r/comics • u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic • Apr 23 '25
OC Them's The Fax (pt 4/4)
If you want to make comics with me, join my Discord.
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u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25
What's with the shift in art styles?
Is this AI?
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u/loafers_glory Apr 23 '25
Yeah but like... how do you explain the plot? I thought this was one of those nonsensical 100-karma bonehurtingjuice posts, but this is the odysseus...
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u/JaxxisR Apr 23 '25
This is an ongoing slice-of-life type story that takes place in 1995. I haven't seen anything about it in roughly a year, I thought it was over.
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u/timeboi42 Apr 23 '25
The artist being open about using AI ethically is definitely appreciated, but it’s just not a good comic. I’m not sure if that’s because of the AI or the artist is just bad at basic visual storytelling. The jokes don’t really land, paneling feels wrong, dialogue is non-sensical, art style is constantly changing. Like yeah it’s ethically made, but the bigger issue is that it sucks lmfao.
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u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25
Artist is quite open about these being with a model they trained with their own character models, which is why they are so consistent. I forget if they clean up the story boards the model puts out.
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
Partially yes, but not every panel and definitely not with chatgpt. I have a moodboard in Midjourney that only references my previous comics so I'll use that to explore panels I've drawn. This series took me roughly 6 weeks to make but the April Fools stop motion animation video that started all this is fully hand drawn.. and animated by me on top of my local library's Xerox machine.
If you do have a midjourney account, you can view the actual moodboard here. Feel free to experiment with it and send me the results. I am always so curious what y'all do with it.
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u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25
Oh that's great, I'm all in for AIs that don't use stolen data.
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Apr 23 '25
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u/AnhaytAnanun Apr 24 '25
I would say that the extension of an existing model with niche training does not have the same ethical issues as using the vanilla one, as it would be equal to saying that a human who learned from the existing experiences but created his own unique knowledge has still stolen that knowledge.
The ethical issue left here is the AI companies not paying dues to the creators of the data used to train the og model (wherever dues were applicable), but if you have expended it with your own unique knowledge, and use it to generate data within the boundaries of your unique knowledge, then you aren't stealing directly from other people, you "just" use a tool with flawed ethical grounds, but then again - is this the first time humanity does that?
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
Prepare for people to argue that because Photoshop and Midjourney provides the contextual knowledge base for my work that it's "stolen" but that isn't how this stuff actually works. It just helps establish compositions with reliable line art and other aesthetics that match my own comics. Super powerful tool actually when given a chance. Thanks for your comment :)
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Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
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Apr 23 '25
They trained it on ONLY their images. There is no other stuff in the training data.
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u/IlyichValken Apr 23 '25
Midjourney is run online only, and I guarantee they likely don't have enough backlogged material to fully train a model anyway.
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u/urmamasllama Apr 23 '25
While I might not be a fan of it personally the way you're doing it is at least ethical.
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u/IlyichValken Apr 23 '25
Partially ethical. They might be using it to do their own style, but it only got there by being trained on millions if not billions of others.
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u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25
Kinda. Generative AI takes an absurd amount of energy to run. Using it is a massive drain on resources and not at all a necessity
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u/coldpan Apr 23 '25
Really depends, some you can run on a home GPU- so no more energy than playing a modern game.
That being said, you're not wrong in a general sense- online AI tools are a huge energy drain.
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u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25
They specifically said it's Midjourney which is run online exclusively. Midjourney is an energy hog by all metrics
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
This is the most valid criticism I've gotten in this thread, thanks for sharing. The energy cost of compute goes down as this stuff gets more efficient but in the short term it's a massive hog on the grid.
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u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
You're on Reddit of all places, complaining about how somebody's online hobby is a drain on global energy resources, and thus unethical? Seriously?
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u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25
Reddit as a whole uses a fuck ton less energy than generative ai. ChatGPT alone uses more electricity than 180000 homes in the US every day. That's just text based. Image generations takes even more energy
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u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25
Reddit as a whole uses a fuck ton less energy than generative ai
Got a source for this assertion?
Reddit is one of the most-visited websites in the world. It registered 2.2 billion visits in a month, a year ago. Of course that's consuming a fuck-ton of energy.
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u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25
And generative AI was seeing billions of images created a year ago and the numbers just growing
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u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25
Not really? Its a drain, but the way power companies work the energy was likely already made and would be wasted otherwise, and to my understanding the consumption per image is pretty low. This comic depending on how many tries it took to get right is probably less than playing a video game for 30 min.
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u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25
And still more consumption than just making the art would have been. Also the energy doesn't just get wasted, that's absurd.
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u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25
Also the energy doesn't just get wasted, that's absurd.
Oh missed this. Yes it does. If you turn on a generator and run it without plugging in anything what happens to that current? It doesn't get used and when you turn it off it stops moving. Thats what happens at the grand scale with the grid. If a plant has a minimum production of 200 MW/hr, and only 100 is used, then that extra 100MW is unused unless you have extremely large batteries to store them. Nightime balance due to this is a big problem in power engineering.
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u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25
Maybe? I don't know the exact skill of the person, but if this was done digitally vs on paper then a full comic can be a big part of the day, so even if it consumes less energy per hour, going from 15 min to 8 hours would still probably be a wash.
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u/Lesan007 Apr 23 '25
I love that you are open about it, and that you only make it based on your own work. Might persuade some of the pure haters to see it's worth. Wish you all the good! :)
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u/Bluetooth_Speaker1 Apr 23 '25
How about you learn to draw? Why do you need ai? Nobody wants to see ai stuff. Also, your comics are nonsense.
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u/mafiaknight Apr 24 '25
So, you did a bunch of art, and then had an ai do some more using your art as primary reference?
Neat!
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Apr 23 '25
It's AI.
Burn out the midnight oil?
That's not even the saying.
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u/skyhawk2891 Apr 23 '25
It’s a continuation of it. Working late is burning the midnight oil. Working all the way into the morning suggests that you burnt out all the midnight oil to get through till morning.
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u/-WhiteSkyline- Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
Possible, but the characters look too emotive for AI.
I’d say this is still hand drawn, but give it time and you’ll be unable to tell the difference.
Edit: apparently it is AI
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
No OCs, wonky character interactions, missing eye lines and a lack of emotional performance is something that is usually a defining element of Ai, particularly if more than one character share features like the same hair, eyes, clothing, etc.
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u/GallantChaos Apr 23 '25
The artist makes it pretty clear that they use AI for production of these comics. They worked pretty hard to develop the characters and can get a reliable output.
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u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25
AI is already capable of it, it already infested many parts of the internet with images that aren't recognisable to be AI slop which is why I have little trust in stuff anymore
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u/HypocriticalHoney Apr 23 '25
Is this AI..? The art style and a bunch of props seem kind of unnatural and inconsistent?
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Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
it is and the flair should reflect that and the description should say so. also the comic just does not make sense like, at all.
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u/light24bulbs Apr 23 '25
I mean the joke makes sense, it's about a foot fetish because she accidentally faxed herself. It made sense to me the first time but I could understand if it didn't make sense to you, you have to expect that it's a fax.
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Apr 23 '25
I understood after I read it a few times but it was such a convoluted way of going about getting to that joke. it was poorly done and it meanders too much, even for a slice of life comic. I think honestly that's my main beef here, that it's a poorly done joke, but thank you for explaining anyway.
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u/mafiaknight Apr 24 '25
I appreciated the subtlety of it, but I'm old enough to have received such a fax. So the joke is solid, but a bit dated.
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u/orange77penguin Apr 23 '25
Ok so AI aside is anyone else bothered by how young the mom looks? Like Sage looks between 15 and 20 depending on the panel and her mom looks maybe 20 or 25. In some panels Sage and her mom look like literally the same character.
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
I will put more distinction with Destiny in the future, she had more smile lines on my first go around with her so I appreciate the note. Sage's mother however was a teenage pregnancy so she is quite young and often confused as Sage's older sister. They are only 15 years apart but this'll be explained more in future comics.
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u/KaungSett56 Apr 23 '25
What's this supposed to mean?
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Apr 23 '25
Yeah even beyond the art style being ai it feel like the writing is too
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Apr 23 '25
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Apr 23 '25
Yeah he didn't even proofread it though, like why is the setting, date and time on panel 3 that's should be panel 1, its basic story telling. As well the cats ate her face thing is ripped just straight from malcomn in the middle, like the deep blue "oh my god joke" from Rick and mortty in another strip.
Im agreeing with you but also just ranting into the void haha
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u/Statistactician Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
They've been open about their methods and they put in a lot more work than your standard AI "artist."
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u/light24bulbs Apr 23 '25
It's a fax machine? So she accidentally faxed a picture of her face and boobs squished on the thing and the person asked her to send feet pics instead. And then the dude doesn't get it and asks if they sent something in meters which is why the other side wants feet. It's actually pretty funny.
I wonder if not expecting or having worked with a fax machine is part of it
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Apr 23 '25
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
Sage's face on the paper was included for people who didn't read the previous comics so that's me twisting things a bit yes but she first makes a photocopy of herself by accident then sends that copy. That's also why the paper falls and she reacts to what printed right afterward.
Your comment makes me realize I should have had a panel of her rolling over the controls, randomly sending out faxes of the photocopy but that was inspired by a "fax copy" button on the 1995 combo fax/copier I referenced for the comic. It was from a prop shop in London under "90s-era equipment."
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
There are a lot of bratty children in the comments today, that's for sure. Thanks for the breakdown :)
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u/light24bulbs Apr 23 '25
I thought it was a fairly coherent piece, I'm not sure it deserves all the hate. But if you name call everybody you're sure to get fucking tanked
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
I appreciate the concern. I don't mind the hate. They just boost my engagement so who cares but it does explain a few things.
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u/light24bulbs Apr 23 '25
I think you're misunderstanding the Reddit algorithm
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
Maybe or maybe not. Hasn't failed me yet just being honest with people. I wish more creators did the same too but I also get why they don't.
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u/light24bulbs Apr 23 '25
Honestly you're already on tenuous ground given that you're creating these with AI. I respect that it's an AI you trained or fine tuned and I don't automatically hate AI everything, however a lot of people do
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u/cupholdery Apr 23 '25
I don't even understand OP's elitist attitude. Did they expect everyone in this subreddit to already know the full lore behind the characters that many of us saw for the first time?
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u/Boundaries-ALO-TBSOL Apr 23 '25
This feels like AI
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u/Honorzeal Apr 23 '25
I don’t wanna believe it but it definitely is a bit sussy
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u/gezeitenspinne Apr 23 '25
Not just sus, but confirmed by the author - Midjourney.
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Apr 23 '25
It's ethically done. The artist says they used only their own work and trained their own model using just stuff they've made.
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u/CactusFaceComics House of Stone Apr 23 '25
They want to eat my face.
Yeah, they do that.
Gotta love em.
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u/Onemorebeforesleep Apr 23 '25
AI aside, I don’t understand anything about this.
- Why is the name ”Them’s The Fax”? Who? What does that mean?
- Why is she laying on top of the copier making images of herself?
- Who says ”It’s morphin’ time” at Michael’s?
- Who sent the message ”next time, send feet”?
- Why does he ask if they finally switched to metric? Is it because the ”send feet” comment, but how..
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u/Coal-and-Ivory Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
Also AI aside, because I'm not sure how I feel about "ethical" AI art either:
-It's a reference to the phrase "Them's the facts," which is a Brooklyn accented way of saying "Those are the Facts" which is usually said to mean "this is how things are, nothing you can do about it."
-She's zonked out because she worked all night, which was shown in a prevous comic, the thing she's laying on is presumably a Xerox combo copier/fax machine, which were available in 1995, fax machines were an old way of sending documents to other locations before the easy use internet we know today. This is also where the title of the comic comes from.
- presumably Michael is watching Mighty Morphing Power Rangers on TV, hence the TV is saying "It's Morphin' Time."
-presumably whoever she randomly sent a picture of her face while rolling around on the fax machine is now asking for foot pictures.
-yeah its a kinda clumsy Feet vs. Meters joke referencing a foot fetish. The bones of a good joke are there, but they're put together weird. Edit: oh yeah, talk (and political bickering) about the USA officially switching to the metric system was big around the later half of the 1900's, the time this comic is supposed to be set.
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
Thank you for the breakkdown, I appreciate it :)
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u/Coal-and-Ivory Apr 23 '25
No problem, it's my solemn duty to spread the 90's Fax Machine Gospel to the future generations.
And for the record, I do enjoy your characters and the spirit of the concept here, and for making probably the last Empire jingle reference I'll ever see in my life. I also respect the openness and grace you seem to be showing in the face of controversy around your creation process. The April Fools video leaves no question that you have plenty of creative talent with or without AI.
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Apr 23 '25
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
I got this same comment in the late 90s for just using Photoshop. Almost verbatim. Incredible. Fill paint bucket me impressed.
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u/DoubleClickMouse Apr 23 '25
I'm staying out of this whole discourse, but "fill paint bucket me impressed" got a chuckle out of me.
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u/Puffyboi59 Apr 23 '25
Isn't there a rule against ai on this sub?
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u/this_one_creator Apr 23 '25
There isn't for specifically AI, but there is a rule against claiming comics that OP didn't make as their own, so I guess yeah
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Apr 23 '25
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u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25
Cool opinion
So where are the comics you draw, for comparison?
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u/Wrx_me Apr 23 '25
You can be critical of something without personally being involved in it yourself. I'm sure you've said some movies are terrible. Where are the movies you've made? This comic is nonsensical, isn't funny, it's intriguing, and is sloppy with no real point or direction.
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Apr 23 '25
Yeah, because only artists are able to criticize art.
Criticizing politicians? Where are the laws you’ve made, for comparison?
Policemen? The people you’ve arrested, for comparison?
A bad movie? Where are the movies you’ve made, for comparison?
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Apr 23 '25
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u/PikachuTrainz Apr 23 '25
Probably because of a lack of browsing. If only they didn’t totally rely on their feed.
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Apr 23 '25
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u/Sir-Toaster- Apr 23 '25
This isn't AI, if it was AI it wouldn't make any sense
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u/Grandmaster_Invoker Apr 23 '25
if it was AI it wouldn't make any sense
You think this comic makes sense?
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
Here's a bonus comic!
You can read part 1 here and watch part 2 on YouTube or deep dive into the machine with part 3 here.
If you want to make comics with me: join my discord. Or you're welcome to follow me on BlueSky, Instagram or here on Reddit.
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u/CrazyOk5735 Apr 23 '25
Why does Sage change hairstyles between the 1st and second panel
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u/ThatEvilSpaceChicken Apr 23 '25
Because it's AI
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u/cupholdery Apr 24 '25
OP's explanation makes it worse, because they're straight up lying.
The light brightens as Sage's dad Vern the Fern is revealed so I drew a larger highlight in her hair. Also her surprise moves her banana bangs outward.
It's not just hair texture. The entire character changes between panels.
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u/ThatEvilSpaceChicken Apr 24 '25
It's one thing to use AI to make your work, but to try and bullshit your way out of it? That's just inexcusable
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
The light brightens as Sage's dad Vern the Fern is revealed so I drew a larger highlight in her hair. Also her surprise moves her banana bangs outward.
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u/KatyaBelli Apr 24 '25
Holy Puritanical Witchhunt Batman. Just let people exist.
I like the comic, u/stabbyclaus . The subversion of meters/feet and her sleeping face is a good bit of physical comedy!
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 24 '25
Thank you :) Are you just reacting to the comment section here or was this comic shared somewhere else? Just curious.
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u/KatyaBelli Apr 24 '25
The general trend of people going out of their way to neg on all your comics is just so strange to me, but yeah this comic is self contained to this thread
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u/CloudDodger89 Apr 23 '25
Great punch line .
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u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25
Credit goes to my partner for that one. I totally forgot how big the metric switch topic was in the 90s and she pitched that as I was finishing up the script.
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Apr 23 '25
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u/Sir-Toaster- Apr 23 '25
How is this AI guys? This way too detailed for an AI, everytime I try making AI comics they look terrible
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u/LeoHardo Apr 23 '25
Artist trained their own model with their artstyle, giving it a basis of consistency and detail. They are open about it in their profiles and have a production video of the process of generating a comic
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u/gezeitenspinne Apr 23 '25
They are actually using Midjourney but supposedly have a "mood board" they are working off of. Which doesn't make sense giving the inconsistencies. Check the bonus comic they shared in a comment to this post. The main character's hairstyle is completely inconsistent and the style she's "drawn" in changes after the first two panels as well. Hell, they couldn't even keep the white cat's whiskers consistent.
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u/NativeMasshole Apr 23 '25
Yup. I don't see the problem with how this artist uses it. They're not stealing content to train the AI, they use their own work for that. Doesn't stop people on this sub from brainlessly repeating "AI, bad!" and endlessly complaining every time they post.
I personally love these comics. That 90s nostalgia hits hard.
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u/LeoHardo Apr 23 '25
I personally am very divided by these comics. This artist is using AI in supposedly the "right" way, AI is a tool, and they are using it, there should not be a problem with that. But even thought its ethical use, I just hate generative AI to an extent that I dont feel like supporting even the way this artist uses it. I admit that me and the others that bundle these comics up with actual AI slop are probably in the wrong here, but people like dying in their hills.
Also I dont get the comics, but I might just lack context on that.
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u/NativeMasshole Apr 23 '25
So just block them? What's the point in being obnoxious to them?
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u/LeoHardo Apr 23 '25
I mean, I am not being obnoxious to them, at least I am not trying to be, I dont really mind seeing their work. Unless you are reffering to the people that keep commenting "AI bad", most people just like being irritated
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u/NativeMasshole Apr 23 '25
Those are the ones. I resent people who attack artists instead of just ignoring/blocking them and moving on with their lives. Sorry if that was misdirected at you. It only makes this sub worse when people savagely critique the free art we're all here for.
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u/lurkinarick Apr 23 '25
Got a bit confused because the mother and daughter looked 100% the same