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.

Bedrock

 Ever since the original series ended in 1966, new episodes of The Flintstones were produced or exist in concept form on-and-off through the decades, usually with a different title and characters as the main focus - beginning with The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

Over the decades, a timeline was implied; subsequent episodes/series/TV specials would sometimes be noncommittal, either depicting the kids as babies again, or as adolescents/pre-teenagers, or their respective parents as children (The Flintstone Kids), but the farthest Hanna-Barbera went was a trio of TV specials in the 1990's: I Yabba Dabba Doo!, Hollyrock-A-Bye Baby and A Flintstone Family Christmas - depicting the engagement & marriage of Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm, birth of their fraternal twins - Chip & Roxie - plus the arrival of Stoney, a foster child who may or may not have been adopted by Fred at the end of that Christmas special; the details on if Fred became legal guardian of Stoney by the end are fuzzy; even the accompanying storybook published didn't clear this up..maybe the kid took off for Hollyrock.

According to what is, essentially, a press release, Bedrock is hinting that it might eschew all that continuity created by the spinoffs and take an alternate route, as it appears the new focus will be on Pebbles Flintstone as an adult in her 20's (voiced by actress & executive producer Elizabeth Banks) living in a Bedrock on the verge of entering The Bronze Age while her father, Fred Flintstone, is adjusting to retirement; this is a retcon from the spinoffs, which depicted Fred continuing to work at Slate Rock & Gravel Company long after Pebbles started her own family; Wilma & Betty had become partners in a catering business, while Barney (who had last been established working as an insurance agent in the original series, albeit for an unseen "Mr. Pebble") was now co-workers with Fred at Slate Rock & Gravel, later renamed Slatecorp. It's unclear if Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm will remain a double act, like they did in the spinoffs, or if this series will be an opportunity to flesh out Pebbles' personality more, possibly give her a redesign, since she's the star; I always thought the reason why the old spinoffs were intriguing as a curiosity, but not particularly successful/entertaining/inspiring and faded into obscurity, is because the writers never really fleshed out the personality of the 2nd/3rd generation Flintstones characters to fuel interesting stories..

 I'm actually hoping there's some distinction to noting the Bronze era beyond a satirical parallel of "woke" activism. That era is significant for the creation of clothing woven from man-made material, replacing animal-skin pelts/togas, along with innovations in craftsmanship, construction, economics and materials with the use of precious metals. If I was writing episodes for this series, I would suggest Pebbles get a job working at a factory that crafts products out of bronze metal, so her path as an adult has a stronger connection to the series' past..That would be more interesting than wondering if maybe we'll see characters use coins instead of clams! The invention of Paper is also on the horizon; It shouldn't look like The Roman Holidays just yet - they'll still be using Smartrock phones..the Flintmobile's GPS will probably be a miniature pterodactyl with Gilbert Gottfried's voice...

At the end of the day, I'm looking forward to seeing if Bedrock will look like The Flintstones, in terms of aesthetic fidelity. The background art for that teaser image looks nice, but offers no clue what the characters will look like...I am convinced the reason why Seth Mcfarlane's attempt at a reboot of the series went nowhere because the show would've resembled a copy of Family Guy, in look & story-style..and the franchise really dodged a bullet, there.

 We'll soon see if we'll Yabba Dabba Doo or Yabba Dabba Don't have a gay old time...