how to draw comics the …

How to Draw Comics the MidJourney Way

by Brian Martinez

Note: This guide was written in September 2022. At the rate this technology is moving, I don't
know how long any of this will stay relevant. Hopefully as the mechanics and abilities of ai
change at least some of the basic methods here maintain some value.

Introduction

I won't go on about myself, but to give you a little self-confidence, let me say this: four months
ago I was a writer who dreamed of one day publishing a comic. To date, thanks to MidJourney,
I've published two. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to work with an artist some day, to
collaborate with a human being rather than arguing with a computer to give me the correct breed
of cat with just the right annoyed expression, but the fact is I've always believed in making the
best thing you can with whatever you have. And MidJourney, if you're patient and enjoy the
challenge, can make comics.
Like any advice worth a damn, I'll start by saying there's never one best way to do pretty much
anything, there's just the best way for you. The way that makes sense and works for your projects
specifically. So for the sake of helping others find their best way, here's how I personally make
comics with MidJourney- at least until I learn better.

Part One: Writing the Script (Wait, Don't Skip This!)

I may be a little biased here as a writer, but to me the story of a comic is at least as important as
the artwork, and probably more-so. Beautiful artwork can hook a reader in, but it takes a good
story to keep them reading, and a great story to stick in their heads. If you can get the artwork to
match the story, and better yet tell the story visually, you can tap into what makes comics such an
amazing format in the first place.
Now I can't teach you how to write your story. For that the best thing you can do is practice,
practice, practice, and when you're not practicing read as much good stuff as possible. Once you
do that you can hone in on writing for comics specifically. Books on comic writing that I've
enjoyed are Alan Moore's Writing for Comics and Comics Experience Guide to Writing Comics:
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 enjoyed are Alan Moore's Writing for Comics and Comics Experience Guide to Writing Comics:
Scripting Your Story Ideas from Start to Finish.

I know you didn't come here to have me lecture you on writing, but here's why you should think
about writing your story before you start prompting images, and it's a lesson I learned myself:
Because then you'll know exactly what images you need. I've done both, prompting images with a
complete story, and with a half-finished story that I would “discover” along the way. The first one
took me two weeks. The second took me two months. What I found is, if you already know every
character, every scene, every image you need before you start prompting, you'll save yourself a
ton of time. You can sit down each day with a list of images you need and start making them, and
making them good. If you're looking to just play around and enjoy the process, there's absolutely
nothing wrong with that. If you want to be productive, especially with a longer project, think
about writing the story first.
Tip: You can write your story in any format you want, from short story to full script, and even
comic scripts themselves have famously varied styles. For an easy format that you can pretty
much cut-and-paste your story into, I suggest downloading the templates from
https://www.oheysteenz.com/scs-template and altering them as needed. I personally don't use a lot
of description in my scripts, because usually those descriptions are to paint the picture for the
artist and, well, no one's reading it but me.

Part Two: Creating the Characters

At least at the time of writing, one of the biggest challenges with telling stories that use ai images
is the characters. You can prompt an amazing-looking character, but can you keep getting the
same one again and again, in different locations, doing different things? Well, yes, but it's not
always easy.
The Shambibble Method
There are a few tricks to creating a character, one of the best being the one @shambibble details
beautifully in their guide to MidJourney Image Prompting. I'll link it below, but I'll describe the
method simply here in case it ever gets taken down or you want a quicker version. Shambibble
really goes into detail with the process, so if you want to refine your method I highly recommend
checking it out.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13c8Ci-
8kU2PVZu6DKghlhOOrbf4kmtc9xxCJAnPqvC0/edit
Step 1: Create a sketch of your character by describing them to MidJourney and asking for it in a
pencil sketch. Keep trying until you get one you like. Here's an example:
Pencil sketch of tough woman in her 30's, extremely short brunette hair, pixie hairstyle, serious
expression
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 Step 2: Now take a) your favorite sketch image and use it as an image prompt, along with b) the
repeated character description, and c) the style you want, to get a full-color version of your
character. Image prompts are done by pasting an image URL at the beginning of the prompt,
which MidJourney will use as inspiration for a new image. This is famously tricky, and will
hopefully get better over time. It has to be an image URL (ends in .jpg for instance) and it will
take some experimenting, mainly with image weights (adding -- iw 2 or -- iw 3 at the end.)
Example:
<Image Prompt of Pencil Sketch here> Tough woman in her 30's, extremely short brunette hair,
pixie hairstyle, serious expression, scifi comic art by Christopher Shy and Ben Templesmith and
Dan Mumford and Jean Giraud and Jim Lee, 4k --iw 3

Step 3: Now use THAT image as an image prompt, once again repeating the character description
and style prompts, but this time give it a setting. Example:
<Image Prompt of color image here> Wide shot of tough woman in her 30's in street of dusty
Mars town, extremely short brunette hair, pixie hairstyle, serious expression, scifi comic art by
Christopher Shy and Ben Templesmith and Dan Mumford and Jean Giraud and Jim Lee, 4k

That's a simplified version, and it doesn't always work for what you need, but it's one method you
can use to get a character with the look you want, and in a way that's repeatable in different
costumes and settings.
One of the things to pay attention to if you plan to use the above image prompting method, is that
you should try to have it be in the basic color palette of your comic. More than anything (and
again, at the time of writing,) MidJourney takes color inspiration from image prompts. If your
image prompt is all red but you're trying to make a blueish comic, you're going to have a bad
time.
The Method Actor Method
The main method I use is to use actor names and have them play the part of my character. I
recommend either blending two actors together or using lesser known actors, ones who
MidJourney has a pretty good idea of what they look like but aren't immediately identifiable by
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 MidJourney has a pretty good idea of what they look like but aren't immediately identifiable by
the reader. Nothing takes a person out of the experience faster than seeing a bunch of images
where some guy who is clearly Tom Hardy does a bunch of stuff, and they're supposed to pretend
that it's totally not Tom Hardy doing a bunch of stuff. It might even get you sued for using
someone's likeness without their permission.
Another great trick to use with this method is to bring in the Hair and Makeup department to
change your actor's appearance. Change their age, weight, hair color, anything that makes them
look less like the actor and more like your character. Then, when you have it right, relentlessly
keep using the same wording to describe your character. Here's what I mean. Let's say we want a
low-level criminal character, and we decide to cast Stephen McHattie.
Stephen McHattie, comic art by Greg Capullo and Jim Lee

If you know the actor, it kinda looks like him, kinda doesn't. Now let's change him to fit our
character:
Young Stephen McHattie, comic art by Greg Capullo and Jim Lee

Okay, that's a big difference, but not the look I want. What if we try:
Blonde Stephen McHattie, comic art by Greg Capullo and Jim Lee

Nice, that was the character I was looking for. Now we can put him in different settings by
describing him the same way but adding a place:
Blonde Stephen McHattie on city sidewalk, comic art by Greg Capullo and Jim Lee
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 Even better, let's get him into costume:
Blonde Stephen McHattie wearing red suit, in an abandoned warehouse, comic art by Greg
Capullo and Jim Lee

We can even get him to act for us:

Closeup of screaming angry blonde Stephen McHattie wearing red suit, in an abandoned
warehouse, comic art by Greg Capullo and Jim Lee

I like this method best because at the moment it gives the most flexibility in action. MidJourney
easily moves actor names into different shots and actions, whereas the image prompt methods
seem to prefer the same portrait composition of the original sketch. You might have better results,
or it might just get better with time, so do with that what you will.
Note that whatever method you use, it's going to take a lot of playing around to get it right. I
recommend turning settings like --stylize and --chaos and whatever other creative modifiers are
currently being used as low as possible to get your results more consistent and closer to what
you're looking for. Once you find the right settings, try to more or less lock them in.
This is the trick to consistent results: experiment until you find what works, then hammer that
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 This is the trick to consistent results: experiment until you find what works, then hammer that
wording in again and again. Only if I'm having trouble with a particular image will I change my
wording up, otherwise I keep describing the character exactly the same way. That also goes for...

Part Three: Finding the Style

Now that you have your story and your characters, you can start figuring out the look of your
comic. You may have a style in mind, or you may be looking to explore a bit to find just the right
look, but what I would suggest would be to aim for a little of both. Have a look in mind, one that
suits you and your story, but be open to finding something better, especially if it's going to give
you consistent results.
That word, consistency, is for me the most important aspect of the visuals I make for a comic. It's
nice to get that one, perfect image in the most gorgeous style ever, but if you can't keep getting it
again and again, with your characters doing what the story asks, then it's not worth much. Maybe
a cover image. The trick is to find a style that both looks good and delivers like a workhorse. For
that, you'll probably need to experiment.
This is actually a fun phase, because it involves a lot of playing around. Essentially you're going
to prompt your characters and your settings using various styles and artists until you start to boil
things down to what works best. This part doesn't technically have to be done after the character
phase, since they tend to go hand-in-hand. You might find the style first, or find it in the process
of creating your character.
The thing to do here is to take your time trying different styles. You don't want to get halfway
through your comic only to find a better style, and now you'll want to go back and do everything
over again in this new look. Hopefully you more-or-less know how to tweak prompts to get
different styles, but here's a basic list of what to experiment with:
Art Style: Do you want a cartoon look, painterly, graphic novel, black-and-white, charcoal, line
art? Find something that matches your vibe, looks good, and doesn't ruin your characters and
settings. Or don't even mention a style at all and just use...
Artists: Prompt the names of several artists, comic or otherwise. I can't recommend enough using
multiple artists, a) because it won't look like you're just ripping off their look and b) it tends to
give more coherent results. It might just be my theory, but I think using more artist styles pulls
from more trained images, which leads to better looking characters and objects. It's also an
amazingly effective way to tweak the color palette.
Render: This is something I don't use much except when I'm trying to get a specific result. Adding
“Octane render” for instance to give a high def look, or “cinematic lighting” for more dramatic
light. You might find it gives you an overall style you like, or it can come in handy for one
specific moment.
Phrasing: This one's a bit more vague, but pay attention to the wording you use in your prompts.
You never know when some small choice of words can totally influence the rest of the image. I
discovered this on my second comic when I switched from saying “painted by” to “comic art by”
and found the look I was going for, without changing a single artist. You could say that this
example relates more to the art style, but it's easy to see how small connecting words we weren't
thinking about can add up.

Part Four: Getting the Images

Now that you have your story, your characters, and your art style, you're going to start creating
the images that will fill your book. This is entirely up to your personal workflow, but I
recommend going page-by-page and creating them chronologically. You'll probably come back
and redo some later anyway, but by not skipping around I find I get a better overall picture of how
the book is coming out.
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 the book is coming out.
However you do it, though, it's important that you make more images than you think you need.
Way more. You'll want to give yourself tons of options later when you're assembling the book.
Think of it like making a collage: you'd want to cut up a hell of a lot of magazines before you get
any glue on your hands. I probably make two to five times the images I need for a comic. There's
no set amount here, just keep making them until you feel good about what you have. You'll
probably still need to go and prompt some more occasionally, but at least most of the time you
can just work on your pages.

Lots and lots of choices

The other reason why making tons of iterations is important is that you can pick and choose from
the ones that look the most consistent. Clothes, especially, are very hard to keep the same from
one image to the next. Hopefully this is one area that improves, but for now I do three things: 1)
use the images that are fairly similar in costume, 2) tweak in Photoshop anything that's glaringly
obvious, and 3) try not to obsess about it.
Aside from fully rendered scenes, you should also think about generating generic images that can
be used throughout the story. Shots of your characters showing different emotions come to mind.
They can have vague backgrounds or no backgrounds, be closeups or medium shots. And if you're
handy with Photoshop or a photo editing program of choice, you can easily throw different
backgrounds into these images.
A tip: stay organized. When you're making this many images it's very easy to become
overwhelmed and not be able to find anything. I make a folder for each project, and within each
folder I have images broken down into characters, locations, etc. It's a lot easier to stay organized
if you do it as you go, so what I do is I download my good images each day and drag them into
their appropriate folders. That way when it comes time to assemble the pages, I know exactly
where to find them. Once an image is used I add the word 'used' to the file name so I don't have to
move it out of the folder, but I also know not to use it again.

Part Five: Assembling the Comic

You can make the job of putting your comic together very easy. All you have to do is download a
program such as Comic life 3 (Windows) or Halftone 2 (iPad) and you can literally drag and drop
your images into a template and add your text. It looks simple and great and the pages are really
easy to read.
I don't know about you, but I for one have never been able to make it easy on myself. To me the
simplicity of those apps means I have very little control over the layout of the page, and while I
totally understand people wanting to make a clean, simple comic, I really enjoy taking a more
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 totally understand people wanting to make a clean, simple comic, I really enjoy taking a more
active role in designing my comic. That's why I use Photoshop and build my page one element at
a time, resizing images, creating caption boxes and speech bubbles, shifting things around like
one of those old newspaper layout guys. By the end there's not a single inch of my comic that
wasn't made with my hands, and I love that. It takes a lot more time, but to me it's worth it.
So at this point you have to decide which route you want to go. There's no wrong answer here,
especially since Photoshop and free alternatives like GIMP require some knowledge to use. I'm
not going to walk you through my Photoshop workflow, being that if you know how to use an
image editing program, you probably have techniques all your own. The gist of it is I create each
page as a separate file, 14 x 20, since that's roughly double the standard comic size:

Then I build the page from the bottom layer to the top, going from the background to the images
to the dialogue and caption boxes. Look up some good tutorials on dialogue boxes, such as
@twiststreet's post: https://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/693990807968038912, or do what I do and
make your life harder by taking stock images of paper and cutting out pieces to tweak and adjust
and apply shadows and stroke to. It's more custom, more handmade, but it's also way too extra in
a very on-brand way.
See? I wasn't lying. Photoshop.

When it comes to the text, remember that readability is king. It doesn't matter how fancy your font
is if no one can read it. I'll be honest and say this isn't my strong point, but I've made a good
amount of progress, and I plan to make a whole lot more. A reader will forgive a lot of things in
the art, but they won't forgive a font style or size that makes reading a chore.
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 the art, but they won't forgive a font style or size that makes reading a chore.
I currently use a free font called Lafayette Comic Pro, but sometime soon I plan to up my game
and purchase one from Comic Craft: https://www.comicbookfonts.com Whatever you do, keep
your focus on clarity and then get some feedback from a few sources. You're not the best judge of
this, since you already know what it's supposed to say.
Once you have your completed comic, print out a pdf and give it to a bunch of people to read. Get
feedback, listen to it, and adjust anything that will make the comic better. You don't have to listen
to every bit of feedback you get, but if you agree with it, or it's repeated by a few people, or it has
anything to do with clarity, put aside your ego and make those changes. The book will only get
better for it, and that's the goal. And now that you have your finished comic...

Part Six: Publishing the Comic

The most important thing you can do with any project is to finish it, but following closely behind
that is sharing it with the world. Whether your goal is to make money from it or just tell your
story to as many people as are willing to hear it, you should find a way to put your comic out
there, especially if you're proud of it. Not only that, but it will make you better at it when it comes
to the next one. Practice above all leads to improvement, but there's something about public
practice, about publishing our work and allowing it to be digested, that motivates us to get better
at the thing.
Coming from the world of self-publishing, so far I've only stuck to putting my comics out through
Kindle and paperback via Amazon's KDP. They have a great free program called Kindle Create
that you can drop your pages into and it churns out a perfect Kindle-ready file. The paperback
version is a little trickier, in that you have to upload a pdf and then pray like Hell that the
formatting is good and you don't have to tweak it five hundred times.
There are also tons of places online where you can publish digital comics. Thirty seconds on
Google turns up a bunch of results for just that, including places like Webtoon, Tapas, and
GlobalComix. If it's an ongoing project I recommend picking one or two and focusing on them so
you're not spending all your time updating a dozen different sites and then getting confused about
where to send people.

Part Seven: Finaling the Thought

Sorry, I couldn't break the naming format right at the end here. The thing is, as much as ai images
have gotten pushback from some people in the creative fields, this is such an exciting time for
people who want to make things like comics but up until now didn't have the means to do it. I'm a
firm believer in paying artists, and since I'm one guy with not enough money to pay one, I never
made a comic. Now I made two and I'm working on the third. Did this replace an artist? No,
because there was no artist to replace. And if I'm ever privileged enough to work with one on a
comic, you can bet I'll be using MidJourney to pre-visualize what I want, or maybe even enhance
and speed up what they're capable of doing.
The time to do this is right now. It's not a gimmick, it's a way to create things in a new way. And
yes, it has its limitations, like any new technology, but the fact that my second comic looked way
better than my first, and my third is shaping up to look better than my second, speaks to two
things: one, that practice doesn't exactly make perfect, but it does make better, and two, that this
train is moving fast, and I for one want to jump on and ride.
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 https://bloodstreamcity.com/graphic-novels.html

Find fellow ai comic creators on Discord at Making Modern Comics and Books
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