Charles Peattie on moving Alex into the Digital Age

Charles Peattie is a British cartoonist and writer who co-created the famous comic strip ‘Alex’ in 1987, which debuted in the London Daily News. The strip’s clever satire, relatable characters, and real-time storytelling quickly gained popularity, leading to its syndication by The Independent newspaper. In 1992, Alex moved to The Daily Telegraph, which has been running ever since. The comic strip follows the life of Alex, a city professional, his wife Penny, and their son Christopher as they navigate the challenges of modern life. The unique feature of the strip is that it shows the characters aging and developing over time, as they would in real life. Alex has become an iconic and beloved fixture in British popular culture, winning numerous awards, including the Cartoon Art Trust Award, and gaining worldwide syndication.

Why did you decide to try AI in your practice?

I work on traditional animation, an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand and collected together into animation cycles. This is a very complex and lengthy process, even with the help of AI. While AI can generate any image, getting the specific result from the algorithm can be difficult. I collaborated with exactly.ai’s engineering team and created prototypes for 2D animation from drawings. I wanted to keep one character, Alex, in different poses and with different backgrounds. I wanted to find a tool to help me speed up the time-consuming animation process of making short videos about Alex. The animation process is usually complex and lengthy.