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I’ve always loved comics.
There’s something magical about writers and artists bringing a story to life with writing and drawing.
Pocket Toonswas created by Pocket Entertainment, best known for its audiobook platform Pocket FM.
Pocket Toons uses an AI system called Blaze!
It supposedly allows human artists to focus on storytelling and character development.
That sounds impressive on paper.
Some of it positively burns the eye when you gaze upon it.
AI art fail
The art is dull, robotic, and aggressively uninspired.
Every character has a few expressions they repeat over and over, much like the copy-pasted backgrounds.
Entire chapters of the comics felt like an infinite loop of deja vu.
And lets not even get into the occasional bizarre hands.
Forget low effort; this was no effort.
This could only appeal to people who have never seen comics or any drawing.
The reason great comic book art succeeds is because actual people put their creative stamp on it.
Imagine someone feeding a million pages of manga into an algorithm and sucking out everything that made them enjoyable.
It raises questions as basic as “What’s going on?”
Writing from the asylum
If this were just bad art, that would be one thing.
But the “writing,” is just as bad if you might even call it that.
I hesitate to blame the named authors for them, either.
They feel like someone blended Wikipedia summaries of popular books and comics with anSEOtool.
The awful art didn’t help make the story better.
I really wonder, why make an app like this?
If it was to prove that AI can replace human creativity, it has done the opposite.
The worst part is that Pocket Toons keeps bragging about how much content its churning out.
New episodes every day!
A faster production pipeline than ever before!
Its like a version of that old joke: The food is terrible!
But at least the portions are large!
Comics are supposed to feel alive and vibrant.
Pocket Toons is mostly empty when it’s not full of garbage.
I’m not against using AI as a tool in art in any form.
AI can assist in tedious tasks, allowing creators to focus more on imagination and craftsmanship.
The good news is, for now, AI comics arent taking over.
