I posted the “Emotional Corndog” Bowl Game story today, and I wanted to share some additional fun stuff for those who are interested. If you have any comments or questions, leave them below!

Also, if you scroll down to the bottom you’ll see a one-panel image of Craig that should be a high resolution. So you can click on it and save it to your device in case you want to use it in the future!

Coming Up With The Story

This one was more difficult than usual because the action statement was so open-ended. “Facing a dilemma.” That could go so many ways!

My first idea was that the corndog would be involved in a soap-opera type of show. But that seemed too focused on “drama,” as opposed to “emotion.” The word I pulled was “emotional,” so I wanted to lean into that.

My second idea was that the corndog falls in love with a packet of ketchup, but has to break up with a packet of mustard before he can be with the ketchup. That might have worked, but for some reason, I wasn’t totally feeling it.

Ultimately, I really wanted his dilemma to be tied to him being emotional. The story wasn’t totally coming to me, so I decided to switch gears: Instead of thinking, I started sketching. Here are my early sketches. You can see I was focused on exploring the corndog and his various emotions. I was also making some story notes.

I find that sometimes when I start sketching, the character begins to take over. I get a sense of who the character is and what they would do, and the story unfolds from there. That’s what happened here with Craig.

How Would AI Handle This?

OK, so you saw my version of the corndog story. Just for fun, I wanted to see what artificial intelligence would do. So I asked the AI program ChatGPT to “create a story about an emotional corndog facing a dilemma.” I also asked Dall-E (an artificial intelligence image generator) to create a picture.

Here’s the AI-generated picture: 

Here’s the AI-generated story. (Next time I’ll ask for a shorter story, but I thought this one was interesting…) 

Once upon a time, there was a corndog named Carl. He lived in a bustling carnival, where he was one of the most popular food items. People loved him because he was crispy, juicy, and tasty. However, Carl had a secret. He was a very emotional corndog.

Carl loved to talk to the other corndogs and share his feelings. He would often ask his fellow corndogs how they were doing and lend an ear when they needed to vent. Carl was a kind and compassionate corndog, but he also had a problem.

You see, Carl had a dilemma. He was starting to feel guilty about his popularity. He knew that he was tasty, and people loved to eat him, but he couldn’t help feeling sad that he was being consumed. Carl didn’t want to be eaten, and he didn’t want to die.

One day, while Carl was deep in thought, he overheard some carnival-goers talking about how they couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into a delicious corndog. Carl’s heart sank, and he knew that he needed to do something.

So, he gathered all the corndogs together and shared his feelings with them. They all listened to him, and they too had been feeling the same way. Together, they came up with a plan to convince the carnival owners to stop selling them as food.

The corndogs protested by going on strike. They refused to be served to the customers and instead held signs that read “Save the Corndogs.” People started to take notice, and the carnival owners were forced to listen to their demands.

In the end, the carnival owners decided to stop selling corndogs as food and instead created a new attraction where people could come and interact with the corndogs. Carl and his fellow corndogs were able to live happily ever after, sharing their emotions and stories with all who visited them. And that’s how a simple corndog’s emotional dilemma changed the fate of an entire carnival.

Carl the corndog was very popular at the carnival, but he was also very emotional. He felt guilty about being eaten and didn’t want to die. So he organized a protest with the other corndogs and convinced the carnival owners to stop selling them as food. Instead, they became an attraction for people to interact with. And that’s how Carl’s emotional dilemma changed the fate of the carnival.

Overall thoughts

It’s interesting how AI named the corndog Carl (similar to Craig). And I liked the idea of the carnival owners being forced to listen to a bunch of corndogs. That was funny. I also thought it was clever that the corndogs end up being an attraction. By the way, it was really weird to see this story appear in like 30 seconds.

I didn’t love the image AI created.

If you have any questions or thoughts to share (about any of this Bowl Game stuff), leave them below!

Here’s what I hope is a high-res version of Craig that you can click on and download: