Dullsville Creator Uses Own Art to Train AI Model and Gears Up for Feature Film
Next-Gen Entertainment Firm Doodles Launches Proprietary AI Model for Feature Film
In a significant development for the entertainment sector, the next-generation company Doodles has unveiled a proprietary AI model, Doodles AI, designed exclusively using images from its original character library and illustrations. This innovative approach has paved the way for Doodles to embark on creating a feature film based on the results of this model.
Doodles AI, launched today and powered by Prism 1.0, claims to generate studio-grade imagery without relying on third-party training data. This decision comes amid ongoing debates about the use of copyrighted images to train AI models in the entertainment industry.
Doodles CEO Scott Martin, also known as Burnt Toast, emphasized the importance of developing Doodles AI in light of these controversies. “The use of copyrighted images and materials to train AI models has been one of the most controversial elements of AI’s use in entertainment,” he stated.
In contrast to those practices, Doodles AI relies exclusively on designs, color palettes, and character designs developed in-house over the past five years. The company has made it clear that no publicly available datasets or images from other artists were utilized in the model’s training.
Martin expressed his vision for Doodles AI, aiming to produce the first feature-length animated film using the company’s intellectual property. He noted, “Right now this is an image-to-image model, but it’s designed to evolve as we gather more data and continue training it. We’ll use this phase, paired with a process called supervised fine-tuning, to improve the outputs in a significant way.”
Looking ahead, Martin outlined an ambitious long-term vision that includes advancements in video production, augmented reality, gaming, real-time rendering, and world-building. He is particularly enthusiastic about enabling individuals who may regard themselves as uncreative to quickly and easily create beautiful content.
Doodles, founded in 2021, gained recognition with the Pharrell Williams-executive produced animated special Dullsville and the Doodleverse, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024. The company’s acquisition of animation studio Golden Wolf in 2023 reflects its strategic growth, making Doodles AI the next major step in its evolution.
“We realized we were hitting a ceiling on how much we could produce manually, so we needed a way to scale creative output without losing the essence of the art style,” Martin explained. He noted that the decision to embed their visual language into an AI model was a natural progression.
With experience collaborating with notable entities like TIFF and McDonald’s, Doodles aims to leverage its recognized body of work to establish credibility for Doodles AI. “People care a lot about how it was built, and we can say very clearly the model was trained entirely on work created by our team,” Martin affirmed.
He further elaborated that the library on which the AI was trained comprises years of effort from dozens of artists. “Everything I’ve made as Burnt Toast going back well before Doodles launched is part of that foundation too,” he noted. Achieving outputs that not only look like Doodles but also feel authentic has required substantial iteration, underscoring the company’s commitment to maintaining its distinctive artistic identity.
