A pitch deck wants a board. A streamer wants an animatic. A book signing wants a comic. Same story, three deliverables. The cheap way to make all three is to reuse the work that already exists.
01The problem
Comic creation, traditionally, is its own pipeline: a separate writer with a separate script format, a penciller working from references, a letterer placing balloons, a designer doing print prep. Studios that want both a comic and an animation usually build the comic from scratch — and end up with two visions of the same characters.
That's wasteful and it's a continuity hazard. The comic version of the hero shouldn't look like a different person.
02The approach
Module 06 (Comic) hooks the same project files Module 06 (Animation) uses. Cast sheets, episode variants, script scenes, storyboard shots — they're already on disk. The comic generator's job is to compose pages: pick which shots become panels, lay out the gutter, place dialogue balloons from the script's speaker tags, drop in SFX onomatopoeia for action beats.
The page layouts come from a small library of grids — three-tier classic, splash-page hero, six-panel grid, european-style nine-panel — and the panel ordering follows the script's scene order by default. Operators rearrange visually; the underlying script reference stays intact.
"It's not a separate product. It's the same show, printed on paper."
03Inside the control panel
The panel reads like a comic editor's worktable. Pages on the left, panel grid in the middle, balloons and SFX as overlays.
- Layout templates. Pick a grid, the panels auto-fill from the script's shot list. Reorder by drag.
- Auto-balloons. Speaker tags from Module 02 become correctly-tailed balloons placed near the speaking character. Manual nudge available.
- SFX library. Action beats from the script trigger onomatopoeia suggestions ("KRAK", "WHRRR") with editable typography.
- Print export. CMYK PDF with bleed, trim and safe-area marks. Ready for the printer without a separate prepress pass.
04What's next
We're prototyping motion-comic export: take the comic page, animate the panels with subtle parallax and sound, and ship it as a vertical-scroll asset for social. The boundary between "comic" and "animation" is already fuzzier than the industry pretends — we're leaning into it.