A comic-making tool that allows users to easily make a comic panel of their own life to share over an internet social network made a big splash at this year's South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

Bitstrips was designed by Toronto cartoonist Jacob Blackstock and friends over the last six months.

Blackstock described the online software as a set of tools for creating comics using elements such as a basic character, a set of poses and expressions and a handful of props.

"Comics are an incredible form of communication and expression that you can't do with text alone, so [we're] taking this and making it accessible to everyone, where it used to be only people who could draw comics could do this," Blackstock told CBC cultural affairs show Q.

"Now everyone can express themselves with comics and we think that's going to be big online."

Blackstock, who has worked intensively on the site with two friends, said the group went to SXSW hoping for a little attention, having made their site public the same week.

They got far more than they bargained for in Austin, after quickly creating a strip based on an earlier mishandled public interview at the festival involving Facebook creator Mark Zuckerman. 

"Within minutes we created a six-panel comic strip and really gave an idea of what Bitstrips can do on the fly," he said.

The buzz never stopped after that, and musicians, artists and technology geeks crowded around their booth for a chance to create a Bitstrips comic of themselves.

Considering next step

Blackstock isn't sure what they intend to do with all of the attention, which earned them a mention in Wired magazine.

The group is still considering how it might put ads on the site without annoying users and still developing the site itself.

"We wanted the tools to work well, so we didn't make a massive library of props and backgrounds," said Blackstock, who did most of the initial drawing for the site.

"It's amazing what people are doing with it — we've got a potted plant and wine bottles and a tin can and out of that people are making, like, machine guns and spaceships and star wars."

Blackstock continues to draw new elements, such as new props, for users to work with.

And he's hoping that online communities will help rein in any excessive use of Bitstrips comics.

"In a way we've kind of built the ultimate insult engine and people are going to be using it in whatever way they want," he said.

But most users will combine the tool with social network sites such as Facebook as a tool for weaving personal and embarrassing stories in comics — just for fun, he said.