Tag: ai

AI-generated horror

I’ve been playing a bit with all of the cool AI-powered art generation tools that have been unleashed in recent times. I mentioned the other day that I got an invite to DALL-E. Rather than burn through my free credits trying stuff, I’ve been trying random things with Craiyon, a free site that uses DALL-E Mini.

Unrelatedly, I’ve been watching a bunch of horror movies that Netflix has been recommending to me. At some point I veered off into Asian horror films, and there seems to be plenty of them for it to keep recommending to me. I seem to have hit a local maximum in its “you might like this” algorithm, such that nearly everything it recommends to me these days is an Asian horror film.

Making the connection between horror films and AI, I decided to try hitting Craiyon with the prompt: Scene from a Japanese horror film. Here’s what it came back with:

AI generated scene from Japanese horror film

Yep. That’s pretty close to what I expected. A creepy long-haired ghost girl, trading on the Yotsuya Kaidan story and the indelible influence it has had on Japanese horror, via The Ring. Notice also the typically Japanese shoji walls, most noticeable in the bottom left frame.

All right. I’ve also been watching some Chinese horror, so let’s try: Scene from a Chinese horror film:

AI generated scene from Chinese horror film

Interesting! It’s mostly similar long-haired ghost girls, but with a vividly different colour palette. The delicate shoji walls have been replaced by brutalist concrete walls. There are also several apparent victims, lying on the floor in shrouds. And some interestingly creepy pictures on some of the walls.

Next up: Scene from a Korean horror film:

AI generated scene from Korean horror film

More long-haired ghost girls, but with a much greater emphasis on the faces and their blood-curdling expressions. We also have a few boys or young men who might be victims, or perhaps relatives of the ghost girl. The colour palette is a bit more blue/yellow and less green than the Chinese examples.

Okay, let’s try moving away from Asia, to Europe, beginning with: Scene from a French horror film:

AI generated scene from French horror film

Now our walls have curtains and doors. We’ve gone back to a mostly black and white palette. And the long-haired ghost girl is replaced by a range of spooky figures with recent haircuts, or horrified victims – particularly that anguished looking close-up of the woman’s face at centre right. In the bottom left we have what might be a witch hovering by someone’s bedside, waiting to bestow a curse. Definitely a more European classic cinema vibe here.

I’ve also seen a couple of German films recently, which have been fairly modern and based around teenagers getting into spooky situations. Honestly they felt more like Scooby Doo than a serious horror film. So lets try: Scene from a German horror film:

AI generated scene from German horror film

Oooh. Getting some Max Schreck Nosferatu vibes here, although not too explicitly. The exterior farmhouse at top middle is interesting – the first identifiably exterior scene generated so far. Good choice though because, as we all know, farmhouses are 90% more spooky than most other buildings. Definitely more of a vampire feel than ghosts here. And a couple of frames of Nazis, which I suppose is fair enough for the horror genre.

Now let’s try some English-speaking origins. We’ll start with: Scene from a British horror film:

AI generated scene from British horror film

Interesting. I’m not quite sure what to make of this. There seems to be a few people in masks, another creepy outdoor farmhouse, and in the bottom left what looks like a shadowy mob. Intriguing candlelight and shadows.

Contrast with: Scene from an American horror film:

AI generated scene from American horror film

There are definitely a lot more interior rooms here, with doors. I guess American horror hinges a lot more on people lurking through doorways.

And finally: Scene from an Australian horror film:

AI generated scene from Australian horror film

I’m not sure that anything here particularly implies Australia. It just seems to be some more semi-generic ghosty building stuff. I don’t know what that claw-like shadow is in the upper left panel, but it’s nice and spooky.

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Editing comics

I’m currently reading a book on editing comics that I got from Kickstarter: Filth & Grammar by Shelly Bond. The book is all about what a comics editor does.

One main part is about what a comics editor should look for when giving feedback/requests to the author/artists. One thing it really emphasises is that every page of a comic should have around 3 or 4 bolded words to indicate speech stresses. If a page comes in with no words bolded, send it back and tell them to bold some.

I’ve long noticed that comics seem to do this – have multiple bolded words on each page. But I always thought the propensity of bolded emphasis words in comics was way too overdone. I find it distracting and annoying. I wonder who in the comics industry decided that comics had to have bold-emphasised words on every single page.

In other news, I got an invitation for DALL-E today, and I’ve been playing with it a bit, generating some artwork. Not too much because it’s easy to burn through your 50 free credits and have to start paying money to keep using it.

It also came with some free credit to try using GPT-3 text generation. I gave it this prompt:

Write the rules for a Euro-style board game based on medieval monks brewing beer.

And here’s what GPT-3 produced:

1. The game is played with two to four players.

2. Each player has a monastery, and starts the game with two brewmasters and two workers.

3. The game is played over six rounds. In each round, the players take turns performing one of the following actions:

a. Collecting ingredients: The player rolls two dice. They may choose to collect either the number of hops or barley indicated by the dice. If they choose to collect hops, they take that number of hops from the supply. If they choose to collect barley, they take that number of barley from the supply.

b. Brewing beer: The player spends one hop and one barley to brew one barrel of beer. The player may choose to brew either ale or lager.

c. Selling beer: The player may sell up to three barrels of beer. They may sell either ale or lager, but not both at the same time. They receive three gold pieces for each barrel of ale sold, and four gold pieces for each barrel of lager sold.

4. At the end of each round, the players check to see if they have enough beer to satisfy their workers. If they do not, they must pay one gold piece for each worker that is not satisfied.

5. The game ends after six rounds. The player with the most gold pieces wins the game.

Wow. That’s almost a sensible game. There are some obvious issues, but you could certainly start from this and tweak it into a playable game.

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