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?

Talking to Sidekick is free while it is in beta. There is no per-message charge and no chat quota.

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 costs nothing.

See how credits work for what each generation costs.

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 takes an image (up to 5 MB) or a PDF (up to 20 MB), and Sidekick reads it directly.

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.

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.
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. A "Seeing" chip appears in the message composer to tell you when this is happening.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: 31/07/2026

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!