Hi friends, mod here.
I want to take a moment to address the issue of low-quality AI-generated content that occasionally gets posted in this community.
While /c/comicstrips hasn’t had a specific rule about this until now, it’s become clear that some AI-generated comics being shared fall well below the standard of quality we aim to maintain. These low-effort posts not only disrupt the overall experience for readers, but they also devalue the hard work of the illustrators and artists who contribute original content here.
Starting today, a new rule is in place:
AI-generated comics are no longer allowed in this community.
Thanks for understanding and helping keep /c/comicstrips a high-quality space for everyone who loves comics.
Just make a comic with stick figures. Cyanide and Happiness literally became famous for doing it and turned into a semi-refined art style. You don’t need AI if you got a good joke on your hands.
So did xkcd.
or sprites from a video game
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please dont remind me of loss comic
edit: ok…i think i need to drop some context with what im saying
Speaking of loss
You just lost The Game
Exactly, the art style doesn’t matter if the written content is good. But this doesn’t need to exclude AI at all, because as you mention the art style is not the critical piece. I don’t care if the art is made by AI, as long as the written content is good.
My biggest problem is included in the “but they also devalue the hard work of the illustrators and artists who contribute original content here” part of the original post, especially since the AIs are trained on copyrighted work.
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There’s a difference between “low quality” and “simple”. Cyanide and Happiness, to use their example was simple, not low quality.
XKCD also a great example
yes. Yes. it is.
Because I believe stick figures are of a higher quality than AI. An AI generated comic shows me that you cared so little about it that you couldn’t even draw stick figures. And this has nothing to do with effort, but artistic intent. It shows that whoever did it had no desire to inject themselves into the comic and would rather have it look generic and bland. Fidelity does not equal quality.
Because AI “art” being posted around isn’t even consistent throughout the panel, and is often devoid of effort and context so even when it’s not that interesting, it’s not even pleasant to look at.
Comic artist like C&H and Oatmeal, while having terrible art, at least are funny and with context. There’s human in it, and they can call the style their “own”, even if it’s stick figure it’s stick figure with distinction. AI art just make you think “is this made from AI?”
You want people to appreciate AI comic? Sure, do the touch up first and make everything consistent.
Oatmeal is actually pretty well drawn. Not a good example. Xkcd would have been a better one.
Fair point. XKCD, Casually Explained, and MinuteScience all are stick figure but they still have some distinctive way to do their thing.
Absolutely! AI comics just lack soul.
because AI is lazy
ai isn’t lazy, it opens up the art industry to people who cant draw, and people who are worried about their art careers need to remember that ai cant make physical art, and there’s already enough hate for ai that will definitely still be demand for human made art, so just draw or paint on a physical canvas, or find the people who have a demand for human made art
Disagree on that first bit a lot, drawing is a skill you have to learn, Jumping to AI right away because you don’t want to take on the hours of learning is just lazy.
i don’t understand why people don’t like ai, its just a very new and advanced tool, it makes peoples lives more convenient and can intelligently solve problems, we used to have manual long range communication like mail services, it would take days or weeks for people to send short one paragraph messages to each other (in this analogy this is equivalent to the pre ai art industry where you could either learn to create art yourself or commission an artwork.) then we developed telegraphs and radio and telephones and eventually smart phones which among other things can allow to people on opposite sides of the world to communicate with almost zero delay (in the post ai art industry almost anyone can create almost anything in a matter of minutes or seconds, something that used to take hours days or weeks to achieve has been streamlined, made cheaper, and more available to the general public)
in both industries automated systems replaced most of the workforce. lots of people were put out of jobs because it was economically more efficient to automate the process for the most part. just like how there are still people in the mail industry delivering packages and of course physical letters, there will still be human artists in the future. the industry will just be smaller and people wont create art for the sake of looking the best, or for the sake of making money, people will personally create art because they want to appreciate it and share it with other people.
so i really don’t see why ai is a bad thing, all its doing is streamlining the industries it can be applied to.
Because generative AI is a lazy shortcut for the untalented or dispassionate. If you give half a shit, put in minimum effort and draw a damn stick figure in MS Paint.
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It differs from AI in that it’s completely unintelligent and doesn’t try or pretend to be intelligent or creative in any way. It leaves all the intelligence and creativity up to the user. It involves no “training” on large quantities of scraped data. It won’t do anything it isn’t explicitly told to do. The exact placement and pose of every stick figure, the precise layout and size of the individual frames, the exact content of every chunk of text is all explicitly and precisely specified by the user of codecomic. (In a source code file.) Also, a given source code file will only ever produce exactly the same webcomic whereas generally with generative AI, the exact same input can be used to generate a bunch of candidate images from which the user must select the “best.”
With something like Stable Diffusion, it does rely on lots of training data and the user’s only input into the content of the “generated” output is to throw a word-salad of keywords at it and tell it to “discern roughly something that fits these keywords”. The user doesn’t specify the exact location of anything in the resulting image. The user doesn’t have control over what exact text appears in the resulting image (and typically AI can’t even do text that’s sensical). At best the user can “influence” what’s output by tuning the keywords and hope with their fingers crossed that the Stable Diffusion model does roughly what the user has in mind.
Something tells me you didn’t even read what is there.
Almost everyone, anyway
And nothing of value was lost.
Incredible. Thank you.
+1
Which ones were identified as AI generated?
what uninspired drivel 🤢🤮
Still funnier than the average Bello Bear or Devils Panties to me.
i mean it just lacked humor, i dont think it was because of the ai
I wouldn’t mind seeing a few examples as well
I started by making comics with horribly drawn stickmen in Paint, black and white, no colors, yet they got a positive reaction due to the writing (example of my work 2 years ago).
Unless you suffer from a severe physical disability, there’s no excuse, you can draw your own comics.
The best part is while drawing your shitty stickmen, you’ll get better at drawing, learn to represent emotions and actions, develop a style, start to have a visual identity, maybe even get good at it who knows.
I learned to draw from scratch in my late 30s, two years later I’m doing illustrations for my own games - there’s still a lot of room for improvement, but it proves practice pays off even without tryharding and you don’t need AI to draw your comics for you. You just need to get over your fears of judgement, try your best with the skills you’ve got, and keep doing it on a regular schedule. Slowly, over time, you’ll get better. I promise. It’ll be fruitless and frustrating sometimes, but you’ll get big visible leaps in your skills every now and then.
That’s why I’m always upvoting and complimenting those who are just getting started and can’t draw much yet, but have good ideas and a vision. I’d encourage everyone else to do the same. A lot of people tend to stop if they don’t get positive feedback.
If you’re considering making AI comics, try drawing them instead. Who cares if it’s ugly, give it your best and share it with the world. You might not get many upvotes, but if your ideas are good enough you’ll get a few comments and the motivation to keep trying, and that’s a lot already. Don’t fret over having no “talent”, I don’t have any either, still can’t draw anything decent with a pen and paper :-)
You don’t even need the stick figures if you’re especially clever about it.
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ASCII art exists. MAD Magazine even had a feature in a few issues from the 1960s-1980s which were comic strips in which the art was made of characters typed on a typewriter, in a very early precursor to ASCII art.
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Fumetti (photo comics) use photographs instead of illustrations.
There are lots of ways out there to be creative without generating slop.
Fumetti looks interesting!
Although both of these techniques are harder than drawing stick figures, they could be a more unique style.
What’s easy for one person may be hard for another, and vice versa. Folks can find whichever they’re good at and share it.
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I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively an effort issue, there’s pretty legitimate reasons why people don’t draw: fear of judgement, lack of belief in self, anxiety…
In my case the last time I had fun drawing was in school, until my art teacher repeatedly told me I drew like shit and I just gave up drawing. Thought I’d never be able to draw. Took me 20 years until I tried again. People’s words can have unexpected effects, that’s why I try to be extra encouraging to new artists.
I can relate to the frustration of really wanting to draw but thinking you can’t do it. I understand why they use the AI drawing generators instead of doing it themselves. I just wish they could believe in themselves the way I did. It’s not easy, but it’s absolutely worth it.
People say that AI generated art displays a lack of talent, but I think that’s not exactly true.
This technology steals the work of artists, funnels money into the hands of dictators and megacorps, poisons towns populated by minorities and sets the planet on fire. Defending all of that requires a level of talent in lacking empathy that’s almost admirable.
You had me on the first half, not gonna lie.
AI-generated comics are no longer allowed in this community.
Was ready to unfollow and block.
Glad we decided to preserve the integrity of the art.Let the ai-bro tears flow.
Same. I want to see web comics here, and the occasional newspaper comic artist.
Ai comics can go to find their own community.
How the mod ruled:
Great choice!
You tell 'em, Everett!
Thank you!!! (づ￣ ³￣)づ
Awesome! Thanks for this decision.
Thank you for making this choice, and keeping this community worth visiting. And thank you for the hard work you do in moderating!
low-quality AI-generated content
Is there any other kind?
Lower-quality content, maybe?
I’m not against the posting of AI generated content, but it should be confined to communities that were specifically set up for AI content.
Excellent decision! The simplest way to enforce this would be to require all comic strip submissions to include a source link.
