Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Image | Tagged: ai, Robo9000, spawn, Spawnuary, todd mcfarlane

Todd McFarlane's Spawn Cover Contest Was Won By AI User Robot9000

At the beginning of the year, Todd McFarlane's "Spawnuary", challenged artists to submit spec cover artwork for his line of Spawn comics.

Published Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:28:09 -0500

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Sat, 27 Apr 2024 07:54:33 -0500

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Article Summary

Todd McFarlane's "Spawnuary" contest for Spawn comic covers ends with an AI twist.
Artist Luis Ruiz, aka @robot9000, wins with work that raises AI art questions.
Images in question were found in Ruiz's MidJourney gallery, created using prompts.
No official response yet from McFarlane or Ruiz on the AI-generated artwork issue.

At the beginning of the year, Bleeding Cool reported on Todd McFarlane's new promotion, "Spawnuary", in which he challenged artists to submit speculative cover artwork for his line of Spawn-related comic books. At the end of the month, Todd McFarlane stated he would choose his favourites and feature them as variant covers on the issues of his published comics. Obviously, as it's a Spawn promotion, it was late. But then the results have been announced. And… well, you can guess what's coming.

One of the winners, Luis Ruiz, using the name robot9000 on Instagram, is a regular AI prompt writer and regularly posts pictures created using AI, including Gunslinger Spawn, to which he credits MidJourney as well as art programmes Procreate, Midjourney, Photoshop, and Maya. Despite this, the images that were created for the Spawn cover contest each of which was described as "Look Ma, No AI versions" and states "I'm a fanboy and I've always been one. This is my entry and I hope you all dig it!Luis Ruiz aka @robot9000 So I guess, my 5 years of drawing class did serve me well, huh???!"

This may have been necessary to say as the rules were quite explicit.

However, there appear to be versions of those images on his Midjourney gallery, with prompts for the artist Ashley Wood, who has worked on a lot of Spawn comic books. And literally asking for an award-winning design. Well, he certainly got them. I signed up to MidJourney for a month to access Robot9000's Midjourney gallery, with these entries for late January. The deadline for the Week 4 Villain cover was the 28th of January. These were generated using Ashley Wood artwork on the 23rd of January.

Clicking on individual images gives the following.

I contacted Todd McFarlane last week but have received no reply. We have also received no reply from Luis Ruiz. We would be happy to represent any involved parties over what went down here,

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