DALLE-3 won't let you do aaaanything | #43
Also, still haven't figured out storyboarding in photoshop.
Hi friends!
Here's what I've been up to the past week since I published my Plan for 2024 and my first weekly update.
In this 43nd issue:
DALLE-3 is cripplingly restrictive on what images it's allowed to generate.
Storyboarding in Photoshop is tedious when I don't have my process figured out. Maybe I should do a shorter video?
Idea 1: Animated finance and business intelligence stories
Idea 2: Breaking down project files of better animators than me
Buying and selling websites
the flies in the soup: the sites I've seen don't sound interesting to me, and affiliate links kinda creep me out
So, what's next?
Let's go!!
DALLE-3 is crippingly restrictive
In the last issue I talked about how I wanted to animate a short story called The Jade Merchant. To make the settings and characters, I wanted to try using AI.
I tried using Adobe's generative fill. It kind of works, but there's no obvious way to make the characters consistent. When I say something like, "change this character's face from happy to sad," it doesn't work well.
So, I searched on YouTube and found this video about creating consistent characters.
It uses DALLE-3. I happen to have an OpenAI subscription, so I tried it. It turns out they are high strung about what you can generate.
I wanted to generate a character that was "sitting down, bored". The response I got back was:
The request to depict someone being in a state of distress might be considered sensitive or potentially uncomfortable. Our content policy aims to ensure that all generated content is respectful and considerate of various activities.
Lovely. That shook my confidence in using AI a lot.
So, I've started thinking about how else I could create assets.
Storyboarding in Photoshop
I started using Photoshop as a storyboarding tool, and so far it's been a pain.
To be clear, at least 50% of the pain is self-inflicted. I don't know the keyboard shortcuts. I don't have a good process, yet.
For example, I copy and pasted an artboard 20 times and then realized I wanted to rename them. So, I had to start all over.
There has been a lot of drag like that.
I am also realizing I bit off a lot more than I can chew. In total there are 45 shots. Having to make creative decisions about each shot and the story as a whole is a lot of mental effort.
It's fun, but I'm getting the sense that doing all that work might be a waste of time. There are a lot of unknown unknowns. So, I think it might be better to pick something shorter (with maybe <15 shots).
Then again, maybe I'm getting cold feet and making excuses. That's a part of why I'm writing this all out.
What would I make instead? If I can think of something else and immediately get started on that, I'd say it's a good idea.
If not, this is what I'm working with.
From past experience, I like making videos when the following things are true:
I'll be proud of the video. It looks pretty, professional, etc. I'd show it to my friends.
It will be very useful to at least one person.
I learn something by making it. Maybe a new animation technique. Or maybe something from researching the video itself.
Here are two ideas I have that fit the above bullets (but might not be shorter):
Idea 1: Animated finance and business intelligence stories
I watched this Alex Hormozi video a few weeks ago.
I loved the content.
I'm sold on why all these terms are important (e.g. Lifetime Gross Profit, Customer Acquisition Cost).
My problem is that it's still hard to parse and it doesn't stick. From an animation point of view, Alex's videos are pretty. But from a teaching point of view, they could be better.
If I wanted to make that better video for myself, I'd add in more diagrams and package it into a story.
For example, let's say I wanted to understand and remember Customer Acquisition Cost. We'll call it CAC.
My goal would be to find a story that mentioned CAC a bunch of times. Ideally from as many angles as possible.
I'd search through episodes of business podcasts, interviews, maybe biographies.
I'd use one or more clips as the script for the video, cleaning them up as needed.
Then I'd add animations to break down the complicated parts.
Is that shorter than my current project? Probably not. lol.
But, I could see myself making videos in that format hundreds of times. So, any mistakes I make, I can correct along the way.
I'm not sure I can see myself animating parables like The Jade Merchant hundreds of times.
In fact, now that I've written this all out, I think that's the reason for my cold feet.
Idea 2: Breaking down project files of better animators than me
After the DALLE-3 trouble, I realized I might need to make my own characters.
I don't know how to make characters, and even if I did, it sounds like a lot of work.
While thinking about this problem, I was on LinkedIn when I saw this post:
The horse was simple but pretty. It looked easy to make in little time. I figured if I learned how to do that, I could make my characters that way.
At the same time, his tutorial on LinkedIn and YouTube was less clear than I hoped it would be.
I loved the idea of
going through his project file,
learning how to do it, and then
making my own version of his video tutorial.
It would be primarily for myself so if I got out of practice, I could rewatch the video. But I also think it could be very useful for others.
It's also a format I could see myself making hundreds of videos for.
So, I asked him on LinkedIn if he would be okay with me making tutorials out of his project files. He seems cool with it.
Buying and selling websites
For context, I also bought a course on flipping websites a month ago.
I went into more depth on why I like the idea here, but in summary:
I could buy a website that's making e.g. $1,000 a month, and then
add some pages that target certain keywords,
switch the ad network around,
add or change affiliate links, and/or
clean up the site (fix broken links, make it prettier, make it more usable, make it load faster)
which could add $100-$500 a month in revenue to the site.
Here's what's cool:
The way a website is typically valued is 30-40 times its monthly revenue.
So if I bought a site that makes $1,000 a month for $35,000 and added $300 in monthly revenue, I could sell it for $35,000 + (35 * 300) = $45,500.
The turn-around (buying, growing, and then selling) for the site could be 6-12 months. But theoretically, I could make $15,000 for maybe a few weeks of work, total.
And this scales beautifully. The better I get at it, the quicker I can do it, the more confident I become, the bigger deals I can do.
Plus I already have most of the skillset required to do this. Writing content, building websites, SEO.
So, that's why I found it attractive enough to check it out.
The flies in the soup
The two road blocks I ran into on this journey were:
I found myself uninterested in the sites I've seen
I recoil at the general vibe of affiliate sites and products for sale
For example, here are two sites on sale right now on motioninvest.com:
I could not care less about loyalty card programs nor smart locks.
And out of the hundreds of sites I've checked out so far, I can't see myself writing new content for any of them.
It's possible I'm being too picky, but I'm going down this journey because I want to enjoy my work. So I feel pretty dignified in being this picky.
That being said, it's also possible that, maybe with expertise and research, I would enjoy writing that kind of content.
But then again, I'm flashing back to English class, when I wrote essays about books I didn't care about.
I don't know.
Also, I'm not enthused by the idea of trying to sell stuff I haven't tried myself and am willing to recommend to a friend.
It's not obvious to me that I can
find a site about content I care to write about, AND
find products to recommend that I've tried myself and feel good recommending to others
I probably could, but it sounds *hard* - perhaps not worth it? I don't know, still think about it.
So, what's next?
I was hoping I had a clear answer by the time I got to this point, but, alas.
I like the websites idea because there's a clear path to revenue.
I like the animation ideas because they sound more interesting. But that's very contingent on those 3 things I mentioned:
I'm proud of the video, I think it's useful to people, I learn something making it.
It's not obvious to me that, if the entrepreneurial video route didn't work out, that I could get a job making videos with those 3 qualities.
I guess even if it's not obvious to me, it's still probably possible if I kept at it.
So let's say I chose the video route. Which idea should I go with? The animation breakdown or the biz intel stories?
Well, doing at least the breakdown of the horse would teach me how to make characters. That would help with whichever videos I made from that point on.
So I guess it makes sense to do that as a next step.
Okay, see y'all next time!
I’m doing affiliate marketing on YouTube in a niche that does interest me; and I still hate doing it. It feels like I’m making content that does nothing for the world, although people do watch and it does make money. So I try to think of it as a day job that will eventually fund my more creative work. But because the creative work lights me up and the affiliate channel does not, I don’t produce enough marketing content for it to grow quickly enough.