Draw a Manga in 5 Minutes! How to Use Anifusion
- Anifusion is easy and user-friendly.
- It updates frequently and supports Flux.1[dev].
- However, it’s still a work in progress.
Introduction
Hello, this is Easygoing.
Today, I’m introducing Anifusion, an app that allows you to draw a manga in just 5 minutes.
What is Anifusion?
Anifusion is an app that makes it easy for anyone to draw manga.
It works online in your browser and is based on Stable Diffusion XL and Flux.1 technologies.
The developer, Nucleus (X: @EsotericCofe), is from the Philippines and currently studying in Germany.
You can generate up to 30 illustrations with a free trial, and paid members can generate up to 300 illustrations per day.
What Makes Anifusion So Great?
With Anifusion, you can draw a manga in just 5 minutes.
comic page in under 5 minutes (realtime!!!). all you have to do is:
— Nucleus☕️ (@EsotericCofe) August 10, 2024
- set up the panels
- type in ur story prompt
- choose best variations (retry if necessary)
- adjust text layers
- adjust crops of images
- adjust style (optional) pic.twitter.com/cnocCUHhNR
Even if you aim for a bit more perfection, you can finish a page in about 30 minutes.
Anifusion has many Japanese users, and the UI supports Japanese.
strongest anifusion userbase is from japan! the rest not so much. i guess americans don't like anime 😔 pic.twitter.com/E3urXpeYzk
— Nucleus☕️ (@EsotericCofe) August 18, 2024
Frequent updates are made every few days, so usability is constantly improving.
Let’s Draw a Manga with Anifusion!
Now, I’ll walk you through how to actually create a manga using Anifusion.
Deciding the Panels (Time: 3 minutes)
First, decide the panel layout.
When you create a new page, a large panel will appear, which you can divide and adjust as you like.
The operation is very simple and intuitive.
Writing the Story (Time: 10 minutes)
Write your story and input it into the story prompt.
- A high school boy aspiring to be a manga artist, with brown hair and wearing a white T-shirt with "comic" written in red, is working on a laptop in his room.
- Next, he looks at the screen and says, "First, decide the panels."
- Then, with a happy expression, he says, "It writes the story for me!"
- Finally, with a wink, he cheerfully says, "Now I just need to choose the images!"
Soon, the manga is generated just like the one above.
Using the latest FLUX.1[schnell], both story creation and rendering are quick and highly accurate.
Choosing the Images (Time: 5 minutes)
Next, generate illustrations until you get the composition you like, and replace the ones you don’t.
You can generate up to four images at once, and it takes about 15 seconds per generation.
In my experience, you need to generate about 20 images per panel to get the composition you want.
Changing the Art Style (Time: 5 minutes)
Now, choose your preferred model to change the art style. This time, I selected the relatively new SDXL model, KivitosXL 2.0.
For changing the art style, the image-to-image process is performed by switching models.
The result has a flatter, more anime-like feel.
It takes about 30 seconds to generate four images.
During this step, you can also use the inpainting feature to remove unnecessary elements or change expressions.
Adjusting the Speech Bubbles (Time: 5 minutes)
Finally, adjust the speech bubbles. You can easily move and resize them.
If you use Japanese or other language, font is based on your browser’s font settings, so if you want to change it, you can modify the browser font.
You can find free Japanese fonts on sites like these:
Exporting (Time: 2 minutes)
Export the completed work in PNG format.
You can choose the resolution, and for this example, I chose 3400 x 4800 px.
Finally, touch up any parts you want to adjust with your usual editing software, and it’s done!
Usability Is Great
Anifusion's usability is excellent. I was able to create a 4-panel manga in just 30 minutes.
Since I’m a complete novice at drawing manga, I expect experienced creators to point out many improvements, but I believe that trying out new technology is all about experimenting and learning from your mistakes.
If you’ve used Stable Diffusion or Flux.1 before, the operation is easy to understand, but even if you’re a beginner, there’s no problem.
In fact, if you’re just starting with image generation, going from Anifusion to Stable Diffusion/Flux.1 would be a smoother learning curve.
The Downsides of Anifusion
Now, let’s touch on the downsides of Anifusion.
As a paid user, I’ll share my honest, unbiased opinions.
A Paid Service for 20 Euros a Month
Anifusion is a paid service that costs 20 euros (about 3200 yen) per month.
For a subscription service, this is a bit on the expensive side.
With services like X (formerly Twitter) or Adobe CC, you get a broader range of features for the same price.
While no other service makes drawing manga as easy as Anifusion does, I rarely use the full daily limit of 300 images.
I’d love to see a more affordable plan for light users.
Unstable Performance: A Key Drawback
As a newly launched service, there are times when performance is unstable.
Sometimes it fails to sync or part of the workspace doesn’t display correctly, even when I launch it the same way as usual.
Currently, there’s no way to export backup files, so if there’s a cloud issue, there’s a risk of losing all your data.
While it’s great for short manga, you should be cautious about using it for longer projects.
Similar Art Styles
In Anifusion, you can choose from multiple art styles.
SDXL
Animagine Series
- AnimagineXL 3.1
- AnimagineXL 3.0
- AAM XL
- KivitosXL 2.0
- Holodayo XL 2.1
- Anything XL
- AnimeXL-xuebiMIX
Pony Series
- PonyDiffusion V6 XL
- T-Pony XL NAI3
- Mistoon Anime
SDXL Base Series
- SDXL Base
- SDXL Anime Final
Flux.1
FLUX.1[Dev] Manga Monochrome
FLUX.1[schnell]
While SDXL covers popular models from the Animagine and Pony series, even when using derivative models, the outputs tend to follow similar patterns.
While you can use LoRAs available on Civitai, creating and uploading your own LoRAs to Civitai is quite a high bar for the average user.
To create truly original work, you’ll need to put in a bit more effort.
Advanced Use: Uploading Images
If you want to change the art style, you can also upload your own images to use.
This method sacrifices the ease of Anifusion's drawing process, but it allows you to easily edit the panels and speech bubbles, improving the overall quality of the artwork.
I think the biggest strength of SDXL/Flux.1 is the ability to use a variety of unique models, and I’m looking forward to seeing more models added to Anifusion in the future.
FLUX.1[dev] Supported!
On August 29, 2024, Anifusion added support for FLUX.1[dev]!
If you are subscribed you can now try out a FLUX Dev model specially tailored towards manga creation. Let's take a look at a 4 page example! pic.twitter.com/QyD4q69rxd
— Anifusion (@anifusion_ai) August 28, 2024
Anifusion uses Fal.ai, a platform for generative AI, and Fal.ai allows flexible use of commercial models with a pay-as-you-go system.
We can expect more new models and LoRAs for the highly active FLUX.1[dev] to be available on Anifusion in the future!
Summary
- Anifusion is easy and user-friendly.
- It updates frequently and supports Flux.1[dev].
- However, it’s still a work in progress.
Anifusion is a groundbreaking app that lets anyone draw manga easily.
While there are still some unfinished aspects, future updates will likely make it even easier to use and more stable.
Since it’s a monthly subscription service, why not give it a try for 1-2 months?
Thank you for reading to the end!
Creator Introduction
This time, the illustrations were provided by Yuki.
Yuki pursues unique model expressions, starting with GhostXL.
The name "Ghost" comes from the model creater's handle "Ghost in Shell", as a tribute to manga "Ghost in the Shell"!
Special thnaks to Yuki for providing your work!