Art & Inspiration Zeltango

Lets get really crazy...

Prompt: Imagine the sun hanging low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the sprawling sands of some wild, sun-soaked beach. Ed Roth, that maverick of creativity, sits there, his wild hair tangled like a psychedelic tornado, his eyes as red as the devil's own tail. He's got his trusty pencil in one hand and a sketch pad in the other, but what's truly fueling his artistic frenzy? It's the devil's lettuce, my friends, the kind bud, the green dream.

As the salty sea breeze tangles with the fragrant smoke of his joint, Roth's mind takes flight on a rocketship of inspiration. He ain't just drawing, he's summoning forth visions from the outer fringes of reality itself. His pencil dances across the page, weaving together a tapestry of chaos and color. It's like the very essence of the '60s is channeling through him, a psychedelic symphony in every stroke.

What does it look like?



Prompt: Same thing only instead of an illustration, I want a photograph...



Prompt: That's dope, but too flashy for Ed's client. He wants something with less colors and maybe something more at home on the street than the beach. What you got?

 

The more Roth shit you ask for, the closer it gets...

 

looks like what you would get if you asked for "a dune buggy from outer space"

 

So, I've played with this thing for about 24 hours now and have gotten better at manipulating it. One of the things I've noticed is that the prompts really need to be thoughtful - one wrong word can send the AI down a rabbit hole of uselessness and you sort of have to start the conversation all over at the point.

Given that, I decided to try something serious in lea of all the bullshit cars I've created at this point.

What if Ford had decided to produce a sports car in 1953 to compete with the Corvette? I figure they would have looked to Europe for inspiration as they were dominant at the time. Plus, Ford had a relationship with AC Bristol as early as 1949 and we know they looked to them in the 1960's.... So that direction makes sense as does the 1950 Bristol ACE as a starting point of sorts.

I also figured Ford would have challenged someone like Vince Gardner with the design work. And we have an early example of his work from 1950 with the Vega.

So, throw all of this together along with images of the ACE and the Vega along with some ideas of wheelbase (102") as well as a cowl height tall enough to support a y-block... It's a little early for a y-block, but a flathead didn't make sense to me and I didn't want to make the same mistake as GM with a straight 6.

What are we left with? A cute little roadster that's probably far too heavy for serious racing... But man, it's handsome... I love the rear quarters and the long hood.

I spent about an hour doing this... another hour or two and I'm confident you could end up with something believable as a concept car. Smart people could ascertain AI involvement, but still... Sort of a proof of concept.

 

Prototype tooling from conventional manufacturing can take months where as Digital Sheet Forming can prototype in mere minutes.

I see a huge world market for this.

 

You are probably right... cuz Ford didn't really make a focused sports car until 2005 or so... Conservative.

But what if Ford had hired Pininfarina to style the thunderbird platform in 1955?



Edit: Don't ask me what's going on with those fuzzy headlights and strange door reveals...

In my opinion, the Corvette was an insincere attempt at a sports car by a company that didn't really support the idea of producing one to begin with. Duntov did the best he could with the restrictions he had on the C1.... and the car continuously improved.

The Thunderbird was never gonna be a sports car. It was a reaction...

***

My thought here was, "What if Ford really wanted to build a sport purpose car?" Like, sincerely... honest-to-god, we want to build a car that can carry momentum on the road and the track. What would they build?

In this context, I think it was time worth while as it made me really work with AI within my own limitations and I learned a lot. For instance, I found AI to be mind blowing... Really amazing... But at the same time, still a bit of a novelty.

The headlights on the 1953 Ford sports car concept are wrong to me. The shape is off and they are located a little too low... As it stands, I can't tell AI to raise them, give them a shape more inspired by the 1953 Ford design language, etc... I'm just sort of stuck with them as they are or I have to go through hundreds of iterations until I luck out and AI gets it right.

It's not a tool for non artists to bring the image in their head to life... YET. Right now, at least on the creative side of things, it feels more like a tool creatives can use for inspiration... or to get them thinking... or to make them feel really insecure about the future.

I do think it's pretty obvious that AI is gonna change the world eventually. I always thought technology would hit labor first... You know, robots doing anything and everything physical in the job market. Now, I'm not so sure... Feels like we are way closer to technology half-assing creativity and mastering black and white mental tasks than we are robots painting houses and fixing plumbing issues...

All that being said, do I think AI will replace a fine artist? I think art is really emotional and part of art is knowing who created it and feeling the pain it took to create it... blood, sweat, sacrifice... all that shit... I can't imagine getting those same emotional feelings IF I know it was artificial.