Student app success painted by number
The MAD students of the Monash-Southeast University alliance
An Android app developed by a group of students that allows users to read, colour, organise and share comic books has placed second in a major software competition in China.
The students, who are all part of the first cohort of Masters of Information Technology students under the new Monash-Southeast University alliance, entered the 2012 Southeast University and BroadenGate Technologies Co Ltd Practical Training Project Competition using the acronym MAD (Monash-SEU Android Developers).
Led by Tao Zhou, the MAD team members, Yuxin Zhang, Bin Ma, Xi Tao, Bin Wu, Xinxin Yuan and Yan Zheng, each had a dedicated task area to focus on.
“We faced a lot of difficulties when designing and developing ComicPainter, as we only had a month and none of us had previous knowledge of Java for Android development,” Tao said.
“Everyone worked overtime, and it is an honour for us to rank second in the competition. It's a great recognition of all our hard work.”
MAD's Android app, ComicPainter, was developed to work with the shift in the way comics are read, from their traditional form to digital.
“People are now using large screen tablet PCs instead of reading traditional print media, making smartphones a powerful tool in keeping comic books relevant,” Tao said.
“Our preliminary investigation showed that existing comic reader applications are abundant in the iPhone App store, while there are fewer options on the Android platform."
Since different colour schemes can greatly influence the feel of comics, the team decided to add a paint module to ComicPainter, as well as a share function so that users can easily post their creations to Chinese social networks such as Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Renren, which are the Chinese counterparts of Facebook and Twitter.
“Our app is a significant improvement on older comic reader apps because of the combination of all the different functions, which is unique in the existing market. Our app changes the experience of digital comic reading,” Tao said.
As the app itself is developed for showing users’ creativity, MAD wanted to ensure that their user interface (UI) design was simple and accessible.
“Xinxin worked on a lot of different ideas to make sure our UI was fantastic. Since most comic books aren’t yet finished, a good comic reader app must have an easy to use organising function,” Tao said.
“Yan and Xi worked on maximising the app's power and functionality, and I developed a new function that automatically crops the comic book so it fits perfectly to the size of the screen.
“Yuxin and I worked on the paint function, and Bin Wu was in charge of the share function. Thanks to his effort, our app supports multiple microblogging systems.”
The team is now working on improving the functions of their app, hoping to bring a perfect product to users. ComicPainter will be available to download from Google Pay in the near future.