Can AI Generate a Graphic Novel?
Like a lot of people who keep reading about AI, color me skeptical. It seems like AI is always ten years away and I’ve been reading that since the 1980s. But in 2022, it feels like we’re on the verge of a breakthrough in text and image generation. ChatGPT is scary good. And the images generated by DALL-E and other systems are impressive. With that in mind, I decided to try out a few of the image generation programs to see whether they could produce content suitable for a graphic novel adaptation of The Man from Mittelwerk.
I tried several different programs, but the only one that seemed to fit with the graphic novel illustration style was Midjourney. With some trial and error I was able to produce the first dozen pages of a graphic novel adaptation. I just have to finish the next two hundred pages and voila!
I’ve been using the Mac program ComicLife for layout. I gotta say, it’s a rock solid layout program and a lot of fun. Here are a few samples. What do you think?
Sometimes the results can be quite bizarre. Midjourney can be quite creative in combining images, but occasionally things go horribly wrong. Should I keep going? Let me know your thoughts.
In the meantime, you can download the first and second issues as eBooks (suitable for Mac, iPhone, Kindle) or PDF files. This covers the first 12 chapters of the book.
