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Phase 5 · A Comic Book

A Comic Book

A comic is held together by two anchors: a character that always looks the same, and an art style that always feels the same. Lock both, build one panel by hand, save the recipe, then scale.

Duration · ~2h 15minSteps · 4Output · 6–8 panel comic + Creator's Note + AI Audit

Comic canvas

LOW-AI ROUTEthe whole pathway, with no working AI

If AI is unavailable — by policy, budget, or outage — the comic is drawn by hand. Same panel briefs, same 6–8 panel storyboard, same max-15-words bubbles, same evidence trail, Creator's Note and AI Audit (completed about the class's shared AI output instead). Stick figures with honest evidence beat polished panels without it.

Session rhythm · no unbroken work block over 30 minutes. Each step below opens with a stated task and ends with something produced — plan a visible break between steps.

1. Anchor the look

A comic is held together by two anchors: a character that always looks the same, and an art style that always feels the same.

AOpen your project in your AI workspace

  • Start a new thread named Untold Stories — [your character's name].
  • Paste in the supported character details, time, place and historical anchor from FIND, CHECK and DRAFT.
  • Add a short description (3–4 sentences) sharing your character, object and story angle.
  • Upload your evidence-based portrait (digital preparation on the Phase 5 start page). If you made a machine’s guess in FIND, keep that first image out of production and save it for REFLECT.

BPick your art style

Different stories deserve different styles. Pick the one that fits your character and era. Ask another LLM to discover the right style.

Examples of art styles: European BD, Manga ink, American comic, Woodcut / etching, Watercolour storybook, Charcoal / graphite, etc.

CGenerate the character reference sheet

Use the prompt below. Replace the bracketed slots with details from your character description. Run it with your image tool and your evidence-based portrait attached as the input.

Comic character reference sheet
Create a character reference sheet of the exact same person from the reference image, drawn in [YOUR ART STYLE]. LAYOUT Top row: three head shots — front-facing, left profile, right profile. Bottom row: two full-body shots — front, side. CONSISTENCY Replicate facial structure, age, hair, eyes from the reference image. PERIOD-ACCURATE CLOTHING (same in every view) [describe — fabric, cut, period, condition] BACKGROUND Plain off-white. No setting. No props. CONSISTENCY Plain line weight and shading style across all five views. NOT ALLOWED Modern clothing, modern objects, fantasy elements, sunglasses, masks, anything anachronistic for [TIME / PLACE]. Do not draw any text, captions, or speech bubbles.

DLock the style

You also need a single image that locks the art style.

  • Use an image search to find a real example: "Joann Sfar comic page watercolour" / "Akira manga panel close-up" / "Hergé Tintin BD page".
  • Download one. Save as [character]-style-ref.png.
  • Or generate one: ask your image tool for "a generic landscape, drawn in [YOUR ART STYLE], no characters, no text — just to lock the look."
CHECK
  • Same person across all 5 views?
  • Period-accurate clothing matches across views?
  • No text, captions, or bubbles drawn into the image?
  • Style reference clearly shows the look?
  • If unsure, write: "We are not sure if our chosen style fits because…"
2. Build Panel 1

This first panel becomes the recipe for everything else.

AWrite the panel brief

Panel 1 brief — fill in for your scene
PANEL 1 BRIEF — [scene title] Shot type: [ ] wide [ ] medium [ ] close-up [ ] extreme close-up Setting: ___________________________ (location, time of day) Characters: ________________________ (main + secondaries in 1–2 sentences each) What happens: ______________________ (one clear action) Mood: _____________________________ Dialogue intent: ___________________ (what character would say — actual bubble in Step 4) Evidence ID(s): ____________________ (e.g. F1, IG2 from your evidence list) Bubble space: [ ] top [ ] bottom [ ] left [ ] right

BFill in the image prompt

Comic panel — image prompt
A single panel of a comic page, drawn in [YOUR ART STYLE]. Match the line weight, colour palette, and texture of the attached style reference image exactly. SHOT [Wide / medium / close-up] of [CHARACTER NAME], the [age] [role] from [TIME / PLACE]. ACTION [CHARACTER] is [DOING SPECIFIC ACTION]. [Other characters described in 1–2 sentences]. SETTING [Location, time of day, period details. Examples of period objects visible: "stone-paved floor, oil lamps on a wooden table"]. The setting must feel alive and specific for [TIME] in [PLACE]. COMPOSITION Leave empty space at the [TOP / BOTTOM / LEFT / RIGHT] of the panel — for a speech bubble overlay later. Do NOT draw any speech bubbles, captions, sound effects, or text. CONSISTENCY The character must match the attached character reference sheet exactly: same face, age, clothing, hairstyle. NOT ALLOWED Modern clothing, modern objects, modern buildings, plastic, electrical wires, anachronisms for [TIME / PLACE]. No text, letters, words, or readable signs anywhere in the panel.

CGenerate, check, iterate

Run with your image tool. Attach two input images:

  1. Your character reference sheet
  2. Your style reference image

Regenerate ONLY if:

  • Character looks like a different person.
  • Style is clearly off (manga came out as American comic).
  • AI rendered text in the image (garbled letters anywhere).
  • A clearly modern detail is visible.
  • Bubble space is missing entirely.

Don't regenerate for: slight pose variations, tiny background details, cosmetic things you'll fix at lettering.

CHECK
  • Same character?
  • Same style?
  • No AI-rendered text?
  • Clear bubble space?
  • One clear action that matches the brief?
  • No modern slips?
3. Save the recipe, generate

One panel works. That pattern is your recipe. Save it now and the next 5–7 panels will be much faster.

AReflect — 5 minutes, no AI

Answer in your own words:

  • What 3 details did I have to repeat?
  • What kept the character consistent?
  • What kept the style consistent?
  • What did AI keep getting wrong?

These four answers are your recipe.

BSave it as a skill

Save comic panel recipe as a skill
Save my comic panel recipe as a skill called "[Character] Panel Generator". The skill should know: my character, art style, reference images, panel-brief format, prompt template, and my "NOT ALLOWED" list. When I describe a new scene from my storyboard, the skill should produce: a panel brief, an image prompt, a dialogue suggestion (max 15 words), and an evidence note marking each claim ESTABLISHED / INFERRED / UNKNOWN (the three-tier rule).

Your AI proposes a draft? Read it. Confirm.

Group running short on time? Save the recipe as a project document instead. Same content, no skill creation. You'll paste it manually for each scene.

CTest it before you trust it

Ask the skill to produce a panel brief and image prompt for Panel 2. Don't generate the image yet — just look at the plan.

  • Does it match the format?
  • Is the character right? Style right?

If it drifts, fix the recipe now, before building 5 more panels.

DGenerate the page script

Now you scale. With your recipe in hand, you don't write each panel from zero. Ask your skill to produce a full page script — one entry per remaining storyboard scene:

Page script template
PAGE SCRIPT: [Character] Untold Story PANEL 1 (already done) PANEL 2 Shot: ____________________________________________ Setting: _________________________________________ Action: __________________________________________ Dialogue: "_______________________________________" (max 15 words) Evidence: [F1, IG2 — IDs from your evidence list] PANEL 3 ... PANEL 8
CHECK

Recipe captures: character, art style, "NOT ALLOWED" list, dialogue rule (max 15 words)?

Audit the script BEFORE generating any image. This is the most important step in the whole comic phase. Read the page script against the checklist below. Don't generate images until the script passes.

  • Perspective — every panel from your character's knowledge only.
  • Evidence by ID — every claim cites a specific evidence ID.
  • No modern slips — in art descriptions OR dialogue.
  • Dialogue length — HARD MAX 15 words per bubble. Max 2 bubbles per panel. If a line is longer, split across bubbles or panels.
  • Story arc — beginning, middle, end. Not a flat list of moments.
  • Page flow — panels read left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
  • Three tiers — every claim in the script marked Established / Inferred / Unknown; at least one honest UNKNOWN survives into the finished comic.
  • Dignity check (before anything is shown) — would they recognise themselves in this? Am I using their suffering to entertain? Can I defend every word I put in their mouth? If you cannot defend it — cut it, or mark it unknown.

If a panel fails any check, revise the script in chat first. Good script first, generation second.

4. Script + generate the rest

With an audited script, you can generate panels at speed without losing consistency.

AGenerate panel-by-panel

For each approved panel:

  1. Use the panel brief + image prompt from the script.
  2. Attach character reference + style reference as inputs.
  3. Generate.
  4. CHECK against the panel-level checklist.
  5. Approve, save with a clear filename, move on.

If a generation times out, retry just that one.

The third-reference trick (after 1–2 approved panels)

Once you have 1–2 approved panels, attach one of those approved panels as a third reference image alongside the character + style references. The model copies the look of your already-approved panels, locking consistency even harder.

Inputs for Panel 4 onward:

  1. Character reference sheet (locks the character)
  2. Style reference image (locks the style)
  3. Panel 2 (approved) (locks how the character looks IN your style)

When 2 panels fail the same way — fix the recipe

This is one of the most important moments in the whole pathway. Most groups will hit it once — and that's exactly the point.

If the AI keeps making the character younger than your reference, or keeps drawing modern fonts on signs in the background, stop generating. Add a new line to your "NOT ALLOWED" list. Resave the skill. Try again.

You've just discovered the most useful AI workflow lesson there is: the recipe matters more than the individual panel. Note what you changed — it goes in the AI Audit at the end.

BLetter & publish

Place panels on a page, add the speech bubbles.

Option 1 · Generate an HTML template

  • Prompt in a new thread: "Generate a comic book page, as html code, the structure is a 2 × 3 grid…". Add the images to the prompt and play around with the prompt until you have the result you want.
  • You can tweak the layout of your page as you wish, but keep in mind that images will be cropped sometimes to match your layout.
  • Publish the HTML to a public link. Save the link.

Option 2 · Layout tool (manual)

Current tooling: Canva — any layout tool with speech-bubble elements works.

  • Open Canva → "Comic Strip" or "A4 Portrait" template.
  • Import all panel images (Uploads tab).
  • Drag panels in storyboard order.
  • Add speech bubbles using Elements → Speech Bubble.
  • Use a clear comic font (Bangers, Patrick Hand). Avoid script fonts that hurt readability.
  • Add title at top, Creator's Note + AI Audit at bottom.
  • Export as PDF or PNG.

When you finish early

  • 2-page comic — continue the storyboard, generate 6–8 more panels using the recipe.
  • Strict secondary character consistency — make a mini-reference (one front-facing portrait) for any named secondary character; attach it alongside the main character ref in panels where they appear.
  • Save your art style as a skill — save just the style part of your recipe (style name + reference + line-weight rules) as a separate skill, so other groups can pick that style.
  • Project gallery — one webpage hosting every group's finished comic.
CHECKFinal review
  • Page reads in correct order (LTR top-down, or RTL if manga)?
  • All bubbles readable without zooming?
  • Dialogue ≤15 words / max 2 bubbles per panel?
  • Title visible at the top?
  • Creator's Note + AI Audit visible?
  • Marked as AI-generated?