Gerard Bisbal is building NUVAGAIA, a transmedia sci-fi universe spanning podcasts, stories, artwork, a wiki, and interactive fiction, using generative AI to do the work of an entire production team. The solo project demonstrates how AI tools are reshaping what individual creatives can produce on their own-work that would typically need millions in funding and years of development.
NUVAGAIA blends solarpunk ideals with cosmic horror and includes multiple entry points for audiences. Bisbal designs, writes, and edits every piece himself, with AI assisting across concept development, visuals, audio, and canon management.
From a folder of notes to a published universe
"Without AI, NUVAGAIA would still be a folder of notes," Bisbal said. The project began with an idea too large for one person to execute through traditional means. AI let him turn scattered concepts into a coherent, publishable world. In one week, he laid down worldbuilding foundations that he estimates would have taken months or years on his own.
Bisbal started by researching underexplored sci-fi territory, which led him to solarpunk. He then crossed it with cosmic horror to create the central tension of the universe-a hopeful future confronted with forces it cannot comprehend. From there, he developed civilizations, internal rules, characters, and visual direction, with AI helping to organize references and explore narrative possibilities.
Coherence and the human role
Across formats, Bisbal maintains consistency through strict editorial judgment. NUVAGAIA has fixed rules, names, a chronology, and a defined aesthetic. AI can expand the lore, but it doesn't decide what belongs. "Coherence does not appear simply because you use AI; it appears because you have clear criteria," he said. "If an image is spectacular but does not feel like NUVAGAIA, it is not useful. If a text explains too much or contradicts the tone, it gets rewritten."
Each medium serves a different function: the podcast delivers immersion, short stories deepen character and culture, the wiki stores public canon, and images make the world visible. AI accelerates output, but human direction enforces the rules. Bisbal discards many AI-generated options and heavily reworks others before they reach the public.
AI as a creative workshop, not a replacement
Bisbal uses different models for different tasks. ChatGPT acts as his main assistant for worldbuilding, strategy, and continuity checks. He uses Gemini for podcast scripts and text-to-speech voices inside a custom Google Colab environment. For visuals, he relies on DALL.E 3 for its hand-drawn finish and uses ComfyUI, GPT Image 2, and other tools for editing and video.
He treats the AI as a palette of brushes. "The more powerful the tool, the more you need taste, direction, editing, and responsibility," he said. He avoids accepting first outputs as final, pushing instead for expressive imperfection and stories rooted in human questions-loss, identity, hope, guilt. AI voices remain the hardest to get right, and he considers the current podcast an evolving proof of concept.
NUVAGAIA is also designed to expand beyond fixed stories. The Thresholds series lets readers make choices that become part of the official canon and are recorded in the wiki. Longer term, Bisbal sees the universe feeding into tabletop games, a video game, a series, or a film-but only after a solid foundation is in place.
Why this matters for Creatives
Bisbal's approach shows that AI, used with clear creative direction, can remove production bottlenecks that once made ambitious solo projects impossible. It doesn't replace the need for a strong point of view-if you lack judgment, he warns, AI will lead you toward the generic. The key skill is learning to direct the tools, not letting them direct you. For creatives, that means building the editorial muscle to say no, throw things away, and keep only what serves the work.
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