Doritos and Pepsi Max Crank Out A Webcomic

Global super-brands Doritos and Pepsi Max have collaborated with Digital agency The Mill to provide fans the latest in digital entertainment: a unique interactive webcomic that tells a story of the adventures for two new superheroes, FireFingers and IceFist. It's really an interesting move: launching two new products, two different brands, with opposite characteristics (cooling and spicy) under one idea.

In an interview between web site Digital Spy and Nick Moorland (The Mill's creative art director) the challenges of the project were discussed, as well as the attempts to make the most of the webcomic format.

Moorland explains "the webcomic is an attempt at pushing a fairly unexplored genre (online comics) into a new and exciting space by using mainstream comic book production techniques and talent coupled with interactive storytelling."

When asked how Doritos and Pepsi Max made the pitch for the webcomic, Moorland goes on to say that there was a "basic outline of what they would like to see happen across the comic episodes." But ultimately it was up to him to assemble an experienced team that could put the webcomic together.

"As luck would have it, there are a huge number of comic book fans at The Mill so there was no shortage of reference material to pour over. We are also lucky to have a number of very talented illustrators here, many of whom have worked on comics before so that side of the process was covered."

The interview then reveals how traditional storyboarding gave way to producing the webcomic using After Effects and Flash. When asked how he wanted his team's work to stand out from other webcomics, Moorland offered that the bulk of online comics he found "were nothing more than glorified PDF readers. Some have full voiceover rather than speech balloons but felt like a boring cartoon: some are interactive but fairly low quality and some are frankly just a standard comic with a click to turn the page."

He and his team wanted to change that reading experience.

"We wanted to try and make a new type of comic that was exclusively for a digital platform, using interaction, music, bespoke artwork and just the right level of animation to bring a comic book to life."

To read the full interview, click here.

The first episode of the Superpowerful Combination webcomic is available to read now.

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Learn more about Pepsi Max on Facebook.