Generative comics - A computational approach to creating comics material

Description of the thesis:

Digital storytelling can be employed as a tool that incorporates human creativity with technology to create engaging stories and compelling narratives. To this end, this research presents an approach that can be used as an assistant tool for comics artists. It focuses on generating comics-based narratives through a system that integrates three main components in the creation process, which are: agent-based system which generates raw narrative material based on the behavior of the system’s agents, an interactive evolution process where the author participates in the creation process, and comics generating engine that creates final comics as outputs. The general scope of the research is to construct a generative system that has the ability to create comics and fictional characters.

Relevant aspects of computer science, visual arts, comics and storytelling have been combined together to form a unified research project that can answer the research questions: How can one employ computing generative methods in creating tools for comics’ artists that can simplify their tasks and enrich their creativity? How can one use such methods as co-authors in creating new form of comics? How can one integrate between humans’ creativity and machines’ abilities in generating comics through interactive process between the user and the machine?

Research findings are discussed in terms of story characterization, the generated stories, and the comics visual representation. The constructed system showed high flexibility, scalability, and capability that entitle it to be employed in various applications for different purposes.

Fulltext version of the thesis