#I know that ai can be a valuable tool!

[greetings-inferiors]

Yes, hi, what's happening to reddit? I usually check some fandom news there but everything is private/blocked now? I have an account and not even that allows me to enter?

Reddit is changing their policy so they every thousand api requests they charge money. This means that third party apps, moderation tools, and other various things just won’t work anymore, since these things rack up thousands of requests very quickly, they’d just be unsustainable to run.

This cost would be average out to a dollar per month per person using third party applications, like an alternative app, text to speech, moderation tools, etc. Reddit has millions and million of users, most of which would be affected.

For example, Apollo for Reddit, a popular third party alternative to the Reddit app (which I used myself, seriously the Reddit app is abysmal) would cost $20MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR TO RUN. Given the app is developed by one guy, that legitimately puts him out of business.

Moderation would get even worse than it already is, as moderation tools use the api to effectively moderate, but now it’s at a cost.

The reason why this change is happening, is because the API can be used to collect data for AI, and, to quote the CEO, “the Reddit corpus of data is really valuable” and he doesn't want to “need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

So, once again, AI and capitalism is ruining things for everyone else.

This is a change that is created solely to make money without thinking for a second about the millions of people it would effect. This lead to 7000 of the most popular subreddits blacking out for 48 hours in protest, and I’m pretty sure it crashed the whole site. The voice of the people has definitely been heard, now it’s just time to see if it’s done anything.

Edit: I got something wrong! Thanks to all who corrected me! No thanks to the anon who was an asshole about it lmao

It’s not that Reddit is charging that’s the problem, it’s that it’s charging way too much, is way too short of a deadline to change it, and spez is just an asshole lying about the Apollo dev. Still a shit situation! Just not exactly for the reasons I said. Look into the reblogs for people who know more!!

[too-fond-to-be-fearful]

Been thinking recently about the goings-on with Duolingo & AI, and I do want to throw my two cents in, actually.

There are ways in which computers can help us with languages, certainly. They absolutely should not be the be-all and end-all, and particularly for any sort of professional work I am wholly in favour of actually employing qualified translators & interpreters, because there's a lot of important nuances to language and translation (e.g. context, ambiguity, implied meaning, authorial intent, target audience, etc.) that a computer generally does not handle well. But translation software has made casual communication across language barriers accessible to the average person, and that's something that is incredibly valuable to have, I think.

Duolingo, however, is not translation software. Duolingo's purpose is to teach languages. And I do not think you can be effectively taught a language by something that does not understand it itself; or rather, that does not go about comprehending and producing language in the way that a person would.

Whilst a language model might be able to use probability & statistics to put together an output that is grammatically correct and contextually appropriate, it lacks an understanding of why, beyond "statistically speaking, this element is likely to come next". There is no communicative intent behind the output it produces; its only goal is mimicking the input it has been trained on. And whilst that can produce some very natural-seeming output, it does not capture the reality of language use in the real world.

Because language is not just a set of probabilities - there are an infinite array of other factors at play. And we do not set out only to mimic what we have seen or heard; we intend to communicate with the wider world, using the tools we have available, and that might require deviating from the realm of the expected.

Often, the most probable output is not actually what you're likely to encounter in practice. Ungrammatical or contextually inappropriate utterances can be used for dramatic or humorous effect, for example; or nonstandard linguistic styles may be used to indicate one's relationship to the community those styles are associated with. Social and cultural context might be needed to understand a reference, or a linguistic feature might seem extraneous or confusing when removed from its original environment.

To put it briefly, even without knowing exactly how the human brain processes and produces language (which we certainly don't), it's readily apparent that boiling it down to a statistical model is entirely misrepresentative of the reality of language.

And thus a statistical model is unlikely to be able to comprehend and assist with many of the difficulties of learning a language.

A statistical model might identify that a learner misuses some vocabulary more often than others; what it may not notice is that the vocabulary in question are similar in form, or in their meaning in translation. It might register that you consistently struggle with a particular grammar form; but not identify that the root cause of the struggle is that a comparable grammatical structure in your native language is either radically different or nonexistent. It might note that you have trouble recalling a common saying, but not that you lack the cultural background needed to understand why it has that meaning. And so it can identify points of weakness; but it is incapable of addressing them effectively, because it does not understand how people think.

This is all without considering the consequences of only having a singular source of very formal, very rigid input to learn from, unable to account for linguistic variation due to social factors. Without considering the errors still apparent in the output of most language models, and the biases they are prone to reproducing. Without considering the source of their data, and the ethical considerations regarding where and how such a substantial sample was collected.

I understand that Duolingo wants to introduce more interactivity and adaptability to their courses (and, I suspect, to improve their bottom line). But I genuinely think that going about it in this way is more likely to hinder than to help, and wrongfully prioritises the convenience of AI over the quality and expertise that their existing translators and course designers bring.

[centrally-unplanned]

I don't think there is anything wrong with making a movie using motion capture & AI generation tools, I just don't know if that really qualifies as the first "AI" movie? Obviously it a buzzword, so there is no right answer here, but its not like we haven't been algorithmically generating "animations" from constructed 3D models built on motion capture footage for many years now. I guess I would need to see more production details to see if this in any way a new idea versus just an iterative step on old methods. (though ofc everything almost always is the latter)

Also I am not a hater (normally), this looks like ass of course but a lot of things look like ass. It reminds me of early Youtube, Red vs Blue type stuff ya know? People with no budget and a lot of ideas making a story "work" for them the best they can with the tools at hand. I play ugly RPGMaker games all the time, if its a niche product you align the economics with the niche.

But if you are gonna do that:

Why tell the most anondyne, paint-by-numbers survival horror story you can find? What is the point, this story already exists. I get it is a proof concept kind of thing but come on, prove a valuable concept.

[tangibletechnomancy]

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[iztea]

dy have any tips to make your art look less lifeless? I stare at my rendered digital art and everytime without fail i start to rot from the lack of soul in it

ok first of all, I think you might be judging your art too harshly. The only quite literal soulless art is AI art so as long as you create something, there's soul in it. But I understand what you mean. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm best suited to answer this since it's something I struggle with myself, but since you asked me, here are my two cents on the matter

A lifeless look in your art may come from two places: a lack of skills or a lack of message/delivery

Skill-wise, there's a looot you can do and improve on : gesture, dynamic poses, more expressive faces, better color language, strategic line expression, shape language, using color theory to better express a certain mood of a piece etc.

i could go into detail for each point but it would take too long so I'll leave it up to you to google and research things on your own ( or you can shoot me another ask if you want me to yap about a certain technical approach and I'll gladly do so)

but honestly, these are just skills and tools that you master in time. A first step is to at least acknowledge their existence. I want to talk more about the second aspect of this issue: intention. The intention behind your art is more valuable than you think. Art can feel soulless if it doesn't send any message, if it's generic, if there's no emotion behind it or if there's nothing to be interpreted. I'm not saying all art should be super deep or profound to hold value of course, but i often feel like this is a rather neglected part when discussing art. We sometimes get so tied up in the technical aspects like rendering or anatomy but the truth is, a general audience (aka the people who will see your art) doesn't give a crap about the technicalities. They judge something at face value and the first thing they look for is the /message/. What is this painting about? Who or what did you draw? The second thing they will look for is connection. When they can relate to the emotion conveyed or the subject matter, the experience becomes more rewarding and engaging. The same applies to the artist. Creating something meaningful and personal often leads to a greater sense of accomplishment. Honestly, skill comes second.

Case in point: why does hyperrealistic art get shit on? It's very impressive technique-wise, yes, you can't deny the artist isn't skilled, but does it express something? Nope, they do the job of a printer which again,. it is impressive but not from an ~artistic pov, just from a skill pov. On the flip side, why do poorly drawn sob stories get so much attention and praise? Because the art triggered a certain emotion (that has overwritten an already untrained eye) and emotions are extremely powerful for humans as we all very well know and it basically makes them ignore or neglect the execution

So, my piece of advice is to draw something that has personal meaning /to you/, that ignites a certain feeling you can't shake ( it doesn't have to be something #deep or sad, laughter and joy are equally valuable so keep that in mind), a certain situation or scenario and I can guarantee your art won't feel as lifeless to you as before. To better express this idea of yours that you now possess, you can now think about the technical side of how you'd express it. For example:

~deliberately messy brushstrokes and textures -> create chaos.

~maybe you're feeling something lovely dovey and soft -> warm colors to express that + brushes with lost edges

~maybe you want to tell a story in a comic format -> focus on calligraphy; shaky lineart gives off the impression of vulnerability; leave whitespaces etc

~something funny? -> goofy facial expressions or lowkey downgrading the quality usually makes something funnier

~Colors ! colors ! colors !!! pretty self-explanatory blues and grays for depression pinks and rainbows for the happy ( or NOT if you're feeling adventurous winkwink)

BONUS TIP: hiding/blocking out/blurring the face of your subject makes the painting feel more immersive. The viewer can relate to the person you're drawing ( "oh he's just like me fr")

There are artists who are insanely skilled but make kinda "boring" art and then there are artists with cool ideas but with maybe an underwhelming execution.

Ultimately, it's a combination of BOTH awesome skills and intentions. Those are my favourite artists. When i find someone who draws something that makes me stare and wonder how tf they drew that while also appreciating how cool the concept is I knoww I hit jackpot. And if they draw fanart of my fave?? bonus points

okkkkkkkkk i yapped for too long sorttyyyyy hope it helped maybe idk

!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!! this is all my personal interpretation and how i view things I'm self taught I've never been to art school or taken any art classes so i might be completely wrong !! take everything with a grain of salt !!

[deception-united]

What are your views on using AI as a beginner writer? I'm particularly interested in knowing until what line this is acceptable for. Can we use tools such as Chatgpt as a proofreader? To make our sentence structures stronger? To flesh out an idea in our heads into words befitting a story?

If I do use it, is it really me who wrote it? But even without it, I would be browsing the internet for writing tips, studying other authors and their writing styles etc. AI just made my work so much more easier.

But I simply cannot shake away the guilt

Thanks for asking! There's a lot of controversy over using AI for creative ventures, as I'm sure you know; and different writers may have disagreements regarding where they draw the line. Some may opt to not use it at all. But here's my personal view of the topic.

Using AI, especially as a beginner writer, can go both ways—though it can be immensely helpful and, in many cases, entirely acceptable, too much reliance is never a good thing. AI is a powerful tool that can provide guidance, offer suggestions, and even assist in the writing process itself. The key is to understand how to use AI effectively without letting it overshadow your own voice and creativity.

Tools like ChatGPT can serve various purposes in your writing journey. They can act as proofreaders, helping to identify errors and suggesting improvements in sentence structures. They can also be used to flesh out ideas, providing inspiration and aiding in the development of coherent narratives. Personally, I find it immensely useful to use AI for tasks like rephrasing awkward sentences, finding the right words when my mind draws a blank, or organising my thoughts into a structured outline for my story.

However, it's crucial to remember that while AI can be a valuable resource, it's not a replacement for studying the craft of writing or learning from established authors. There's a distinct difference between drawing inspiration from AI-generated text and studying the nuances of human writing styles. I highly recommend immersing yourself in the works of real, non-AI authors to truly understand the artistry and depth of storytelling. Studying other writers—their writing styles, plots, and characters—can also provide great inspiration for your own writing.

As for using AI as a proofreader, it can certainly be beneficial in helping you familiarise yourself with different phrases and words. Nonetheless, it's essential to exercise discretion and selectively implement the suggestions provided by AI. You want to maintain your own writing tone and style and avoid sounding too robotic or generic.

Ultimately, using AI as a beginner writer can alleviate some of the challenges you may face while honing your craft. Embrace its assistance, but always remember that the words you produce are still yours, shaped by your creativity and vision. There's no need to feel guilty about leveraging technology to enhance your writing—just ensure that you maintain a balance between AI assistance and your own unique voice.

Happy writing ❤

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[titleknown]

You know that one bad AI bill on likeness rights I talked about a bit ago? Yeah, there's another one advancing, and it's also bad, and if you don't believe me, then at least believe the EFF...

[dross-the-fish]

If you do leave tumblr where can we find you?

For now I'm not going anywhere but as for the future?

I don't know yet, honestly I may just limit myself to hanging out with my friends on Discord. It seems like it's pretty unavoidable that if art or writing is posted anywhere on the internet it's going to be used to train AI, if not today then likely in the future, and there's not much we can do about it. I also know that a lot of the anger I feel about it is pretty irrational and comes from a petty place. There's a tendency for people online and IRL to like my work but ultimately treat it like disposable content because that's the current culture around any kind of media sharing, the consumerist attitude towards art, film and writing these days has made me pretty weary. Knowing that what I make could be used to train an unfeeling machine to pump out content that is more technically impressive but meaningless and there will be people out there who think that's a good thing just leaves me feeling bitter about the whole landscape of social media. I've heard so many defenses of AI "oh it's a tool for people who can't draw to make art!" and "Everyone should be able to get art! Especially those of us who are poor and can't afford commissions" The art I make isn't really valuable to anyone by myself, and never will be, but something about knowing being an artist is no longer valuable to masses of people and possibly never really was is such a bleak feeling. Especially seeing how much AI is winning and how there are AI blogs and Instagram accounts with thousands of followers who don't want anything out of art except "cool imagery" Tumblr was already the last place where I felt like I got actual engagement with people who were curious about my characters and who actually seemed to enjoy the things I created. I felt like I was sharing something, but increasingly that feeling has begun to fade. Tumblr keeps trying to be like other sites like twitter and instagram and this latest development might not drive me off just yet but I feel like it's only a matter of time before I do break up with this hellsite. I've made a cohost here but so far it's pretty dead -> X I have a pillowfort here -> X

[weenwrites]

Heyo! Could I have some headcanons about TFP Ratchet with a younger cybertronain s/o who can’t go out on the field due to past injuries and feels useless/is dealing with depression? Maybe Ratchet could help the reader stretch or give them a massage so they could possibly move faster, and the reader doing the same in return? The writing would mean a lot to me, thank you!

✎A/N: Please let me know if I've gotten anything wrong, and I hope you enjoy it!

[ Please do not repost, plagiarize, or use my writing for AI! Translating my work with proper credit is acceptable, but please ask first! ]

Ratchet

Ratchet was there when you were first told that your injuries were too severe for you to continue going onto the field. He was there to comfort you, to listen to you, to keep you company, and to take care of you through your recovery. And the chances are that he was the doctor who fixed you up, which means he feels immense guilt that he wasn't able to treat you well enough so you'd make a full recovery.

While he knows that feeling guilty won't change anything, he can't help but feel horrible anyway whenever he sees that you're having a hard time. Still, he tries to use this guilt to motivate himself to help you do simple exercises or stretches to try and improve your mobility.

He'll take 50 minutes out of his day to do some wrist and ankle rolls, knee marches, torso twists, heel slides, calf raises, etc... Or if possible, he'll have you do some curls with some relatively light weights. And the moment you start feeling any discomfort or pain, he'll have you stop and try something else or sit and rest for a while.

He's told you before that you should do your stretches and exercises without him, but you've managed to convince him to join you anyway. Sometimes, other members of the team will join in on the exercising and stretching sessions just to keep you company and talk with you.

Since most of—if not all your time is spent at the base, he'll have you assist him with some of his work at times, just to give you something to do (he's started doing it ever since he learned that you felt useless). Though he won't have you doing any heavy lifting or rigorous physical activity, he'll have you help him with cleaning up his workspace, or perhaps bringing him light-weight tools. Or if you have some scientific or medicinal knowledge, then he'll have you help him perform regular checkups on the team, or simple patch-up jobs whenever they get injured. Or if your strengths lie elsewhere, in things such as military strategizing, mission coordination, or managing communications, then you can do that from the base as well.

He then learned about aquajogging online and performed some extensive research on its benefits and drawbacks. He was curious, and so using his connections with Fowler, he managed to find a massive indoor pool to use. Of course he tested it out himself to see if it would be beneficial for cybertronians before allowing you to try it out. Or if you don't like that, then he's taken the kid's advice and rigged an exercise video game set-up, if you want something more entertaining to motivate you to exercise.

At times whenever you feel down, upset, or mourn the loss of what you used to be able to do, he'll remind you that you've made much progress towards improving your mobility thus far. He'll point out things that used to be much more difficult, and how you're now able to do them easier after taking the time to exercise and stretch for however long it's been, and he'll place a lot of emphasis on how proud he is that you've made it so far.

Or if you're upset about being useless, he'll keep emphasizing that no matter what you think of the work you for the team from back in the base, it's still valuable and it helps them greatly. And depending on what you do, the team will be sure to back him up and tell you about how helpful your strategies were for winning a key battle, for example, or how your coordination during missions helps them work together better, so on and so forth.

[boggsart]

EXCUSE ME who told you you’re talking too much about your art?? Dude that’s the part I love most!! I like hearing about how you struggled to get it where you wanted, or how much the tools you’re working with frustrated you, but you got to a place you were happy with anyway.

I don’t know anything about 3d animation, and I know even less about game design. So it’s really important for me that you describe your process and how much work you had to do because it your work context. I’m sorry anybody made you feel like that wasn’t valuable. I’d argue that’s more valuable than the finished work itself!!

I always love seeing your posts pop up on my dash. And Wolffe and the 104th look absolutely fantastic in the newest one!! If you don’t mind me asking, what were some of the weird issues you ran into in the 104th’s one, and what makes them different issues from the ones you ran into before?

Thank you so much for all the kind words, but to be completely honest, they are kinda right. I think any artist can relate to the feeling of being too critical towards your own work. I tend to overexaggerate mistakes, or point out issues that aren't even really noticable to someone that knows little about this field. But at the same time, i always have a vision of how i'd like my current work to look like, and when i don't meet my own expectations (which i rarely do), that's when i start yapping. Well there were some minor ones, like noticing how some of the armors were not modeled accurately( like around the shoulder part of the chest piece, it's completely missing that part where it connects the front to the back, elbow pieces are way too big, helmets were also not modeled accurately, etc). I also completely messed up the rigging process, thus giving myself so much more work when animating. There are always certain body parts that just go into eachother (lower arm going into the upper arm when it's bent, feet going into the floor, hands going into the chest, etc) that could have been easily avoidable if i took the time to make a proper rig for my models.

There are also always some texturing mistakes, or wrongly placed focal points i notice once the final render is done. In this one, once all of the characters come up, and the camera starts zooming in on their faces, the focal point was placed too far, resulting in some parts of the helmets looking blurrier, than they should look. Since renders take a whole lot of time, i always try to fix this by putting the final renders into a 3rd party AI upscaling program, instead of going back to place it correctly, then re render it. That's probably a crappy workflow, but if this project wouldn't have a deadline that's approaching WAY TOO QUICKLY, and i wouldn't have a lot more stuff to model and animate, i would do the latter. At the same time, i probably should just pay more attention before hitting the render button lol. Also, the movements of the characters sometimes look way too stiff, and don't have that fluidity to them. I haven't been animating for long, so here's the reason for that, at the same time tho, i'm noticing some impovements when comparing the recent piece to my first animation. These are the problems i'm running into most of the time. In the recent one though, if you look closely, once Wolffe goes into his stance (after the commander Wolffe text disappeares) there's some weird black flickering going on around his chest/belly area, that for the love of God, i could not fix. Sometimes the particle system can cause some really interesting issues, that most of the time can be fixed by baking the dynamics. Since i did that (multiple times, deleting them, then re baking) and the issue persisted, i started to think either the shaders, or the particle system+volumetric fog combo was causing this problem. I also use a s*** ton of REALLY powerful lights, with the power constantly changing throughout the entire animation, that could also be causing this issue (i think?) I tried re-placing the cube that's making the volumetric fog, tried placing the lights and camera slightly elsewhere, but nothing worked, so i just decided to leave it as it is. The super slow mo parts are being made in the Non Linear Animation editor, which is... just as confusing as it sounds lol. Making the slow mo parts sometimes causes the blasters to disappear then reappear at the wrong time. The way grabbing the blasters then putting them away works is by having one blaster that's always parented to one hand, and one, that's always parented to the holster, and you change the visibility accordingly. (the moment the character pulls the blaster out of the holster, both blasters have to be perfectly alligned so the change in visibility doesn't have a weird jump in it) The visibility itself gets an action strip on its own, and it's hard to line them up correctly once you chopped up all your other strips and scaled them to make them slow motion. Because if the armature's action strip gets chopped up and scaled to make the movement slow motion, then everything else that has movement linked to it has to as well. So lights, the camera, the empty axes that the camera is parented to, and the blasters as well. This could be achieved by just placing the keyframes further apart from eachother, but i found this method to be somewhat simpler.

I'm probably doing this the wrong way though and could just place the keyframes accordingly without pushing the blaster action down to the NLA editor (cuz after all it's just visibility, not slow motion movement the blaster has). Though i have some really cool ideas with blasters in the upcoming animations, that would probably require to have them as NLA strips. Or maybe not, and everything i'm doing and talking about is bullshit, and isn't the way it should be done, and i really hope someone, that's in the industry doesn't read this and go "what the f is this woman talking about" lol. Basically everything about animating confuses the hell out of me, and i'm always doing stuff on the trial and error basis. So i hope one day i'll be able to learn it properly haha See, i'm yapping way too much after all. And i'm sorry for the long answer, but i'm really really passionate about this. And it actually feels so nice to know that there are people out there that care. 💖💖

[childotkw]

(omg sorry for the long post!!)

I have this fanfic idea in my head for years now and it is one of them i often fantasize about (yea i have many different ones. i just let them play in my head like a movie while staring into space or while listening to music) but anyway, sometimes harry is a boy but most time hes a girl version. He/she has this mad talent about getting in and out of any situation or place she needs to. He/she has this shady business where she steals for clients in exchange for money, or sometimes for pleasure because hes a bloody magpie and likes shiny things. The harder the mission the more she likes it (danger junky). I even imagined his/her apartments/hide-out place in great details (and the booby traps). Anyway, the ministry is under Voldemorts control, under guise as Minister Riddle. He gets involved in trying to trap her/him after she manages to sneak into his mansion (and skillfully avoids all the detection tools) and she robs his ring, escapes right under his nose too... (She has no clue that she robbed from a dark lord yet, that wasnt in her extensive research). That moment is when his obsession starts. She is already wanted by the ministry but he now gets involved. I have this scene where he lays a trap and she is in his grasp however she uses the ring as a bartering chip for her freedom (she thought she might have to use it when she realised a dark lord was after her). She placed it in a dangerous place surrounded by enemies, a place only she can sneak into but something goes wrong cos theres a rat in voldemorts inner circle and she gets caught. Before getting caught she manages to send the ring to him but he still decides to get her out of there and gets into full murder/war scene (he wanted to get rid of this group of enemies anyway). Shes pissed of. She could have gotten herself out even after the torture sessions, thank you very much. 😂 Anyway a fic full of (sexual or other) tension between the two, trying to get one over the other. A lot of wump, vulnerability, power play, childhood trauma, inner demons ect.. Theres so much more but ye, sorry, just felt like sharing and see where u go off on this haha, cos ur brain is super interesting and i never had the skill to write something even if i have so many ideas. Mind you, i tried starting on my own novel but im just not a writer, if something could just take it straight from my brain to paper, that would be awesome 😂😂😂 (futur AI?? Haha) xxx

(Imma borrow a concept from American Gods for this because it's too good not to!)

When Harry is four she finds a coin on the ground. It's gold, and shiny and to a little girl it's the prettiest thing she’s ever seen. So she picks it up and puts it in her pocket - and it's the best decision she ever made.

Because her pretty little trinket is, not that she knows it at that point, a leprechaun's coin. Imbued with pure luck, this little coin changes her life, and brings with it certain traits.

A need for mischief, the ability to come out of any situation on top, a love for all things shiny. And that combination, introduced to someone so young, well...it's only natural that Harry would grow a taste for thievery.

Years fly by and Harry, with her lucky coin held close, begins to gain a reputation as someone who can get in and out of impossible situations, in and out of impenetrable places, and collect valuable items. She can't help herself - it's almost an addiction, and no one is better than her.

Her current wanted poster - no image, because she's too lucky for that - is framed on the wall of her hideout.

Harry never turns down an interesting job, so when someone asks her to break into Minister Riddle's house and steal some documents, she agrees because why wouldn't she? Riddle's a dick of a politician, and Harry might not be heavily involved in the politics of her country but she gets a special kind of joy from fucking over assholes.

She breaks into his house, grabs the documents, and on her way out she sees a ring. It's gaudy, truly a hideous thing, but Harry wants it.

So she takes it.

How was she to know that that ring would be the thing that brings down the full attention of the Minister on her? How was she to know that her dickhead of a Minister was actually a fucking Dark Lord and petty as shit.

Harry likes a challenge but she likes living more - and something tells her that even with her lucky coin, she wouldn't come out of that fight unscathed.

And so begins their dance. Harry on the run, Riddle at her heels, back and forth, up and down, the two of them circling each other like cats.

Riddle's growing obsession with the person clever and quick enough to outmanoeuvre him.

Harry's addiction to adrenaline making her take more risks.

This is the most fun either of them have had in years.

[tacodemuerte]

you have no obligation to reply to this i just felt a bit :/ esp as ive liked your work for so long (TYSM for all the Bill and Ted art!)

But the discussion around what art is valuable/good is quite a reactionary one? Especially as those discussions are old as balls - oh no modern art is worthless, Duchamp did NOT make that fountain!! - and arbitrary too, the usual basis people go off of is what? White hegemony? Who gets gallery space? Who gets sold for the highest price? (To conflate 'good' = worth money is pretty silly when 'good' is subjective) When famously minority groups are the ones excluded from those categories.

Similarly to praise this innate hand made, human connection is a bit silly, and ableist to boot (I'm sure this is done to death but honestly, art is not imbued with a piece of human soul matter just because the artist touched a pencil, and decrying a valuable tool for disabled people on this basis is so harmful.) Moreover, people had the same criticisms of digital art and of photography - both well respected mediums today!

Sorry for the long ask!

i can see that point of the argument. but those kinds of arguments are also used from ai bros as well. handmade doesn't always mean literally hand made, it just means made by someone. there's countless of artists who make art without having to use hands as well, that are being hurt by ai.

i get that the subject of what art is good/bad can turn into complete nonesense, but i think again that discussing what makes an art piece valuable is important, because that is what gets us jobs/pieces sold.

i think part of why ai is able to weasel it's way in is because people don't want to have any strong opinion with art. "art is subjective!" "i dont want to determine what is art and waht isn't", but the thing is this isn't a urinal or a photobashed piece.. this is something that is made to eliminate the work of artists. i think we should absolutely reject ai art because it's not good for us. like at all..

ai generated art is made in disdain of artists. it's not innovative in the least, and it discourages people from being creative.

i know that my opinion is really strong but i just dont see any positive outcome from this. like let's say someone does get compensated for getting their work scraped from an ai..like is that it? it's just gonna be ai generated images from coca cola and sony for the rest of our lives? why bother hiring any artist when you can just scrape from one guy for 100 years... i dont want that to be the future JDIOSHFS

[rottenbrainstuff]

You know I’m seeing a lot of panic from artists about advancing AI capabilities…

It’s shitty for sure, not good at all, but you know, this is just really cementing in my brain that we all really need to get away from viewing art as a consumable finished product, an image containing pleasing things to look at that we view and scroll past. Artists and audience both.

I’d love to see a push for artists to share more of the thought process, more of the rational for why they made stylistic or narrative choices, to talk more about their art, to open a conversation with the audience, to think about what that conversation looks like and why. I’d love to see artists start to experiment, be more creative than just single flat digital images, I’d love to see artists experiment with sequential art, with physical mediums, with interactive formats. I’d desperately love to see artists especially get creative with style, get weird, get unusual.

And I want to see audiences challenge themselves to engage in stuff like that. Ask artists about their thoughts and their process. Ask them about alternate sketches that they made. Get to know artists’ portfolios and view their body of work as a whole. Open up the conversation, value it, see it as essential, see art as more than just pretty pictures on your feeds that you consume and scroll past. Challenge yourself to get interested in physical art! Go out and see things in galleries! Attend opening nights! You’d be surprised what’s out there, and how many galleries have no admission. Challenge yourself to consider the merits of art that looks different.

Basically… like… it’s making me do a lot of thinking, just like when I talked to a teacher about the prevalence of using AI to write papers in post secondary: it’s going to be quite hard to stop that now that the tool is so widely available and so hard to detect. Instead, maybe we need to think about what kind of work we’re making the students do, what kind of assignments, how are we grading and testing it, what is the human element that is actually important if a stupid AI can spit out a stupid paper?

I think it’s similar with art. Look, we can’t really stop it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also use glaze and nightshade and whatever and speak out against it… we should…. what I mean is, in addition to that, I think we really really need to start thinking about what is the human element that AI can’t reproduce? What do you bring to art that a machine can’t do? Why do we even need artists if a machine can quickly and cheaply spit out a shitty graphic? Is the only thing valuable about art that singular final aesthetically pleasing image? What else is valuable? Explore that, investigate that, promote that, ask for that, require that.

I honestly think it’s a bit exciting. It’s a shit situation but I can see the possibility for something extremely positive to come from it. AI art is shit, one of the shittiest trends I’ve seen, makes me angry and depressed. But I think we could take it and do something so exciting with it, really think about what makes art valuable and why, really shift our thinking all around. I think we need to try.

[zytes]

Hello, have you talker about your art process anywhere? I am very interested in how you got into glitch art/photomanipulation/however you’d call this, and i want to learn more. Do you have programs you use, plugins, do you use any physical media or scanography/scanner manipulation? I really want to hear about anything you wanna talk about regarding the creation process for your art. Thank you for sharing your work.

Yes! Unfortunately, I tried answering this question in a ton of detail but tumblr didn’t save it as a draft automatically - which was a frustrating experience to say the least - so this is my second attempt at answering this ask — you’ve asked a lot of really valuable questions here, I’ll do my best to be concise in my answers!

When I first began playing around with editing software, I was 16 and simply wanted to make memes and silly edits. This was around 2015-2016, whenever vaporwave was a fresh concept and Resonance was trending on Vine — which is a sentence that makes me feel fucking ancient. I was really entranced by vaporwave, which had this off-white nostalgia for post-consumerist 80s and 90s cultural trends. I later became interested in how many of those cultural trends persisted and evolved into Y2K culture and beyond.

these are some of the images I was working on during that period of time, which were loosely inspired by indie horror and jazz cups and soundcloud rap. I was so proud of learning how to make my own scanlines using GIMP :)

Late 2016 I began my freshman year at a hoighty-toighty art school that I was too poor to attend, and quickly entered a mental health downward spiral — but I learned many valuable things, most of that info was painfully basic; my education prior to that was not anything special. I would not consider myself someone with exceptional aptitude for art — I just have a chronic compulsion to break things.

So, where to begin? My recommendation to anyone who’s newly interested in this style of artwork and editing:

Glitchet is a repository of info regarding many different styles and methods of distortion - from sonification to slipscans, there’s a ton of good info to comb through. Most of the techniques and tools covered are free to use, but there is some paid stuff out there too - but if you know your way around, virtually everything is free. More on that shortly :)

As for my process, programs, plugins, etc - there is a lot, and I don’t think I can cover everything. Primarily: Photoshop, After Effects, GIMP, ArtStudio Pro for iOS, Procreate, DestroyPix, and a number of other pieces of software that perform smaller, specific functions - such as BigJpg for AI-upscaling. I also employ analogue/physical distortion techniques like circuit-bending, slipscan, and more. These require additional hardware and knowledge; such as access to a copier/scanner, old CRT screens, and the ability to solder + work with low voltage electronics without accidentally shorting them out. Best part is that you can ✨layer✨ anything and everything, collage style — which is my favorite aspect, very playful and exploratory.

Now, if you’re like me and can’t afford fuck-all, but wholeheartedly believe that money should not be a limiting factor for creativity, I recommend installing the Adobe Creative Suite from downloadpirate(dot)com - which is also where I’ve gotten many of my plugins, although I do also pay for the plugins that I come to really appreciate, as they’re typically done by independent developers who could actually use the scratch. Same risks as any pirate cove: intrusive ads, popups, and redirect chains - use Ublock Origin to kill these annoyances. I recommend performing a scan with Malwarebytes after using any sketchy-looking-download site, but I was raised to be a bit paranoid so that’s purely preferential.

As for plugins:

Filenames in this image may correspond with the developer of the plugin — you can just search the filename + ‘after effects plugin’ and you’ll almost certainly find your way.

Most commonly, I use Pixelsorter, Pixdither, Displacer Pro, Pixel Stretch, and Hacksaw — although some of the plugs that I use aren’t listed above, like Datamosher, which is a script-based solution that helps remove i-frames from a clip in After Effects, all without having to use VLC and any handwritten scripts (the ol’ fashioned way).

These are all from the last year or so, to show the relative growth I’ve experienced since my time spent as a creature of 16 years. Naturally, I’m also like, more of a person now - so the art is partly better because I’ve simply suffered more :p

When I started, I didn’t know any of the jargon or how to describe a specific effect I was trying to achieve - so I taught myself how to do stuff by googling around, and if I couldn’t find an answer (which was 90% of the time) I’d just try to figure shit out. Which rarely ever resulted in outright success, but was always a significant learning experience. That’s why I’m so quick to drop the link to Glitchet! Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what I’d be doing now if I had known there was an online library for info on how to produce different types of distortions - definitely would’ve spent less time trial-and-erroring my way through aesthetics.

In conclusion: there’s so much to try and you should try absolutely everything that interests you. It’s free if you’re cool enough to steal it; though some things (like hardware) are gonna cost. You don’t need talent or an exceptional education, though both of those things would certainly help — and you’ll never run out of things to learn because there are infinite ways to break shit. More so than anything else, you need a willingness to explore, experiment, and fail often. You’ll fail miserably at times, so a proclivity for humiliation is also a big plus. Eventually your failures will start looking like successes; but you’ll have forgotten the difference by then and will be free to make whatever the fuck you want :)

I’m glad that you enjoy the work! tumblr has always been the best place for me to share my lil jpegs and actually find a real sense of connection with others who are similarly jazzed. My life completely bottomed-out a few years ago and I was in a really bad place whenever I logged into my blog for the first time in half-a-decade and started posting again. My personal growth from then to now has been a strange and incredible experience, and I’m so glad that I had the art and the funny little gays on this website to help me through the toughest points and teach me valuable things about myself; so if I can give back a little knowledge, I’ll gladly take that opportunity! I hope these findings serve you as well as they’ve served me.

[tangibletechnomancy]

Saw someone earlier say that the popular millennial/early gen Z reaction to AI tech is very comparable to Gen X-ish's reactions to GMOs, and...I can no longer find that post but I can't help but feel that to be true on a lot of levels.

As stated in that post, both technologies have their very legitimate problems - with GMOs, it's Monsanto being fucking evil and trying to monopolize plants and food, or GMO herbicide resistance being used so that major corporate farms can saturate the land with said herbicides without any short-term financial damage to the companies as if it doesn't harm the environment; with AI, it's any form of automation always appealing to the most abusive of corporate greed - but both ended up whipped into a dogmatic fervor about something completely not only irrelevant but made-up and reactionary ("GMOs are all POISON, nature knows best ALWAYS!" - which led semi-directly to the antivaxx movement btw / "it doesn't matter how different it is from the input taking inspiration from existing works the WRONG way is PLAGIARISM, you're rewarding LAZINESS, and REAL ART vs. FAKE ART is totally an objective distinction that can be made and certainly not at all a fascist talking point, and I want art made by HUMANS, the humans running these programs to express something from their human brains don't count!"), completely ignoring that GMOs have reduced world hunger and given us valuable conservation tools, and AI is giving people - real people, not machines - more expressive capacity, serving as a valuable research tool into what kinds of things people tend to associate, justly or otherwise; and even being used to augment human judgment for things such as reviewing biopsy results, finding cancers that otherwise may have gone unnoticed for months or even years longer. In fact, many opponents will full on deny any of these benefits - "what good does reducing hunger do if we haven't eliminated it completely AND we're feeding people POISON? In fact, why should I even believe that really happened in the first place!? if you wanted laypeople to be able to read these studies you wouldn't have made them so complicated, you CLEARLY have something to hide!" the anti-GMO warrior asks; "I don't believe those people who are so severely disabled that they couldn't draw or write without AI REALLY exist, your meditation on the nature of data doesn't COUNT, I don't care how many hours you spent on that piece you're TOTALLY being lazy, and I refuse to believe anyone who points out that it's not a copy-paste machine because you CLEARLY have an AGENDA to lie" the anti-AI reactionary claims. Both hold to a belief that ignorance is a virtue, and even TRYING to understand the Bad Side is tantamount to shoving orphans into a wood chipper.

But I'd take it a step further and say that AI is serving a similar sociopolitical purpose in that it's drawing a line in the sand and asking progressives at a certain stage in life - mostly from the ages of 25-35 - "are you willing to acknowledge nuance around subjects that are new and scary to you, or are you going to give into that fear and treat ignorance as a virtue because there ARE undeniably bad things about this and therefore EVERY bad thing you can imagine about it must be true?" Both serve as, essentially, an acid test - will you declare that it's IMPOSSIBLE to be reckless with GMOs, that Monsanto DESERVES to have sole control over the world's food supply because ~they've done so much good~, or that all GMOs are EVIL POISON and GOING TO KILL US ALL and they're also TOTALLY the reason we're all FAT now which is THE WORST thing a person can be? Or are you going to acknowledge that Monsanto is fucking evil, but GMOs as a whole are a complex thing that can, indeed, be created and marketed in some pretty evil ways, but also have the potential to save countless lives? Will you declare that AI is True Sentient AI, the cyber-utopia becoming real; that everything ChatGPT says must be true and OpenAI is our best friend, or that REAL art by HUMANS is going to be destroyed forever and anyone who benefits from AI is inherently evil? Or will you acknowledge that AI, while it has its drawbacks in the form of corporate overpromising people and compromising information reliability by doing so, on top of the perennial labor issues that come with automation and other potential abuses, also has the capacity to dramatically improve and even potentially save lives? Will you work to save the good WHILE rejecting the bad, or will you insist it needs to be shoved in either the good box or the bad box - probably the bad box, if you're an adult?

The answer, I feel, says a lot about the ideological trajectory someone has chosen for their adulthood.

[eusuchia]

sorry to the anon but I couldn't figure out how to edit my answer once it was in my drafts (great website).

the question was (badly paraphrasing) shouldn't we try to preserve the livelihoods of ceramicists and weavers too? and instead of saying 'mass production already killed this industry, and it will happen to others,' try to save more art from it?

basically yes! deskilling due to industrial capitalism sucks and mass production makes commodity fetishism infinitely worse. I think it's important to preserve craft knowledge and don't think we should just cede everything to industrialization, but that feeling isn't going to shift industrial trends -- only industrial action will do that. for what it's worth, it's really annoying to hear 'just unionize!' as an artist, when many, like me, are self-employed/freelance, and without sudden mass interest in some kind of low-entry-requirement sectoral guild, are not very unionizable because we don't have workplaces in the traditional sense. but by sheer numbers a lot of the job loss to AI would be corporate-level, I think, and there's more potential for people employed by like, marvel, to actually do something significant about the use of AI, than for individual customers trying to throw their weight around by buying or boycotting. I'm happy to get proved wrong here by some targeted mass boycott campaign, but I'm not holding my breath.

on a personal level I regularly spend money on handmade ceramics, fiber arts, and original art commissions both physical and digital because I find them valuable and beautiful. but I also use my IKEA plates and print-on-demand t-shirts, functionally devaluing those crafts. no amount of hypothetical discourse shaming me for 'stealing from working craftsmen' would really change that due to the economic realities. (tangentially, I don't use AI as a stand-in for commissioned art because they are not at all interchangeable to me.)

broadly though, isn't every kind of automation 'taking a livelihood' from someone in theory? my original reply to metamatar's post was basically asking where you draw the line. digital printing is taking the work of typesetters and sign painters, canva presets are taking the work of graphic designers, slip casting is taking the work of ceramicists. yet those trades still exist, and if anything I think their creative horizons are a little wider when the drudgery of the industry is taken up by machines. I know that's paltry compensation for a vanishing job market under capitalism, but isn't it a good thing when ceramicists and weavers are free to explore their ideas and not confined to backbreaking work of making the same bowls or yards of tweed for years on end? (especially in The Good Society with robust social protection that we should all be fighting for anyway)

there can be different use cases for these things (artisanal vs mass produced) and one use doesn't mean 1:1 something is being stolen from the other. personally I'm never going to pay someone to render my likeness instead of taking a photo; the money that's being 'lost' by a realism portrait artist there is purely hypothetical. same for when people get mad about others generating AI art for fun. 'you could have paid an artist for this [generated meme in the style of hr giger]' ok but they weren't going to and you can't make them.

I think people are unthinkingly flattening all kinds of creative labour when they talk about what might happen with AI. to start with, people are often talking about the job market of the first world/imperial core/etc despite the huge amounts of creative labour in/outsourced to other countries. but wherever you want to apply AI -- I don't think boutique client-based work is ever going to vanish, because the stuff that AI can do well is limited to certain types of digital illustration and animation, and you need human, creative problem-solving for new creative work, even on industrial levels with lots of automating tools in the workflow. art directors with good sense can see that. big name editorial illustrators are going to remain big name editorial illustrators. etc. (tbh, I think even the stuff AI is 'good at' looks dogshit a lot of the time, hence my disinterest in it, but that's a personal valuation and has no economic bearing.)

I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about, especially because managers and execs are often stupid and have bad taste and want to 'incorporate AI' when it makes no fucking sense, and would gladly thin out their staff for any reason. but that is ultimately a labour problem and not an artistic one.