011 - An INTERVIEW with its creator, Wizard of Ozymandiaz.
The INTERVIEW
I don't use Al to write the stories or dialogue because I think I can do it better.
How does Al influence your creative process? Does it act as a collaborator, a tool, or a Muse?
It's an interesting question because a few years ago, I never thought I'd have to consider it deeply. The thing I love most about comics is that they're almost more like movies than books. The scripts are written more like screenplays than novels, and the images allow everyone to be on the same page regarding what everything looks like, but there's still plenty of room for imagination between the panels.
So, in many ways, it's a little bit of all of them, but if I had to pick one, I'd say it's a tool. At the end of the day, you have to rely on your artistic vision and personal tastes to guide the narrative of whatever story you're trying to tell.
Where do you draw the line between your artistic vision and Al's capabilities?
I almost feel like that's for the audience to decide for themselves. In my case, I'm a writer who can barely legibly spell my name. Drawing isn't my forte, but my brain is brimming with high-concept stories I'm excited to tell. I don't use Al to write the stories or dialogue because I think I can do it better.
In terms of my process, I write all the scripts myself, and then, instead of collaborating with an illustrator, I try to generate a bunch of images that work for the story.
What are your thoughts on the ethical implications of using Al in art, especially regarding originality and authorship?
The first thing we should be looking at is the information these tech companies, like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Open Al, have available to them. Yes, people are going to use the tools to make naked people, BUT these companies have been selling customer data for years and feeding their algorithms with original artwork without paying the artists.
The ethical implications of any single artist are a blip in an ocean of the history of exploitation of artists in the digital age. Right now it seems like the problem will get worse before it gets better, but I hope that creative people can use the tools to create their digital networks to benefit from some of these tools.
What specific Al tools or platforms do you use for your comic book creation, and why do you prefer them?
The main image generation tool I use is Dalle because it's very intuitive, and more importantly it's a tool that gives me consistent results. With narrative comics, consistency is everything.
ComicsMaker.ai also makes a great tool when it comes to assembling the comics. I use them for paneling and lettering.
There isn't a market for physical Al comics which means they're all online and generally read on a smartphone. The end result is that the lettering needs to be legible and you can't fit much information on each page. This ends up affecting the pacing, and then the story feels very fast.
With Al it's also difficult to generate multiple characters in the same frame consistently. The end result is that you sometimes end up writing around what you want to write about instead of doing it directly.
How do you see Al transforming the comic book industry in the next few years?
My greatest hope is that it will help popularize the medium and bring more people into the fold. The reality is most of the art people are excited to make is really difficult to do.
Comics are easier to do, but hiring an illustrator is expensive, and people most excited in the world to write comics are likely on the rejection end of a proposal letter. With Al, more people will be able to tell their stories, which I think is a net positive.
What new creative opportunities does Al offer for comic book artists and storytellers?
One of the things few people talk about is that Al can de-risk the act of creating High concept art. What I mean by that is anything Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Historical, by the nature of its production, would be expensive and likely an enormous collaborative effort.
With Al you can attempt to tell these stories yourself without giving up your career, or making as many sacrifices in pursuit of your dream. I think artists who are active and not making a living from their art come to terms with the fact that they're really doing it for themselves. What's cool is that now that with Al you'll have more options in terms of how you'd like to tell that story, and that's a cool thing.
What inspired you to start using Al for comic book creation?
Great question. I have a group of friends that started playing Dungeons and Dragons during the pandemic. I've been writing for 15 years, but had never played and was now the official, eternal Dungeon Master. DnD allowed me to worldbuild in a way that I had never done, because up until then, I was always focused on writing self-contained dramas I could sell to a network or podcast.
However over the course of years, everything became hard to track so I wrote a history book of the world, and used Al for the images.
How does your use of Al reflect your unique artistic style and vision?
Love this question. What I like to remind people of is that although I do use Al for the images, every single detail of the characters and the world of Galaxy Girl exists in my head. Al is just the tool to translate it for readers.
It is a bit hard to take credit for people like the style of Galaxy Girl, because that's really more of a compliment on my taste than it is my creative ability. That said, I've found Galaxy Girl specifically to be an interesting vehicle for exploration of ideas surrounding futurism, identity, and sexuality as it relates to an increasingly pluralistic world that seems to have almost 2 realities: Online and Real life.
Galaxy Girl is about a lot of different themes, but one of the threads that flows through all of my work is a desire to challenge the status quo, specifically in the United States. With comics, a visual medium, I'm interested in exploring identity and that includes sex because in America Sex tends to be weaponized, and used as a divisive tool when it should be a beautiful form of self-discovery.
Has Al ever surprised you by generating something unexpected or groundbreaking?
For sure! I mean, any time I work on a new character, it's the most exciting thing in the world. My workflow is to create a character bio sheet and challenge myself to imagine as much of their history, personality and looks as I can BEFORE I type anything in DALL-E.
That way I have a very clear idea of the character, and when it's finally time to give them a face it's the most fun in the world tweaking it to fit exactly what you had in mind.
What's your ultimate vision for the future of Al-powered comic books?
The ultimate vision for Al Comic books would be some sort of template for what is possible with Al art in general.
The technology we have today is capable of allowing consumers to build digital communities where they can vote with their dollars and cut out a lot of the bullshit that comes with creative industries in the form they exist today. Imagine Kickstarter on steroids run completely by and for artists. That's the ideal.
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