– 'Tuning Plus' Closed Beta Launch, 99% Implementation of Creative Intentions… Official Release in March
– Promoting global investment attraction along with entry into the US market
– “We will become the YouTube of the webtoon world where anyone can create their own story.”
“We will make the joy of creation enjoyed by only 1% of creators available to all 99% of people.”
AI webtoon production platform startup Toonsquare recently established a corporation in Delaware and began full-scale entry into the North American market. CEO Ho-young Lee said, “We are preparing for a new leap forward in the North American market, where the AI ecosystem is developed, and we plan to pursue Series B investment from overseas investors.”
Along with its entry into the North American market, Toonsquare has launched 'Tuning Plus', a professional AI-based webtoon and web novel production platform for college students and the general public, in closed beta. 'Tuning Plus' is receiving favorable reviews from partners, including signing a contract after testing with a Japanese collaborator, and is scheduled to be officially launched on March 17.
Founded in 2019, Toonsquare has attracted seed investment from Samsung Electronics in 2020, pre-A investment from SoLab, and series A investment from N Partners, IPX, and CNTUS. In 2024, it received series A2 investment from Isu Venture Investment and AIOI. In 2023, it won the Bucheon Cultural Content Startup Award and the StartupCon Battlefield Award. In 2024, it won the NexRise Award and was selected for the 'AI Startup Accelerator 2nd' program of SK Telecom and Hana Bank.
With the launch of 'Tuning Plus' and its entry into the North American market, Toonsquare has come one step closer to its goal of an initial public offering (IPO) in three years. We met with CEO Ho-hyung Lee at the Toonsquare office in Seocho-gu, Seoul, to hear about the launch of 'Tuning Plus' and its entry into the North American market.
■ “It relieves the pain of creation”
The representative explained the difficulties of writers, saying, “Writers have a hard time differentiating themselves from existing works in terms of characters and storylines and securing originality. It takes a considerable amount of time and energy to complete a single work, such as several months just for the adaptation work. They also self-censor while worrying about marketability.” The representative pointed out, “Fatigue from repetitive work is particularly serious. They have a hard time implementing the desired expressions, and it is not easy to maintain consistent characters and drawing styles. Due to this pain of creation, excessive time and effort are required to produce works, which can lead to a decrease in creative motivation.”
To solve these problems, Toonsquare developed 'Tuning Plus'. The representative explained, "We identified the specific difficulties in the creative process through interviews with artists. In the 'art' area that requires creativity, humans take care of it, and in the 'science' area that is repetitive and technical, 'Tuning Plus' solves the pain of creation."
Currently, the generative AI market is led by large tech companies such as Google Gemini, OpenAI’s DALL·E and Sora, and ChatGPT. “The era of ‘AI creators’ where many people create with AI will come in the future,” said CEO Lee, emphasizing that “we have found opportunities in areas where large tech companies cannot.”
■ Webtoon production that implements 99% of creative intent with just a few clicks
'Tuning Plus' offers three core functions. Through the story creation tool 'Stories', the image production tool 'Tuning Plus 3D', and the post-processing tool 'Editor', it goes beyond simple image creation to accurately implement the creator's intentions.
'Stories' is an LLM (Large-Scale Language Model)-based service that creates stories by conversing with AI. It acts as an intelligent agent that helps structure stories by conversing with virtual characters in real time. In particular, it is capable of making natural suggestions during the process of deepening the story, such as conflict structure and character diversification. The representative said, "We implemented the genre, main character personality, and even narrative structure as an interactive UI. For example, you can get inspiration by conversing with virtual characters like Kang Baek-ho from 'Slam Dunk', and you can also develop conflict structure and character relationships with content recommended by AI, so it acts as a creative partner." He explained the 'Stories' function.
'Tuning Plus 3D' adopts a method of composing a scene in a 3D virtual space and then converting it into an image, so it can precisely implement close-ups, low angles, and even the subtle emotional expressions of characters. The representative explained the image creation method, saying, "Existing AI image creation tools have limitations in visualizing text. 'Tuning Plus 3D' is an image creation tool that accurately implements the artist's intentions and can implement the elements desired by the artist, such as costumes, poses, and expressions, at a 99% level."
'Editor' is a system that enables real-time multi-party collaboration. Multiple creators can work simultaneously and exchange immediate feedback. It helps to improve the completeness of the work by having a joint editing function and a platform linkage system. Lee said, "If existing tools focused on the personal work environment, the 'Editor' function is a tool that helps collaboration. And the completed work can be uploaded directly to Naver Webtoon, web novel platforms, YouTube, etc."
Toonsquare actively reflected the opinions of webtoon artists and studios during the development of 'Tuning Plus' and had current webtoon studio board members participate in the development. The representative explained the effects of 'Tuning Plus' by saying, "After introducing 'Tuning Plus', a large Japanese studio saw work efficiency increase by 84%, with one person completing work in three days instead of six people in one week. In addition, the problem of repetitive work due to not being able to accurately implement the intended scene was greatly reduced."
■ Providing creative experience
Toonsquare has been operating 'Tooning', an AI webtoon creation tool for elementary, middle, and high school students and teachers, for 4 years. Currently, 652 schools, 16,000 teachers, and 224,000 students are using it. It has signed agreements with 7 major domestic webtoon departments and is also being used in regular classes. It is also provided in multiple languages, including Korean, English, French, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese, and has secured 8,000 users in the US alone.
Toonsquare holds a creative writing contest for college students and aspiring writers every year. This year, they are planning to hold a college contest targeting the North American market.
Toonsquare also plans to further activate 'Tuning', which is already performing well in the education market. The representative emphasized, "Tuning is not just an educational tool. The goal is to teach students how to use safe generative AI and provide them with a fun creative experience."
■ Targeting the global webtoon market through AI creator training
“Toonsquare aims to play a role similar to YouTube in the webtoon industry, where anyone can upload their own stories.”
What Toonsquare ultimately aims to achieve through 'Tuning Plus' and 'Tuning' is to grow into a comprehensive platform encompassing webtoon and web novel production, AI creator training, and distribution. CEO Lee stated, "Just as the era of individual creators opened with the innovation of smartphones and editing tools, we plan to lower the entry barriers to webtoon creation with AI technology. Through the 'democratization of creation,' we will open a new creative renaissance with AI technology."
Toonsquare aims to enter the global webtoon IP market worth 73 trillion won by 2030. In the future, it plans to expand its business beyond webtoons to include drama scripts, movies, and short stories.
You must be logged in to post a comment.