BonusLockSMith/gritai-comic-pipeline

GritAI Comic Pipeline

One person. Local hardware. 13 complete AI-generated comics in a single day.

A fully local, reproducible pipeline that transforms story descriptions into complete multi-page comic books with panel layouts, character consistency, and dialogue overlays. Zero cloud APIs. Zero subscriptions. Just SDXL + Qwen + Pillow + PowerShell.

Pipeline Architecture

Story JSON → Stage 1 (SDXL Base) → Stage 2 (Qwen Edit) → Stage 3 (Pillow Assembly) → Bubble Renderer → PDF

Stage 1: SDXL Single Base Generation

• Checkpoint: realcartoonXL_v7 (RealCartoonXL)
• Single base image per page using character-consistent prompt
• Same base_seed across all pages for character consistency
• 20 steps, CFG 7, 1024x1536 portrait

Stage 2: Qwen Parallel Panel Editing

• Model: Qwen 2.5 VL (image editing mode)
• Takes single base image → branches into N unique panels simultaneously
• Each panel gets a unique edit_prompt describing the scene
• 4 steps, CFG 1 (fast inference)
• All panels generated in parallel via ComfyUI API

Stage 3: Pillow Panel Assembly

• Custom Python/Pillow assembler (replaced ComfyUI CR Comic Panel Templates)
• 12 layout templates: H2, H3, V2, V3, G22, G33, H12, H21, H13, H31, V12, V21
• Auto-scale and center-crop panels to fill slots exactly
• 8px black borders between panels
• Assembly time: ~1 second per page (down from 6s with CR node)

Stage 4: Bubble Renderer

• Overlays narration boxes, speech bubbles, and thought bubbles
• Reads text arrays from story JSON
• Position-aware: places bubbles within correct panel boundaries
• Three types: narration (rectangular, cream), speech (rounded, white, tail), thought (cloud, dots)
• Comic font rendering with word wrap

Orchestration

• run_story.ps1 — One-command story generation from JSON
• run_comic_pipeline.ps1 — Per-page pipeline execution via ComfyUI API
• pillow_assembler.py — Panel assembly with layout templates
• bubble_renderer.py — Dialogue overlay system
• Auto-titling with arched gold text
• Auto-PDF generation

Hardware

Node	Specs	Role
Rig1	RTX 5070 Ti + RTX 3060, Windows	SDXL generation, ComfyUI, dataset staging
Spark-2693	NVIDIA DGX Spark, Blackwell, 128GB unified, Linux	Robotics, local LLM inference (future)

Output Stats

Produced in a single session:

Metric	Value
Total stories	13
Total pages	80+
Total panels	230+
Layout templates used	6 (H2, H3, V2, G22, H12, H21)
Avg time per page	~1.5 min
Avg time per 8-page story	~14 min
Stories with dialogue	3 (WotW, Frankenstein, Dracula)

Stories

All source material is public domain classic literature.

#	Title	Pages	Panels	Template Mix
1	War of the Worlds - Vol. 1	4	16	G22
2	War of the Worlds - Complete	8	23	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2, H12
3	Frankenstein	8	23	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2, H12
4	Dracula	8	23	H2, H21, G22, V2, H3, H12
5	The Time Machine	8	23	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2, H12
6	Jekyll and Hyde	7	19	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2, H12
7	20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	8	23	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2, H12
8	Treasure Island	5	15	H2, H21, G22, H3
9	The Invisible Man	5	15	H2, H21, G22, H3
10	A Christmas Carol	6	17	H2, H21, G22, H3, V2
11	Hound of the Baskervilles	4	12	H2, H21, G22
12	The Picture of Dorian Gray	4	12	H2, G22, H3
13	Journey to the Center of the Earth	5	15	H2, H21, G22, V2
14	The Island of Doctor Moreau	5	15	H2, H21, G22, H3

Story JSON Format

Each story is defined as a single JSON file:

{
    "story_id": "frankenstein",
    "story_title": "FRANKENSTEIN",
    "base_prompt": "character description for consistency across pages",
    "base_seed": 8001,
    "global_settings": {
        "width": 1024, "height": 1536,
        "stage1_steps": 20, "stage1_cfg": 7,
        "stage2_steps": 4, "stage2_cfg": 1,
        "sdxl_checkpoint": "SDXL\\realcartoonXL_v7.safetensors"
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "page_title": "THE CREATION",
            "page_template": "H21",
            "panels": [
                {
                    "panel_id": 1,
                    "seed": 8201,
                    "edit_prompt": "scene description for this panel",
                    "text": [
                        {"type": "narration", "position": "top", "content": "The storm answered my ambition."},
                        {"type": "speech", "position": "bottom-left", "content": "LIVE! In the name of God -- LIVE!"}
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Layout Templates

H2:  [████████]    H3:  [████████]    V2: [████|████]    G22: [████|████]
     [████████]         [████████]        [████|████]         [████|████]
                        [████████]

H12: [████████]    H21: [████|████]    H13: [████████████]
     [████|████]        [████████████]       [████|████|████]

Samples

War of the Worlds - Complete Edition (with dialogue)

Frankenstein (with dialogue)

Dracula (with dialogue)

Covers

Key Technical Decisions

1. Single base → parallel edit — Generating one base per page and editing it into multiple panels preserves character consistency far better than generating each panel independently.

2. Pillow over ComfyUI for assembly — CR Comic Panel Templates couldn't scale panels to fill non-G22 layouts. Custom Pillow assembler handles all 12 templates with center-crop fill. Reduced assembly from 6s to 1s.

3. PowerShell orchestration — ComfyUI API called via PowerShell, not Python. Enables Windows-native workflow with direct filesystem access.

4. Bubble renderer as post-process — Text overlays happen AFTER page assembly, reading from the same JSON. No re-rendering needed to add/edit dialogue.

License

Pipeline outputs are CC-BY-4.0. Source stories are public domain.

Built by

GritAI — A one-person AI lab focused on reproducible AI generation, local deployment, and proving that meaningful creative output doesn't require cloud subscriptions or enterprise budgets.

• X: @BonusLockSmith
• Gumroad: gritai.gumroad.com
• Reppo: reppo.ai