Prompt Playbook: AI Explainer Comics for Business PART 2

When it comes to creating AI-generated comics for your business, the biggest challenge I hear from people is simply not knowing where to start.

"I'm not a designer or artist, and I have no experience with comics”. Makes sense! Most people don’t!

There's also the very real concern that without proper guidance, you'll end up with something that looks like a generic knockoff rather than something distinctively yours.

Thankfully you don't need artistic talent or extensive comic knowledge to create effective, original comics for your business. BUT what you do need is a systematic approach to making smart choices about characters, settings, and visual style.

That's exactly what we're going to work through today: a methodical process for developing your comic identity from the ground up.

Let's get started

The Step-by-Step Approach

Creating a comic identity might seem overwhelming if you're not a designer or illustrator. We’re going to break it down with a handful of prompts that will:

1. Ask you the right questions

2. Generate examples based on your answers

3. Help you refine your preferences

4. Build your master prompt document

By the end of this process, you'll have a clear visual direction and a master prompt that ensures consistency across all your future comics.

We’ll then use this master prompt as a style guide to create all our comics moving forward.

Step 1: Character Development

Characters are the heart and soul of your comics. They guide readers through concepts, embody abstract ideas, and create emotional connection. Whether you opt for a cartoon version of yourself, a brand mascot, or characters that personify concepts in your field, they need to be instantly recognisable and consistent.

When I created characters for my AI explainer comics, I knew I needed a way to represent neural networks, the language model itself, and the input/output process. After some experimentation, I settled on a friendly brain character (depicting human intelligence) with arms and legs and a blue robot with a cube-shaped head (depicting artificial intelligence).

Let's develop your characters using this guided prompt

You are a comic character development expert helping me create characters for business-focused AI-generated comics. Please interview me to develop characters that will represent key concepts in my business.

Ask me these questions one at a time, waiting for my response to each:

1. What industry or topic will your comics primarily explain? (e.g., AI, marketing, finance, health)

2. Who is your target audience for these comics?

3. Would you prefer to:
   a) Appear as yourself in the comics
   b) Create a mascot character that represents your brand
   c) Use characters that personify concepts in your field
   d) Feature avatars representing your customers/users

4. Based on my choice, ask relevant follow-up questions:
   - For self-insert: Ask about my appearance, style preferences, and how I want to be portrayed
   - For mascot: Ask what animal/object/character would represent my brand well
   - For concept characters: Ask what 2-3 key concepts need representation
   - For customer avatars: Ask about my typical customer demographics

5. For each character we decide on, ask:
   - What is this character's role in explaining your topics?
   - What personality traits should they have?
   - What distinctive visual features would make them instantly recognizable?
   - How do they typically interact with other characters or concepts?

After gathering my responses, provide a detailed summary of each character with name, role, visual description, and personality

Go ahead and run this prompt, answering each question thoughtfully. This guided interview will help you clarify your character needs before we even start generating images.

Now continue in the same Chat with the next step.

Step 2: World Building

Your characters need a world to inhabit. This doesn't have to be elaborate—even a minimal background provides context for your concepts. The main thing is we explicitly define the world so that when generating comics the AI doesn’t just choose willy-nilly.

For my AI comics, I wanted a clean, abstract environment that wouldn't distract from the explanations. I settled on simple gradient backgrounds with occasional digital elements. I created visual metaphors like building blocks for tokens, stacks of paper for context windows, and magnifying glasses for attention mechanisms.

Your world should complement your topic area. Financial comics might use money gardens or budget containers as metaphors. Marketing comics might visualise customer journeys as actual paths. The key is consistency—your audience should recognise your comic world instantly.

Let's develop your comic world using this guided prompt

You are a comic world-building expert helping me create settings and environments for my business-focused comics. Based on the characters I've developed, please help me define my comic world.

Ask me these questions one at a time, waiting for my response to each:

1. Would you prefer your comic settings to be:
   a) Realistic environments (offices, homes, etc.)
   b) Abstract conceptual spaces
   c) Metaphorical landscapes
   d) Minimalist backgrounds

2. Based on my industry, what specific environments would be relevant to show? (Ask follow-ups based on my industry)

3. Are there any specific props or objects that would help explain concepts in your field?

4. What visual metaphors might help represent abstract concepts in your field?

5. Would you like your backgrounds to be:
   a) Detailed and immersive
   b) Simple with just enough context
   c) Very minimal to focus attention on characters

After gathering my responses, provide a detailed summary of my comic world with key settings, props, and visual metaphors

Run this prompt and work through the questions. This will give your comics a consistent sense of place and visual vocabulary.

Again, keep this and continue your work in the same chat for the next step.

Step 3: Visual Style Definition

Visual style might be the most challenging aspect to articulate, especially if you're not a designer.

This includes elements like art style (cartoon, manga, comic book), line weight, colour palette, and text treatment. This is where specialist language and terminology comes into play and if you don’t know it then you might feel overwhelmed.

When I was developing my comics, I experimented with several approaches before landing on a clean, simple cartoon style with medium-weight lines and flat colours. This style was both visually appealing and - crucially - consistent when generated by AI.

Your visual style should align with your brand and resonate with your audience. A financial advisor might want a more professional, clean approach, while a creative agency might prefer something more expressive and vibrant.

Don't worry if you don't have the design vocabulary to express exactly what you want. The following guided prompt will help you explore options through examples:

You are a comic style consultant helping me define the visual approach for my business comics. Based on my characters and world, help me determine the most appropriate visual style.

Ask me these questions one at a time, waiting for my response to each:

1. Which of these comic art styles appeals to you most:
   a) Clean, simple cartoon (like xkcd or Dilbert)
   b) Manga-inspired with more expressive features
   c) Classic comic book style with more detail
   d) Modern minimalist with geometric shapes
   e) Hand-drawn, sketchy appearance

2. How would you describe your brand's visual personality? 
   (e.g., professional, playful, cutting-edge, traditional)

3. Is there an existing comic, illustration style, or artist whose work you admire?

4. What colour palette aligns with your brand or topic?
   a) Your existing brand colours
   b) Industry-standard colours
   c) Conceptual colours (e.g., green for money, blue for technology)
   d) Limited palette (2-3 colours only)

5. How would you like text to appear in your comics?
   a) Traditional speech bubbles
   b) Modern text boxes with borders
   c) Integrated into the scene
   d) Minimalist text without containers

After gathering my responses, provide a detailed summary of my chosen visual style with art style, colour approach, and text treatment

OK as before keep in the same chat. You now have the character, world and style guidelines in place.

Let’s have a look and SEE what this looks like.

Testing Your Style Options

Seeing is believing when it comes to visual styles. It's one thing to describe what you want, but you'll only know if it works when you see it.

To start let’s very simply use this prompt in ChatGPT

Generate a comic panel introducing [concept from your field] using the above character, world and style descriptions.

This will spit out a first draft of your style. It may be amazing off the bat. But we want to go a little further.

When I was developing my style, I tested subtle variations on my chosen approach. I found that small adjustments to line weight, colour saturation, or character proportions could make a significant difference in both visual appeal and clarity.

Here's a prompt you can use to generate a grid of style variations based on your choices so far:

Create a 2x2 grid showing four variations of the same comic panel.

Create four variations that maintain my basic preferences but explore different style possibilities.

Label each variation clearly and include a brief description of what makes each one distinct. This will help me refine my final style choice.

Here is an example output

Importantly you don’t need the language to explain what exactly you like or don’t like. You can see the variations and simply decide.

We are then going to feed that decision back to ChatGPT and ask it to revise our style guidelines accordingly. I could say “I like the modern gradient style here, can you give more variations along those lines” and continue like this until we settle on something great.

Don't rush this stage—the style you choose will define the look and feel of all your future comics. Take time to analyse the variations and determine which elements work best for your specific needs.

Step 4: Building Your Master Prompt

OK. Lots of groundwork but it’ll be worth it.

We’re going to pull everything together in one place: a master prompt.

Your master prompt is essentially a comprehensive creative brief for all your future comics. It's the document that ensures consistency across every panel you create, no matter when or what topic you're explaining.

Think of your master prompt as a set of brand guidelines specifically for your comics. Just as companies have strict rules about logo usage, colours, and typography, your master prompt defines the rules for your comic universe.

I keep my master prompt document in Notion for easy access. Whenever I create a new comic, I start with this document and then add the specific content for that panel or sequence. This approach saves enormous time and maintains consistent quality. This is why all this prep work is worthwhile!

After you've worked through the character, world, and style prompts, and you're happy with the visual examples generated, use this final prompt in the same chat to create your master document:

Based on all my previous selections for characters, world, and visual style, please create a comprehensive and exhaustive master prompt that I can use for all future comic panel generation. The master prompt should:

1. Include detailed descriptions of each character with their roles and visual features
2. Define the world settings and visual metaphors
3. Specify the chosen art style, colour approach, and text treatment
4. Include any special instructions for maintaining consistency
5. Be structured in a way that I can easily modify for different comic panels while maintaining the core elements

Format this as a complete prompt template with clearly labeled sections that I can copy and use directly with AI image generation tools.

The resulting master prompt becomes your comic creation blueprint. Any time you want to create a new comic panel or sequence, you'll start with this document and add the specific content for that panel.

What's Next?

OK that’s a lot of prep work! Fun part starts in the next Part I promise!

In Part 3, we'll take your newly developed master prompt and use it to create your first complete comic sequence.

Keep Prompting,

Kyle