My Surprises in Making a Comic Cartoon
Over the last weekend, I found myself creating a cartoon using GROK (AI) to generate the animation and the voice overs. While its really not ‘broadcast’ quality, my interest in the AI animation is growing. For those who don’t understand, allow me to explain.
I am not using AI to generate the art of a comic, I am using the art from a comic I wrote and drew (The Great Cyclopian #1, 2019) to create the animation. This means I am putting the art from the comic, panel by panel, into the GROK system and prompting it to animate the scene as needed while telling it what dialogue I need spoken.
I was humbled watching it do its thing as I can clearly see that my art was TERRIBLE years ago! Well, thats my personal opinion, but I was surprised to see how ai was correcting my messy art. It exposed a lot of my short comings, but in ways that help me envision ways to avoid those shortcomings. While I have improved dramatically since the Great Cyclopian #1, the AI shows problems without bias or restraint. There’s no ‘soft-shoe’ when it’s does its thing.
Ultimately, I’d like to find an ai animator that will allow for models to be built and stored for later use. Something with more organization designed to be reused just like an old fashioned Animation factory!
Once I have created a string of clips, I can put them together using Final Cut Pro. Its fantastic except the voice overs are inconsistent and they make terrible actors. I figure if I start doing this for all the comics I’ve made, I’ll find better solutions for the audio, whether it’s a dedicated app that is more flexible or actual actors doing them.
The only other thing I’ve used in making the cartoon is SUNO. SUNO is (in my opinion) the best ai song machine out there. I used it to create tv like themes and shorts for the ‘show!’
Sometime over the next week or two I’ll post a tutorial so that other creators can do the same thing with their books! It’s opening up a whole new world for me and the Great Cyclopian, and it can help other creator too!
The cartoon will appear tonight on a special live-stream on our youtube page.
CATCH THE CARTOON IN FULL HERE!
