Part 10: Using AI to Make WHAT 😲?!

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“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”  

— Dr. Seuss 

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Part 10 of my learning project. As I was looking on the schedule for next week, I saw that we were going to be talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although we are going to delve more into the topic next week, it got me thinking… if you can use AI to create meal plans, voice overs, or images, can you use AI to make pixel art? Going even further, to connect to my recent projects, can AI be used to make video games? Let’s check it out!

Before I began my research, I wanted to share a HILARIOUS AI-based video game I found called Suck Up!. Essentially, you are a vampire who is trying to convince AI civilians to let you into their homes… it sounds weird but it is oddly addicting. See more below:

After having some fun with Suck Up!, I officially decided to start my research. I got quite a few suggestions for the Retro Diffusion Extension on the Aseprite program. However, my search quickly came to a dead end when I realized it was $65.00 – if you have money to spend, the reviews on this sound great! From there, I tried the Orbofi AI website… I did NOT link this site because it crashed my entire computer when I tried to open it… how rude. Jeepers, my research is off to quite the start. Time to go on a break and reset.

I am back… and happy I did not give up! On a Reddit forum, I found the character.ai website. This is a free website where you can create video game characters, practice a new language, get book recommendations, or even practice an interview. Wow! If you haven’t caught onto the theme of my resources by now, it’s even free 😎. I was honestly blown away by all of the possibilities within character.ai. After exploring the website for a few minutes, I officially jumped into the journey of creating a pixel art video game character using AI.

I clicked Create a Character, and away I went. IMMEDIATELY, I was faced with a login button (agh). All I had to provide was my email… and questionably my date of birth? Oh 🐋. From there, I had to provide a name, tagline, description, and greeting for my character. Although this was more behind-the-scenes work than I initially anticipated, I had a lot of fun building my character… until I realized I was creating a CHAT BOT! What in the world… I thought I was creating a photograph. So, if you ever want to chat with a Snorlax AI bot hit my line.

After some back pedaling, I ended up finding a pre-made chat bot within the website that creates images – phew! Let’s try this again. After asking the bot to provide a photo of the Snorlax Pokémon, things went sideways… it provided me with an image of an AI woman in a dress *sigh*. Back to the drawing board. Although this website has tons of cool features, it is not the place to go for creating AI images of characters.

My final attempt was Canva. Through the magic media function, you can can create AI generated images using a typed description (fingers crossed). After some trial and error, I finally ended up with an image I was happy with. Today was another win in my books for Canva. 100/10 recommend, whether you need aesthetic presentation slides or AI images!

As AI continuously evolves, I am left to wonder where we will be in even a year from now! Hopefully… making better – or free – video game creation programs. Although I left today with different results than what was in mind, I had a lot of fun researching some of the different possibilities that AI currently has to offer.