Infinite canvas

The infinite canvas refers to the potentially limitless space that is available to webcomics presented on the World Wide Web. The term was introduced by Scott McCloud in his 2000 book Reinventing Comics, in which he suggested that webcomic creators could make a Web page as large as needed to contain a comic page of any conceivable size. This infinite canvas would create an endless amount of storytelling benefits and would allow creators much more freedom in how they present their artwork.

Journalists responded skeptically to McCloud's idea of the infinite canvas, as five years after Reinventing Comics, the concept had not taken off in large proportions yet. Webcomics were primarily presented in the form of comic strips, which fit easily on a screen. Various webcomic creators have experimented with the infinite canvas, however, and extending comics to beyond what is possible in print has gained some popularity over the years.

In comic books, the panels of each page are laid out in such as a way to fit perfectly on the page, forcing cartoonists into a relatively small set of possible panel lay-outs per page. In his 2000 book Reinventing Comics, cartoonist Scott McCloud proposed a solution for this situation in the form of the web page. Instead of using the monitor on which a webcomic is read as a "page", McCloud suggested using it as a "window" upon an infinite canvas. A webcomic could be made to be infinitely large, and the cartoonist could give a reader the ability to zoom in and out on it at will. McCloud claimed webcomics could be laid out in any shape: vertically like a tower, horizontally like a skyline, diagonally like a descending staircase, or even three dimensionally like a revolving cube.

According to David Balan of Sequart Organization, webcomics with pages of limited size that use hyperlinks to move forward in the story consistently take the reader out of the experience, as there exists no visual link between any two pages. This issue is solved with a long, scrollable canvas, where the webcomic is presented as one long image. Such a webcomic may drag on, however, due to a lack of rhythm or punctuated story beats. Balan praised McCloud's 2003 webcomic The Right Number for its zooming interface, which would have the same benefits as other infinite canvas formats, but still allows for a certain rhythm to exist. Other artists known for making persistent use of the infinite canvas in the early 2000s include Cayetano Garza, demian5, Patrick Farley, Tristan A. Farnon and David Gaddis.

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