Since taking Stan Heller‘s 3D art class at Mission Comics, I’ve been wanting to make more anaglyphic pieces, but didn’t want to have to order red/cyan glasses for people to read… after pondering the problem, I thought I could try using animated GIFs to show depth (parallax scrolling). I’d like to note that this isn’t the first time a webcomic has used an animated gif as part of it’s story, but those other comics where using them to convey movement of time (rather than keeping each panel a “snapshot” of time) and also usually only as a novelty effect in a single panel.
The advantages of this technique include; no glasses necessary, plays on browsers without requiring Flash, can use any colors, and works for people who can’t get the 3D effect from stereoscopic glasses.
Downsides are: constant uncontrollable movement, file size is large (because I’m loading 6 big pages of art), and it takes FOREVER to make.
Since the left right motion reminds me of old lenticular cards, I’m calling this style “lengifular 3D”. If you’d like to repost the above comic, you can find the original file here.