Abstract
While generative AI models can produce visually faithful artwork, they often fall short in conveying emotional authenticity--a key driver of human expression. In visual storytelling, particularly comic storyboarding, this gap becomes pronounced: effective storyboards require both technical knowledge (e.g., anatomical accuracy or scenic composition) and emotional insight (from lived experience). We explore how human-AI collaboration can support emotion-driven creativity, where the user's feelings guide generation and emotional resonance is the goal. We present EmoToon, a technology probe that helps non-professional artists generate sketch-like storyboards and iterate on visual ideas. In a controlled study with N=25 participants, we find that AI assistance significantly improves emotional expression, aesthetic quality, and exploration, but reduces users' creative ownership. Our findings offer broader insights for human-AI co-creation in the domain of comic storytelling, emphasizing balance between output quality and user freedom, and raising new challenges for image generation models in this domain.
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Publication details
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- Open access
- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Shen, J., Pu, I., Briseño, A., Kim, H., Lu, F., Alghowinem, S., Breazeal, C., & Park, H. W. (2026). Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding
MLA 9
Shen, Jocelyn, et al. "Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding.
Chicago (author–date)
Shen, Jocelyn, Isabella Pu, Alessandro Briseño, Hyun Kim, Fiona Lu, Sharifa Alghowinem, Cynthia Breazeal, and Hae Won Park. 2026. "Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding.
Harvard
Shen, J., Pu, I., Briseño, A., Kim, H., Lu, F., Alghowinem, S., Breazeal, C. and Park, H. W. (2026) 'Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding.
Vancouver
Shen J, Pu I, Briseño A, Kim H, Lu F, Alghowinem S, et al. Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding
IEEE
J. Shen, I. Pu, A. Briseño, H. Kim, F. Lu, S. Alghowinem, C. Breazeal, and H. W. Park, "Drawing the Line: Where AI Guidance and Human Creativity Meet in Emotion-Driven Comic Storyboarding," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/drawing-the-line-where-ai-guidance-and-human-creativity-meet-in-emotion-driven-comic-storyboarding.