OUR STORY PROCESS

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Almost 2 years before the release of Chat GPT I played with auto-complete text ai. Stories are created when a simple prompt is put into an A.I. Story Generator, then 'iterations are tweaked', prose are polished and art is added.

 

Iteration: in this case iteration is... reinserting A.I. generated text up to a chosen point, allowing Story-Bot to revise the next paragraph. It's a hit and miss process, alot of what the A.I. generates is... to put nicely... garbage.

 

Initially, the inside cover of each book indicated the number of iterations used to create the raw story. Zero iterations means that Story-Bot nailed it. Anything over 3 iterations often leads to the story being scrapped, then the original prompt reinserted.

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Following the first batch the iteration number was removed due to an adjustment in the editing process (info below).

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For reasons only the computer knows, some prompts work far better than others. Mundane and off-the-cuff prompts often have amazing results while crafted prompts fall flat. And for some reason the A.I. seems to think Mr Chuckles is a Cat... so it tends to cough up a heap of 'cat-themed' nonsense. And lately it thinks Mr Chuckles is a dog. 🤷

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Story Editing: While the raw A.I. output needs some TLC, no story elements are fabricated by a human (eg. phrases, sentences, concepts). Most narrative tweaks are limited to changing personal pronouns, truncating phrases and removing 'fiiller text' generated by the A.I... Some characters are renamed to fit with LSL cast members, while others like 'Mr Deep' and 'Little Rhino' are pure A.I. surprises.

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Authentic A.I. output is the aim, my hope was to take what the system offered then interpret it. But consistent quality of the episodes is essential. So more recent books have begun to cherry-pick excerpts from iterations, allowing for a more linear logic and punchline. I feel I've got a fair code of conduct that stays true to the intent that, nothing beyond the initial prompt is a human fabrication.

 

In all honesty, during review, if someone pitches a line rewrite that works really well, it's easy to ignore it and get the A.I. to come up with something better.

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I see this series as a way to play with the opportunities of A.I. narrative, so I feel it's important to let the A.I. to tell its own story, with me being just an interpreter.

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Art: It becomes a sort of 'leap of faith' - where the highly subjective story is interpreted visually for, hopefully, comedic effect. This is where the play between what is written, what is seen and how the A.I. speaks adds a new level of surprise, unease, mystery and/or suspense. 

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New characters, props, Mr Chuckles variants and locations are par for the course at this point.

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The Narrator: Story-bot is another A.I. program that chooses the inflection and rythmn of the story.

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Video Editing: Minimal music and embellishments are added and the end products are the insane mini masterpieces you've been chuckling along with.

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