Here is a panel from Threat Quotient I wanted to animate. It’s a cool panel of TurboKnight coming in for a vertical landing, leveling his sonic cannon at the bad guys. I went into this pretty flexible—just as long as it looked cool and not too wonky, I would accept it.
Even that low bar wasn’t low enough in this effort. These clips are posted here in no particular order—and no: these are not nearly all of them. I thought perhaps I wouldn’t run out of credits as fast if I downvoted and deleted the really awful generations. That turned out to be false.
In the clip above, the flames and smoke weren’t bad. Imagine didn’t morph his armor in stupid ways or change his color scheme. I had finally convinced it to quit giving him bird-like wings, so his wings swinging up into position instead of telescoping straight out from the side like they’re supposed to was such a minor annoyance at this point, I could have taken the “L” on that. His final pose looks dumb. But what ruined it beyond hope was it morphing his turbines into just a solid rocket pack with no intakes.
I had grown extremely frustrated with trying to make it get the turbines right, to no avail. So for many subsequent attempts, I tried to get Imagine to show him from a lower angle—thus eliminating the need to render the intakes, since they wouldn’t be shown at all. It ignored prompt after prompt to do that.
Here’s one wherein the “A.I.” (A.S.) finally followed the prompt to use a low camera angle…with another dumb pose. And it decided to turn the comic panel into two physical objects floating/turning in mid air. Also notice the jet exhaust is transformed into a fixed, tangible object hanging down behind him as if made of crepe paper.
Here, Imagine decided that he’s not flying yet, so it renders him as merely stepping on solid ground, then taking off, where a different wing design also swings into position as he assumes another stupid pose and he flies at the camera so that you can see it has once again removed the turbine intakes.
Another stupid pose. Another treatment of the turbine exhaust as if it’s a solid object. Another deletion of the turbine intakes. At least one of these issues persisted in every single generation, until I ran out of credits for the day.
Here most of the turbine exhaust appears dynamic. It does shoot from a low angle. But the background/comic panel is treated as if it’s a vertical tunnel. And the funky wings are sideways to the direction of travel.
The time it took you to read my text and watch these clips was only the fraction of a percent of the time I spent tweaking prompts, rewriting prompts, and regenerating in the attempt to get a clip that’s usable.
Again, it’s impressive what Imagine can do. And the results are great, if it’s being used as just a toy or a pastime, and you don’t need footage that fits into a project that requires logic and continuity.
If you’re trying to make its generated video function as part of a visual narrative…well, the only control you have over what it produces is a prompt. And it doesn’t always comprehend the prompt, even when you carefully specify precisely what you want to see. More often, it completely ignores specific direction in your prompt (much like human artists, but for free) and renders just whatever it has “learned” to do by analyzing other animations/videos, I guess.
Which is to say: you have very little control over what appears and happens in the finished clip. The reason it looks anything at all like what you envisioned is because you provided the starting still image—which becomes the first frame of animation.
Artificial Schizophrenia is growing more comfortable depicting characters that fly. It’s already good at making characters walk; run; dance; eat; talk; etc. But there are a few actions crucial to projects like what I would like to do that, so far, it just cannot pull off credibly: throw objects; use weapons; punch; kick; react to violent force; etc. So, at its current level of capability, you could make it generate the clips you would need for a Super-Friends episode. It is not ready to help you make an action movie of any style or running time.
About that Graphic Novel…
If you like comics, visit Virtual Pulp Press, where I’m posting episodes of my new ensemble superhero graphic novel, Threat Quotient. I plan to launch a campaign for the print version in the spring, but you can read it digitally for free in the mean time.
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