Articles on: Creating Comics

Sidekick, your AI collaborator

Sidekick is the AI collaborator that lives as a persistent chat column on the right-hand side of both the comic editor and the Story Video studio. You talk to it in plain language and it does the work — writing pages, rewriting dialogue, rendering artwork, restyling a comic, opening the right form for you to review.

It was previously called the Script Assistant. Same feature, bigger job: it now does far more than scripts, and it works in the video studio too.

On web: Sidekick is available in every comic and video editor.
On iOS: Sidekick is not available. Use the web app.

Does Sidekick cost credits?

Messages aren't billed per-message the way generations are billed per-image. New accounts get 10 free Sidekick messages, lifetime, shared across the comic and video assistants (not 10 each). Only messages you type come out of those 10 — answering a question Sidekick asks you is free, and so are the app's own updates to it (for example when your script finishes writing). After that, continuing to chat with Sidekick requires a monthly plan — unless you were already buying credit packs before subscriptions launched, in which case Sidekick stays included at no extra cost, same as today.

Used your 10 free messages but haven't seen a page yet? Every account's first two renders — the cover or a page — are free. If your script is written and your characters are drawn, the notice that replaces Sidekick's message box also shows a Use my free renders button. It renders only the free ones and spends no credits, so you can see your comic drawn before deciding on a plan. (You can also press Generate on a page yourself — the free renders apply there too.)

How much Sidekick each plan includes:

ComicInk Plus — unlimited Sidekick.
ComicInk Basic — 150 Sidekick messages a month, shared across the comic and video assistants. The same rule applies as for the free messages: only what you type and send counts. Answering a question Sidekick asked, and Sidekick's own follow-up steps, don't. The allowance resets on your billing date (the day your plan renews, not the first of the month), and unused messages don't carry over.

If you use all 150 on Basic, the message box is replaced by a notice — "You've used this month's Sidekick messages" — with the date they come back. Everything else keeps working in the meantime: the script editor, generating pages, characters and videos, and your credits.

You pay credits only for what Sidekick produces — a rendered page, a cover, a character image, a video scene. Those cost exactly what they'd cost if you clicked the buttons yourself. Sidekick doesn't add a markup, and asking it questions, planning a story with it, or having it rewrite your script text never costs credits — though each message you type still counts toward your free messages, or toward the monthly allowance on ComicInk Basic.

See how credits work for what each generation costs, and subscription plans: Basic and Plus for the message allowances.

Ask Sidekick what something costs

You can just ask. "How many credits is a character?", "what does a page cost?", "how much to render this whole issue?", "what can I buy?" — Sidekick looks up the live prices rather than guessing, so the number it gives you is the number you'll actually be charged.

It will show its arithmetic on a multi-item estimate, so a 12-page issue comes back as the per-page cost times twelve rather than a bare total you have to trust.

Attaching images and files

The paperclip in the message composer gives you two choices:

Upload from computer — an image (up to 5 MB) or a PDF (up to 20 MB) from your device.
Attach from your library — anything you have already made in ComicInk.

Either way, Sidekick reads the image directly.

Attach from your library opens on the issue you have open. Its rendered pages and covers come first, marked THIS ISSUE, followed by the other issues in the same series, then your characters, assets and locations, then your graphics.

The chips along the top narrow the list — PAGES is also how you browse into a different comic — and the search box filters by name. You can attach up to 6 items at a time.

That covers more than it sounds like. Attach a photo and ask for a character based on it, and the reference image is carried into the character editor for you. Attach a script or screenplay PDF and ask Sidekick to build pages or scenes from it — see turning a screenplay into a Story Video. Pasting text into the chat works for shorter material.

A full-length book is a separate, larger flow with its own button — see below.

Attachments are deleted after 2 hours

For privacy, anything you attach with the paperclip — an uploaded photo or PDF, or a copy of something from your library — is deleted after 2 hours. Sidekick reads an attachment on the message you send it with, so the conversation carries on normally afterwards. In an older message, an attached image shows an "Attachment removed" icon instead of its thumbnail. Your own pages, characters and graphics are never affected — only the copy that was attached. To use the same file again, attach it again.

Reuse a page from an earlier issue as a template

To lay out a new page like one you have already made, attach the old page and say so. Open the paperclip, choose Attach from your library, pick Issue 1's page 5, and ask for "a title page for Issue 2 laid out like this one". Sidekick works from the page you attached.

This is how you keep a recurring page consistent across a series — a title splash, a recap page, a credits page — without screenshotting the old page and uploading it again. The picker lists your other issues in order underneath the one you have open, so an earlier issue's pages are always a couple of clicks away.

The same works for a character, prop or location: attach it and ask for a new page featuring it.

What Sidekick can do to your script

Sidekick is a full editor for your story text. You can ask it to:

Write a script from scratch — a whole issue, or a whole video's worth of scenes.
Rewrite any page or scene: tighten the dialogue, change the tone, fix a plot hole. Asking to "keep pages 1–7 and rewrite from page 8" doesn't regenerate the whole script, because that would replace every page. Sidekick explains this and offers to rewrite the pages you want one at a time instead.
Add pages or scenes anywhere in the story.
Delete pages or scenes you don't want.
Reorder the story — move a scene earlier, swap two pages.
Restructure wholesale: "split this into three acts", "cut this from 12 pages to 8".

None of that costs credits. Only re-rendering the affected artwork does.

Sidekick can render artwork — and when it asks first

Sidekick isn't limited to text. It can render a page, a cover, a back cover, fix errors on an existing render, and run Generate All Pages.

The approval behaviour differs, and it's worth knowing before you ask:

A single page, cover or back-cover render submits immediately. There is no confirmation card and no cost quote — say "render page 4" and page 4 starts rendering, and the credits are spent.
Generate All Pages quotes the total and asks you to confirm, because it's a bulk spend. You see the number of pages and the total cost before anything is charged.

If you're not sure you want to spend, ask Sidekick to write or revise the script first and render when you're happy with it.

Sidekick can see the page you're looking at

When you have a rendered page open, that image is automatically attached to your message. This happens silently — there is no indicator, and nothing to switch on.

If you attach your own image too, yours is the one Sidekick works from. Say "use this as a template" with a page attached from your library, and it builds from your attachment rather than the page that happens to be on screen. The page you are looking at is still there as context, but it is no longer what "this" refers to.

This is what lets you point at a problem in plain language:

"her left hand has six fingers, fix it"
"the sign in the background says GARAGE, it should say GARDEN"
"the man in panel 3 is wearing the wrong jacket"

Because Sidekick can see the render, it edits the existing image in place rather than starting the page over from scratch — so the rest of the page stays as you approved it. See fixing image errors for the full range of fixes.

An image fix keeps your captions, dialogue and cast

Asking for a change to the artwork never rewrites the words. When Sidekick fixes a picture, the panel's caption (the narrator box), dialogue, action, setting and cast stay exactly as they were — it only changes the part of the panel you asked about.

The same is true of a text edit. "Change the caption on page 19 panel 1 to…" touches that caption and nothing else; the description, cast and dialogue are left alone.

To remove a caption, say so directly — "delete the caption on page 4 panel 2" — or clear the Caption field yourself in the Script tab. Sidekick doesn't treat a fix request as permission to drop text.

If a caption ever does go missing after an image fix, tell Sidekick the exact text and which panel it belongs to and it will put it back; then let us know through the chat bubble, because that's a bug.

Sidekick notices changes you make outside the chat

Your script isn't only edited through Sidekick. You might rename a character in the Cast rail, hand-edit a panel in the Script tab, or have a second browser tab open on the same issue. Sidekick sees those changes.

At the start of a turn it re-reads your project from the database — cast, assets, locations, pages and panels — so what it's working from is the current document, not a copy it made earlier. If something changed since you last spoke, it says so before answering, in a line like:

Since your last turn, page 3 was edited outside this conversation.

Renamed a character and Sidekick kept using the old name? That's what this fixes. A rename is called out specifically, both names at once, because the old name is still sitting further up in your conversation and would otherwise look current:

"Detective Morris" was renamed to "Detective Adams" — "Detective Morris" no longer exists.

The same applies to a character, asset or location you add, edit or delete from the rails while a conversation is open.

Two things worth knowing:

Its own work is not reported this way. When Sidekick writes pages, creates cast, or regenerates a script, that's the conversation's own doing and it won't be announced back to you as an outside change. If you ever see Sidekick describe something you asked it to do as happening outside the conversation, that's a bug worth reporting.
Silence is the normal state. No message means nothing changed. If you rendered artwork between turns, that isn't a script change, so it stays quiet.

If Sidekick ever contradicts what you can see on screen, say so plainly — "the cast rail shows Adams, not Morris" — and it will re-read rather than argue.

Why Sidekick keeps moving you around

Sidekick navigates you to whatever it's about to change. Ask it to rewrite page 6 and the app switches to the Script view and scrolls to page 6. Ask it to render and it switches to the Comic (or Video) tab. Ask it for storyboard work and it opens the Storyboard tab.

This is deliberate, not a glitch. The point is that you're always looking at the thing being edited, so you can see the change land and catch it if it's wrong. If you'd rather stay put, finish reading first and then send your message.

Moving between issues is the one exception — see below.

Creating issue 2 does not take you to issue 2

Say "create issue 2" (or "make the next issue") and Sidekick creates it but leaves you exactly where you are. It hands you a card with an Open Issue 2 button, and you stay in issue 1 until you click it. The card names both issues by number, so there's no doubt which one you're in and which one you'd be leaving.

The new issue's script is written when you open it, not before — so nothing is generated for an issue you never look at.

If you think creating a new issue deleted your work, it didn't. A brand-new issue starts with no script and no artwork, and Sidekick may give it a title similar to the one you were already working on. Landing in it unannounced looks exactly like your pages have vanished. They haven't — the issue you came from is untouched, and switching back to it from the Issues list shows everything still there. This is why creating an issue no longer moves you automatically.

Why Sidekick asks questions before writing

If your brief is vague — "make me a comic", "write something with dragons" — Sidekick asks 2 to 4 clarifying questions before it writes anything: genre and tone, setting, who the protagonist is, the central conflict, how long it should be, art style, intended audience.

It does this so it doesn't spend your credits rendering the wrong story. A generated comic you didn't want is expensive; a question is free.

To skip the questions, do either of these:

Give a specific brief up front: "A 10-page noir detective comic set in 1940s Shanghai, protagonist is a jaded ex-cop looking for his missing sister."
Say "just do it" and Sidekick will make the calls itself.

Incremental edits to an existing story never trigger the questions.

Why creating a character opens a form instead of just doing it

When you ask Sidekick for a new character, asset, world or location, it opens the pre-filled editor rather than creating it in chat. Ask for "a grizzled sea captain with a mechanical arm" and the Cast editor opens with Sidekick's suggested name and description already filled in — along with any reference image you attached to your message.

You review it, change anything you like, and click Save & Regenerate to generate the image.

The extra step exists on purpose: entity images cost credits, and it's far cheaper to fix a description before generating than to regenerate afterwards. Nothing is charged until you click the button yourself.

Changing the art style of a whole comic or video

Sidekick can restyle an entire project. Ask it to switch your comic to a different art style and it will:

Regenerate your characters', assets' and locations' reference art in the new style first, so everything re-rendered afterwards stays visually consistent.
Quote you the number of stale pages or scenes that would need re-rendering, and the total credit cost.
Wait for you to approve before spending anything.

Because it does the reference art first, re-rendered pages match each other rather than drifting between styles.

Adapting a book with Sidekick

Next to the paperclip in the composer there's a separate Attach a book button. It takes a text PDF up to 50 MB and turns a full-length book into a comic series.

Sidekick reads the book, proposes a split into issues, quotes the cost, and asks you to confirm three things: the proposed split, the cost, and that you have the rights to adapt the work. Nothing is created or charged until you confirm.

Scanned or image-only PDFs won't work — Sidekick needs real, selectable text in the file. If your PDF is a photograph of pages, run it through OCR first.

Full details in converting a book to a series.

(The ordinary paperclip is different — it attaches images and short PDFs to a single message, for reference.)

Exporting and publishing through Sidekick

Ask Sidekick to export or publish and it opens the Export or Publish window for you, with the options you asked for already selected.

It stops there. Sidekick never publishes anything behind your back — you confirm in the window yourself, exactly as if you'd opened it from the toolbar.

Generate all reference images in one click

Sidekick's Reference images card can create every missing character, prop and location image at once. See Generate all reference images in one click.

Sidekick in the Story Video studio

Everything above applies in the video studio, and Sidekick handles the video-specific work too: writing and reordering scenes, managing cast, assets and locations, rendering scenes and Generate All Scenes, AI Extend, Fix Audio, captions, the background music library, format, HD upscale, and export and publish.

Rather than repeat those here, see:

Asking Sidekick how ComicInk works

Sidekick can look up these help articles. If you're unsure how something works — what an art style does, how a limit is enforced, what a button means — just ask in the chat instead of leaving the editor. It answers from the same help centre you're reading now.

Starting from a blank comic

A new comic opens on a blank page with three buttons under Sidekick:

Write "your title" for me — Sidekick invents a short story from the title you gave the comic and writes a 4-page script. You do not need to describe anything first. It takes about a minute, and writing a script does not use credits.
Adapt a story I've written — puts your cursor in Sidekick's message box. Paste your story and send it; Sidekick turns it into a script.
Surprise me with an idea — Sidekick picks an idea of its own and writes from that.

If you came from the quick-start page and already typed an idea, there is nothing to tap: the editor writes a 4-page script from your idea as soon as it opens.

A 4-page script is a starting point. Ask Sidekick to make it longer, change the ending, or rewrite a page.

Where your past conversations go

Sidekick keeps your previous conversations per project, with auto-generated titles, so you can resume any of them. See Sidekick conversation history for how to browse, resume and delete them.

Updated on: 14/10/2026

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