Category Archives: Illustration

Flux hackathon provides perspective

AI/ML, Illustration

The team at BFL is celebrating some of the most interesting, creative uses of the Flux model. Having helped bring the Vanishing Point tool to Photoshop, and always having been interested in building more such tech, this one caught my eye:

“Ruining” art with Nano Banana

AI/ML, Illustration

But, y’know, in a fun & cheeky way. 🙂 Check out this little iterative experiment from Ethan Mollick:

As a longtime Bosch enthusiast, I’m partial to this one:

Reminds me of the time in 2023 (i.e. 10,000 AI years ago) that I forced DALL•E to keep making images look more & more “cheugy”:

Spin me right ’round, Illustrator

3D, AI/ML, Illustration

I’m excited to check out this rather eye-popping new Illustrator feature, and I’m installing the beta as I type:

Another cool example:

My birthday gift: Ditching AI

Illustration

My family, having seen so many of my AI-powered image generations over the last 3 years, is just utterly inured to them. So, for my MiniMe’s 16th, I sketched up the patriotic little HO-scale engine we’re getting him, along with a cute large ground squirrel (to quote the Dude, “Nice marmot”).

I feel like this is my micro version of when the world revolted against too-perfect Instagram culture, swinging towards Snapchat & stories, where “rough is real,” and flaws are a feature. In any case, my dude was happy as a clam—and that’s all that matters to me.

“A surrealist design engine no one asked for”

AI/ML, Illustration

A while back, Sam Harris & Ricky Gervais discussed the impossibility of translating a joke discovered during a dream (“What noise does a monster make?”) back into our consensus waking reality. Like… what?

I get the same vibes watching ChatGPT try to dredge up some model of me and of… humor?… in creating a comic strip based on our interactions. I find it uncanny, inscrutable, and yet consequently charming all at once.

GPT-4o image creation is coming to Designer!

AI/ML, GPT-4o, Illustration

Having created 200+ images in just the last month via this still-new image model (see new blog category that gathers some of them), I’m delighted to say that my team is working to bring it to Microsoft Designer, Copilot, and beyond. From the boss himself:

StarVector: Text/Image->SVG Code

AI/ML, Illustration

Back at Adobe we introduced Firefly text-to-vector creation, but behind the scenes it was really text-to-image-to-tracing. That could be fine, actually, provided that the conversion process did some smart things around segmenting the image, moving objects onto their own layers, filling holes, and then harmoniously vectorizing the results. I’m not sure whether Adobe actually got around to shipping that support.

In any event, StarVector promises actual, direct creation of SVG. The results look simple enough that it hasn’t yet piqued my interest enough to spend my time with it, but I’m glad that folks are trying.

Rive introduces Vector feathering

Design, Illustration

I really hope that the makers of traditional vector-editing apps are paying attention to rich, modern, GPU-friendly techniques like this one. (If not—and I somewhat cynically expect that it’s not—it won’t be for my lack of trying to put it onto their radar. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Vibe-animating with Magic Animator?

Illustration

I know only what you see below, but Magic Animator (how was that domain name available?) promises to “Animate your designs in seconds with AI,” which sounds right up my alley, and I’ve signed up for their waitlist.

ChatGPT reimagines family photos

AI/ML, GPT-4o, Illustration

“Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” — David Sedaris
“Turn your fam into Minecraft & GTA” — Bilawal Sidhu

And meanwhile, on the server side:

Runway reskins rock

AI/ML, Illustration

Another day, another set of amazing reinterpretations of reality. Take it away Nathan…


…and Bilawal:

Mystic structure reference: Dracarys!

3D, AI/ML, Illustration

I love seeing the Magnific team’s continued rapid march in delivering identity-preserving reskinning

This example makes me wish my boys were, just for a moment, 10 years younger and still up for this kind of father/son play. 🙂

Behind the scenes: AI-augmented animation

AI/ML, Illustration

“Rather than removing them from the process, it actually allowed [the artists] to do a lot more—so a small team can dream a lot bigger.”

Paul Trillo’s been killing it for years (see innumerable previous posts), and now he’s given a peek into how his team has been pushing 2D & 3D forward with the help of custom-trained generative AI:”

Charmingly terrible AI-made infographics

AI/ML, Illustration, Infographics

A passing YouTube vid made me wonder about the relative strengths of World War II-era bombers, and ChatGPT quickly obliged by making me a great little summary, including a useful table. I figured, however, that it would totally fail at making me a useful infographic from the data—and that it did!

Just for the lulz, I then ran the prompt (“An infographic comparing the Avro Lancaster, Boeing B-17, and Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers”) through a variety of apps (Ideogram, Flux, Midjourney, and even ol’ Firefly), creating a rogue’s gallery of gibberish & Franken-planes. Check ’em out.

Celebrating the skate art of Jim Phillips

Illustration

If you’re like me, you may well have spent hours of your youth lovingly recreating the iconic designs of pioneering Santa Cruz artist Jim Phillips. My first deck was a Roskopp 6, and I covered countless notebook covers, a leg cast, my bedroom door, and other surfaces with my humble recreations of his work.

That work is showcased in the documentary “Art And Life,” screening on Thursday in Santa Cruz. I hope to be there, and maybe to see you there as well. (To this day I can’t quite get over the fact that “Santa Cruz” is a real place, and that I can actually visit it. Growing up it was like “Timbuktu” or “Shangri-La.” Funny ol’ world.)

Celebrating Saul Bass

Illustration, Typography

It’s a real joy to see my 15yo son Henry’s interest in design & photography blossom, and last night he fell asleep perusing the giant book of vintage logos we scored at the Chicago Art Institute. I’m looking forward to acquainting him with the groundbreaking work of Saul Bass & figured we’d start here:

FlipSketch promises text-to-animation

AI/ML, Illustration

We present FlipSketch, a system that brings back the magic of flip-book animation — just draw your idea and describe how you want it to move! …

Unlike constrained vector animations, our raster frames support dynamic sketch transformations, capturing the expressive freedom of traditional animation. The result is an intuitive system that makes sketch animation as simple as doodling and describing, while maintaining the artistic essence of hand-drawn animation.

AI fixes (?) The Polar Express

Illustration

Hmm—”fix” is a strong word for reinterpreting the creative choices & outcomes of an earlier generation of artists, but it’s certainly interesting to see the divisive Christmas movie re-rendered via emerging AI tech (Midjourney Retexturing + Hailuo Minimax). Do you think the results escape the original’s deep uncanny valley? See more discussion here.

“Only Murders In The Building” titles

Illustration

Somehow, despite my wife being a huge fan of the show over the last couple of years, I hadn’t previously seen the delightful titles for Only Murders In The Building:

Salon has a great article that goes behind the scenes with Elastic, which previously created titles for “Game of Thrones,” “Watchmen” and “Captain Marvel,” among others.

“The brief was this idea of a love letter to New York in a way and true crime and true crime podcasts,” Lisa Bolan, a creative director at Elastic, told Salon. “John really wanted to capture this romantic illustrative approach to New York, building on the magic of Hirschfeld and The New Yorker – illustrators who have abstracted New York in a way that’s beautiful and also speaks to these little glimpses of magic in the urban landscape.

“How To Draw An Owl,” AI edition

AI/ML, Illustration

Always pushing the limits of expressive tech, Martin Nebelong has paired Photoshop painting with AI rendering, followed by Runway’s new image-to-video model. “Days of Miracles & Wonder,” as always:

AI in Ai: Illustrator adds Vector GenFill

AI/ML, Generative Fill, Illustration

As I’ve probably mentioned already, when I first surveyed Adobe customers a couple of years ago (right after DALL•E & Midjourney first shipped), it was clear that they wanted selective synthesis—adding things to compositions, and especially removing them—much more strongly than whole-image synthesis.

Thus it’s no surprise that Generative Fill in Photoshop has so clearly delivered Firefly’s strongest product-market fit, and I’m excited to see Illustrator following the same path—but for vectors:

Generative Shape Fill will help you improve your workflow including:

  • Create detailed, scalable vectors: After you draw or select your shape, silhouette, or outline in your artboard, use a text prompt to ideate on vector options to fill it.
  • Style Reference for brand consistency: Create a wide variety of options that match the color, style, and shape of your artwork to ensure a consistent look and feel.
  • Add effects to your creations: Enhance your vector options further by adding styles like 3D, geometric, pixel art or more.

They’re also adding the ability to create vector patterns simply via prompting:

Microsoft Paint (Paint!) does generative AI

AI/ML, Illustration, Microsoft

Who’d a thunk it? But now everyone is getting into the game:

“Combine your ink strokes with text prompts to generate new images in nearly real time with Cocreator,” Microsoft explains. “As you iterate, so does the artwork, helping you more easily refine, edit and evolve your ideas. Powerful diffusion-based algorithms optimize for the highest quality output over minimum steps to make it feel like you are creating alongside AI.”

Some eye-popping AI/3D demos

AI/ML, Illustration

Martin Evening combines Adobe Substance 3D modeler and Krea to go from 3D sketch to burning rubber:

Jon Finger combines a whole slew of tools for sketch->AR:

Throwback: “Packed with vectors, Physics Pak really satisfies”

Illustration

I came across this post (originally from 2017) just now while looking for other work from Paul Asente. Here’s hoping it can finally see the light of day in Illustrator! —J.

———–

Paul Asente is an OG of the graphics world, having been responsible for (if I recall correctly) everything from Illustrator’s vector meshes & art brushes to variable-width strokes. Now he’s back with new Adobe illustration tech to drop some millefleurs science:

PhysicsPak automatically fills a shape with copies of elements, growing, stretching, and distorting them to fill the space. It uses a physics simulation to do this and to control the amount of distortion.

NewImage

[YouTube]

Drawing-based magic with Firefly & Magnific

3D, Adobe Firefly, AI/ML, ControlNet, Illustration

Man, who knew that posting the tweet below would get me absolutely dragged by AI haters (“Worst. Dad. Ever.”) who briefly turned me into the Bean Dad of AI art? I should say more about that eye-opening experience, but for now, enjoy (unlike apparently thousands of others!) this innocuous mixing of AI & kid art:


Elsewhere, here’s a cool thread showing how even simple sketches can be interpreted in the style of 3D renderings via Magnific:

AI mashups of Star Wars x classic art

AI/ML, Illustration

Check out Min Choi’s crossbreeding of Star Wars characters with iconic paintings (click tweet below to see the thread):

Here’s a look at his process (also a thread):

Infographic magic via Firefly?

Adobe Firefly, AI/ML, Infographics

Hey, I know what you know (or quite possibly less :-)), but this demo (which for some reason includes Shaq) looks pretty cool:

From the description:

Elevate your data storytelling with #ProjectInfographIt, a game-changing solution leveraging Adobe Firefly generative AI. Simplify the infographic creation process by instantly generating design elements tailored to your key messages and data. With intuitive features for color palettes, chart types, graphics, and animations, effortlessly transform complex insights into visually stunning infographics.

Magnific style transfer is amazing

AI/ML, Illustration

It’s amazing to see what two people (?!) are able to do. Check out this video & the linked thread, as well as the tool itself.

I’m gonna have a ball going down this rabbit hole, especially for type:

Amazing: Realtime AI rendering of Photoshop

AI/ML, Illustration

I cannot tell you how deeply I hope that the Photoshop team is paying attention to developments like this…