AI ANIMATION?

Ok – hear me out. I had always been somewhat of an opponent of AI for sometime – well, at least until the last year or two That’s when I started to dabble with ai audio. Using the suno service, I realized how quickly and easily I could use my lyrical skills to create fun little promotional songs for my human written and drawn comics. Though it might seem like a weird marriage, it worked for me! I started dabbling with a service called vidu, which is an AI Video program, but I ultimately didn’t feel like I was getting ‘it.’

As time went on, and X upgraded GROK, and suddenly I found myself messing with the basics it offered. Soon, I was expanding my use of the AI to animate pictures of action figures my brother Tony makes using suno music as a background. Then I allowed GROK to add dialog I was scripting, and soon I came out with a series of short comedy clips called ‘Absolutely Silly.’ During this explosion of ideas, I took a drawing of Eladio from Atomic Comics title, UNDER THE RING and made a video promoting their second issue that really LOOKED like an old 1970’s/80’s cartoon. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

When we started Hero Shack, my initial idea was to make cartoons that were like the cartoons I grew up with. I wasn’t thinking anime, but instead, the cheesy ole American styles, like the SuperFriends or the first SpiderMan series. I rediscovered my love for creating actual comics by getting my toe into that, and soon left cartoons on the furthest back burner I could find at the creative stove.

Today, some 8 years later, AI is maturing to the point that it is becoming a constructive tool! Today, I am seeing how quickly and easily it is to adapt my hand written and hand drawn comics into quirky little cartoons. While they are definitely a little rough, even when compared to the ole American cartoons, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that GROK seems to be getting closer to what I want ever single day.

I already expect some criticism over the use of AI to animate, but its really no different that contracting an animation factory out of South Korea to churn out animation based on my drawings. Basically, animators are debilitating frames of art over and over and over again with minor variations to make the pictures move. It’s little more than an exercise in redundant motor skills. AI is attempting to do the same thing, and it’s getting better at it.

Let me know what your thoughts on AI in the creative word are. I am interested in seeing how this changes the 21st century.