Using AI: Helping My Kid Make a Birthday Card
My daughter was invited to a birthday party. Instead of buying a card to attach to the gift, we decided make one.
I drew her friend’s name, cut it out, and glued it to the front of the card. I was about to draw a picture of a cake and a unicorn (per my daughter’s art direction) when I had a thought - let’s use Dall-E in ChatGPT to do the art, and then glue that to the front of the card.
Here was our first prompt, and the results:
“Please create a coloring book page style image for me. Bold black line art on white background. I need to see a fancy birthday cake with a unicorn poking its head up behind the cake.”
“That was great! But it went off the page. I need the entire image to fit inside the bounds of the graphic so that I can cut it out and glue it to a birthday card. Make the cake shorter, maybe a single layer, so that the unicorn can pop up from behind it instead of beside it.”
“That was good but it was as if you took a photo of a coloring book page. I just need the line art graphic. And make it more basic, less detail please.”
“That was great! but now it’s too simple. A little more detail please.”
And this was our final design that Isabel coloured using crayons and glued to the front of the card.
I really enjoy teaching my daughter how to use AI. Here’s looking forward to 20 years from now when we try to talk about a time when we couldn’t just speak and have everything we want just appear out of nowhere in front of us.
My Future Filmography
here’s the projects I’m developing:
Tomorrow Never Knows (the Psychdelic Era) - Short film about The Beatles’ psychdelic era
GAlactic Riff - Feature film about one insane night at a hotel with a band on the road, on the verge of breaking up, when they encounter an alien cult that’s infiltrated the music industry.
Stan & Jack - Feature film that puts the silver age of comics in the 60s and 70s into a Scorsese crime thriller.
Release The Snyder Cut - Animated mini-movie about Zack Snyder and the comedy of errors that led to his Justice league.
Z. Thrillington in ‘The Grand Opening’ - animated short featuring Z. Thrillington and his scheme to get on the biggest stage of them all.
All of these projects have completed scripts. This has been my life since the pandemic impacted my youtube channel, and last year I basically did this full time.
Visualize and Manifest
It was winter and I couldn’t even get $400 together to make rent. I turned one of the walls of my bedroom into a vision board and taped up pictures of things I wanted to draw into my life on it. I vividly remember when I posted up the photo of an iMac computer. I thought about how i could not see a path from the hardship and turmoil I was in, to owning an expensive piece of machinery like that. But I was confident that I would one day have it. Now I have two.
Back when I was living in one room of a house on Bathurst Street downtown in Toronto, I wished to have a place with enough space to spread out and have multiple Projects in various stages of development around. Today I have this huge basement with my best suits on a rack like a stylist works out of here, with my scripts and stories developing on cards and post it notes all over the tables and walls of the space.
I have no idea how this movie plan comes together but I am supremely confident that in ten years I will have this awesome filmography in place.
I’m Making a Movie.
I knew a while ago, mid-pandemic, that what I was doing on youTube wasn't working any more and I needed to change my creative strategy. I reconnected with why I even started doing any of this in the first place - not just doing YouTube, but why I wanted to be an artist at all. Why I stopped showing up to my telemarketing job back in the day so that I could start selling comic books to strangers on the street. The whole reason I did any of this was because I wanted to write and direct feature films. And with no money, equipment, education, or connections, creating comic books and photocopying them at Staples was just what I could do with what I had. I was starting from the gutter to build a brand and a body of work.
I've been on many adventures and side quests in the time since then, including an incredible success on YouTube. In 2018 I finally felt like I was ready to make my move. I invested a bunch of cash into a horror short film that would be my film school as a producer. I hired industry people to work on the thing so that I could learn from watching them how to run a professional set (as opposed to the home movie style of my YouTube productions). The mistake I made was letting the creator of the IP the film was based on, write and direct the piece. He was one of the core members of my YouTube team, and I thought we were close enough that our trust was supreme. We had nothing in writing - I wanted to do this short film as an experiment, then make a formal agreement based on what we'd learned doing the short, when we do the feature. But when the film was done he put up roadblocks that delayed the release. Then, just before the pandemic hit and while I was out of commission tending to a health crisis involving my newborn daughter, the film still unreleased, he insisted that because he created the IP, the film belonged to him and he intended to carry on with the business of the film without me, even though it was my idea to do it in the first place and I had paid for everything.
All of my plans for making movies were wrapped around my YouTube crew. We were going to make the horror feature. Then we were going to play ourselves in a movie that takes place during one epic day at a comic con. Then would come what I really wanted to make, which was a stylized crime thriller that takes place in the world of publishing during the silver age of comics (1960s & 70s).
The breakdown of trust between me and my collaborators caused by the horror short's failure to launch, destroyed the team dynamic at my studio. The team quit together and made a coordinated social media post about how they're no longer associated with me or my show. I think I created a monster in that, because the other guy now had a 'professional' film as writer & director under his belt, he was now a bigger deal than me in their eyes and they went with him in the divorce, thinking they would all go make the horror movie without me. To my knowledge, a feature film based on my former friend's IP is not in active development.
It was all I could do to try to maintain my YouTube schedule during pandemic lockdowns with a new cast, while managing my daughter's health situation. By the time I realized that a new YouTube strategy was needed, I thought long and hard about my goals and refocused on making a feature film. I created a new Youtube strategy that involved releasing music, and creating music videos that would show off my skills as a director. But very recently I had the thought that even if the new strategy was successful, I was still just a guy with an idea until I've got a script complete and a pitch package in hand. Something came over me and I put other plans on hold to set about writing the first draft of my 'silver age of comics' crime thriller. I went from zero to a 112 page first draft it in a marathon 5 days. I reached out with it to the industry connections who were going to help me create a movie when the idea was to have a feature length Youtube video on my channel as a rental, alongside my weekly uploads. Their feedback was all the encouragement I needed to give myself the summer to commit full time to writing this script, and now nothing matters to me - not weekly videos or social media reach or any other creative endeavors - as much as making this movie. Whether it's an independent project made on a micro budget or a $2 million project with stars appearing in it, this movie is my new obsession the same as with my self-published comics back in the day, or my daily videos in the early days of my Youtube career.
If you are inspired to help me on my mission to uplift spirits and inspire generations through the stories I tell, you can click Join on my Youtube channel to become a monthly supporter or send a donation via paypal to sean@seanward.net
This is how it Goes for Me
I remember a long time ago I was riding the subway, feeling down about my situation, when a comforting thought occured to me. I realized that anything that I had really wanted badly enough in my life, I always got it. It's just it up till then, my focus has been on movies I wanted to own, albums I wanted to buy, and that kind of shit. I realized that I was using my super powers of manifestation all that time, and that I could simply apply that focus and determination to my artistic milestones. And I’m so blessed that whatever I want, I get it in exponential amounts. My dream for my YouTube channel was 100,000 subscribers, and It just kept going up to 4 million. So if I apply that same magical mathematics to my Movie project now, it’s as if the universe won’t stand for it to just be a feature length YouTube video. God wants to watch a major Motion Picture in 8k on a 1000-foot screen.
Screenwriting Journal May 17, 2023
Screenwriting journal: Writing the Galactic Riff screenplay was a bitch. It was really difficult. That one felt like I had a whole bunch of pieces that I was trying to attach, but the joiners didn't match perfectly so I had to really mash them together in a lot of places. The one I'm working on now is totally different. I did the three act, 40 scene, 'Save the Cat' story breakdown for it back when I first had the idea. Now writing it feels like I'm watching the movie in my head. I can make it go forwards and backwards and I just transcribe what I'm watching. And when I can't get it to go any further forward, that's how I know I don't have the beat yet. So I get on Loomo and go riding around, talking out the 'why' of the situation into Google docs until it starts turning into a description of action and dialog. Then I talk out the scene until I can't get it to go any further. Back to the computer to transcribe the note on my phone into the screenplay in Final Draft. I originally came up with this idea 5 years ago as a project for my YouTube regulars. As a period piece with a fairly large cast of characters, I put the idea on backburner when lockdowns came into place, and tried to come up with other things to work on. The idea only occurred to me last weekend that if I return to my original idea, and fictionalize it instead of directly basing it on true events, then it doesn't need to be a period piece. It mostly takes place in offices and on street corners so at that point there's no technical hurdles in the way of making it immediately. I've written 50 pages of a first draft since Monday morning, and hoping that after the movie is made I'll have a great story about how I wrote the screenplay in a week. I'm writing this as I'm taking a break to update social media, now I'm going to make a reel announcing that the Pick Up Rhymes official video is out. I'm already thinking ahead to when Z. Thrillington does the end credits song for the movie, and how dope that music video will be. And that's the update from the side of the mountain.
A drastic and dramatic rebranding of my main SWS YouTube channel
There will be a period when it's rough. We will be losing subscribers. It might even get demoralizing. But something will happen where people who haven't checked in it in a while will come check it out. Then the YouTube algorithm will start to serve it to other people who are subscribed but haven't checked in on the Sean Ward Show in a long time, and they'll click over. I'll start to see supportive comments, then the views will start going up again. Then the videos will start doing millions of views and away we go.
I’ve Got a Brand New Style that you Just Can’t Top
I'll tell you, I've got like an album and a half worth of music in the can that I've been sitting on... Partly because YouTube has been so all-consuming but also because of feeling like I need to wait until I can invest the time to make an album release a big deal.
But I realized there are a couple of things wrong with that way of thinking.
First, that's never how I've done well at anything. Any success I've had has not been a result of perfect planning. It's been a result of jumping in with no plan and no idea what I'm doing, and then drip, drip, drip until it's turned into something.
Second, that's not how life works. There's never a brilliant, shining moment when everything is perfect, and waiting for it just leads to regret. I already have tons of regret now about not getting these songs out sooner and I realized I'd regret it more in a few years if I still didn't get them out VS how is feel if I put them out when the moment wasn't perfect.
Then the final piece of the puzzle is feeling like I'm one of the world's greatest artists, but the work I've been producing, while wildly successful, hasn't been the most true reflection of my personality and creative vision for a long time now. I have enjoyed playing in the Marvel & DC sandbox and that will always be a driving passion, but I have so much more I want to say and so many more opportunities I want to explore.
Something happened while I was recording Sweet Child o' Mine that made the whole music thing click. I suddenly felt like I had a plan for how to release a series of singles, most of which are already recorded, to take me into next year. I don't know what will happen by the fifth release but it won't be nothing. And I'll definitely feel much better about getting the stuff out there than if I sit on it for another five years, lamenting that the perfect moment never came along.
Like i said in one of my old songs: "I've got a brand new style that you just can't top." I'm confident that I've got something unique that no one else is doing. All of my nerves and apprehension about putting stuff out there have everything to do with how people might perceive what I'm doing before I get to where I'm going, and nothing to do with whether or not I think I've got the goods. What it boils down to is that when I'm in my car and I want to listen to the music I've made, I'd rather pull it up on Spotify or YouTube Music than out of a Google Drive folder that no one else has access to. I'd rather be thinking about the videos I released with the song than the videos I want to one day release with it.
Allow me to Reintroduce myself
For those who are new here or ain’t been in a while, here’s what I’m working on right now:
The Sean Ward Show YouTube channel - putting out weekly content in the comic con/Superhero fan space. Comedy with coverage of Comic Cons all over North America (and soon, the world). First Viral hit in 2012, started going weekly in 2014.
The Snyder Cut: The Movie - an original Non-Fiction Graphic Novel and animated film based on the drama behind the scenes of the production of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement
Galactic Riff - my debut live action feature film as writer and director. currently writing the screenplay, loosely based on several hours of conversations with Jennie Vee (bass player in Eagles of Death Metal)
Monsterz - 300+ original characters, launching as a t-shirt Fundraiser for SickKids Foundation before featuring in a new Performance-based card game called “monster Voices” coming soon!
Inspirations Behind The Snyder Cut: the Movie
Here are some Media projects that Have inspired my animated take on the story of Zack Snyder and the making of Justice League:
Way of the HouseHusband
The original idea was to do the story of Zack Snyder and The Making of Justice League as an animated explainer video on The Sean Ward Show YouTube channel. At the same time, I was mulling over the fact that I wanted to be in production on a FEature Film by now, But those plans had been de-railed by the events I described in a Previous post, and then again by Pandemic Lockdowns. I saw the trailer for the Netflix original anime series “Way of the Househusband” and immediately recognized that we could accomlish that style of animation with what we were already doing, and my mind flooded with images and whole scenes, movements and transitions. I was on my way to bed and Instead of turning right to go up the stairs, I turned left into the living room to jot down a note. As I turned, the realization came over me that The Muse was visiting, and she & I were gonna go at it all night. I was up until about 3 in the morning writing out my version of the entire story, from Zack Snyder taking the job of directing man of Steel to the release of Zack Snyder’s justice League on HBO Max.
The Social Network
In an interview with Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher about their movie version of the founding of Facebook, they talked about the challenge of adapting such recent history. This is probably my interpretation more than it's actually what they said, but my sense of it is that they declared at the outset that they are not journalists. Their loyalty is not to the facts, their loyalty is to their story. If they have to rearrange events or combine characters to make the storytelling easier, that's okay as long as the emotional truth of the story is intact. My interest in the story of the Snyder cut is totally on this same level, where I see how it suggests this epic Shakespearean drama about power and loyalty.
Remain in love
I just finished the Chris Frantz book about his life as a musician, and his experiences as a member of Talking Heads and Tom Tom club. I found his honesty about his relationship with David Byrne to be very refreshing. I could tell there was a lot of love there, but the facts are the facts. One of the things that I'm finding a challenge is how the story requires that I portray certain people in an unflattering light. And because the story is based on things that actually happened, there is a level on which… it's like when someone got too drunk and embarrassed their self at my wedding. I told some friends about it because it was funny. But one of those people later used that against the person the story was about. And I felt like that was a betrayal of me, and my trust. It wasn't his story to tell, let alone to use as a weapon against the person. But on the other Hand...
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
What Tarantino did on Inglorious Basterds was inspired, but the story of Rick dalton and Cliff Booth is revelatory. At the end of the day he’s not telling the story of what happened in Hollywood, 1969. He’s telling the story of what happens in his imaginary alternate universe version of Hollywood 1969. Re-watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the thing that gave me permission, in a sense, to tell my alternate universe version of the story behind Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Sean Ward Saying Thank You
Hello! First thing is I need to say thank you, for two things.
1. First is thank you to everyone who sent me birthday messages. And to everyone who jumped on my birthday fundraiser for @sickkidsvs on Facebook, you are awesome. Raised over $1000 almost without trying - all I did was raise the goal amount twice because people were so awesome about contributing to it.
2. A very emotional thank you to the people who commented on my previous post, the one where I'm holding my daughter and kissing my dog. It's been a big help to be reminded that I'm not alone and there are people out there who care.
I know I keep alluding to some big changes happening in my life and business right now, I'll tell you more about that - I'm coming up on the 10th anniversary of my first viral video on YouTube and I'm feeling like a Saturday Night Live performer who knows it's time to move on. I'm putting things in place behind the scenes to keep the channel going while freeing up my time to pursue other things. Specifically, to write a screenplay for a movie I'm going to direct. I already have 3 high level industry collaborators waiting on me to get it done, and the biggest thing that came out of 2020 was the realization that I can't do it part time - this shift I'm trying to make has to be an all-or-nothing commitment. I'll have lots more to say about all of this in a video I'm doing after the holidays with the hyperbolic title "I'm Retiring from YouTube" but for right now I wanted to thank you all for the shot of confidence during this time when the future is a big mystery in a way that it hasn't been for years. In the meantime, what are you hoping Santa brings you for Christmas this year?
My Adventure at the Blood In the Snow Film Festival
I just saw a post about the Blood in the Snow film festival! Oh, the memories! Let me take you back to 2018… the official premiere of a film I produced called Quiet Room Bears. This is when me, Lee, Violet, and Makenzie were still tight. I rented a limo and everything, I wanted it to be a big night.
In fairness she got very drunk before we got to there but Makenzie got ejected from theatre. The part that didn’t make sense was that she had been ejected for making transphobic comments in the restroom. Very confused, I went outside to see what was going on and Makenzie is out on the sidewalk, her face is Niagara Falls she’s crying so hard. Before she can even start to tell me what’s happened, some rep from the festival or the theatre itself comes outside to tell us we have to move. I still don’t know what’s happened so I tell her I’m not the one that was kicked out, and I’m just trying to find out what’s going on. The rep won’t budge, and two more people come to back her up. They’re insisting we have to move, and threatening to call the police. I’m sure it didn’t help the situation that I was laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, and I told them to go ahead and call the cops.
Makenzie got me to instead leave and go to the restaurant where we would be having a combo birthday dinner for me and after party for the film premiere. Apparently that altercation was enough to make Lee decide that he didn’t want to be in business with me any more after I’d already invested over $15,000 in the film and the business at that point. Of course he didn’t just say that - He held up the release of the film and jerked me around for over a year saying he wanted more time to think about it, while continuing to collect a paycheque every week for working on my YouTube show. Only after the awkwardness over the delay in releasing the film had poisoned the whole team dynamic, and he & the rest of the team mutinied (while I was reeling from my daughter having just had a scary liver surgery at six weeks old) did he finally bring up this incident at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival as the reason why he threw up all those blocks a year previous, as if it gave him justification to take the film for free and hip check me out of the business that was my idea in the first place.
And that is the story of my one and only experience attending the Blood in the Snow Film Festival!
Growing the business, recent successes!
Successfully opening additional revenue streams and growing the business
Report from the Field: I didn't soft open my Sean Ward Show online art shop so much as set it as public and put some ads on it to analyze some data after a couple of days. I left it for about a week and was delighted to find it's been making a couple of sales a day before I even got back to tweak anything! And the same day as I made that discovery, I got the email notification that my first payment from Amazon Prime Video for sales and rentals of the horror film I produced is on its way to me! I'm working on a campaign to properly open my online art shop that I will announce with the release of my animated version of The Batman trailer, I'm getting excited and inspired in a way that makes me remember what it felt like manually printing copies of my comic books on a self serve copier for the release party happening the next night or sometimes later that same day. Thank you for your ongoing support! Subscribe to my email Newsletter for all the news first + exclusives, see the sign up form at the bottom of this page. The photo is just me with the homeys at Fan Expo in Toronto this past weekend :)
Starting Work on The Batman Trailer: Animated Version
Today it begins! Work commences on another animated trailer project after the success of the one we did for Spider-Man: No Way Home. The new Trailer for The Batman Dropped this weekend during DC Fandome, and now The Sean Ward Show is in production on an animated version of it. I’ll be documenting the whole process for a how-to video later, and adding updates and milestones to my Instagram story all week long. follow me on Instagram @the.sean.ward.show
And sign up to my email newsletter for updates and exclusives. I’ve got a big announcement coming up, and members of The Sean Ward Underground are going to get advance access to something really cool!
My Graphic Novel about The Beatles
Everyone knows that I'm a big fan of classic superheroes. But there was a time when a big part of my personal brand was being one of the world’s leading experts on The Beatles, especially where it concerns their visual art - album covers, movies, videos, cartoons, etc. I have been interviewed on TV about the Beatles many times.
Way back when I was a street artist selling my comic books on the street for a living, I created an original 64 page graphic novel about the Beatles with a focus on their middle psychedelic period. The title was “The Beatles Go Too Far”, based on the title of an experimental solo album that Paul McCartney never released. in 2013, I had an opportunity to publish a prestige format remastered edition of the book. I gave it the new title “Tomorrow Never Knows": a Comics history of the Psychedelic Beatles” and it became a cult smash in the beatles fan community. Before my YouTube channel had turned into a business, selling this book as an impulse buy at Comic Cons & Beatles fan Festivals was how I was covering my living expenses and production costs.
I’ve been hanging on to a small stash of copies to release at the perfect time. I’m so excited about the upcoming Documentary film “The Beatles: Get Back” (and just in time for Christmas), I’ve made the book available for an extremely limited time.
Tomorrow Never Knows is available right now in my brand new Shop! click over there and let me know what you think! And buy a copy of the book for the Beatlemaniac on your christmas list!
Click Here to check out my original graphic Novel “Tomorrow Never Knows”
Saying Good-Bye to my best Friend
RIP to my very good friend Lemon the Real Life Cartoon Dog. A lot of people gave a lot of love to this dog, and I really want to say thank you and share her gorgeous memory with everyone who cared about her. She went last night at home, right beside me in her bed. It’s actually sweet and poetic how it happened, just the two of us. It was sudden but peaceful. She was of a very advanced age, but she never got old. Neighbors still thought she was a puppy as recently as a few weeks ago. She came into my life when I was at my lowest point and was my faithful companion all the way to the top. I’m a wizard and she was my familiar. Like baking, an important part of how 5th dimensional manifestation magic works is the time waiting for the ingredients to do their thing in the oven. Lemon helped me learn how to slow down, not be in such a rush, and do that waiting to let the magic happen. The walks we used to go on and the adventures we got into were some of my best thinking time, she was instrumental in helping me come up with some of my best ideas. Her natural intelligence and sweet demeanor touched a lot of people’s lives - people who said they don’t like dogs loved this girl. Strangers frequently felt compelled to stop and say hello to her when they saw her wagging her tail. Kids loved her, and she was always so patient with them. We gave each other a great life and it’s my belief that she and I have been doing this for millennia, and we’ll catch back up with each other on our next trip thru the 3rd dimension. This was one of the most special relationships of my life and I’ll enjoy showing Isabel photos of her and Lemon as she grows up. My beautiful doggie, I love you Lemon.
The Biggest Blessing of my Life
My YouTube channel’s success so far has not been about creating a dedicated fan base that comes back week after week, so much as in creating content that people all over the world continue to discover and enjoy year over year. There is a delicate art to balancing more of what’s worked before with taking big chances and trying new things. Right now I’m thinking about how it’s when the focus falls too far in the direction of trying to repeat what’s worked before, it starts to drift down. But using the success of my collection of evergreen hits as cover to try new things always starts to get the ball rolling again.
Money Does Not Buy Loyalty
I‘ve been on both sides of it - I have done work for less than I was worth, and I have paid people more than they were worth, and in both circumstances I have learned the hard way: money does not buy loyalty. In both scenarios, what the other party learns is that they can take advantage of me. I’ve worked for a reduced rate thinking I was creating an opportunity for something bigger, not realizing that working for a reduced rate has flagged me as someone not worth their time, to the people who hold the keys to the opportunity i thought I was seeking. And when I’m the one paying people, I’ve learned that no amount of money can inspire people to Rise to challenges, they will always choose their own comfort or convenience. A very hard lesson came when I realized that I had a picture in my head of the group I was working with as a band, a group of people ready to walk through hell together to reach the top. But the reason the group came apart is because as soon as it got to a point where they had to put some skin in the game, they would sooner not get paid any more than have to give up something of their own. Like that Horror movie I produced - the dude would rather get nothing from me ever again, even if it might be more in the long run, than give up a little bit now for a potential huge payoff down the line. This is the sort of thing I talk about when I say “I wish I was meaner”. I Love collaboration and I love creating opportunities for people, but it often seems like life would be less stressful if I was more ruthless about seizing all opportunity for myself to the greatest degree possible. I would have less stress in my life had I never offered to create a film based on someone else’s I.P. Even then, I would have less stress right now if I had insisted on being the writer/director and had the creator of the I.P. Onboard as a consultant. That’s why my whole strategy for the next ten years is about the projects I want to make. I can’t give other people their dream until my dream is locked and secure - that’s the foundation without which the whole thing collapses. So ten years and five movies for me, and after that I can shift focus to a producer role and applying my creativity to bring up other talent.
YouTube success as Easy as 4, 3, 2, 1
4 million subscribers.
3 billion views.
2 million dollars.
1 incredible journey.
The Lawyer who sued LuLaRoe has my Pen!
Watching that LuLaRoe documentary with the wife last night and noticed that the lawyer in the final episode has my pen! I buy this pen in multiples, leave them everywhere I might be. At my studio, the only hard and fast rule is that no one but me is allowed to use this kind of pen.