
How?
I rarely have the chance to ditto Jim Lavery, but remember that comic strips, comic books, jazz, rock and roll, punk, heavy metal and hip hop were all taged as another low in the history of Art. And this is no less ridiculous.
I’ve taught art to kids for decades and you just can’t expect them to care about what you want them to care about. Some really want to be creative, but many would just love to be able to accomplish something decent that they can print out and take home and stick on the fridge.
As for spending taxpayers dollars on tablets, I would sugest that people will be using far advanced techniques and technology in just a few years. Far beter to hire humans to teach the color wheel and basic drawing, painting and musical foundations that can be applied to any technology.
I betcha.
Pastis has been doing that Swine strip of his with this for years and he’s a billionaire!
Joe: LOL!