Boredom can be a powerful catalyst. For some, it might inspire the creation of an epic new story spanning galaxies in search of something to do. For others, perhaps it causes a prolonged brain fart where thoughts are meaningless and time is an illusion. It’s truly difficult to tell which side of this spectrum these particular folks in the visual effects industry fall into, but they’ve certainly created something worthy of morbid, scientific curiosity for fans ofThe Avengersand other pop culture icons.
Corridor Digital, whom many may remember as the team who may haveoutdone Disney with a Luke Skywalker Deepfake, is at it yet again with a bizarrely fascinating new project that’s sure to inspire plenty of dreams tonight. Either as a fun project or because humanity has been abandoned, they decided to take a bunch of their favorite cartoon and video game characters (plusThe Avengers' Thanos) and turn them into almost disturbingly realistic recreations. Who says creativity is dead? Though some may now say it should be.
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But this isn’t the average photo-realistic fan art that was painstakingly put together stroke by stroke. In fact, it’s not even technically artwork at all (at least, depending on one’s preferred definition). The Corridor Crew actually pulled this off entirely using artificial intelligence, which frankly might sound like a bit of a cheat. But it managed to create some seriously surreal portraits, and the best part is that anybody can use it.
They really ran the gamut of characters when picking out their experimental subjects for this one. Giving each team member their own chance to shine, the object of Corridor’s little activity was to stump everyone else with their A.I.-generated “creations.” Some were rather simple, like a picture ofGeralt fromThe Witcher 3churning out an image that could easily be a real person. There’s also the interesting decision to plug in Norman Reedus' character fromDeath Strandingand ultimately receive… Norman Reedus again.
But where the activity really took off was when ideas went truly off the rails. Miguel from Pixar’sCocoand the collector fromToy Story 2may have resulted in some bizarre outcomes, but then some real bangers came into play. Thanos from theAvengersfilms turned into a purple pawn shop owner, whileKaneda from the anime movieAkirawas a grumpy kid with an unfortunate haircut (ok, so maybe not that far off from the original). But the true masterpiece may be what happened when they used the Statue of Liberty as their subject. It’s a result that has to be seen to even properly describe.
As mentioned before, the coolest part about this often fun and occasionally terrifying technology is that anybody can use it. The end of the video even includes a short tutorial on how to do just that. So get out there and show the world whatthe inviting cast ofThe Owl Housewould look like as humanoid monstrosities. Humanity must know.
