AI Resurrects Late Manga Artist Osamu Tezuka, Publishes New Work to Continue His Legend
Osamu Tezuka, a Japanese cartoonist known as the God of Comics, has passed away for 30 years and has become a permanent memory for many people. Last year, Japanese semiconductor company Kioxia launched a project "TEZUKA2020" to use artificial intelligence technology to draw comics in the style of Osamu Tezuka, hoping to continue his work.
If manga artist Osamu Tezuka were still alive, what kind of future would he depict in his comics? Could AI help him realize it?
February 27,The first part of the new manga "Paidon" by the late Osamu Tezuka, designed and drawn by AI, was published in the manga magazine "Morning".
How does this comic designed and drawn by AI reflect the style of Osamu Tezuka? Is it close enough to the charm of Tezuka's works?
Tribute to the God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka, known as the God of Comics, is the originator of modern Japanese comics.Someone described him like this: Osamu Tezuka is to Japan as Caesar is to Rome.
"Astro Boy", which he created when he was 24, caused a sensation in Japan, and "Phoenix Bird", which he created when he was 26, is still widely regarded as the highest masterpiece of the Japanese comics industry.
In October 2019, Japan's Toshiba Memory Company Kioxia launched a 「TEZUKA2020」projects aimed atChallenge Osamu Tezuka to create a new manga in his honor through collaboration between AI and humans.
In Kioxia's view, Osamu Tezuka's comics created images beyond imagination, and they want to record the memories he left for people, memories that have inspired everyone's imagination of the future.
On February 26 of this year, Kioxia held a press conference to announce that the new comics had been completed and introduced the specific content of the project.
AI continues to write the future world of Osamu Tezuka
The name of this new comic is "Paidon".The theme of the work is still the future, which Osamu Tezuka has always been concerned about.
The new work tells the story of a homeless philosopher Paidon in Japan in 2030 who lost his memory and worked with the robot bird Apollo to solve a series of criminal cases.
AI technology restores Tezuka Osamu's works by learning the style and ideas of Tezuka Osamu's works, and creates new comic works based on this.
According to the introduction,This comic analyzes 65 works of Osamu Tezuka.These include classics such as "Firebird" and "Black Jack".
By analyzing his work, the AI generated character designs and basic storylines.The protagonist of the new comic was generated by AI after learning 6,000 character images.Professional creators then add elements such as costumes and dialogue to complete the work.
Tezuka's son and video creator Makoto Tezuka also contributed to the project.
"I always feel sad when fans of Osamu Tezuka say they can no longer enjoy his new works," he said at a news conference in Tokyo. The AI created his new creation... This is exactly the (technologically advanced) world depicted in Tezuka's manga."
"I hope this technology will be used to train young manga artists and spread the unique culture of Japanese manga around the world."
The technology behind achieving “high imitation”
In addition to Kioxia's "TEZUKA2020" project team, the main members of the "TEZUKA2020" project include Professor Satoshi Kurihara, a professor of artificial intelligence and computing at Keio University, who is mainly responsible for the AI part.
At the project launch conference, Professor Kurihara introduced the specific implementation details of the project.
They first manually digitized 29 items of data from 65 major feature films of Tezuka Osamu's manga and conducted field of view and background analysis. In addition, they converted 131 short stories into data by placing them into 13-stage scene structure templates.
Then,About 130 plots were created using ASBS (Automatic Scene Building System) developed by students in Kurihara's lab.When creating the picture, they would add a parameter that is unique to Tezuka Osamu to make the picture look more like his work. On this basis, Tezuka Shin further proposed ideas and created the script.
For character drawings, they used StyleGANThe style model is based on NVIDIA's real-life face learning model,and technology developed by Future University, which extracted thousands of images of various characters by Osamu Tezuka from the comics and then generated them through transfer learning.
It seems that AI has put a lot of effort into imitating Osamu Tezuka.
The release of "Paidon" brings good news to Japan, which is in the midst of the recent epidemic. However, some people think that by simply learning from his past works, can the new comics created retain some of Osamu Fuzuka's charm?
At present, we know that there are endless works of art created by AI, but can they reach the true level of those great gods?
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