글림나비

Although the Korean webtoon industry has achieved global success, professional artists face severe overwork issues. More than 40% of artists work more than 10 hours a day due to weekly serialization deadlines, suffering from chronic diseases such as carpal tunnel syndrome.

The industry is facing a crisis with concerns about talent depletion and declining work quality due to the difficulty of recruiting additional staff. While partial tools such as automatic background generation and 3D model utilization existed, their use was limited due to the difficulty of maintaining a consistent art style.

GlimNavi was developed from this awareness of the problem, aiming to reduce repetitive labor by utilizing AI for drawing assistance and helping artists focus on creative work.

Unlike general AI that generates an entire image at once, GlimNavi adopts a modular generative AI that separates the comic production workflow into several stages. For example, when an artist uploads a rough sketch, the AI cleans it up with clean lines, then the AI suggests coloring, and finally, it adds shading and effect lines.

The characteristic is that the artist can provide feedback and make corrections at each stage, making it a collaborative AI rather than fully automatic. In particular, it learns the artist's unique style with a proprietary segmentation engine and CLIP-based similarity matching technology, so the AI-drawn line drawings and coloring also maintain consistency with the artist's existing style.

The result is provided as a layered PSD file for easy post-editing, and through all these processes, it dramatically reduces work time while ensuring the final result belongs to the artist. It also provides cloud-based collaboration tools for smooth team-based collaboration and version management.

In short, it is a tool that allows AI to act as an assistant, taking on repetitive tasks and allowing artists to focus on creative work.

Individual webtoon/comic artists (B2C)and webtoon studios/platforms (B2B) are both targeted. We have already formed 6 partnerships with famous domestic webtoon platforms to conduct beta tests, and 4 art colleges/comic education institutions have incorporated it into their curriculum.

This means it is also being used for training new creators. Therefore, in the short term, professional artists and aspirants are the main users, and in the future, it may be adopted as an official tool by Naver Webtoon, Kakao Webtoon, etc.

The B2B revenue model includes providing licenses to platforms or selling cloud APIs, and the B2C revenue model is expected to be provided as a subscription-based SaaS tool for individual creators. In the public sector (B2G), support may be provided by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency to support the cultural industry.

In addition to comics, it can also be applied to other digital art production such as game concept art, web novel illustrations, and animation storyboards. Modules such as human body posing and color recommendations can be provided separately to be expanded like Photoshop plugins.

Globally, there are huge markets such as the Japanese manga market and the US comics market, but data tuning for each market is necessary due to differences in art styles.

In terms of regulations, copyright issues may be raised regarding AI learning art styles, but GlimNavi only learns the artist's own style and copyrights are attributed to the creator, so there are no major problems. However, we are striving for transparency and ethical compliance, considering the AI aversion of some artists.

Overall, it has high market scalability as a productivity improvement tool in preparation for the rapid increase in content demand, and there is room for growth through the education sector and global expansion.

It was recognized for its technology by winning the CES 2026 Innovation Award (Artificial Intelligence category), and positive evaluations were given for its creator-friendly use of AI. The judges"The fact that AI is made an assistant instead of replacing the artist"was seen as an innovation, and the social value of solving the overwork problem was also highly valued.

It was also mentioned that investments already made by Naver, etc., support the possibility of commercialization. However, some critics commented"It is uncertain whether artists will actually use it."It is pointed out that there are hurdles to overcome, such as aversion to AI and copyright issues when learning. However, with news that the response from artists who participated in the beta was positive,

AI에 대한 거부감이나 학습시 저작권 문제 등 넘어야 할 산이 있다는 지적입니다. 그러나 베타에 참여한 작가들의 반응이 좋았다는 소식이 전해지며,"A rare success story applied to practice"is receiving expectations.

In summary, there are many evaluations that give meaning to solving the structural problems of the industry with technology.