01
Generation is slow, so the product is asynchronous by default
A ten-page comic is many image generations. The work is queued and reported on rather than awaited, so the app stays responsive and a dropped connection never costs a user their comic.
Case study — COMAIC
COMAIC
Photos and a story idea become illustrated comics
Add up to five character photos, pick an art style, describe a plot — and COMAIC generates a multi-page comic with panels, dialogue and illustrated pages, in Manga, Manhwa, Comic, Seinen, Shonen, Shojo, Josei and Manhua styles. Up to ten pages per comic, exportable as PDF.
An end-to-end generative-media product: the prompt and image pipeline, asynchronous generation, character consistency across panels, the credit system, PDF export, storage and the App Store release.
- Status
- Live · v1.1.0
- Category
- Magazines & Newspapers
- Model
- Free with credit-based subscription
- Shipped
- March 2026
- Role
- Sole designer, engineer and maintainer
What shipped
What the product does
- Photo-to-character generation that keeps a face recognisable across panels
- Story, dialogue and panel layout generated together rather than separately
- Eight art styles, each with its own visual treatment
- Up to ten pages per comic with varied panel layouts
- Creation history, PDF export and a credit-based subscription
Stack
- Client
- Expo · React Native · TypeScript
- Backend
- Node · Google Cloud Functions
- AI
- Vertex AI (image generation)
- Data & infra
- Firebase · Cloud Storage
- Commerce
- RevenueCat, credit metering
Engineering
The parts that were actually hard
02
Character consistency across panels
The hard requirement is that the same person still looks like the same person on page seven. That constrains how reference images are carried through the pipeline and how each panel prompt is composed.
03
Credits make cost legible
Image generation has real per-call cost, so the subscription is metered in credits — three per page — rather than sold as unlimited. The billing model follows the unit economics instead of fighting them.
Screens
Still to publish
What is deliberately not on this page
I have not published usage numbers for this app. When I do, they will be figures I can stand behind rather than rounded-up vanity metrics — so for now the evidence here is the product itself, which you can download and use.
- Usage metrics (downloads, comics generated, conversion) — none published anywhere on the site.
- In-app art-style reference cards include recognisable copyrighted characters; excluded from this site and worth reviewing in the app.
Building something like this?