What happened when an analog manga artist tried drawing manga with AI, Part 1: Getting serious about paneling

I made this tweet the other day. (Also on FB)

Since the post only had the first page, I'll upload everything from the beginning to where it is now in this article!

What I really got serious about was the paneling.

Up to this point! And the production time was 2 days (evenings only).
It really is fast when you make it with AI~

Now, after this, whether I can make my hand-drawn character, Mr. K, coexist with the AI manga depends on my own drawing skills!! ( ´艸｀) Super difficult~~~~!

Trouble during production: Please, stop wanting to show your shoulders right away.

Now, as for how I'm actually outputting with DALL-E,
it's like this.

Even though I say "simple white T-shirt and black shorts,"

DALL-E wants to expose skin right away.
(Is Dali with the mustache also like a pervy old man? Is it just a specification?!)

Please put your shoulders away.

So, shoulders! Don't show them!

Alright! The shoulders are tucked in!
It seems the AI is really obsessed with the black bra strap, lol.
Fine, I'll compromise on that part...

Wait, now it's long sleeves.
You don't need to tuck in the arms!
And where did the diagonal bag strap come from!

So, having run out of patience, I decided to fix it by hand.
That's actually faster, lol.

Well, like this,
if you're someone who can draw, it seems like you could do quite a lot...
but whether an analog artist would actually do this is another question.

The speech bubble problem

The procedure for creating AI manga is roughly as follows.

1. Generate/select images with AI
2. Import the selected images into Canva
3. Arrange them within the panels on Canva
4. Add speech bubbles and insert dialogue

What's surprisingly troublesome is the speech bubbles in step 4.
Many of the speech bubbles in Canva are horizontal, designed for American comics, and there aren't any vertical ones for Japanese comics.

So, I created a collection of vertical speech bubble assets that are convenient for Japanese manga100 items→122 items (I will keep expanding this, and the price will go up little by little as I do, so please get them while they're affordable~)👇 Please, go ahead and use them~!

The unexpected benefits of an analog artist trying to make AI manga

People who draw actually love the act of drawing itself.
So this is like giving up the task I love most (drawing),
to put it another way,
it feels like 'focusing on scenario progression and camera work (using AI-generated art).'

Simply put, for an analog artist, it's not fun at all.
It's not fun, but... however.

Because you're giving up the most fun part, which is drawing,
you can focus very calmly on camera work and paneling.

So what happens?
Your camera work and paneling get better!

For example, this scene

The guy in the middle panel actually has a pretty cute face ↓

If it were a drawing I had done myself, I wouldn't be able to

cut off a face I'd worked so hard on like this!

But for the scenario progression on this page, his face and gaze aren't needed.
They'd just be in the way.

Even in times like this, with AI art, I can make a calm judgment.
"I don't need this face (snip)."
This is because it's not a drawing I spent time creating myself, right?

So,
for those who usually draw manga (or want to try it in the future)
but struggle with scenarios or camera work,
AI manga might be good practice.

(Added 8/11) Or rather, I feel like the mindset when drawing manga is different.

I had a few more things to add, so here is an update.

It's a drawing process unique to AI manga, where you
"think about which part of the AI image to crop into a panel."That's what you end up doing.

Like this ↓

When you do this, it's actually quite a fun task.
That said, as you keep lining up panels like this...

The page becomes too luxurious ( ´艸｀)

How should I put it, rather than manga,
it starts to feel like something between anime and mangaas well...!

If you create a packed manga page using plenty of AI images,
perhaps the human eye
might get too caught up in the beautiful depictions.

(No, maybe it's okay to get caught up.
Instead of just following the story,
I feel like it's fine to have manga where you
enjoy the characters in a beautiful world.)

When I was drawing manga analog-style until now,
of course I drew while being conscious that the world continues outside the panels,

but that said, manual work meant"I was drawing pictures inside the panels."I feel like this is a pretty big difference.

Perhaps depending on the story content,
it would be better to consciously think about"erasing the background"or
how to create "white space" or "pauses."

I tried leaving plenty of white space.
I felt it when I layered the protagonist's head over the ocean scenery.
How should I put it, this is a collage-like sensation.

(If it's a collage, maybe I could do something else...)
In the art world, collage is excellent as a sensory training exercise.

By combining multiple visuals that seem unrelated at first glance,
it evokes a certain kind of image in the viewer.

...that's what it means if you put it in complicated terms.

Manga is, in the first place, a temporal collage of cutting time at appropriate points
and stitching it together, so...

(For example, in the diagram below,
1. When the protagonist looks down at the sea from above,
2. When the protagonist is walking on the beach,

I am cutting out and layering two different moments in time.)

Hmm, this might be interesting in many ways.

I feel like many people currently drawing AI manga
are doing so with the mindset of, 'What if I just replace the art in the traditional manga style with AI?'
but

I feel like there's a possibility for a completely different form of expression to be born!

So,
I'll do a bit more research over the summer...

To be continued! (Wait, is it really continuing?!)

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▶ Click here for the continuation of this article!

What happened when an analog manga artist tried drawing manga with AI, Part 2
I tried drawing a promotional manga for my Kindle book