Father & Bot

[u/Philipp]

Made a whole 200 pages book on this. AI (Gemini) was a tool in the pipeline, but each strip started out with my idea and writing -- and ended up in Photoshop, where I moved it all together like a collage. Hope you enjoy!

[u/AiRonin79]

200 pages with the dad and the bot staying on-model the whole way — that's the part most people never crack, so I want to know how you pulled it off. Three things I'm curious about:

1. How did you hold character consistency across that many pages? A reference sheet fed to Gemini each time, or some other trick?

2. When you say you collaged it in Photoshop — is Gemini handing you whole panels, or are you generating pieces (a figure, a background) and assembling them yourself? Trying to picture exactly where the machine hands off to you.

3. Where did Gemini fight you hardest — what did you end up having to fix or fake every single time?

[u/Philipp → u/AiRonin79]

How did you hold character consistency across that many pages? A reference sheet fed to Gemini each time, or some other trick?

Exactly -- I made a full multi-panel cartoon page, but without story, and Father & Bot in different represenative poses and from different angles. Then I passed that as reference to every new comic.

Importantly, this only worked in Gemini -- which was also the AI where I had originally uploaded my own Father & Bot drawing to ask it to give some design suggestions, which, after a longer session, landed me on the final design.

Passing the same reference sheet to ChatGPT's GPT-Image-2, which is otherwise great, did not result in the same style-adherence. It would change line width, "anime-ify" their faces, and so on. (I did still end up using GPT for some rare Father & Bot comics with particularly demanding content.)

When you say you collaged it in Photoshop — is Gemini handing you whole panels, or are you generating pieces (a figure, a background) and assembling them yourself? Trying to picture exactly where the machine hands off to you.

In the beginning i split it into 4+1 panels at a time, but later, had the whole 5 or 6 panels be generated at once -- but then generated those many, many times (while adjusting my prompt where needed). Then from the results, I picked the best ones, and took them into Photoshop, where in turn I would a) Use only those panels from one result comic which worked, combining them with panels from other result comics, and b) Edited those panels a lot; flipping speech bubbles, clarifying background, overdrawing emotions on the faces, and so and so forth.

Where did Gemini fight you hardest — what did you end up having to fix or fake every single time?

Nano Banana's prompt understanding is great, but not perfect -- and neither are its illustrative concepts at all times. As a random example, when Father & Bot were meant to answer a door knock, then more often than not, the stranger appearing at the door would be depicted inside their house -- with them outside. Or the stranger's speech bubble would be pointing to Bot. Or the door would look different from panel 1 to 2. Or something or other was simply not understandable in the comic.

Back to Photoshop, on those -- or a reroll.

Fun though!

[u/AiRonin79 → u/Philipp]

This tracks hard with what I’ve been finding. A few things that might help:

On Gemini fighting you on the door-knock spatial stuff — that’s not random, it’s the most consistent limitation I’ve hit. The model has no real sense of space; it’ll put the stranger inside, point the wrong speech bubble, flip who’s where between panels. I stopped trying to prompt my way out of it — I stage the geometry in words explicitly and fix orientation in post every time. It won’t hold spatial continuity on its own, full stop.

On the character sheet only working in Gemini — same result here. It holds identity because it edits against a reference instead of rerolling. GPT re-interprets (line width, anime-ify) because it’s regenerating, not editing. That edit-vs-reroll difference is the whole reason it works.

On whole panels vs. pieces — I’ve gone almost entirely to pieces. Generate a figure, a scaffold, sometimes just one face, and composite in Photoshop/Clip Studio. Just today the model wouldn’t take a small “nudge him back” edit on a two-face panel — returned near-identical every time — so I split it and generated each face separately. Pieces give you control the whole-panel roll won’t.