AI Comic Strip Changes : New Look, New Software

Most comic strips evolve. Peanuts did. Dilbert did. Beetle Bailey did. I’m not saying Robonk is in the same league at all. What I am saying is that the cartoonist learns and evolves their strip. That’s a real thing.

Here’s the visual changes to Robonk in the first two years:

Alpha level : Spring 2017

Gotta start somewhere.

v1.0 : First real Robonk strip (#00000)

The robot got its own font. The title panels were massively improved.

v1.05 : (#000B9)

Same basic system as before, but some technique changes were developing. Robonk is generally zoomed in more and the talk bubbles at this point often have elements overlapped on top. Font size was reduced. This was the 177th strip.

v1.5 : (#00100) : The new look

The Robot is generated the same way as with the Alpha level strips (Tinkercad) but…

  • The bubbles have new individual looks for the robot and the human.
  • The human has a new font.
  • The background has a blue fade.
  • The bubbles are created using a newly written (just for Robonk) jQuery/HTML/CSS system called Bubblematic.

Bubblematic makes creating strips much, much faster. I used to spend a large chunk of time building the quote bubbles. Now, Bubblematic handles that quickly and with precision. Automation made the ELIZA AI writing process much more efficient (Robonkers system), and now the drawing side has a custom software tool too.

Here’s a screenshot of Bubblematic v1.0. I normally make prettier interfaces, but this is an inhouse tool for just me and it works nicely as is.

Bubblematic v1.0

Software doesn’t just write Robonk, it also draws the quote bubbles for the comic strip these days.

All the new software has improved the quality and speed of creating new Robonk comic strips. It makes me wonder what it’s like to actually write and draw a comic strip.