So I was cleaning out my browser bookmarks today and among the things I encountered was this old post over at Blog Flume about a Wendy’s kids meal toy that allows you to generate a Peanuts comic strip by inserting pre-printed panels into a little “frame.”
I bookmarked it not just because it’s cool (which it is), but also because it reminded me of something I made many years ago when I was teaching at the North Carolina Governor’s School and had access to lots of “real” art supplies: a mix and match Nancy strip generator.
The genesis of this item was a weird piece of cardboard I’d found with an ocean image printed on it. I just started messing around with it and among the things hanging around the studio that caught my eye were a bunch of photocopied Nancy strips. (I can’t remember why now, but having a bunch of Nancy strips around requires no justification in my opinion.) Anyway, what emerged was this item:
Each of the “panels” is made of some cut-out images from a comic strip glued to a clear acetate sheet which can be pulled up and out of the frame by the black “handles” at the top (the one on the left has fallen off) and rearanged. It’d have been nice to have more “panels” to use other than just these three, but hey, what can I tell you–I was working on this on the taxpayers’ dime!
Here’s another possible combo. You get the idea…
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We need to find a Nancy archive online and make a web version
After the fall of the newspapers, people fondly looked back on the advent of the travelling strip animator who would show off their collections of framed gag panels in a variety of different orders to innocent and impressed crowds of bystanders. Inspired by the kamishibai of early 20th Century Japan, the travistrippers started a new kind of interaction between comic strip creators and their audience…
Scott McCloud’s gotcha beat… About ten years ago, he came up with 5-card Nancy, which used cards with Nancy panels to create random strips.
And yes… there’s an online version… http://www.7415comics.com/nancy/
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Actually, I think I had my students making decks for five card Nancy that summer–and that’s why I had photocopied Nancy strips hanging around the studio. But, yeah it’s a similar thing, although obviously my objet d’art runs out of combinations pretty quickly with only three “panels.”
[…] [Oddity] The Nancy Weird Comic Strip generator Link: Ben Towle […]