#88: Holographic Comic Adventures

I remember the first time I read a comic book as a kid. Much like the first novel I enjoyed, it was an incredibly immersive experience. My imagination was so engaged that it didn't feel like I was reading words on a page. In fact, before long all of the imagery, text, and even time itself seemed to fall away, leaving just me and the story being told.  

Fast forward a decade or two, I found myself experiencing the same level of immersion as I played through MALDACENA: the first ever holographic comic.

Digital artist & storyteller Jake Adams built MALDACENA while researching Science in Design and Digital Media at the University of Edinburgh. This holocomic explores immersion and engagement of holography through the lens of sequential art storytelling.  

Simply by using the keyboard, the reader is able to flip through a narrative experience unlike any other. The text, images, and visual elements found throughout the story are function as tangible storytelling elements that exist in our world through the Looking Glass, which is exactly why its creator Jake Adams chose our holographic display to debut MALDACENA in the first place.

As the story serpentines between the real and unreal, the viewer finds themselves in the midst of a genuine psychological and emotional journey, which is exactly what Adams wanted users to experience. If you haven't flipped through MALDACENA yet I highly recommend playing it on your Looking Glass now via our MadeWith site.

Also on our made with site is Halfway, an emotive tale about youth and friendship. This narrative experience was borne out of an experiment by Missy Senteio and Noca Wu. Like MALDACENA, Halfway leverages tangible holographic elements to take digital story telling to new heights, and may even get you to shed a tear or two along the way.

Digital comics aren't a new occurrence, but we're excited about the emergence of holographic comics, as they combine classic elements of storytelling while also giving us a peak at the next frontier.

**this is part of our “100 Days of Holograms” series, where a few of us in the team at Looking Glass Factory post one new wonderful or weird (or both!) use for the Looking Glass holographic display being conjured around the world each day.