▲ 352 points
back
148 comments
Stunning. Definitely worth fixing the link for! https://www.djfood.org/fantasy-jodorowsky-tron-visualisation...
Oh, double-pasted. Unfortunately can't edit anymore.
This is simply amazing. There were so many images there that are photorealistic enough that I was trying to figure out was this a real live action project? Or had someone simply staged the images as part of a larger "art project " or something...
Took me by surprise that this was AI generated, although in hindsight it should have been obvious. For me, this is the moment I realized AI art had become something "useful", and the world isn't going to be the same.
I can see where this is going... The commercial implications are enormous. Speeding up the concept art process for movies, etc. As someone here mentioned, why not make entire movies this way? Once they figure out how to animate this stuff, it puts the movie industry out of business.
I can only imagine what my grandkids are going to be using this for.
>why not make entire movies this way?
Literally everything will be made this way. In 10 years anything you’ll watch will be custom-generated specifically for you in real time.
> Once they figure out how to animate this stuff, it puts the movie industry out of business.
I'm also intrigued about the potential of AI-generated animation.
However, I don't think the industry would be "out of business", but rather they would simply evolve into a new phase. The established movie industry will most likely have access to the most expensive and performant AI models to make short and long form animations, which would be time and cost prohibiting for hobbyists.
Man do ppl even know Jodorowsky?
Cause he would definitely shit on AI generated art. He was bored of mindless American shit long before anyone was complaining - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQZF0KF-zw
Well, who knows him really?
What I‘d gather about him over the decades of work, is that he deliberately uses provocation/expressive words for his art/communication.
I think in the context of that little clip he was hinting at the ruthless commercialisation of American cinema/comics; and indeed since then it had well developed to today‘s Marvelization of Hollywood[0], a multi-billion industry of its own.
He is 93 now, so I think he doesn’t give a shit about anything at this point, but I like to think that back then as a young artist he would have embraced/explored/experimented with AI generated good shit to enhance/help his artistic vision. In the end it seems that mattered to him most.
[0]https://www.paudal.com/2022/11/24/quentin-tarantino-marveliz...
I don't believe that anyone who says anything about how X or Y as a Jodorowsky movie would have been $positiveHyperbole has seen anything other than the documentary about the unmade Dune movie.
First, because his most compelling stuff is heavily surrealist and I've found the audience for that is niche and has very little overlap with what modern Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans have in mind. Second, because at this point whatever they have in their minds for what it would have been is likely an impossible standard for any director, much less the one that made El Topo or The Dance of Reality (not a slight, just pointing out this guy makes art pieces - not blockbusters).
I experimented with midjourney and while it produced some interesting pieces I couldn't imagine creating something like these tron images with it. Like I couldn't get midjourney to even create a proper looking chess piece for instance
Having read the responses of the guy that generated these, the prompt is as simple as
production still from 1976 of Jodorowsky's TRON, 20 ASA 35mm --v 4 --ar 3:2
production still in version 4 doing most of the heavy lifting, with the year and film propeties giving a bit more vibe, and of course the overarching theme of TRON in the style of Jodorowsky. Add some extra words to differentiate scenes, such as light cycle or disc or computer. Add wide aspect ratio, and that's it. So it's 99% Midjourney. Mind blowing.
I’m always blown away by the images Midjourney is creating: https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/.
I think there is some skill in creating these, but the output can be really amazing and it’s constantly getting better.
Those are lovely images.
However while there is an awful lot of 'background symmetry' AI seems woefully incapable of 'human figure' symmetry that, to me anyway, it really sticks out. Eyes not quite the same size, breasts pointing in markedly different directions, bone structure on the face markedly different to each side.
To that end I am also amazed at how forgiving our brains are for this stuff (a bit like being able to listen to music over a fuzzy, in/out AM station without much bother).
Anyway, thanks to whoever made this. I think there could be a market in 'imaginary film posters'.
P.S. Did it really need the 'Disney' logo on it though?
Big opportunity for studios.
Instead of selling the 4K version of an old movie, now they can re-imagine it in 10 different styles.
This feels like a peek at the first truly practical application of AI art beyond “I need a blurry illustration for my blog post”. I could easily imagine this as the first step in an art director's creative process of exploring the look of a project quickly and iteratively, yet at high fidelity.
Even with the unavoidable AI artifacts, the aesthetic of these images is incredibly evocative.
The amount of time it would take to edit these to remove the subtle AI nonsense/artifacts/dysmorphia is a fraction of that time it would take to make the images from scratch. There will still be art departments but they will be 10x smaller.
I'll be the one to call B.S.
E.g., here, I'm skeptical about the specular reflections, which show a blue light on the left, a yellow light on the right, and a (seemingly) physically-accurate transition down the middle. Plus the too-plausible DOF in the background.
https://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Jodo-Tron-...
This image, with the patterns following the 3D contour of her head. And the glossy reflection of the lights on the tabletop. https://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Jodo-Tron-...
My wager is this is possibly using some AI-generated imagery, but it is largely a human art project.
Why aren't film producers throwing money at Jodorowsky? The visuals and stories he'd tell would surely be mind blowing. (I ofc know these are AI generated images, but it still makes me wonder.) For instance I'm certain that it's his influence that made Nicolas Winding Refn make Neon Demon.
I'm having trouble believing an AI did this. I mean, I know it did, and I trust HN to call BS. But ... it's just too perfectly imperfect. You can almost spot the cardboard headwear. I literally can't convince myself an AI did it. It's a weird feeling I'm experiencing.
I may be mistaken, but the film Tron looks to have been inspired by this section from a 1940s Busby Berkeley film: “The Gang’s All Here”
This has been edited as a video for the song Soft Core by Tamaryn:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AnZDaK9Vy0Y
The Gang’s All Here, and yes that’s Carmen Miranda: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xZp-s4wIc_s
> There seems to be a current trend in AI circles of mashing up film genres or visualising existent films either within different time periods or with different directors.
Out of boredom, I fed the prompt "Fight Club" into Stable Diffusion, and it generated some interesting images of a human that looked like a mixture of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.
I've seen similar mixed up results when I type a prompt that includes two obscure animals, such as "an emu playing chess with a lemur". The AI spits out an animal that looks like a cross between an emu and a lemur, instead of the two separate animals playing chess.
I want to know more about how these algorithms work, but that level of detail is hard for me to comprehend. I remember struggling in my college algorithms class to write code to do something relatively simple: I think the assignment was to: given a XY plane with a set of points, I had to find a set of lines that would create an intersection of polygons that contained only one point each.
I'd love to see Jodorowsky's Lord of the Rings.
I was about to reply to the skepticism of a poster, who deleted the post in the meantime:
This is a clear context in which re-doing something in the style of some Author can be radically inappropriate:
the visual style is stunningly good, but an unintelligent operation - it is relatively easy to mock a style, while the real thing was the judgement underneath. The Author knows if and why he would have used a curve made in such way in that place - not the simple mocker.
Edit:
in case some wanted to advance the idea that they are contented with the visuals, AJ is a foremost example of visuals studied to serve a content. Not to mention his declared contempt against states of poor hallucination.
Can't help but see shades of "Metropolis". Is there perhaps an Art-Deco style the AI is drawing from?
It caused me to wonder if Tron was a world inside a computer ... or our own future (and, sure, why not both).
This is fantastic. I want to watch the movie!
What do you think are the odds that we'll see a feature length AI powered "Jodorowsky's Tron" film within say.. the next 20 years? Some shepherding by humans allowed of course.
All I can think when I see this stuff is that the end is nigh. I'd assumed we'd have artificial intelligence before artificial creativity but it looks like nope.
How far can the singularity possibly be?
One image has a recognizable Han Solo, with classic outfit, side parting, but not quite Ford's face. A weird cut'n'paste from the conceptual-visual space.
This outfit:
https://www.alamy.com/star-wars-return-of-the-jedi-1983-20th...
So beautiful. Why can't the real world be this way?
If Jodorowsky was indeed capable of such style and vision - it would truely be amazing.
Unfortunately the mith is larger than the man.
Glad I came to the comments, it's amazing.
Endless Poetry (Poesia sin Fin) was for me one of the most beautiful and touching movies I ever watched - yet, it certainly was also very tough to watch at times. Some scenes pushed the cringyness factor to the limit. Other scenes were so mesmerizing that I'm coming back to them from time to time.
These graphics are amazing. I had to tweak the site just a little and the imagery is even easier to view... set the body to background:#000; and color:#eee; remove the float:left and set the main to width:100% - zoom the content 3 times and feast your eyes on amazing graphics.
This is my favorite "use" of AI generation. Imagining art in the style of artists who've passed away but in new settings and contexts. Unable to share right now but people like F.W. Murnau, Matisse, Paul Gauguin, etc
I can’t wait until they just make the movie.
I suspect that something like this is running already on scripts and vfx and that explains some of the really mediocre content from Netflix, Disney, etc (ie, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”).
There are more (non-FB) images here:
https://goodinternet.substack.com/p/if-jodorowsky-directed-t...
Amazing. I’d pay to see that.
Oops! That page can’t be found.
It looks like nothing was found at this location.
This is incredible and beautiful. I think that as technologists we need to embrace this evolution, which will touch all areas of our work, or be left behind.
Midjourney is insane: simultaneously really inspiring and terrifying in the quality of "imaginative" images it's effortlessly spitting out.
Yes. Thanks, thanatos519 for providing the corrected link and thank you bj-rn for the original post. Fascinating!
Jodorowsky is insane.
El Topo makes it clear.
yt video of the images to some trippy music
wen AI movies generated on the fly....
Headline does not reveal that this is all AI-generated art; Jorodowsky never designed anything for Tron.
Ah. So it’s a fast-takeoff then. Looking forward to being enslaved by the elites with AI being used as a wall to separate billionaires from everybody else.