Outbound Flight | A Visual Novel/Audiobook Project (Chapter 1 Released)

Launch of the “Outbound Flight” Visual Novel Project

Hello, I am announcing the commencement of an ambitious new visual novel project, starring the 2006 EU novel from Timothy Zahn, “Outbound Flight”. This immersive storytelling experience is a test project in the visual novel genre, blending cutting-edge AI imagery with a captivating audio narrative that explores the beloved story in a new format.

About the Project

This is a labor of love project that stems from my passion for both the EU as well as trying to innovate and push the limits of modern-day storytelling. Essentially, this is a detailed adaptation of the novel with a full cast of voiced characters, a narrator, sound effects/tracks, and accompanying AI imagery. Using DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT scripts, I have been able to create (mostly) consistent character and ship “profiles” and go line by line through the novel, generating an image for each and every sentence. I began to experiment with animating some of the images as well, so feedback on that would be appreciated. Yes, things get a little wonky at times, even the best AI image generation software is going to struggle with the complexity of the tasks I am feeding it. Because I am essentially writing a whole paragraph prompt for each sentence of the novel, sometimes the technology is limited. However, everything is consistent enough to bring you into the moment for a unique experience, and as I rewatch it, I have a much easier time picturing things as if they were being brought to life. With the sentence-by-sentence images, I have also manually added soundtracks, audio effects, and a unique cast of voiced characters for an authentic “audiobook” experience. If you are someone who struggles to focus while reading or just want to experience this novel from a new perspective, maybe give this a shot. At the end of the day, this project is certainly an experiment, and in the first chapter, you can see the various techniques that evolved as I tried to nail things down. Interested to hear if anyone thinks it’s a fun watch, but I can confidently say I had a lot of fun letting the creativity flow as I was making it. It’s a fun time to bring something you love to life in a new way!

Key Features

1. Consistent AI Imagery: Utilizing advanced rendering techniques, my aim was to deliver visuals that bring Zahn’s characters and universe to life. Every scene, from the rustic cockpit of the Bargain Hunter to the haunting beauty of distant star systems, is crafted with meticulous detail in the prompt generation. When things got really wonky, I’d take parts of various generations and combine them in Photoshop to make the scene I wanted. No, not every scene is perfect without glitches, it would take an eternity to get that right… But imagine this more like a concept art sketch as you planned the movie rather than the movie itself. Examples below:

Qennto, Maris, and Car’das evade Progga’s ambush in space

Maris glares at the distant, unfamiliar set of stars as they venture beyond known space

Progga the Hutt contacts the crew with his demands

The Bargain Hunter is caught in the Chiss “Connor Net” attack

Qennto and Maris prepare to welcome their Chiss boarders into their disabled ship

2. Rich Audio Narrative: I attempted to create a professional audiobook-style production, similar to what you’d get when Star Wars itself releases one. Yes, my voice cast is entirely custom-created AI voices as well, so through dynamic dialogues generated through Eleven Labs Speech-to-Speech synthesis, AI-generated SFX, and some Star Wars music backdrops from the EU, I tried my hardest to bring emotionally charged moments to life and ensure that listeners are having an immersive experience.

3. Faithful Adaptation: I first began creating this only using dialogue and events from the novel, and cutting out the normal “novel” descriptive sentences, but it felt very shallow and like I was doing a huge disservice to Zahn’s work. Even though it took 10x the amount of effort, I decided to move forward with a perfect one-to-one adaptation of the novel’s text so that everything is perfectly represented. Of course, I have to take personal creative liberties on the appearance of the characters, environments, and ship designs, but I did everything through the text provided in the book. Unfortunately (actually, probably very fortunately and for a great reason), DALL-E 3 has some random copyright restrictions, so sometimes it will refuse tasks that it believes are Star Wars intellectual property. “Outbound Flight” lends itself well to this however as it is such a unique story and setting, it doesn’t have a ton of copyrighted designs that are very classically Star Wars.

Goals

The goal was to push the limits of 2024 commercial AI technology to see what can be accomplished. It is also a test of my own skills in programming, storytelling, and creativity. A seamless blend of storytelling and visual artistry purely through AI is not yet possible, but this is a small glimpse at what the future could deliver. I hope I can transport a few watchers into the story of this novel in a new and enjoyable way. One day, AI will be able to take an entire novel and generate a seamless “movie-like” experience… It is a future that is both exciting and worrying. But one thing is for sure, the technology is here to stay. It’s going to revolutionize art, music, games, movies, etc. I know there are varying opinions of the application of AI when combining someone else’s arts, but to me, what I attempted here does not take anything away from Zahn/Star Wars and I hope it drives people to engage with more material. At the end of the day, ALL credit goes to Timothy Zahn and the original Lucasfilm team who made this possible.

Video Preview

CHAPTER 1 COMPLETED (18 minutes 32 seconds)
Chapter 2 In Production

Feel free to leave any and all feedback about the project itself. I would like this thread to stay on topic about the “Star Wars Fan Edits or Other Projects” aspect rather than on AI itself. That type of conversation can happen in other areas of the website or in DMs if you are interested. If there is feedback on my particular application of AI to the story or tips for improvement, etc, that is perfectly fine! DM me if you’re interested in viewing it in full.

We’ve entered the third generation of fanediting, folks!