A few words from the Ranmabooks team about the use of AI.

Readers will instantly notice a different art style used for the “Fresh Face” pinup and there is a unique reason for it. Artificial Intelligence tools have become available for creators. These tools can allow us to upscale our older art made in the standard definition era to 4K, create background locations that allow our characters to travel outside the usual confines of the Ranmabooks 3D Tendo home model, and add detail during the coloring process which would normally be impossible under the constraints of our never-ending production schedule.

It is then with a mixture of awe and trepidation that we announce that the Ranmabooks team has begun to experiment with the use of AI tools in our content creation. This is still a young technology which isn’t fully understood. Our team- and we’re sure our readers- have concerns about what using AI in Ranmabooks art would mean going forward.

What we want to definitively state is that we are NOT suddenly going to replace our human artists with AI. During our experiments with pure AI creations we saw some crazy results. One generated girl had three knees! And even when the results were more successful, generated art often took a dozen revisions and much human editing before it was in an acceptable state. Please be assured that this technology is simply not advanced enough to replace a human artist’s skills and judgment honed from the years spent passionately perfecting their craft.

The vast majority of Ranmabooks art will continue to be presented as you’ve come to expect it with the highest quality that our very human artists can muster.

Of paramount concern, Ranmabooks comics will not use AI beyond some occasional upscale support for backgrounds or to help enhance our oldest stories with the lowest resolution masters (such as the Palcomix books). While we have already remastered the vast majority of our comics in as near 4K as we could manage, some books such as The Misadventures of P-chan fell well short of the mark. The AI upscale tools provide an opportunity to finally present our earliest stories in a true UHD experience. Look for more details about such upscale projects in 2024.

Fan Requests will have limited AI involvement. Similar to our comics, the oldest Fan Requests which were mastered in the tiniest resolutions may be revisited and AI upscaled to a true UHD experience. As for the use of AI tools in the aid of new pinup creation, we will again only be using AI tools for background support on a case-by-case basis. The team realizes some community members would welcome the use of AI in the pursuit of their erotic dreams, but we’re not confident that the technology is mature enough to consistently produce the standard of quality our supporters deserve. Perhaps someday, but not this day.

This leaves one other branch of content to discuss: Ranmabooks Specials. It is here where we will begin our experiments with the goal of enhancing human art with AI tools. It must be stressed that ALL art made with the aid of AI you will see at Ranmabooks was created using the character work of our human artists as a baseline. The goal is to push beyond our limits (coloring, lighting, locations) so that we may discover a new level of detail previously impractical and unsustainable.

Not all experiments will succeed, but we make them in the hope of creating special experiences for our artists and community. With this in mind, over the next 2 weeks we’ll release a series of pinups crafted with the help of AI tools. We’ll discuss the art results with the community along with the challenges encountered during its creation. Whether our AI pinup efforts continue beyond these two weeks has not been determined, but know we’re exploring this with a completely open mind and hope our readers will share in that spirit.

-Deep Star & SHADE