In my situation, the introduction of AI came at the perfect time. I was planning to make massive changes this year, and once AI swept over us, I was carried away with it and immediately tried to find ways to adapt myself and my process to accommodate it.
Why?
Being open to change made it easier for me to jump right in; time was also a factor. Before AI, there was no way I would have been able to write all the stories I wanted to tell. That may still be true, but with the help of AI, I have a much better chance of getting more work done than before AI. In addition, with enough practice and with enough upgrades to the different technologies I may be able to provide even more visual context to my stories. And in some cases that may be me doing everything myself, a normally laborious and daunting task that I would not have been able to try before this year.
As someone who has written, produced, directed, and acted in short films to make sure that they got made, I have worn a few hats and have an inkling about the importance of all the steps in the process of creating films. And with each passing day, I gain more confidence with AI tools. So, the potential is there for me to take giant leaps forward in my ability to offer more to my readers and viewers.
Proper-looking video is still not there yet from AI but it is getting closer by the day. However, from what I have seen, animation appears to be the medium to delve into if you want to involve motion in your AI art.
The few animators I've seen comment on AI's rise recently are not against AI because it does help lessen some of the repetition in their work. Many of them had already been using AI in one way or another in their workflow. It really is just another tool for them to have at their disposal.
That may be the most important part for everyone when it comes to AI: working AI into your own workflow (a 2023 power word). We will all have different workflows, but there is likely to be at least one AI tool that can improve your own workflow. You just have to find it.
There are fears that AI will replace people. This is happening and will undoubtedly continue to happen. However, animators, filmmakers, and game developers already using AI are only becoming better at what they do and are therefore irreplaceable. (As I type this I see that Marvel's VFX team wants to unionize.)
Once the WGA and SAG/AFTRA have resolved their issues with the producers things could get interesting. I think we have passed the point of no return and the entertainment industry will be forever changed once the new normal business starts back up again.
For people like myself who have no animation training and lack the knack for drawing and painting, having the ability to bring to life that which has been limited to mere thoughts and words on a page with the help of technology is like magic. I can envision and write on paper worlds that do not exist anywhere else. I don't yet know what it will feel like to visually realize those worlds without having to beg, borrow, and steal, but I hope it gets close to how I imagined it could be when I first realized this spring that it might be possible. I was beaming with joy as the "hope" that it might all be possible washed over me. The initial excitement has abated a bit as I have focused on learning about the technologies I am going to need to use to realize my goals. As the improvements to the various AI tools rolled out over the summer it became clear that the hope of it all being possible would not rely on the AI, as it is clear that it will be up to the task; no, it will rely upon my learning and adapting to AI. That is something we all have in common with this emerging technology.
You have to put in the time to learn these resources properly. Too many people are not creating good prompts and getting frustrated when generations don't go the way they want. Some people are just giving up because some of these tools are not even easier to use than they already are. Some will never have the patience to get the best out of the current iterations of AI.
I read the other day that only 3% of people who start writing a novel actually finish it. That's an astonishingly low number. It's not easy, but for 97% to abandon the process before completion is remarkable. Finishing what I start is not a big concern for me, getting all the stories I want to tell out there is my concern. I know I can implement these tools because I have already started to do so. For me, it is just getting good enough with these tools to allow the outputs to be a part of something that I would actually try and sell to people.
I'm still on Twitter/ X out of habit and for the AI updates more than my ability to get seen by people because I don't want to pay the richest man in the world for something I used for free for over a decade. The AI Bros and their updates have kept me up to date, which is kind of why Twitter was created in the first place, to provide timely news updates.
People are already creating better images with AI than I will ever need for any illustrated book that I may want to publish. Life-like video is close but it is still a bit dodgy, even the animation is still a little bit off. But having seen all the updates and all the money being thrown at AI you can be certain that there will be updates that improve on both life-like and animation video capabilities soon. The director's editing tool for Runway and Pika Labs is the most recent impressive update that gets us that much closer.
That is why, for me at this moment, it is best to focus mainly on improving my outputs for static images. My instinct is to try and develop my own AI art style that can be consistent across several stories. We'll see, I can also understand changing the look for different types of work.
Within a few months, after I have created some images to accompany my written work, I will be attempting to make my first AI-assisted teaser for one of my stories. I've watched the evolution of AI images and video over the past five months; it has been a period filled with updates and new and better tools, and the people using them are pioneers. The best part is so many of them are sharing their workflows with the world so we can all learn from them. Brilliant!
A full movie or TV pilot seems a ways off but I am hopeful that a quality 10-30-second teaser is possible. And if that is possible, then I can do a teaser or longer trailer for other stories. If and when I can do all of that then I will be satisfied with what I have learned. Would I want to use AI to do an entire movie or TV show (animated or life-like) by myself? While I do enjoy creating on my own, I also like the collaborative venture of creating film and television with others. Collaboration has always been key for me, but the way things are moving we may all have to provide an AI video to go with all of our written work just to get read. That's not great but I want to be able to do it should that become the norm. Plus, while I actually enjoyed creating short films the old-fashioned way, I wouldn't mind testing out the storytelling possibilities with AI video.
It has been a lot of work to try and get my head around AI and how it might augment what I do. I am not a Java or Python guy who grew up coding, so I wanted to better understand AI in general and how it operates even though I may not understand all of the technical stuff. I have focused mainly on machine learning and deep learning, two of the ways that help train Generative AI models to create their outputs. I'll continue to learn more about the inner workings, but for the next few months, it is going to be all about practicing generations and developing a style.
Once I am confident enough with the images I create, I will move on to animated videos. My goal is to achieve some measure of confidence with images before the end of the year, and video by next summer. I am already confident enough with chatbots to use them to assist in organizing written projects, but I probably need a refresher course because I have been so focused on learning about other AI tools.
I was reading a recent thread on X where the AI Bros were complaining about their numbers dipping and how some of them were tired of regurgitating the same things. They seemed to stumble upon a larger, more important goal as they worked through their issues. One of them summed it up best by responding: "It's time to solve some problems rather than posting AI tutorial $hit posts". While I am grateful that this army of guys and girls who paid for their blue check marks in order to get clicks and provide me with AI news provided those updates, I get their point. I too am trying to solve some of my own creative problems and adapt by using AI tools to address those problems. It sounds like they need to try and understand their followers' needs to provide them with the information that they need to use AI instead of just overwhelming us with the same info every day.
I have always wanted to create a Graphic Novel. Once upon a time, I had hoped I might be able to do this with one of my artist friends. We always talked about doing so when we would hang out together. The years passed and I came to accept that the two of us would likely never be able to do a graphic novel together. Maybe with the help of AI, we can revisit that at some point together. For now, I'm eager to do it all on my own.
My experience with making short films, publishing books, or trying to sell my scripts to share them with the masses had a long list of issues. Even short films take a lot of resources and collaboration with others to get made. If only 3% of people finished their books before AI, you can imagine that number will jump significantly over the next few years. I have over two dozen unproduced screenplays lying around collecting dust. At one point or another, I wanted to have all of them produced. Even with the help of AI tools, I will never make all of those stories into movies or TV series, but I can better deliver my vision for those that I really want by creating teasers. Who knows, one day we may all be able to write and, with the assistance of AI, produce feature-length films and TV shows. If not, I may just segue into realizing these stories as Graphic Novels.
Considering the amount of story material I have at my disposal and what I have seen others do with AI art as far as graphic novels, I can see myself focusing on graphic novels in a big way. Realistically, if I can learn enough by the new year, I have enough written material that could work in the graphic novel format that I could create images for at least a graphic novel a year if that was something I really wanted to do. How people consume stories has changed a lot over the past decade since I started publishing stories. I want to be able to give people the stories I have to tell in a way that they want to take that story in.
The medium in which we tell our stories needs to be accommodating to those whom we want to reach with our tales. The number of actual book readers is dwindling. If we become even more like the humans in Wall-E then even graphic novels may be too much reading for us. We can't fret too much about that as we need to focus on the now. And in the now AI is best used to create Graphic Novels. AI Video will very soon have its day, maybe even before the end of the year. It's that close in the right hands.
This is why I decided to adapt and why learning about generative AI was the 1st step I could take. People have been flooding the zone with AI artwork and videos for the past few months. It has been great to see and learn from the progress so many are making. It's been brilliant.
I avoided shelling out hundreds of dollars to sign up for the best tools to focus on learning (taking all the free AI courses I found to be relevant) for a few months. Instead, this summer I tooled around with Firefly (which was free until this past week), took several courses, soaked up the AI updates on Twitter (X), worked on stories that are in progress, and found some time to work with AI to review older projects and discover how to use AI to assist me with writing new stories.
I am in fact empowered by my work with AI this summer. Emboldened to create a new path forward, focused on merging what I have learned into a new style that is not only assisted by AI but also presents the visual aesthetic of what I want to say through my work. This feels like a pivotal moment and I have no intention of letting it slip by. I've seen so many opportunities flitter before my eyes only to vanish. All I want is to tell stories that move me in one way or another and hopefully move others.So, instead of writing a script that no one will make into a movie or another 400-page novel that few will read, I will aim to reach a 21st-century audience who still wants new stories but doesn't want to read only words on a page.
For the next few months, I will work on creating a visual style for two books: the House Fly graphic novel, and a two-part novel series that I have been sitting on for a while -- it'll make a great illustrated books series. The style may differ for each, not sure yet.
Some of you may remember that I released part one of House Fly last year as a Kindle Vella. I had every intention of doing the same with part two this year, that was, until I became AI aware in late February. Now, I can actually present House Fly as the graphic novel I had originally wanted it to be.
The first book in the illustrated book series will likely come first, I'll know for sure by the new year. Yes, that means I won't be releasing a book this year, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make to integrate AI into my process and to focus on developing a consistent style. So, that's what I'll be spending the last few months of the year on, continuing to learn more about AI and developing an AI art style to publish one or more projects next year with illustrations.
Let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss integrating AI into your own workflow. I'll be busy racing the sun each day until January, but I am always happy to discuss the creative process with like-minded souls.
