Iconic cartoonist’s comics to be recreated with AI technology

A Jaedam Media Corp. official works on a remake of a character from “The High School Baseball Team” at the company’s office in Mapo-gu, western Seoul, July 10. (Yonhap)

Local creative content company Jaedam Media Corp. is scheduled to showcase a series of artificial intelligence-generated comics in December.

Since October last year, the company has collaborated with renowned cartoonist and webtoon creator Lee Hyun-se, training AI software on more than 4,000 of Lee's comics, including some of the artist's most beloved comic projects, “Untouchables” (1986), “Armageddon” (1988), “Mythology of the Heavens” (1997) and more.

Based on the cartoonist’s style, Jaedam Media Corp. plans to adapt the latest trends in fashion and hairstyles to create remakes of Lee’s popular comics “The High School Baseball Team” (unofficial translation), “Armageddon” and “Midnight of Caron” (unofficial translation).

The use of AI technology in this way is not new to the Korean comics and webtoon industry, as Naver Webtoon -- South Korean tech giant Naver’s digital comics platform -- launched the AI art generator Toon Filter in May.

Toon Filter, Naver Webtoon’s AI image maker, recreates the users’ selected photos in an art style from one of the company’s 10 beloved webtoon illustrators, including Lee Dong-geon of Yumi’s Cells,” Park Tae-jun of “Lookism” and more.

Ranging from images of friends and family to food and pets, different kinds of photos are eligible for the generator’s webtoon-style adaptation.

By Lee Si-jin(sj_lee@heraldcorp.com)