3 Months later – Proof of concept for making comics with Krita AI and other AI tools

Some folks might remember this post I made a few short months ago where I explored the possibility of making comics with SDXL and Krita AI. I had no clue what I was doing when I started, so it was entirely an experiment to figure out could you make comics with these tools. The short conclusion is yes, you can make comics with these tools, if you know how to get the most out of them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1ozuldj/proof_of_concept_for_making_comics_with_krita_ai/

Well, a few more comic pages (and some big comic page updates) later, I’m here to basically show (off) what you can do with a lot of effort to learn the tools and art of making comics/manga, and a fair chunk of time (this was all done during what little free time I have after work/adulting/taking a bit of downtime to myself during the week and on weekends).

https://imgur.com/a/rdisfzw

Just as a quick reminder, while I use an SDXL model (and 2 LORAS I trained for the main characters) to help me create the final art for each panel (I do a sketch for each panel, refine or use controlnets to create a base image, clean up the drawing, refine/edit, refine/edit, refine/edit, until I’m happy with an image), all writing, storyboarding, and effects are done by me using KRITA (all fonts are available for free for indie comic makers on Blambot).

I’m also still in the process of doing the final cleaning up these pages (such as fixing perspective errors and cleaning up some linework and character consistency issues), and I have scripted roughly 15 more pages on top of these that I need to start storyboarding. Once it’s all done, I’ll release it as a one-shot (once off) manga/comic that I’m going to give away for free.

But, apart from putting up this update as a demonstration what you can put together with some time and effort to learn the tools, as well as the actual art of making comics, I wanted to get some feedback:

1) After reading the pages I’ve released here, do you prefer the concept art for Cover 01 (with the papers) or Cover 02 (with the clock)? (These are just the basic ideas I have for the covers, I plan to expand on whichever one people think is the most eye-catching and related to the story I’ve released so far).

2) All the comics I plan to produce I will be releasing for free, but is this the quality of work that you’d consider supporting financially on a monthly or once-off basis (e.g. through a recurring monthly or once-off donation on Patreon)?

3) Do you know of any comics-focused subreddits where they haven’t banned AI-assisted work? I would like to get crit/feedback from regular comics readers who aren’t into AI content creation, as well as those here who read comics and are into AI tools.

Also, just a note that I am still learning the art of black and white comics. I’m considering adding screen tones for example, and there are some panels I might still go back and rework. However, the majority of the work on these pages is done, and anything from here I would just consider fine tuning (unless I’ve missed something big and need to fix it).

Finally, if you have any other constructive thoughts/feedback, please feel free to add them here.