AI Pokémon Cards 1

AI Base, Human Polish

AI is controversial, especially when it pertains to the creative process… but I believe it will become a necessary tool for creatives to understand, at the very least. I just wanted to see where AI was at, so the raw images came from Bing Image Creator and I edited them and created the cards.

Utilizing AI can certainly limit creativity if you let it, but my hope is that people will always crave and value a human touch when it comes to art/design.

Grass Type Pokémon

Bulbasaur was one of the first Pokémon I tested to see if this was going to be possible. I was stunned by the result. It’s scary how detailed the images are, with their varying styles, poses, depth of field, etc. 

Water Type Pokémon

Bing Image Creator seems to handle water quite well, which is something I didn’t expect. There are probably more varying visual styles used in this set than the rest, but I attempted to ensure they still felt like a cohesive group.

I also thought the poses in this set were super impressive. I could see how cranking out a ton of images in different poses to get an idea for what you were going to create could be helpful for artists.

Psychic Type Pokémon

No doubt Mr. Mime & Jynx were the trickiest ones for the tool to generate. As many of us know, AI has notoriously had trouble with fingers, toes and faces. These two were no different, but I still think they turned out pretty good… even if they took 50+ iterations and some tweaking on my part.

I did really like the way Gastly & Drowzee came out in this set! The swirls of smoke/magic are cool looking!

Successful First Attempt

In a project like this, I was able to generate several dozen iterations of each character, allowing me to figure out the best poses, expressions and backdrops in seconds. If this was a production project, I could see using all these as a jumping off point… but definitely not for final versions.