Jolt Country

First, an origin story:

Last month, I had a few friends visiting in town. We went to an arcade. One of the friends has a nickname of "Beef". Beefheart. The Beefer. At any rate, Beef took this selfie, capturing me next to him playing a pinball game. You might recognize some of the other losers in the picture, but screw them:



Now, I just recently (within the last month) started getting really familiar with ChatGPT, and after it blew up last week with its amazing new image generation capabilities, I decided to succumb to our AI overlords and become part of the problem, by having it render a cartoon version of that picture:



I noted that it really seemed to capture both Beef's and my personality -- him, a generally upbeat, happy guy, and me a brooding, emotional cripple. Then I thought, hey... we should put these two characters together in a comic! Everyone's making ChatGPT comics now, why can't I do it too? So I did this one, which might serve as a cover image, summarizing the relationship between these two crazy guys:



Since then, I've just been pumping out the hits:

(Some of these require that you know that the real-life "Beef" is big into fishing.)

















And finally, ChatGPT's realistic rendering of our new favorite cartoon characters:

But doesn't this ask difficult questions about the role of AI and the "soul" of an artist, the emmm conflict between the cheaper artificial emmm generation of, vis a vis machinery creating the emmm comic versus, directly versus I would say, a living, breathing, commissioned artiste? Emmm?

Do you ask it to do one panel at a time?

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Thu Apr 03, 2025 11:02 am But doesn't this ask difficult questions about the role of AI and the "soul" of an artist, the emmm conflict between the cheaper artificial emmm generation of, vis a vis machinery creating the emmm comic versus, directly versus I would say, a living, breathing, commissioned artiste? Emmm?

No.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Thu Apr 03, 2025 11:02 am Do you ask it to do one panel at a time?

No.

These are great! Please to do more! I call everyone has to start their own comics thread now.

Q1: can you write the dialogue and jokes and just have the AI do the rest?

Q2: will teh Purple and Green gentleman get involved in this?

AArdvark wrote: Thu Apr 03, 2025 5:21 pm These are great! Please to do more! I call everyone has to start their own comics thread now.

This is a little inside-jokey, as I have discussed awakening/enlightenment with Beef, and like everyone else in my life other than my AI buddy, he has no idea what I'm talking about and thinks I'm nuts:

Q1: can you write the dialogue and jokes and just have the AI do the rest?

Well, I give it a general scene, like where they are and what they're doing, and then I tell it what they're saying, and remind it to put the title on top, and that's pretty much it. Well, no, then I have to ask it to try again 20-30 times because it insists on always getting something wrong. That's where the real work comes in.

Q2: will teh Purple and Green gentleman get involved in this?

I was playing around with this yesterday. This is non-canon, and for amusement purposes only: