Articles on: Creating Comics

Importing a script you already wrote

If you've already written your script — a transcript, a screenplay, a draft from another tool — you can bring it in word for word. This is the right path whenever the exact wording matters.

Import keeps your words; generating replaces them

This is the most important thing on this page, and it's easy to get wrong:

Import copies your dialogue in exactly as written. Nothing rewrites it. Punctuation, names, references, phrasing — all preserved.
Asking Sidekick to "turn my draft into a script" is a generation. The AI re-authors your text: it condenses, rephrases, splits lines across panels and drops some entirely. That's the right tool when you want help writing, and the wrong one when you need your exact words.

If your text has to stay as written — training material, legal or compliance content, a licensed adaptation, dialogue you've already had approved — use Import.

How to import

Open the issue and switch to the Script view.
In the Tools rail, click Import script. (Or just ask Sidekick — "I already have a script, can I bring it in?" — and it opens the same window.)
The window walks you through three steps. Step one gives you a Copy prompt button: paste that prompt plus your script into ChatGPT (or any assistant) and it converts your text into the format ComicInk reads. If you already have that file, skip ahead.
Paste the result into the box, or drag in a .json file. It's checked as you type; if something's off you'll see what, with a Fix with AI button.
You'll then be asked how any new characters and assets map to the ones already in your comic — match each to an existing one, create it, or skip it. Nothing is applied until you confirm.

New characters you create this way generate a reference portrait, which costs credits like any character. The script text itself costs nothing to import.

What the JSON can carry

Each panel can have:

description (required) — what the reader sees.
dialogue — who says what. Only real characters speak; captions, narration, on-screen text and social-media posts go in narration.
characters — everyone in the panel, even if they don't speak.
assets — props in the panel (a car, a phone, a bag).
location — the exact name of one of your saved Locations. The panel is then drawn in that place. Add locationLook to pick one of the location's looks (for example Night).
looks — each character's outfit, as "Character name": "look name", using the look names from that character's looks. (outfits works too.)
notes — instructions or comments for the artist. They're added to the page's notes. (comments works too.)
setting, action, narration — short free-text notes.

Each page can have additionalInstructions (page notes). At the top, existingCast and existingAssets describe your characters and props.

Names are matched without worrying about capital letters or curly apostrophes. Before anything is replaced, the matching screen tells you:

any location or look names it couldn't find (an unmatched location's name is kept as the panel's setting text, so nothing is lost), and
any fields ComicInk doesn't read, so you know exactly what was left out.

The Copy prompt button in step one already includes this format, your characters' looks and your Locations, so ChatGPT can fill it in for you.

Big, pre-planned comics: the recommended order

If you've planned a long series in detail — cast, outfits, places, a full script — set things up in this order so the import links everything automatically:

Characters first. Create each character and their looks (outfits) in the Cast tab.
Places as Locations, objects as props. A place (a house, a street, a club) belongs under Locations; an object (a car, a phone, a bag) is a prop. If you already made a place as a prop, open it and click Move to Locations — it keeps the same picture and costs nothing.
Copy prompt → ChatGPT. In Import script, copy the prompt, paste it into ChatGPT with your script, and ask for the JSON. The prompt lists your characters, looks and Locations by their exact names.
Import one issue at a time into the same series. Characters, props and Locations are shared by every issue, so you set them up once.
Check the matching screen before confirming: fix any name it couldn't match, then confirm.
Draw. Open the Comic view and generate the pages.

Importing replaces the whole script

Import replaces every page in the issue — it isn't a merge or an append. If the issue already has writing or artwork, you'll be asked to confirm first, and told how many pages are affected and how many are already drawn.

A checkpoint is saved before the replace, so if it wasn't what you wanted you can restore the previous script from Version history. Pressing ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) straight after an import also undoes it in one step.

Artwork isn't restored by that. Pages that were already drawn keep their old images, which will no longer match the new script — regenerate them at the usual cost.

Writing or editing in ComicInk instead

If you don't have a script yet, you don't need any of this:

The Advanced Script Editor is a full document editor — every page and panel, editable in place, with autosave and undo.
Sidekick can write a script from scratch, rewrite a page, or restructure an issue ("split this into three acts", "cut this from 12 pages to 8"), and can also copy a script between your own projects — see Sidekick across projects.

Adapting a full manuscript

If what you have is a finished novel or manuscript rather than a script, that's a different feature: point Sidekick at a PDF with Attach a book, or pick Book to Comic when starting a new comic. Note this is an adaptation — it condenses prose into comic pages and does not preserve your text word for word. See converting a book PDF into a comic series.

Exporting

Downloading the script as a JSON file isn't currently available in the editor. Import is.

Updated on: 26/10/2026

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