Just wrapped up a project where a client needed a retro-style comic book cover for a promotional campaign. They were after that specific 80s pulp aesthetic—bold lines, halftone dots, dramatic shading. I used Leonardo for the heavy lifting on asset generation, then moved into Photoshop for final compositing and typography.
Here’s a rough breakdown of my workflow:
* **Initial Prompting:** Started in Leonardo with a focus on character posing and lighting. The key was nailing the main hero shot. Used `leonardo style` for "Vintage Comic Book" and "Cinematic" to get the right base.
* **Consistency Challenge:** Getting a consistent character across multiple generation batches for alternate angles was the biggest hurdle. I ended up using Alchemy on, with a medium creativity setting, and relied heavily on **Prompt Magic v3** and **Image Guidance** with an initial rough sketch.
* **Upscaling & Prep:** Used Leonardo's upscaler to get the selected assets to a workable resolution, then exported.
* **Final Assembly:** All elements (hero, background, secondary characters) were composited in Photoshop. Added the classic comic "dot matrix" texture overlay, speech bubbles, and bold, stylized typography there.
The client was thrilled with the final piece. Main takeaway: Leonardo is fantastic for generating the core artistic assets with a very specific style, but for a polished, layout-heavy final product like a comic cover, be prepared to handle the assembly and text in a dedicated design tool. The in-painting and element generation were useful for creating smaller background details.
Has anyone else used it for similar narrative-driven artwork? I'm curious about strategies for maintaining character consistency across a series of images for longer comic strips.
Integrate or die