Alito, AI & A Touch of the Covid...
A cartoon in the works, some AI & fever-dream sketching
In this Cartoon Update:
Covid
Alito
& AI, oh my!
I’ve been a little quiet the past few days thanks to the fog of Covid.
Thankfully, I’m through the worst of it now and it wasn’t really even that bad (thank you, vaccines). It’s that spacey fever-brain feeling that makes all time and logic slip away that really gets me.
Thanks to the ridiculousness of Justice Samuel Alito, I already had a cartoon idea(s) in the works.
In case you missed it, Alito is on the defense after ProPublica revealed his luxury Alaska vacation with a couple of billionaires.
He of course got a free ride on a private jet to get there, which, according to Alito, is no big deal since the seat was empty anyway so he might as well use it!
That logic makes perfect sense if you’re a petulant child.
Some of you sharp-eyed cartoon-watchers may notice I updated my Alito caricature — if you want to dig into my scriptwriting and caricature process, you can see more here.
I’m drawing and animating more for, “Alito’s Theory of Ethics and Living Well,” keep your eyes peeled for the finished animation!
While I was a bit bleary-eyed with Covid, I did some experimenting with audio AI.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn over the keys to the robots just yet, but I am exploring ways AI may be able to help me ease the workload. (And am really just trying to keep up with all the latest/weirdest developments by playing with them.)
Here’s a little experiment I did using technology developed by “Synthesia,” which is not a creepy they’re-coming-to-steal-your-souls sort of company name at all, right? (Synthetic euthanasia is all I can think of.)
It’s pretty mind-blowing though, you type in text and pick one of their live-action characters to say the lines.
(If only I could plop in my animated characters and type in the lines, but I’m sure that’s coming.)
I also experimented with a voice AI model (Contraption? Gizmo? Website? What do we call these things?) from Eleven Labs.
This one is also amazing, although it does not bode well for voice actors.
I hesitate to even post this here and suggest I am heading down this path because real, live, human voice actors bring so much to my animation.
In truth, they are irreplaceable, but for the basic, “just say the lines, Bub,” this AI is almost there. (You can even dial up and down the level of emotion or “humanness” to these voices.)
Here are a five different voices saying a couple lines from last week’s animation.
You can also record your own voice and train the AI to replicate your voice in case you, you know, never want to talk again.
We are entering a very weird time . . .
Now it’s time for me to get back to drawing and animating, I hope to get the Alito animation done early for you.
Thanks so much for following my work and sharing it with people you love! (Or hate.)