Family Guy It premiered in 1999 on Fox and since then it has become an icon of our popular culture. The routine and animated adventures of Peter, Lois, Chris, Megan, Stewie and the dog Brian have been with us for no less than 400 episodes, providing enormous amounts of humor in each scene. Together with The Simpsons, we could say that the sitcom An animated film created by Seth MacFarlane changed the television scene in the 2000s, both for its parodies and for its references to the current world.
Now, in 2023, many years after its cancellation, Family Guy has returned, but this time in the flesh. An Artificial Intelligence has turned the animated series into a live action eighties, in the purest sitcom style of the time. Although only the intro, the opening scene of the series, has been published, we have been able to see what their mythical characters would be like if they were real. And the result is simply fascinating.
The creator of such a digital feat is YouTube user Lyrical Realms and has used MidJourney to perform the conversion. “All the images come directly from Midjourney, but they were not created using only the text prompts, it was a combination of using existing images and using prompts as well,” the video’s author recounted in this article. He also tells that he used Photoshop to remove foreign objects or separate the layers and give a 3D-like effect.
During his feat, he had to discard a few images that had clear imperfections, such as one where Peter is not wearing glasses or one where he is too tall compared to Lois. “The engineering part was definitely the hardest part, I had to generate an insane amount of images before it started to see the light of day and I finally managed to generate the kind of look I was looking for (about 1,500 images). Once the first character (Peter) was generated, the rest was a bit easier. The hardest to spawn were Cleveland and Quagmire,” he explains.
The author tells that it took about five days entire in carrying out the project, since while the AI generated all those images it could not continue and it continually delayed it. Despite joining YouTube just a month ago, Lyrical Realms already has over 13,000 subscribers on the platform and their video of Family Guy It has almost 5 million views.
The audiovisual piece has interesting details. It is faithful to the original material.: Peter Griffin is overweight, wearing a white shirt, round glasses and green pants, while his wife, Lois Griffin, has her typical red haircut. Some of the more unusual imaginations are baby Stewie Griffin (who doesn’t have a rugby ball head) and dog Brian Griffin (who is a real dog here).
In the past, there have been live TV series specials where viewers could see the cast in the flesh. In fact, a film about Family Guy for a long time. MacFarlane confirmed that there were still plans for her, although there are clear challenges in making real versions of some characters. In particular, the shape of Stewie’s head and vocabulary would make it difficult to imagine him live.
In fact, it is what has happened to Lyrical Realms when making such an epic conversion. Although you have tried to give it a looks as realistic as possible, the result has been a bit misshapen in some cases. In Peter and Louis Griffin it is quite noticeable. And in others like Glenn Quagmire or Stewe, who just gave more reason to be deformedhere they seem more realistic, in a result that does not quite come together.
Luckily for the netizens, Family Guy It has not been the only series from our childhood that has been recreated with artificial intelligence. As Ryan Broderick shows us in this Twitter postthere are already examples of The Simpson either Scooby Doo, even though their quality and similarities leave something to be desired.
Images: Lyrical Realms (generated by AI MidJourney)