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.
Comic Strips
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
Rules
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π Be Nice!
- Treat others with respect and dignity. Friendly banter is okay, as long as it is mutual; keyword: friendly.
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ποΈ Community Standards
- Comics should be a full story, from start to finish, in one post.
- Posts should be safe and enjoyable by the majority of community members, both here on lemmy.world and other instances.
- Any comic that would qualify as raunchy, lewd, or otherwise draw unwanted attention by nosy coworkers, spouses, or family members should be tagged as NSFW.
- Moderators have final say on what and what does not qualify as appropriate. Use common sense, and if need be, err on the side of caution.
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𧬠Keep it Real
- Comics should be made and posted by real human beans, not by automated means like bots or AI. This is not the community for that sort of thing.
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π½οΈ Credit Where Credit is Due
- Comics should include the original attribution to the artist(s) involved, and be unmodified. Bonus points if you include a link back to their website. When in doubt, use a reverse image search to try to find the original version. Repeat offenders will have their posts removed, be temporarily banned from posting, or if all else fails, be permanently banned from posting.
- Attributions include, but are not limited to, watermarks, links, or other text or imagery that artists add to their comics to use for identification purposes. If you find a comic without any such markings, it would be a good idea to see if you can find an original version. If one cannot be found, say so and ask the community for help!
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π Post Formatting
- Post an image, gallery, or link to a specific comic hosted on another site; e.g., the author's website.
- Meta posts about the community should be tagged with [Meta] either at the beginning or the end of the post title.
- When linking to a comic hosted on another site, ensure the link is to the comic itself and not just to the website; e.g.,
β Correct: https://xkcd.com/386/
β Incorrect: https://xkcd.com/
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π¬ Post Frequency/SPAM
- Each user (regardless of instance) may post up to five (5 π) comics a day. This can be any combination of personal comics you have written yourself, or other author's comics. Any comics exceeding five (5 π) will be removed.
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π΄ββ οΈ Internationalization (i18n)
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
SΓ, por favor [Spanish/EspaΓ±ol]
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
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πΏ Moderation
- We are human, just like most everybody else on Lemmy. If you feel a moderation decision was made in error, you are welcome to reach out to anybody on the moderation team for clarification. Keep in mind that moderation decisions may be final.
- When reporting posts and/or comments, quote which rule is being broken, and why you feel it broke the rules.
Banned Artists
The following artists are banned from the community.
- Jago
- Stonetoss
It should be noted that when you make reports, it is your responsibility to provide rational reasoning why something should be removed. Saying it simply breaks community rules is not always good enough.
Web Accessibility
Note: This is not a rule, but a helpful suggestion.
When posting images, you should strive to add alt-text for screen readers to use to describe the image you're posting:
Another helpful thing to do is to provide a transcription of the text in your images, as well as brief descriptions of what's going on. (example)
Web of Links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)

Almost everyone, anyway
And nothing of value was lost.
Incredible. Thank you.
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.
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.

Thank you!!!!! (γ₯οΏ£ Β³οΏ£)γ₯
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?
Awesome! Thanks for this decision.
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.
I congratulate you on your decision
However, I do think that people like us are on the losing side. US tech companies are flooding the internet with AI slop and most people in the world are tied up in them and see barely anything else anymore.
Soon enough we'll be a tiny minority, but what can you do....?
Many people cook entire meals using the microwave, and many people cook using an oven and stove.
Yes there's a lot of quickly processed food out there to feed the masses, but even the masses can tell the difference between a home cooked meal and a microwaved plate.
We might be the minority with our cooking, but our clientelle don't want it any other way and thats okay
Thanks for all your work on the community! It's a thankless job.
While I think Ai can make some cool images, it sucks at comics.
They look souless, have weird facial expressions and have inconsistent fonts.
Stick figure comics are far better.
Stick figure comics are far better.
I'll test your theory. Here's a comic made be me in a minute trying to act like a data scraping AI. I don't know how to edit things.

Ai could never make this
This is a masterpiece. Historians will find this in 2,000 years and try and figure out what it means.
Based.
On what? Idk, just based.

