"No one would ever want machine produced textiles! How could a machine ever reproduce something that was made by real human hands? Surely the common people can recognize the difference between painstakingly thread by thread crafted embroidery done over several weeks and imported from Venice, versus lace crunched out in several minutes by some soulless machine.
We must stop these automated looms at all costs!"
- Some weaver in 1812, probably
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
AI Generated Art (aka we're all out of a job soon)
TheJagged wrote:Weavers had been using machines to make actual fabric and thread for thousands of years by this point. They're called looms and spinning wheels. Both operations could be done totally by hand but it's like why use corded and pinch pottery when you have the wheel?
"No one would ever want machine produced textiles! How could a machine ever reproduce something that was made by real human hands? Surely the common people can recognize the difference between painstakingly thread by thread crafted embroidery done over several weeks and imported from Venice, versus lace crunched out in several minutes by some soulless machine.
We must stop these automated looms at all costs!"
- Some weaver in 1812, probably
But embroidery was so labor intensive and in the early 19th century there were millions of soldiers who needed pretty uniforms and there just had to be a way to simplify the process so all the grenadiers could have nice embroidered grenades on their nicely edged turnbacks and so its not a printed piece of cloth slapped on there with a few threads. And machine made lace? Be quiet foolish luddite all the hussars need a full chest full of cording and the Marshall's coat must literally be able to stand up by itself because of all the gold embroidery. So if there's a way to make it faster and cheaper the Emperor will give you a legion d'honuer
bravo1102 wrote:So like digital art right now? Personally I don't trust any artist who doesn't grind up minerals for pigment. :^)
Weavers had been using machines to make actual fabric and thread for thousands of years by this point. They're called looms and spinning wheels. Both operations could be done totally by hand but it's like why use corded and pinch pottery when you have the wheel?
Seriosuly though, anyone who ever used Gaussian Blur better not be complaining about automated algorithms ruining art. I still say, if i could get an AI to speed up the process of my own art, i would do it in a heartbeat.
The whole "don't steal my art" is a fallacious argument. Anyone could steal your art, as soon as you put it on the web, it's practically already stolen. Whether it's an actual hooman ripping you off or a machine, does that really make that much of a difference? All i need to do is ask my buddy google and presto, i got all the images i could ever want. The only difference is that ai art mashes those thousands of google images together into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. How would you ever even know that you got stolen from? So instead of feeding the algorithm 100 images from the same artist, you feed it 100 images from 100 different artists, voila, you can't tell who exactly got ripped off anymore.
At what point does it cross the line from inspiration to plagiarism anyway? Like, how much do i have to copy from another artist's style before it becomes morally questionable? 10%, 50%? You think you learned drawing in a vacuum? Your brain is an algorithm. You learn art by copying art from other artists. Copying, tracing, rinse repeat. My 8 year old self copied stills from Sailor Moon, send me to jail! I stole Sailor Moon's art!
I bet if the internet had been a thing in the 80s Ray Harryhausen woulda started a hashtag against CGI. Maybe i'm in a luxury position cause i don't make money off my art (and if you do, well tough titties. Go join the pile of other jobs that got made obsolete by machines. Maybe a typewriter factory is still hiring somewhere.) but thing is, we already lost. AI art isn't going away. So why not embrace it? Figure i'd rather find ways to use it for my own advantage instead of being salty.
Meanwhile, ITT: https://i.imgur.com/fIZ2vND.jpeg
Well.
Don't complain about art thieves that take your work and profit off of it.
Don't whine about a flood of no effort comics that will rival Sprite comics that bury your work.
Don't talk about improving your style or technique.
Don't ever take pride in anything as it has no worth.
Don't innovate, challenge, change, inspire or influence.
Don't even put effort into writing prompts as you got a fucking macro to do that for you with a button press.
Don't bitch about ethical practices any more.
Just consume, consume, consume! No thinking, no wonder or awe. Just open you gob and swallow grey slop.
You guys just made all art worthless and meaningless for the pursuit of praise and money.
The techbros had won here.
TheJagged wrote:
So like digital art right now? Personally I don't trust any artist who doesn't grind up minerals for pigment. :^)
Interesting example to use. Because you know what never happened? The natural mineral and plant based dye industry didn't fight the synthetic dyes. The synthetic dyes only supplemented and complimented the natural not replace.
Even if the artist does not grind his own pigments, someone still does. It's not like it's summoned out of the ether like magical sprites on some sort of board or screen – oh wait.
Yet they still make canvas and paper, now more than ever. Digital prints mimic brush strokes and many are printed on stretched canvas. Things don't go away in the arts. They might in practical usage like pinch pots and the potter's wheel but pinch pots are still made and used( he types looking at the one he made in ceramics class four decades ago.)
I have a feeling this won't be a case of buggy whip manufacturers going out of business because of the horseless carriage but more like Fisher body works shifting from making carriage parts to making automobile parts and there's still a job for the guy doing the custom filigree work by hand.
I just got hired to art direct a table-top RPG rules book, and the authors want all the illustrations to be AI-generated images. I'm currently very busy formulating arguments to convince them that that would be a really bad idea. I think I am in for a white-knuckle ride!
fallopiancrusader wrote:
I just got hired to art direct a table-top RPG rules book, and the authors want all the illustrations to be AI-generated images. I'm currently very busy formulating arguments to convince them that that would be a really bad idea. I think I am in for a white-knuckle ride!
Of course they want it that way, it costs a lot to commission so generating such is practically free. I guess one argument against it could be how owning the rights to it could be really difficult and there's at least one legal precedent from recently where the whole AI thing backfired on the author. There are very talented people who could illustrate such and aren't trying to bag hundreds of dollars, but they probably aren't very conscious about the prices other artists work for either. It's just best to be very clear that they will own the rights, not the artist. Considering how AI generated images might never be recognized as their own and… something tells me they aren't looking to release their game as a free public domain thing, going cheap but not THAT cheap might be their best course of action.
The most important thing about AI and comics we need to remember that comics are form of storytelling. Drawings are only part of what makes a comic. I saw this AI generated comic fallopiancrusader linked and it's just a mess. Unless computers somehow learn to write, people who create their own stories have nothing to fear. And I suspect that final effect of AI writing will be close to crap Hollywood is currently farting out - no originality, just bunch of people checking boxes trying to generate something that they think will sell.
Wildcat Arren wrote:
The most important thing about AI and comics we need to remember that comics are form of storytelling. Drawings are only part of what makes a comic. I saw this AI generated comic fallopiancrusader linked and it's just a mess. Unless computers somehow learn to write, people who create their own stories have nothing to fear. And I suspect that final effect of AI writing will be close to crap Hollywood is currently farting out - no originality, just bunch of people checking boxes trying to generate something that they think will sell.
This reminds me of a singer/songwriter we have in our country and how he writes all these lyrics that sound deep and filled with pathos. So many years ago, someone wrote a code to generate lyrics in his style and it was hilarious, because as it turned out even a website was able to do it and most of the results were pretty similar to his song lyrics. I'll never forget it.
TheJagged wrote:I think you're on the wrong tack here personally.
The whole "don't steal my art" is a fallacious argument. Anyone could steal your art, as soon as you put it on the web, it's practically already stolen. Whether it's an actual hooman ripping you off or a machine, does that really make that much of a difference? All i need to do is ask my buddy google and presto, i got all the images i could ever want. The only difference is that ai art mashes those thousands of google images together into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. How would you ever even know that you got stolen from? So instead of feeding the algorithm 100 images from the same artist, you feed it 100 images from 100 different artists, voila, you can't tell who exactly got ripped off anymore.
Just look to the music industry for an analogue about plagiarism, rip-offs, rights etc.
And the comparison with the Luddite movement for weaving is misguided. The popular idea is that the "Luddites" hated technology and wanted to stick to their old ways but the reality was that they were protesting the big corporate mills destroying all their jobs. They were happy to use tech, but they couldn't afford to compete with the ultra rich guys who set up a giant mill and paid their workers almost nothing.
There's a big difference between people getting inspiration from one another and a machine that physically takes you art whole and uses all the data it comprises off to train itself.
The programmers who make these AIs and the companies that own them have illegally made money from millions upon millions of artists by using their art without paying for it. That's horrendous.
I believe that these AI art programs can be great tools if the art they used is ethically sourced or we can just plug in our own art. As it is it's simply all a huge hoax on us right now. It's a pastiche machine copying and pasting people's work wile making money for the greedy companies that own them and absolutely disenfranchising the people they steal from, treating them as shit- when we could be the best users of this tech if we could adapt it to our own work.
Ozoneocean wrote:
I believe that these AI art programs can be great tools if the art they used is ethically sourced or we can just plug in our own art. As it is it's simply all a huge hoax on us right now. It's a pastiche machine copying and pasting people's work wile making money for the greedy companies that own them and absolutely disenfranchising the people they steal from, treating them as shit- when we could be the best users of this tech if we could adapt it to our own work.
That's the key and the way it'll go I think. The genie won't go back in the bottle, so it's up to us as artists to take hold of this technology and find it's potential. The tech bros just don't have the imagination, but the people they think they are replacing will show them how it's done.
With the Stable Diffusion AI, it is theoretically possible for anyone to train their own AI dataset using any input they want. (like maybe all the inputs are your own artwork or photographs that you have taken yourself) It would just take a lot of work and processing power to do something like that.
lothar wrote:
It would be totally different if it were some kind of program that you could feed your own artwork into and have it emulate your style without using outside sources. That, I might be interested in using.
That would be the ideal outcome, and that's what i'm hoping to get out of it in the end. AI art that works kinda the way that auto-tweening works. Heck, i recently learned there's an option in CSP to automate your work process, you bascially create your own step by step program that will automtically generate layers & add effects etc. Enhancing that to be even more automated would be the logical next step.
Furwerk studio wrote:Can't beat em, join em. I demand all my payment be in crypto from now on.
Just consume, consume, consume! No thinking, no wonder or awe. Just open you gob and swallow grey slop.
You guys just made all art worthless and meaningless for the pursuit of praise and money.
The techbros had won here.
I don't even have it in me to be upset about capitalist BS anymore. Companies will be companies, artists getting screwed over is hardly anything new.
I'm pretty sure i made this argument already, but the kinda art that gets commissioned by companies i would barely consider "art" to begin with. It's marketing approved mass fodder, the more generic the better. The cover art on board games, the art on trading cards, the concpet art behind movies and games… If companies want that to be AI art, i say let them have it. Might save some artists from literally killing themselves in crunch at least.
Just from personal experience, of all the comm art i made for others, i can't recall a single one that i would have done if i hadn't been payed for it. None of that is my art. It was just a job. By all means, anyone feel free to rip that off, re-sell it, etc. It has zero emotional value to me on a personal or artistic level.
Actually, i'm gonna go on a huge philosophical tangent here. Making art your career is bad. What kind of artist enjoys making comm art over working on personal projects? Pretty sure any big buck artist in the industry, working his back off to please Papa Disney, would secretely rather be working on that passion project they had been brewing in the basement for three decades. Maybe, just maybe, it would actually be better if every artist stuck to art as a passion and/or hobby and stopped worrying whether they could make money off their work, or if anyone else is making money off their work without their permission. Cause art shouldn't be work.
And yeah i know, we don't live in a utopian society where everyone has a secured basic income and can slack off to paint all day. Artists gotta eat, i get it. That's why i'm saying stop making art you career. Because money is the antithesis of art. Art should be free.
If you love your profession, you'll never work a day in your life. Getting paid to do something you love isn't work.
My problems weren't the commissions, the problem was my attitude. I was approaching it wrong. Looking back I'd have no problem doing it again because I really did learn a lot doing them.
But then I never was very good so maybe I wasn't a talented enough of an artist to not want to just serve my own grand vision as opposed to getting practical experience doing things I otherwise wouldn't have done. After all I'm no genius and barely ever get recognized for anything no matter how hard I try. It was nice being paid for it and people liking what I turned out. I even realized that I was goofing up on certain things, things I can do better now. Well it's all for people smarter than me to figure these things out and I just do what I love and love what I do and try not to think too hard about it. Think too hard I'll just recognize just how inadequate my work is and cycle into depression and I have plenty of that anyway.
This is only adjacent on the topic, but there is something extremly sad and extremely sobering about this bit from the Pagemaster making of.
https://youtu.be/XjaUZHSMPU4?t=615
"What makes it special… It's probably one of the last hand crafted things that are still being done in the world today. We use computers for some of the imagery and the painting and such, but for the most part it starts with an artist in this room, with a blank piece of paper and a pencil."
Toy Story: I'm about to end this man's whole career
20 years later
AI art: I'm about to end every career everywhere
I'm just depressed because of how easy it is to create beautiful artworks in matter of seconds with AI and in contrast, the "ethical" thing to do is for me to spend years or decades on putting all the hard work in for free, developing a skillset to come even near that level and in the mean time I could die without ever really getting there and making my mark. It's depressing. Yet, unless you have a fortune to spend, like a 1000 times more, than you'll ever make with your finished product, I don't have any ethical alternatives. I get it, AI art is unethical for obvious reasons and doing the wrong thing will get you judged by many. But in this case, doing the right thing is just the worst deal ever and people expect you to do the right thing by standard without a care in the world about how much it sucks. And who really gives a crap if all I do is just develop this skill day and night and I die or no longer can for some other reason and I never get there to finish something that looks stunning? Absolutely no one. Say what you will, that is depressing.
Have you considered that you don't need to make perfect works of art.
Or that ai is not perfect.
This ai bullshit is like the advent of photography. A lot of people moved away from realistic art to do impressionistic, abstract, surrealist art. There are things ai can do and there are things ai can't do and may never be able to do. And as it progresses people will start to be able to tell the difference and recognize its shortcomings. Eventually ai will be as cringe as those old-timey death portraits or Instagram dog face filters. It will be as noticable as rotoscoping or the garbage cg in the phantom menace. What is wowing the masses now and causing existential crisis among artists will become as embarrassing and unprofessional as comic sans. But just like that font, people will still use ai: some ironically and some because they are just ignorant or lazy. But it won't be the revolutionary tech that it's thieving creators are touting it to be.
I know AI is far from perfect or that other stuff could look just as good in their own way (I personally love rotoscoping too, although never used it). I just think the visual richness and aesthetics are beautiful and great when it comes to this (now generic type of artwork) and it's popular for a reason, people also like to just look at these and get lost in the details, which is part of the reason why artists who don't even have ongoing stories to tell with them managed to get tens of thousands of people interested in their works. Maybe that took years as well, but they can produce in 16 hours something that looks like it's close to perfection, while I can produce in 16 hours something that looks like a draft with fucked up shadowing and even for that, I have to heavily rely on references. And the worst part is, I could not create consistently, like draw two characters that even look remotely similar without the skills to do it. I know AI generated images aren't appreciated either, but AI has been around for a while now and before it mimiced art that looked that good, people barely acknowledged it, that's telling. If I'd know for sure I have the time to do what it takes, I wouldn't complain about it, put in all the work and just be glad I did it, but the thought I wasted 30+ years of my life without trying to draw and being medically not in a great shape just makes me terrified that the most I get to leave behind is a few scribbles and something that looks "okay" because I filter hundreds of other people's stuff to give it some consistency.
Well, I can always try to just filter photos in different ways. People won't give me half the credit if I don't draw it by hand, but maybe if I manage to use my own works all the time and make it consistent, it not looking great or beautiful will not be bothering me all the time.
I once heard someone say (it was probably Scott McCloud) say that you have 10,ooo bad drawings in you and you have to get those out before you can do anything good. I'm paraphrasing and probably misattributing. But the point is you gotta train just like you would in sportsball. So far, I have a few thousand pages of drawings… I'm maybe closer to that 10000 mark. I don't know the point of what I was going for here. But the way it's relates to ai …. I forgot that too.
Drunk Dick rules!!!!!!!
Forever and ever and never to part
Never gonna give you up DD
lothar wrote:
I once heard someone say (it was probably Scott McCloud) say that you have 10,ooo bad drawings in you and you have to get those out before you can do anything good. I'm paraphrasing and probably misattributing. But the point is you gotta train just like you would in sportsball. So far, I have a few thousand pages of drawings… I'm maybe closer to that 10000 mark. I don't know the point of what I was going for here. But the way it's relates to ai …. I forgot that too.
Drunk Dick rules!!!!!!!
Forever and ever and never to part
Never gonna give you up DD
"Drunk Dick". lol :D Thanks anyway, your words of encouragement are nice to read. I like the Duck and will try to remain productive.
TheJagged wrote:Not at all XD
Because money is the antithesis of art. Art should be free.
"Art" encompasses too WAY many things to come out with any statements like that about it.
Creative people have real training to do their craft. Serious training. They have heavy skills, knowledge, and ability, it's hard won and worth a lot. That skill and knowledge is more intensive and detailed than that in many other professions, it's certainly a lot more advanced than what someone learns in business school
We need creatives for many things, not just making 2 dimensional pictures. But the skills people learn from making 2D images transfer into other creative jobs.
For myself I've worked at graphic design for many years, taught animation, done web design, product design, made and sold armour and sculptures. I sew, I make hats, gloves, boots, I do professional photography, I create promotional art and many more things…
All that is part of my "art". I choose what I make free. I create my comics and show them here for free and have done for years, but they're still fully copyright to me, just like all art produced by every artist and company. No one has the right to invalidate my copyright, especially not tech-bros who steal it for their AI programs :)
Ozoneocean wrote:TheJagged wrote:Creative people have real training to do their craft. Serious training. They have heavy skills, knowledge, and ability, it's hard won and worth a lot. That skill and knowledge is more intensive and detailed than that in many other professions, it's certainly a lot more advanced than what someone learns in business school
Because money is the antithesis of art. Art should be free.
"Craft" is the magic word there.
Craft is not necessarily art. And art does not require craft.
You can put a pissoar in a museum and it's art.
You can learn for decades the intricacies of professional painting techniques, and still not produce a single piece of art in your entire life. You're just painting nice looking pictures.
I suppose my definiton of what constitues as "true art" is very specific. Art is something you do for yourself, it's an experession of an emotional state, it must have a meaning or try to convey something meaningful, something tangible to the beholder. Art is a type of human communication. Something that can't be conveyed by any other means.
Commercial art cannot be art because the only thing it conveys is "buy me". It's a product. I'm not saying that a product can't possibly have any artistic merit, but i am saying that i would have been a more pure bit of art without the stench of commercialism clinging to it.
Anyone who had committed themselves to mastering an extensive skill set and creates is an artist creating art. Doesn't matter what they're paid, doesn't matter if it's also a specialized craft.
To claim otherwise is to denigrate that person's worth. Commercialism takes the art out of it. You just called that person a hack. Just a pair of hands turning out stuff to sell stuff for all the consumers. At the same time the implication is made that somehow you're better than that.
That's awfully cold. Fortunately I never claimed to be anything other than a hack creating utter garbage. Now you know why I say that. It was The whole pretentious attitude about what art is and who can create it and under what circumstances. I had a lot of talent and potential once upon a time. Ran into that mindset and gave art up for decades.
The effort and result of that effort are all that is needed. Thst person's dedication to what they're doing makes it art. Not an algorithm or a bunch of philosophical sounds and letters signifying nothing. I have nothing to loose because I'm just a hack who turns out technically meh crap with filters and tricks that one could ever consider art if you even ever lowered yourself to actually look at it.
That is what you're saying. Whether you admit it or not or claim projection or deflect it away, at the end of the day, stripped to its core that is what the words mean when you deny a craft is art.
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