A comic book page by AI
Terrified, by Dall-e
Someone challenged me to write a graphic novel of my short story A Bang on the Head, which forms the basis of my experiments in style, à la Queneau*. Well, I’m useless at drawing the kind of comics I like to read, so I thought I’d enlist the help of AI. I used this prompt, mistakenly, with ChatGPT:
Draw a page of a comic book in film noir style depicting a man getting out of bed, hitting his head on a wall, going to hospital and then being discharged.
Here’s what it produced:
I'm sorry, but I'm a text-based AI and cannot create visual drawings or images. However, I can describe a scene from a comic book in film noir style for you:
Panel 1:
Setting: A dimly lit, cluttered apartment with blinds casting dramatic shadows.
- Caption: "The night was a shroud, and he awoke in its embrace.”
- Illustration: A disheveled man, wearing a trench coat and fedora, slowly emerges from his unkempt bed, rubbing his eyes.
Panel 2:
Setting: Same as Panel 1, but the man is now standing.
- Caption: "But fate had a cruel twist in store.”
- Illustration: The man, still groggy, stumbles forward and clumsily collides with a wall, a stark "THUD" sound echoing in the room. His hand clutches his throbbing head.
Panel 3:
Setting: Exterior of a gritty, rain-soaked city street.
- Caption: "A hasty journey through a city shrouded in shadows.”
- Illustration: The man, now drenched from the rain, holds his bleeding head as he hails a taxi. The taxi's headlights pierce through the darkness.
Panel 4:
Setting: Hospital corridor with harsh overhead lights.
- Caption: "The sterile corridors of salvation.”
- Illustration: The man, still in his trench coat, sits on a sterile hospital bed, a nurse attending to his head wound.
Panel 5:
Setting: Hospital room, still harshly lit.
- Caption: "The verdict was in, and it was time to go.”
- Illustration: The man, with a bandaged head, stands by the hospital room door as a stern-looking doctor hands him his belongings.
Feel free to use this description as inspiration for your comic book page.
Not bad as a storyboard outline I suppose. I gave Dall-E the same prompt. Here’s what it produced:
I quite like that style of drawing, and if I had a mind to I could work on applying the ChatGPT ‘storyboard’ to the Dall-e artwork.
But when all said and done, I prefer my own efforts — and so far, others have too, which is rather a relief!
To keep up with my Experiments in Style project, which I update on a weekly basis most of the time, go here, and be sure to subscribe:
*See my review of Queneau’s Exercises in Style.