AI Art Soup

There is such a thing as a World Record for the "Fastest Drawing of Fred Flintstone". To date, artist Lev Cantoral still holds the record at drawing a recognizable Fred Flintstone in 6.27 seconds.

I didn't exactly time my effort at using AI to create a drawing of Fred, but I would say it took half a minute to type in a prompt and have the software "generate" an image:

Lev has nothing to worry about.

  This was more Ood Abbad Abbay than Yabba Dabba Doo. There is a feature where you can upload an image of Fred Flintstone and the AI remakes it into whatever it thinks it is, but that's not quite as fun...plus, that's the element that makes established artists nervous - the chance of someone selling reproductions of someone else's art, so I stayed away from that. I had more fun seeing what the AI would generate from scratch anyway.

That was supposed to be "Scrooge McDuck drawn by Chuck Jones"...I don't think the software has a grasp of Chuck Jones' style much.

This "technique" is called Stable Diffusion", or "Text-to-Art", the flip side of using talk-to-text. This actually combines capabilities that have been in existence for over a decade: photo filtering, image search, text search prompts, etc.. the results are a lottery...

"Scrooge McDuck in Disneyland"

"Ducktales"

"Kevin Conroy as Batman"

"Full-Body of Batman, drawn by _____."

            Pokies, huh? AI did it.

"Full-Body of David Tennant as Constable Hamish Macbeth, in uniform, overlooking a field in Scotland."

    AI don't know what a Scotland 

    Constable's uniform looks like.

"Lindsay Lohan as Batgirl, as drawn by ______"

                            Ok...

"Leslie Grace as Batgirl, as drawn by ______"

                       Hmm...

"Karen McDougal as Batgirl, as drawn by _____"

        That's...really, really good!

"Lily Collins as Batgirl, as drawn by _____."

    The likeness is very on-point.

"Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, as drawn by _____."

I found it interesting that instead of a mask, it generates glasses or bifocals, while the hair and cowl  form one piece or "helmet" shape, while the facial features are approximate to mimicking the artist I had in mind, but not quite; it might as well be the AI as "student" learning to draw from an influence. Meanwhile, the bat-emblem is a puzzle for it; the one with McDougal created a Power Girl-esque "Boob Window" without revealing anything. The ones with Lily Collins are clearly dipping into photo references, but a lot of flesh-and-blood comic artists often employ the same trick. Also, there's never a repeat of the same costume in each image, although when I specifically wanted Lily to wear a purple costume, then the color was consistently the same, as well as the color of her hair. The eye color was variable.

At this point, I exhausted the free trial on the site I used and wasn't interested in paying to continue, but I thought it was fun - not quite 'there' in meeting up with human imagination and creating images we're thinking, but the limitations are rooted in our ability to articulate what we want exactly. Once the developers crack that, the sky's the limit.

The Batgirl On The Shelf

One Year Later...

   Pictured: Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton.

 I was looking forward to seeing this Batgirl film and see if it's good on it's own terms, for multiple reasons. 

First of all, it's Barbara Gordon. Barbara Gordon is the real Batgirl. Accept no substitutes. 

 And, yes, that is the Batgirl costume Barbara Gordon wore during the "Batgirl of Burnside" era, designed by artist & writer Cameron Stewart.

 We were also going to get a 3rd appearance of Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne, in a supporting role, on the heels of his "comeback" appearance in The Flash, as part of an ongoing plot thread that would link these upcoming films. From what little we've been told, this is an older, veteran Batman, wearing an updated version of his costume from the 2 Tim Burton films; it's possible this characterization is somewhat inspired by high-concept takes on the character in spinoffs like Batman Beyond, Kingdom Come or The Dark Knight Returns, while still offering something different. There were clues about the events taking place within an altered reality that was held in place as an amalgamation of different timelines:

     From a yellow belt to a black belt..I just realized that as I was sorting through these pictures that this could be the gag behind the change in utility belt color.

    I miss the yellow belt, anyway.

I found all of this stuff intriguing; they were clearly fast-tracking a deep dive into history and retroactively using the concept of a multiverse to insert a continuity and bring back whoever wants to jump in. Of course, this doesn't sit well with people who wanted a simpler, direct continuation of stories featuring characters and cast members from Zack Snyder's Justice League, but that's a reflection of the paroxysms in leadership at Warner Brothers effecting the content that gets created. To this date, anything we think we know about the future is coming from people on the internet who have the option of denying everything they said - it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. There were a lot of people rooting for the film to fail, without really knowing much about it, beyond what they're told by people claiming to have "sources". Why were they rooting for it to fail? Fidelity to Zack Snyder? Fidelity to Ben Affleck? Fidelity to Henry Cavill? Fidelity to Ray Fisher? Unfortunately, it's not clear if any of them are coming back, yet there were a lot of ugly campaigns employing gaslighting tactics to try to control/derail/influence executive decisions on what gets made and what shouldn't. 

 Everything I'm sure is true can be taken for granted by photographs taken of the cast and film locations in Scotland, both by amateur bystanders, posts on Twitter by the "Batgirl Movie News" fan account and by the crew, as well as any statements or posts made on social media by the film's star, Leslie Grace, co-directors Bilall Fallah & Adil el Arbi and statements made by the studio. 

  

   The casting of Leslie Grace was a surprise and recieved a mixed reaction; a relative newcomer, this was her first starring role in only her 2nd film (she had appeared in In The Heights the previous year), so it appeared she was popular enough with the studio executives, rather than cast a more-experienced actress, who might have a larger following. Nevertheless, in the months that followed, it's clear she always regarded her casting with appreciation, class, charm, dedication & enthusiasm.

    Stop the press...who's that?

     That's Emely Cartagena - Leslie Grace's stunt double as Batgirl.

       Yep, that's Emely up there..

          She's great, isn't she?

                     Exquisite...

    This message she posted was sweet of her.

The reveal of the name and identity of the sexy stuntwoman is bittersweet; this happened a week after the news unfolded that post-production on the film had been shut down by an executive decision to shelve the film.

 

As part of a new corporate merger between Discovery Networks and Warner Brothers, a massive restructuring of the corporate hierarchy took place, and the new boss, David Zaslav, decided that Batgirl wasn't up to a new standard going forward with the films; the implication is that he would rather greenlight  fewer movies than push ahead with content he found mediocre.

  Is Batgirl a bad movie? We don't know. There are people claiming to have seen it, via private focus group "test" screenings of a "rough cut", and their opinions are questionable; these people are anonymous and have no names; the people reporting these accounts will deny accountability for reporting fake news by blaming the anonymous source - that's always their loophole. 

       Written-off...by "Top Men"

   ...representation of Warner Brothers Archive

 What we do know, is that unless Zaslav reconsiders his decision, the footage from Batgirl will be locked away in an archive as proof of a "lost movie" the studio can't do anything with, applicable for a tax credit, reportedly worth 50 million dollars...for a film that cost 90 million to make...

    Locked deep in the Bat-archive

  Honestly, my take on this is Zaslav is going to run the studio like a military operation; he's making an example of this film, as his own message that from here on, he wants the studio to offer nothing but the best content, no compromises. No lazy pandering to demographics inferred by cynical & manipulative marketing research; no room for hustling, uncreative people using Conditioning tactics under the guise of "Social Justice Warrior" psuedo-activism and faux-hip subversion-of-expectations. Or so we think.. 

 Will he reconsider? If the film has been written off already, it can still be released anyway - the studio would have to pay back the credit received, but that's if they did the filing...

 One thing I'm certain of...this move by Zaslav got a whole lot more people talking about this film than at any time beforehand and, perhaps unwittingly created a movement to release it and give it a chance.

#ReleaseBatgirl / #ReleaseTheBatgirlMovie 

 And one other thing for sure...this is the first time I had a crush on a stunt double!

        Lovely view...and I'm sure that window has a nice view of Glasgow, too.

Until next time...same Bat-time, same Blog-channel..