Change the Game With AI
Part 1 – Art and Design

AI generated art is revolutionizing the game design process in a multitude of ways. Game designers are using AI design tools to make the creative process more efficient and ultimately more creative.  AI art tools allow designers to be more creative by taking on generic and low skilled tasks from resizing images to removing unwanted items, leaving the humans to focus on the more valuable design work. AI design tools also help designers explore the options, mix up their images, and free their imaginations. The tools themselves allow designers to make major changes to their designs, taking them to the next level. In a world as creative as games design, these tools are invaluable. They add originality, flair, and excitement to standard images, and support game designers as they reach for new design inspiration. In this blog, the first in a series of articles exploring how AI design tools are revolutionizing design, we look at three AI generated art tools and what they offer to games designers.

Surprise! It’s AI generated art

Before we look at some AI tools available, we’d like to introduce you to some AI generated art that took the design world by storm – the works of Nikolay Ironov.  Nikolay Ironov is the name given to an AI system used by Russian creative agency “Art. Lebedev” Studio to design creatives for their clients. Over the course of one year, Nikolay Ironov created more than 20 logos, and none of the agency’s clients figured it out before the Studio revealed their secret. Nikolay Ironov is a neural network that was trained with hand-drawn scalable vector graphics (SVG) icons covering different design themes and styles. It was then able to combine this training with analysis of input text about the company (for example the About Us page of their website), and other brand materials to identify the words it wanted to turn into images. The results were then created using algorithms which scaled, smoothed, and simplified the designs, and created a set of logo options for the client. The human designers then chose which options to put forward to the clients – who loved them all. But while “Art. Lebedev” Studio’s experiments with Nikolay Ironov were successful, they are also definitely not the norm for designers. That’s why we look at three great design tools that allow you to use AI generated art in your designs.

Game Changing AI Design Tools

Artbreeder

Artbreeder invites you to ‘extend your imagination’, and that is certainly what you will do. The Artbreeder platform lets you combine images and manipulate them using machine learning to create entirely new images that have never been seen before. Artbreeder allows you to create five styles of image – portraits (new characters), landscapes, album covers, anime, and totally random general images. For example, use the landscapes neural network to create new, imaginative, or totally different landscapes. From a starting point of a cityscape, you could end up with a fantasy mountainous landscape, or a floating, flying city worthy of any game scene. The different tools within Artbreeder (random, mix-images, and anime) will transform the starting landscape into something totally new.  Cross breed images to create totally new scenes that have never been seen before. Explore and discover new worlds, invent new characters, and entertain your users. Collaborate with other artists on the platform, and create your masterpieces with the click of a button. Shape the future of your games – mix previous levels to create new levels that have a familiar yet different feel, modify characters as they progress through the game, or get inspiration for new games, characters, designs, and more.

Adobe Sensei

Adobe Sensei uses AI to support designers, taking care of boring, mundane tasks from searching for suitable images to editing out unwanted features from an image, and ultimately allowing them to create incredible experiences for your audience. It makes the creative process faster and more intuitive. Adobe Sensei takes time-consuming tasks and makes them engaging, simple, and efficient. Adobe Sensei enhances other Adobe products to take them to the next level. For example Sky Replacement is a new feature that lets you select the sky in any image, and replace it with a different sky, changing the mood, and creating a whole new scene.  Content-Aware uses Sensei to quickly manipulate images and video frames. Content Aware removes unwanted details, blending the removed section with the rest of the frame, and creating a seamless new image, which is then applied to every frame throughout the video. This is achieved with minimal human input, removing a time-consuming, mundane task, and allowing the designer to move on to their next creation. For game designers, Adobe Sensei is an epic game changer. Combine Sensei with other Adobe products (from Photoshop to After Effects), to create new-level game assets and marketing materials faster than ever before.

NightCafe Creator

NightCafe Creator uses AI to enable you to reimagine your images any way you choose. With NightCafe Creator, any photo can become a Van Gogh, Picasso, or even Munch! You can mix styles to create something truly unique – the styles are endless, and the resulting images are totally yours. NightCafe Creator’s neural networks are trained to understand various output styles, and how to analyse input images in order to transfer the chosen style onto the original image. When you upload an image to the NightCafe app, the algorithm will simply recreate the image in the new style. Unique creation tools allow you to mix styles, and the tools for power users enable you to duplicate and tweak creations, and manipulate the same input image into several different styles. NightCreator is the perfect app for creating marketing materials for your games. With just a few clicks of a button you can stylise your games stills into engaging marketing materials that will talk to your audience. Try NightCafe now – it’s free, so you have nothing to lose, and a whole lot to gain.