Stay Human

An animated comic about keeping the best parts of our humanity

A 6-panel animated comic strip about keeping the best qualities of being human in times of uncertainty and destabilizing change. Each panel contains some animation. Each frame is drawn by hand without any use of generative AI. Titled "Stay Human," 2026, by Connie Sun.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what parts of our humanity we can retain in times of uncertainty and destabilizing change. I came up with this list, just as a start.

This week, I also gave myself the challenge of trying to animate the comic panels manually, without the use of any generative AI, which I’ve still never used.

I’m no animator, but I taught myself draw and color each frame by hand -- no shortcuts. It was labor-intensive, but I got much more out of the exercise than I would have if I outsourced my learning to an algorithm.

Sharing my beginner’s attempt at animation here. It’s clunky, but I’m proud of it because the learning is 100 percent mine.

Here is the original comic.

"Stay Human," 2026, by Connie Sun.

Thanks for reading and being here. Working hard on something new, so I’m online less. Hope to be able to share with you all soon.

Stay proud. Stay human. Be an original.

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To new subscribers, thanks for joining! This is where I share new comics, art process and pep talks each week while I work on new projects and my longer graphic novel. You can also find my entire cartoon archive here, all the way back to when I first started teaching myself to draw comics 15 years ago. Against all practical odds, I still haven’t given up the dream.

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