#also started arguing about AI art

[gotjacobian]

More thoughts on AI art discourse - there’s a claim I’ve seen pop up a few times that AI art models are tools for “democratizing creative expression’ because they enable people who can’t draw or paint well to make beautiful art about things they want to see. This claim is weird to me, in a way that’s had it rolling around in my head since I heard it. I have zero incentive to begrudge the use of technological tools to help create art - even those that embed strong priors in what that art output looks like that comes more from the technology than the user. That statement applies to many interesting and well-respected mediums, including those that act like AI art in other ways - remixing and resampling existing work is a legitimate way to express creativity. But like, you don’t make a collage of something and tell someone ‘I drew this’, right? Or you don’t say, “this is just like if I drew this”. Which is what I feel like this claim is saying. That making AI art of something will be as if you drew it yourself. 

That’s a claim that will elicit immediate backlash in the same way that traditional art theft (“I made this”) would. But I think it’s different than claiming the skills and work of another artist directly. Most people I’ve seen sharing AI art are honest about how the image was generated. The benefit they get isn’t the clout of having the skills to make the image - it’s just the clout of the image… existing, I guess? So I don’t think that’s my issue with the framing. I think, instead, the part of the original claim that stirs me up is this idea that people who use AI models to make art would not otherwise be able to creatively express themselves on as “high a level” without AI tools. And that’s weird to me! 

I think it’s common to think of the process of creating art as of translating some platonic ideal of what that piece could or should be from the artist’s brain into an actual artifact. The artist wants something to exist, and they bring it into existence, in a form that’s impacted by not just their self-expression and decisions, but also their physical abilities and the tools available to them. It’s not uncommon to metaphorically label these two parts of the process into something akin to “signal” and “noise” - to imagine that the ideal art in someone’s brain is corrupted by their lack of ability to realize it. In my experience, most people who don’t think of themselves as artists think that this is what making art is. You get better at art to reduce the ‘noise’ and make images that look more like you want to make. 

I’m not gonna claim that’s wholly untrue. I think it would be dishonest of me - god knows I prefer digital drawing over traditional because it gives me tools for making my art cleaner, clearer, and more deliberate. But also, the more art I’ve made, the more I’ve come to reject the “signal/noise” framing. Artists are not printers. It is much more common, in my experience, to ‘think on the page’. When you’re making art, you’re communicating with the world, your medium, your own abilities, at every step of the process. I don’t see those influents as noise - or rather, when and whether they are benefitting or hindering the art is extremely contextual to what you’re trying to do. The “democratization through AI art” claim comes in with some very specific ideas of what all artists are trying to do. It implicitly assumes the goal of art is to produce a very polished image in a specific and recognizable style, that features a desired subject or theme, and is appealing to look at. It then follows that people who have creative ideas but who aren’t able, currently, to bring them to fruition in that exact way, are deprived somehow of the experience of making art. 

I disagree with that. I recognize that technical art skills and expressive capacity often grow together, but art that is made by a person without those technical skills is just as art-y as what they’d make with years of training. The quality of expression comes from the process of making the art, not the polish of the outcome. I know there’s an eternal, unresolvable discourse about how much certain tools erode the artistic process. Again, the use of new technology to create art in general doesn’t bug me. What does is equating what I see as processes on very different parts of a spectrum - saying they’re doing the same thing, and fulfill the same role for an artist, audience, or art as a whole. (Plus, there’s a whole other piece to be said about seeing the way that art is shared and distributed online currently, where art with certain polished visual styles is more likely to be produced and shared en-masse, and then thinking that the way to make that process more ‘democratic’ is to give everyone the ability to make art that looks exactly like that, rather than to consider and elevate the art that people are already making.)

Which brings me to my last point- I don’t actually think it’s bad in any way to want to have a polished piece in a specific style that you didn’t have to draw yourself. But that need isn’t met by better drawing tools - it’s met by art commissions. The claim that AI models make it easier to make art, rather than to bypass paying artists to make you art, is a spin that should have more eyebrows hitting the ceiling. 

[reachartwork]

How exactly do you advance AI ethically? Considering how much of the data sets that these tools use was sourced, wouldnt you have to start from scratch?

a: i don't agree with the assertion that "using someone else's images to train an ai" is inherently unethical - ai art is demonstrably "less copy-paste-y" for lack of a better word than collage, and nobody would argue that collage is illegal or ethically shady. i mean some people might but i don't think they're correct.

b: several people have done this alraedy - see, mitsua diffusion, et al.

c: this whole argument is a red herring. it is not long-term relevant adobe firefly is already built exclusively off images they have legal rights to. the dataset question is irrelevant to ethical ai use, because companies already have huge vaults full of media they can train on and do so effectively.

you can cheer all you want that the artist-job-eating-machine made by adobe or disney is ethically sourced, thank god! but it'll still eat everyone's jobs. that's what you need to be caring about.

the solution here obviously is unionization, fighting for increased labor rights for people who stand to be affected by ai (as the writer's guild demonstrated! they did it exactly right!), and fighting for UBI so that we can eventually decouple the act of creation from the act of survival at a fundamental level (so i can stop getting these sorts of dms).

if you're interested in actually advancing ai as a field and not devils advocating me you can also participate in the FOSS (free-and-open-source) ecosystem so that adobe and disney and openai can't develop a monopoly on black-box proprietary technology, and we can have a future where anyone can create any images they want, on their computer, for free, anywhere, instead of behind a paywall they can't control.

fun fact related to that last bit: remember when getty images sued stable diffusion and everybody cheered? yeah anyway they're releasing their own ai generator now. crazy how literally no large company has your interests in mind.

cheers

[dynsdiary]

━━ wellie elliams

pairings : streamer!ellie williams x reader

warnings : use of yn, mentions of using weed/nic, lowkey self inserted uhh, more focus on ellie than ellie x reader

cr : @idontgetanysleep & @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

a/n : guys i really enjoyed doing this, had a thought of ellie's reactions to read fics about her, her edits (esp with the ai audios, shout out to akemi, i love her) & fan arts

DAILY CLICK

DONT BUY TLOU

WAYS TO HELP PALESTINE

👾 starts off doing streaming just for fun & thinks to herself that no one’s gonna watch it until people actually enjoy watching her play.

🎮 definitely play minecraft and would argue with KIDS on roblox and get competitive with them while playing.

🕹️ OBSESSED WITH FORTNITE LITERALLY A FUNDRAISER TO FORTNITE

👾 definitely would say this "i can cook, clean and carry you on fortnite" to flirt with girls

🎮 she definitely has a cat(s) and people would always want it on the stream

🕹️ i can totally see her raging while playing valorant lolll and would definitely waste money on the skins too.

“okay chat, should i buy it? nah, im just gonna buy it” the chat floods with saying no but will she listen to you guys? no. “okay, i just bought it! watch my aim get better chat” her aim DOES NOT get any better lol but at least the skins are pretty!!

👾 she’s surely shy at first and won’t show her face, hell even her hands !! she just shows what she's playing and just talk

🎮 would try to be social with her “fans” as much as possible cause she likes to hang out with them.

🕹️ would do a face reveal after she hit the milestone!! and people would go CRAZYYYYY. i mean who wouldn’t, right? it’s ellie williams!!!

👾 she probably would be active on twitter more and sometimes on tiktok and rarely on instagram (just to update story and her feed)

🎮 tweet the most unhinged things YET doesn’t get cancelled because somehow all of her tweets are kind of relateable…

🕹️ other than streaming her gameplay she would definitely do some reaction, play her guitar and sing, reviewing things that are so useless & stupid

👾 talking about reactions, SHE WOULD TOTALLY REACT TO THE EDITS, ART AND FICS ABOUT HER (she thought it was funny and some of the fics are BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN)

smelliewilliams : OH NO SHE KNOWS iloveellie69 : uhh yall better hide !!!! livelaughloveellie : ellie pls dont react to it 😇 simpforels : FOR YR OWN SANITY!! “chat, you’re going crazy” she scoffed. few minutes later… “oh wow, that sure is something! haha uhm…” "the technology is getter scary, how does she makes it sounds like me. like does that not sound like me actually saying it?? it's really impressive" her reacting one of the edits with ai audios that sounds like her “YALL ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD AT DRAWING”

🎮 she appreciates all of your edits, fics and arts! would totally do friday fanarts or something like tom felton would do lol!

🕹️ people BEG her to do vlogs, cause it would be fun and silly vlogs!

👾 her music taste is 👩‍🍳 💋, source? trust me bro.

🎮 people would want her to do a room tour cause somehow she keeps her room clean & tidy but also a really cool room

🕹️ small lights >>>>>> big lights

👾 people would be shocked if they knew how smart ellie is 😭 a major nerd if you ask me ! there's no doubt that she starts to share some fun facts that she knows & takes some online quizzes to prove that she's smart

🎮 would totally go on omegle and just troll or make new friends

🕹️ that is where she met you !!

you were bored one night and decided to go on omegle just for fun and you met her there. although ellie's platform is big, she still doesn't know half of the influencers or streamers so her chat goes CRAZY when she sees you and is like matchalvr : OMG IS TGAT YN ???? smelliewilliams : ELLIE YOURE SO LUCKY justanormalgirl : MY TWO WORLDS COLLIDING “wait a second, are you yn?” she asked ”that’s me” “why is my chat going crazy about you?” her eyes scanned the chatroom. “hold on, you do streaming too?”

👾 started to play with you more and she would occasionally join your stream and support you there if she can't play (since the timezone sucks)

🎮 people start shipping you two and one-day ellie liked an edit of you and her (which is super hot and the audio is boaf? BOAF!! , pls get what i mean 😢) and the fandom went insane

🕹️ the two of you started to get close and plan to meet each other sometime in the future

👾 LOL WOULD TOTALLY DO THE “when the gc makes it to the hang out” TIKTOK, the gc is being JUST the two of you 😭

🎮 she would either have an energy drinks, juice or water on her table.

🕹️ her sleep schedule is FUCKED UP, that’s explaining her dark circle & eyebags.

👾 love when people greet her at public place, she just love meeting her fans

🎮 oh im pretty sure she goes to the twitch con (?) thingy and would probably go with you as your date hehehehehehehhehehehe

🕹️ have figurines and legos displayed in her room

👾 super open about her using weed & nicotine (to sleep)

🎮 is open minded and an open book

🕹️ would do "my anons dark secrets confession" thingy

👾 OH SHE WOULD DO ASMR FOR FUN & people actually enjoyed it lol

🎮 she would play dress to impress with you

🕹️ STREAMING TOGETHER WITH YOUUU

👾 when the two of you are officially dating, both of you wear "i love my hot gf" every single streaming session

🎮 she loves matching bro so matching avatar in games

🕹️ would talk about you 24/7 EVEN WHEN SHE DIDNT MEAN TO

"oh me and my gf just-" , "chat, me and yn are-" elsyngfs : OKAY ELLIE WE GET IT!!!!!!!! ynssimp : i get it ellie, i too would talk abt her a lot ynaalyn : WHERE DO I FIND THIS RS GUYS idwtowatchellie : BRO UR R A LOSER GF smelliewilliams : gosh imagine if they're not ldr...

in conclusion, she's literally a loser lovesick lover girl

REMINDER !!

that neil is a zionist and therefore dont buy his games, doesnt matter remastered or not !!!

before you leave, have you DONATE TO PALESTINE today? ITS FREE TOO !!

[thoughtspresso]

Oshi No Ko was about Arima Kana all along.

And I think there’s a real possibility she may die at the end.

Or be placed in the way of grave danger.

I was reading some AquKane shippers say something about how they don’t understand AquaKana, and why the writers and directors keep clearly pushing Kana towards Aqua when they barely share any chemistry. Whereas, in their belief, his relationship with Akane is more honest, deeper, whatever. I’m not here to argue about that. But I get where they’re coming from. And the simple explanation is this:

It’s because this whole story was written for Arima Kana.

I’ve seen some Youtubers talk about how this whole story was meant to be fulfillment for Ruby/Sarina’s dream to become the next great Idol, something about Amaterasu favoring her.

And that’s near what I thought of it. But I really think if the God of Entertainment wanted to bless a child with cancer a second life as the world’s great idol, they’d also give her a great singing voice, y’know?

Spoilers for the manga, of course as we go along on this explanation. So anime onlies, get caught up before you start reading me ramble.

Here we go:

1. Arima Kana is the embodiment of Amaterasu, not Ruby.

Or at least, Amaterasu’s appointed representative, or her favorite daughter.

To give you a run-down of some of the core Shinto/Japanese Mythology that is important for the story, the Creator God Izanaki had three children:

Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun.

Tsukuyomi, the Moon.

Susanoo, the Storm.

The story goes that Amaterasu and Susanoo had a competition about who could create better gods. So Amaterasu took Susanoo’s Totsuka-no-Tsurugi* (longsword) and split it into three, from which she birthed the three Munakata goddesses.

And woncha knowit, there are three great actresses born in that year?

*A reminder that Kana plays the character Tsurugi, which literally just means Sword. And Akane’s character Saya-hime just literally means Sheath or Scabbard Princess.

In this bet, Amaterasu got clever with the rules and won on a technicality. Susanoo went on a rampage, destroyed Amaterasu’s ricefield, and flayed Amaterasu’s favorite divine horse*, and then threw its body at her loom.

*The name Arima is spelled with the Kanji of Horse & Exist/Live. 

Amaterasu, in her grief, flees into a cave, believed to be Amano Iwato cave, right in the town of Takachiho, Amamiya Gorou’s hometown, and the death place of  Tendouji Sarina.

The being that draws Amaterasu out of there was the Goddess of the Dawn, known also as the Goddess of the Revelry & Arts, a being that Aqua says he knows well, and believes there’s a grain of truth to:

And how does Ame-no-Uzume draw Amaterasu out of her grief?

By throwing an absolute rager, and dancing really wildly that it catches her attention and makes all the gods around them laugh so hard. Just like:

Ame-no-Uzume will later on marry a diety who tried to block her passage before, Sarutohiko, who in Ise is worshipped as the god who illuminates the world.

That’s some divinity-level AquaKana shipping right there.

Just like how Aka Akasaka wrote the story of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War about two lovers who couldn’t be together just like in the myth of Kaguya, but having his characters overcome all odds to defy divine fate, I do believe that apart from the parallels to the mythology like he did in Kaguya-sama, there is very literal divine intervention this time in Oshi No Ko.

I think what’s happening is that the gods, particularly Amaterasu and Susanoo are quarelling again about who could create better gods, just like before, but now more of whose favored child will shine the brightest and be worshipped by the most humans. But just like last time, Susanoo may have been enraged, especially at the sexual assault of his chosen Hikaru Kamiki, that he possessed him with a corrupting force that urges him to destroy shining stars before they reach their peak, hence the murders of Himekawa Airi, Hoshino Ai**, and Katayose Yura.

Which by the way, the name Hikaru means Radiant Light!

And Hoshino means Field of Stars!

Whether it’s because Amaterasu is angry that every daughter she sends to earth is slaughtered by Susanoo’s chosen, or just because she wants to win their competition, she appoints Ame-no-Uzume to assist in safeguarding her new favored one from Kamiki’s clutches. Her new favored one being Arima Kana.

And therefore, Ame-no-Uzume takes the souls of two motherless humans who had passed before they could shine and sent them to become Hoshino Ai’s twin children. It was all anyway happening in her territory of Takachiho at the most opportune time.

Ame-no-Uzume is also known as The Goddess of Dance, as well as The Great Pursuader. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly the gifts that the Hoshino Twins received.

An energetic performer who takes the stage with dance:

And a deceptive, persuasive, extremely believable actor, who:

fooled his own sister into believing she had been rejected from an audition

pretended to scout an idol from a competing agency to research them

get Director Gotanda to raise him and train him

make Akane not just date him, but follow him down a destructive path

convince Kana and Mem to join IchigoPro

impersonate Pieyon for several days straight

Anyway, I truly, truly believe that unbeknownst to Aqua, his true mission is just to keep drawing Kana out of her darkness until she shines the brightest. Which is what he keeps doing anyway:

2. The Timing of the whole Oshi No Ko plot is aligned with Arima Kana’s rise to unprecedented stardom.

The story of Ai Hoshino’s pregnancy and meeting of Gorou Amamiya in a quaint hospital occurs at the beginning of Arima Kana’s life, just after she is born.

She meets Aqua Hoshino around age 4, already talented, and already extremely arrogant which could have easily been the demise of her career. But meeting Aqua and seeing his acting was a necessary wake-up call for her, that it brings her to tears. She never forgets this experience that she brought that lesson with her to her adulthood: that she can’t be satisfied and keep working harder, and to be a better communicator with her colleagues. At their first point of contact, Aqua already becomes the reason why Arima Kana’s acting career survives the slump.

They meet again in high school, when Arima Kana has one acting job in a lackluster production of Sweet Today. The ratings had plummeted, if not for the fact that Aqua came onto the set to draw out the best acting Arima Kana could deliver. After this, Arima receives much more respect and recognition from her colleagues in the industry beyond just being cast to bring some legitimacy to their production.

It’s because of Aqua and Ruby that Kana joins IchigoPro’s Idol Division, and her career is reborn anew. Such that, even after quitting B-Komachi, Arima states she never regretted the decision to join, because otherwise the career of Arima Kana would have been already over. 

It’s because of Aqua’s presence that Arima trains to become better and better as an idol. Aqua kept drawing out the light from Kana’s eyes, to the point that it catches the attention of the crowd who previously had no interest in her.

It’s because of her experience as an idol that she regains the confidence and sense of greed necessary to grab the attention of the audience when on stage, such that even Akane recognizes this change in her when Arima takes the stage as Tsurugi for the 2.5 Adadptation of Tokyo Blade.

And it’s because of all of these that she captures the attention of award-winning Director Masanori Shima, who lines up some roles for her when her acting schedule had dried up. It’s once again because of Kana’s dedication towards Aqua that Shima D finds her so interesting that he was most willing to promise her the best role possible.

It was as if Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto appointed Aqua and Ruby to come draw Arima Kana out of her Cave, and bring the Sun out again, just like how the deity drew out Amaterasu.

If you think about the title of the show, Oshi No Ko, it literally means The Favorite Child. God’s favored child. Arima Kana had been born chosen by Amaterasu from the very beginning. And Ame-no-Uzume is sending Aqua and Ruby to aid on this quest.

Which explains why it seems like there had been a mission communicated to Aqua from the very beginning. And why Ai was never going to be reincarnated at all.

You would think that if The Crow Girl, which we assume is the divine guide Yatagarasu, was communicating with Aqua about his revenge plan or helping him find Kamiki, that Aqua would hold a more favorable relationship with The Crow whenever it appears to give advice, no?

But it’s exactly the opposite. Because The Crow is guiding him into something that is different from his personal goal that Aqua doesn’t understand.

And this is where I think Arima Kana could be put in danger.

3. Arima Kana is Hikaru Kamiki’s next target.

There were earlier theories that thought Kurokawa Akane was the one to die next, because of what people have now learned of Kamiki’s serial murderer profile targeting big celebrities before their peak, and because Akane had received a bouquet of white roses from him when she won an award.

The chapter when it was expected to happen was a fake-out from Aka Akasaka, and some people think it’s still possible that she’s the target. In fact, I keep seeing recent theory videos who discount Kana and say she’s “the safest”. Hah! If only!

The scenes with Shima D weren’t just a mere plot point to bring scandal to Arima’s name, and threaten her career and life enough that it pushes Aqua to reveal his mother’s secret in exchange. But it’s there because this is the upward path for Arima Kana. So far, the only people who have witnessed her dazzling star power have been fans of the Sweet Today manga, idol otakus, and people who attended Tokyo Blade. That’s not really masterpiece-of-the-century, performing-at-the-dome level. None of these gigs have placed her center stage in what could be Film of the Year, and a Best Actress spot. Now, the chance is here, and it’s real:

I think, The 15-Year-Lie will attempt to draw out Hikaru Kamiki, or that Aqua intends to reveal himself in the movie looking like him, and reveal the identity of his father.

But I also think what would happen is that they would be unsuccessful at taking him down completely. Instead, from the movie, he would be interested in Arima Kana, and target her through the course of her Shima D movie, and plan to kill her before an important awards night.

Alternatively, now that Kana is changing her focus to film, she may consider moving agencies, and ask Frill Shiranui about her agent. And if we’re right, she is likely represented by Kamiki Productions.

Either way, Kamiki will pay attention to her and try to kill her just before she reaches her highest.

But I don’t think Arima Kana will die. I think instead of being saved by Aqua, it’ll be Kana who takes Kamiki down. Echoing back to her getting mad at Aqua for thinking that avoiding her was protecting her, and Aqua believing that Kana doesn’t need help since she’s strong enough to take care of herself.

And then maybe, it’s Arima Kana who draws Aqua out of the darkness too.

And, just like with Kaguya and Shirogane Miyuki, Aka Akasaka is once again writing a story about two people who will defy a fate of divine tragedy, and come out of it being more truthful with each other than they’ve been with themselves all along.

[creatingblackcharacters]

FAQs!

I go by Ice, she/her pronouns 💕. In case you had any of these questions, here you go:

1. "Why'd you make this page?"

I want to make the creation space- fandom to professional- more inclusive for people that look like me.

It is very disheartening when you really like something, and you see that oh! It's going to include a Black character! And then you get that character and... They're subpar. Especially in comparison to the usually white characters that have so much thought put into them. You accept them because you REALLY want that rep, but... We deserve to wholeheartedly accept our characters too, no ehhs about it.

I wanted to challenge myself, using my amateur art skills and my teaching skills, to convey to creators how that makes us feel, and little things they can do to more intentionally create their Black characters. There's more to us than adding to a diversity quota.

2. "So you aren't even a professional?"

I got 27.5 years of being a Black person on my resume 🤣 jokes aside, I am a self teaching artist. It's only been about a year for me. My more specific goal here is to use my skills to convey a perspective change towards Blackness, not necessarily a "how to do". If you want to learn the specific how-to's of drawing Black characters, there are Black artists all over Tumblr and the web that can show you. I actively encourage you to go check them out and support them, it's a great way to learn as well as to support our community!

3. "But if you're not a professional, why should I trust you?"

Well, again, because I don't have to be a professional to recognize when supposedly Black characters... Don't look like me 😅. Or, in writing, don't have any thought about me behind them. I could show my 87 year old Grandma some art and she'd recognize the issues.

But also, I personally believe that if you start from the foundations thinking about intentionally creating your Black characters, it'll make it much easier for you moving into the future. I am holding my hand out as a Black peer to HELP YOU! There are professional video games and art pieces and projects out there with poorly designed Black characters. The concept clearly needs to be introduced to the people somewhere before a million dollar project is release 🤣 But I can't talk to the people at the AAA studios. I can talk to you!

4. "I don't think race matters/should matter."

Alas, it does, everything we do is affected by our beliefs unconsciously or not- but I'm not going to waste my time and argue with you. This blog isn't for you 🤷🏾‍♀️ this blog is for those who want to take that first step to be better, both as creators and as people. 👍🏾

5. "Do you support AI?"

Not in the arts. Learn how to draw and/or write, it's very fulfilling.

6. "Do you answer asks?"

I do! However, this is a lesson based page, more than an ask based page. If I think your ask can be answered by one of my lessons, I'll refer you to that lesson. If it's an ask that's relevant to something coming up, I will answer it, but you will find more detail in the lesson coming up! I'm only one person doing this, and I can't answer every singular scenario. Also, keep in mind, if you ask me my opinion on something, I will be fair, but honest!

7. Will you be turning on anons?

Okay: right now, we've earned Anon Office Hours Wednesday thru Friday 12:30-6:30pm EST!

Most of this is due to the nature of what I'm discussing. Historically, these topics (and how race is relevant) upset some people, and it can get unsafe. Personally, I have no intention of allowing racists, or those who will take my advice in bad faith, to hide their faces. If you want to hate me, speak with your chest 😤👍🏾

The other part is that it is not a bad thing to ask questions! I did create this blog to be a learning opportunity. So long as you are kind to me and send me asks in good faith, I will be kind to you and reply in good faith. I'm also pretty sure I have the option to answer privately, so if you don't want your question posted publicly, You can say that.

If I get more questions, I'll update this!

[sardonicdoll]

able-bodied artists (or artists who don't have the relevant disabilities even if they are physically disabled in some way) really need to start checking themselves because i have seen more than enough ableist garbage on my TL recently. i don't get any traction on twitter though so i'm posting this here instead.

1. i'm not giving my thoughts on "AI art" because i do not have the patience and energy but bringing up physically disabled artists with limb differences, motor impairments, etc. (the ones that able-bodied people put on a pedestal because inspiration porn, anyway) as a gotcha is just as bad as the "AI art" bros you're arguing with who aren't disabled themselves (or disabled in these ways) but also tokenize these forms of disability. we're not ammunition in online discourse, i bet 10-1 that you people never uplift and empower and give a platform to disabled artists w/ limb differences/motor impairments/etc. in your online art spaces otherwise, and any logic that amounts to "this disabled person can do [x] so you're just not trying hard enough/what's your excuse?" is always always ALWAYS ableist no matter how you try to spin it, sorry.

if you don't have these conditions and consider yourself an ally to us then you do not have any business speaking with any kind of authority in conversations involving limb differences, motor impairments, etc. and art-making, or bringing artists with these conditions up when people are talking art-making and accessibility. full-stop. speaking from experience, being an artist with coordination and motor skill impairments when i'm surrounded by artists who aren't hindered by those things (even if physically disabled) really takes a mental toll on you and being all "oh this guy learned to draw with his teeth, so" does not help that whatsoever.

2. speaking as a horror artist/author - critically examine what you consider monstrous or horrific and the overlap between that and visible physical disability. not only have i had the above nonsense shoved in my face but then semi-popular art account posted a few photos (from online assumedly) that they called "monster eyes" when one of those images was leukocoria and another looked something like tonic pupil and/or coloboma (the pupil looked atypically large and out of place.) structrual eye conditions that cause visible differences aren't "monstrous." one of the images had crystals growing out of the eye, which, yeah! do more with that. but consider that images of "freaky" eyes you find on the internet are in fact eye conditions that real people have and what you're doing is associating how their bodies look with "monstrosity."

people have talked about this quite a bit with limb differences, bodily proportions, gait differences, motor impairments, etc. but i've never seen it talked about nearly as much with eye conditions. stop associating aspects of visible bodily differences with horror and monstrosity. even if it's unintentional that's purely due to your ignorance of the wealth of conditions that cause disability. exploration of disability and bodily difference within the context of horror and monstrosity can and honestly should be explored but that should be left to to those of us who actually understand what that is like rather than those who only have an outside perspective.

generally i'm very tired of able-bodied artists and then any physically disabled ones who lack respect for those of different experience to their situation.

[sexhaver]

While it’s stupid that people are arguing that AI art has no “soul”, it’s troubling that you made no mention at all of the concern many have about feeding AI with stolen art when you were clowning that ask. Just because that person was an idiot about that one part of the ask doesn’t mean they were an idiot about the other part.

firstable, the art isn't stolen. it is still on the artist's hard drive/website/portfolio. complaining about digital files being "stolen" makes you sound like the RIAA.

secondly, before you start arguing semantics about how "well obviously i didn't mean they were LITERALLY stolen, just used without permission," that's not even true either. the current legal theory they're operating on (until it gets challenged in court) is that the AI's output qualifies as a "transformative work", meaning it doesn't violate the original artist's copyright. your kneejerk reaction to this might be to expand copyright law to make this kind of use illegal, but that would also necessarily outlaw a LOT of art forms/techniques, like fanart, fanfiction, collaging, sampling, etc.

at a base level, these AIs aren't doing anything humans weren't already doing - human artists have been taking inspiration from other artists since the first cave painting. anyone telling you the AI is "just mashing together parts of existing art" or whatever has 1. no idea how AIs work because that aint it and 2. no idea how copyright works since "collaging parts of existing art" (which, again, is not what they're doing) is already explicitly protected as transformative work. we don't know enough about how humans OR AIs think to conclusively say that the way one makes art is quantitavely different than the other, and trying to make ethical or God forbid LEGAL judgements based on this imaginary, unmeasurable difference is a losing proposition from the start. there are reasons to be wary of AI art, but "the way an AI views my art and uses it to generate output is fundamentally different than how a human would do it, and that difference means that i am being wronged somehow" rings a bit hollow to me.

to be clear, there are definitely valid reasons to be wary of/dislike AI art. the main one that inevitably comes up is the impact it will create with artists who work on commissions. why would someone pay $50 and wait a week to get a picture of their fursona/concept art for their video game world when they could just punch a few sentences into an AI and have dozens of pics for cheap basically instantly? setting aside the obvious answer of "because most AIs actually suck at drawing really specific things", i feel like this is akin to complaining that the invention of the camera/daguerreotype put professional portrait painters almost entirely out of business. yeah, it did, and that sucked for them, but nobody would ever suggest boycotting the camera for those painters' benefit because that's the nature of technological advancement baybee!

also not to be a communist on main but i NEED to point out the possibly insultingly obvious fact that this is an issue with capitalism, not the "integrity of art" or whatever. the main negative impact the technology has on artists is potential loss of income due to competition, which would stop being an issue if your ability to stay alive was decoupled from your ability to work/sell your labor.

[sweettjrose]

What is your opinion about Disney?

​

Oh boy... This is a complicated question for me.

And the main reason is that I have a lot of Nostalgia for Disney. I grew up watching and loving animated Disney movies and tv shows and is probably the main reason I have such a love for animation and music. And even when I rewatch the movies and the shows they still hold up, some even are better than I remember and show clear mastery and love for art and creativity. The truth is I love these characters and I love these stories and I honestly don't think I could ever truly hate Disney...

But I can still be disappointed. And unfortunately, Disney has and continues to do disappointing things. It would be wrong to ignore all of the bad elements of Disney. Unfortunately, Disney made quite a bit of racist media both in shorts and in movies, and as a mixed person (half-black and half-white) it honestly a truth that is hard for me to truly accept at times. Disney played a major role in really messing up our copyright system making it harder for more media to be in the public domain, despite them liberally using public domain characters to make their stories. Even now with the war in Gaza, it sucks to see Disney officially only side with Israel and not with the Palestinians, with some of them even wearing Disney merchandise. And honestly, I am really worried with the disaster of Wish, Disney+ confusion, and the rise of AI, that Disney will start making some really big anti-creative decisions and somehow even destroy the parts people still like about Disney.

But with that said, I do think there is one element that people tend to forget when talking about the pros and cons of Disney. They are not a monolith. Disney is full of constantly changing and moving people all with completely different politics, opinions, and goals, and contributions. Tbh you could argue that the only time it has been like that is when Walt was in charge and even that is debatable. As a result the people who are doing the stuff I love are rarely the ones doing the stuff I find frustrating. I know artists who work on Disney shows that are supportive of Palestine. Heck you can even feel the internal battle at Disney when it comes to trying to add more LGBTQ+ and diverse content. There are people are trying their best to use their time at Disney to create positive media for future generations, just as much as there those trying to hide or shoot down those media. And even in cases the people causing harm are the same ones making the parts I like, that unfortunately is a constant in life, no matter where you go. Gottfredson made one of my favorite Disney comic characters, but he also did and said quite a bit of racist things. This isn't a justification, but something you can't completely avoid or ignore and have to decide how to handle yourself. To be honest that alone is a completely different essay. But the point is that people change and Disney 100 years ago is different from Disney 30 years ago which is different than Disney today. And even within Disney, not everyone agrees and supports the same things.

And personally, I feel like people tend to overcorrect when it comes to criticism of Disney and act like they have been nothing but a bland corporation with no creativity or positive impact on the world at all. I feel like people tend to group Disney with corporations like McDonalds as if they don't produce any artistic endeavors at all, but just generic content and I can't really believe or support that either. Regardless of how you feel about Disney. They have made such an impact on not just animation, not just on American media and culture, but everything all over the world. Anime is heavily inspired by Disney. Videogame Mascots like Sonic and Mario are inspired by Disney. Even media that takes shots at Disney like Shrek wouldn't have existed without Disney. To be honest it would be harder to find stuff without some element of Disney influence. As I said before a lot of amazing movies have been made with Disney and wouldn't have existed without it. I would consider The Great Mouse Detective and Beauty and the Beast straight-up masterpieces. And it was through Disney that they even got made. Disney can have its frustrating eras (like now), but they're also an effective tool to allow amazing movies and shows to be created. And in a world that doesn't value animation, we still need companies like Disney to still have that faith and support. At least I hope we can.

So to make a long story short, I think it is important to acknowledge the flaws and not ignore or hide them, but to also recognize the artistic achievements as well. Disney had a positive impact on me and nothing will be able to change that. Disney is a constantly changing cultural force that will grow along with us. It will continue to evolve as new people take the reins. Some will try to make up for past mistakes and move forward and some will repeat those mistakes and cause more problems.

All that we can hope is that the good will outweigh the bad.

[nothorses]

I'm genuinely frustrated with the AI art debate from so many angles and most of them are people completely misunderstanding the actual problems but arguing against it anyway based on like. dumb bullshit ideas Disney peddles. and making it so easy to refute "the anti-ai art crowd" using what should be strawmans- because they are that obviously bullshit- that the real problems go completely unaddressed.

AI art could be a good thing! It could! Ethically, philosophically, whatever- it could be a great tool for learning artists, an interesting discussion piece, a natural addition to the conversation started by dadaism and Duchamp's The Urinal, a tool for people who struggle with artistic skill but still have artistic ideas that they deserve to express.

Artistic skill and artistic thought are equally valuable. Someone who picks up a skill naturally and creates breathtaking work, even if it's not really thoughtful or deep, deserves appreciation just as much as someone who has beautiful and thoughtful ideas, even if they express them using AI art instead of a paintbrush (for example).

That's not the problem here.

The problem is that AI art programs are products. They are being sold for a profit. The products contain work created by independent artisans who couldn't give their consent. Even if the products often alter the work they contain, it also is sometimes producing work that is identical, or nearly identical, to work stolen from an unconsenting artist.

I think this is about as ethical as hot topic's stolen art t-shirts and those bots on Twitter and Facebook that turn random artwork into products on some shady website. They might also be producing ugly fucking shirts with hyper-specific taglines printed in weird fonts that are, by no means, stolen work from someone else; but the stolen art they're selling is still a problem even if it's not the whole business model.

The public, free-to-use tools are honestly not as bothersome to me. The people using these programs, particularly when uninformed, also aren't really doing anything wrong.

But the companies who made and profit from some of these programs could have made this a "donate your art" or a "we'll pay you like $0.50/pic you submit to help train this" situation, and I think it's a bad precedent to set that we're cool with them just, like, grabbing whatever they want for a product they built to profit from & that isn't functionally guaranteed to change everything it produces enough that you can't recognize the stolen art in it.

and I think we should be able to have that conversation without it turning into some bullshit about The Importance Of True Artistic Skill And Suffering or whatever.

[just-antithings]

It's not much but I have a tip for the former-anti who's trying to change their behavior.

I was never an anti, but I used to have a serious problem with arguing in online comments sections. Like it was something I felt like I HAD to do, I struggled with stopping myself, even though it made me miserable.

One of the major things that helped me was learning cognitive distortions in CBT. A lot of the time, the feeling that I needed to do something came from a cognitive distortion.

For some examples:

Mind reading - They said something positive about AI art. So they probably think that artists don't deserve to be paid for their work. (This assumes they have all of the same information and context as me, as well as assumes what theyre thinking and their intentions.)

Fortune telling - This person I used to like said something ignorant, so they've probably done a bunch of other bad stuff. This probably means that everyone they've interacted with is also going to get exposed for doing bad things, so I shouldn't trust those people either. Otherwise, people will see me interact with their posts and think I'm a bad person when one of them inevitably get exposed. (Jumps to a conclusion about what's going to happen in the future based on a small amount of information.)

Emotional Reasoning (probably the most common ones in anti circles) - This person likes something that someone who hurt me liked. Thinking of that thing causes me pain and emotional distress. Therefore, that thing is bad, so they're bad for liking it. (Assumes that our feelings are always based on factual reality, rather than being based on our own experiences and emotions. Treats our emotions as the 'correct' emotions to have and all others are therefore 'wrong'.)

I could give a bunch more examples, but the best thing you can do with this information is to look up cognitive distortions on your own and practice identifying them. You don't even have to use current thoughts. It can be just as helpful starting out to look at your past reactions to things and try to identify them. That helps you learn to spot them when they happen. Once you realize something is a cognitive distortion, it becomes much easier to look at it from other perspectives. Usually just identifying what sort of cognitive distortion I'm having is enough for me to no longer feel the need to say anything.

Anyway I hope this helps and im so happy for you that you're working on things and breaking out of that mindset. Yes, for the sake of others, but also for yourself. Anti culture is so detrimental to people's mental health, and you deserve better than that.

.

[wyrdwulf]

I've been looking at Palworld discourse as I come across it because it's something that interests me in a few ways. Discussions of AI usage and of plagiarism in media affects artists, and I am a big Pokemon guy even if I am highly critical of the games and company practices rnow. I think there's a lot of valid reason not to support Palworld/studio that made it, and to criticize the game-- the dev being a huge fan of using AI in making games and Cryptobro is enough for me, tbh. But I also feel like there are some arguments and reactions being had about why the game is bad where there's like, validity to them to an extent, but that people are working on assumptions or being overly reactive in a way that muddies valid arguments that can and should be made? And I think overlooking that is. I dunno. Not helpful in trying to have conversations on what is and isn't bad form in making art.

One of the big things is the whole accusation that the monster designs in Palworld are AI generated. I will be perfectly upfront with my take-- based on comments and tweets made by the dev, (especially the one below) I really do suspect that AI could have been used to either make monster designs wholesale, or to 'help' the process along. However, there is no definitive proof of this. This has not been confirmed. But I see so many people spreading that 'fact' as if it is. And again, I really do suspect that could be the case, but like. It's not helpful to spread misinformation, even if it's for a cause that might be good. Both because misinfo is just generally harmful and because it can do so much harm to your argument when you include falsities or state conjecture as fact to people.

Side note-- I've been seeing now that there are claims that the Palworld models are either direct rips of or heavily copy Pokemon models. For that, too, I've already been seeing that the claims of them being full rips can be proven false, but that it is very arguable that there are some severe similarities between elements of certain models, etc. I'm no 3D modelling expert, so for me I really just want to take this information with a grain of salt and wait until I see definitive proof one way or another.

Another thing I've been thinking about is the claims of the monsters fully plagiarizing existing Pokemon... To start, there's a whole question of parody and what constitutes being fair parody versus just stealing which I feel could be debated here. From what I've seen, the game was kinda marketed as parody, and looking at for example the Salazzle clone, its description really seems like it's parodying Salazzle to me. But moving past that, I do really feel that some of the Palworld monster designs are blatantly ripping off Pokemon-- however, I think that it's like, WAY less than I see a lot of people asserting. I've seen some people arguing that the Palmons are legally distinct enough that none are ripoffs but like, c'mon--

I genuinely think someone who argues that this guy doesn't look like Luxray is lacking observational skills.

This is another one for me that like, yes, the silhouette and certain features are different enough to make it 'distinct', but I feel like anyone with pattern recognition should be able to see the colors and design elements being waay too similar here to be a coincidence.

Also, there are definitely designs that feel like mashups of multiple Pokemon features to me, like this guy feeling like it's got Meganium, Serperior, Lilligant, Goodra in it--

But then there are some that I see people using as examples of plagiarism where I'm just like. Brother. That's just Common JRPG Mob Design.

I'll just use this guy as my one example but like. Claims that this is just a Wooloo rip are wild to me. This looks like I can find it in like half of fantasy JRPGs. There's other examples like this where I'm just like... I get that because a good amount of these monsters ARE very likely ripoffs/inspired by existing Pokemon, people are trying to find the Pokemon 'in' each Palmon, but I feel like so many of the comparisons are stretches which can weaken genuine argument.

Also this is an aside but a very petty thing-- I'll be seeing people claim X palmon is a ripoff of Y Pokemon when there's a different Pokemon that feels like a better comparison, like this guy?

So much closer to the unreleased water starter line from gen 2 than Lapras. C'mooooon.

I guess tl;dr though, I think there are genuine issues about artistic integrity, plagiarism, possible AI use and such which should be discussed about this game, and again, the company's ties with AI and crypto are reason enough to not support them, but. I feel like when having these conversations it's best to critically think about what's proven fact and what's speculation, and to consider what's a strong argument for why it might suck and what's not.

[nieves-de-sugui]

The Yaoi Ronso and Akiko Mizoguchi

here the original post this one stems from. I advice reading that one first if you haven't. Please note I am no expert on this, and this is a post to give an overview of the different topics treated. There might be some inaccuracies.

The Yaoi Debates - 1992

In 1992, a “confrontation between women yaoi fans and gay men about the relation between the representation of homosexual love and society’s prejudice against gay men in real life” that happened in the japanese feminist magazine Bessatsu CHOISIR. 

The Yaoi Ronso (or Yaoi Debates) were a series of letters published in the magazine between Masaki Sato (a gay activist), who criticized the genre, and the female readers, who defended it. Masaki Sato criticized yaoi for showing examples of homosexual life that could negatively impact young gay men who read them. Meanwhile female readers argued back that shonen ai/yaoi was not meant to depict reality, or real men. This exchange of letters ended with Masaki Sato and some of the female readers agreeing in some points, and Sato suggesting that instead of escaping from reality these stories should make reality easier to live in. 

Up to that point, in most of the 20 years of academic studies regarding the subject, it has been argued that the men depicted in these stories chould be thought as a third gender free of societal expectations, object of love in a pure form. A means for female sexual liberation and exploration, made possible thanks to its detachement to reality. Lots of theories at the time said that women used these “boys” to avoid having to become “women”, and the expectations that came with the title. Maintaing the “boyhood” from childhood that is lost as they become women. 

After the Debates, female academics started evaluating the power of the symbol of male homosexual love fantasies. And so started a discussion about the difference between reality and fantasy, getting to question topics such as depictions of rape being easily allowed. All of this as part of gender studies and manga studies.

One of the more discussed things in academic studies regarding shoujo and BL is its heterosexual female public. The shonen-ai/yaoi/BL has served as a medium for homosexuals to find each other but also for heterosexual women to flee society’s heteronormative and gender pressures, heavily associated with fantasy. One example of this is the magazine Barazoku (meaning Rose tribe, bara is a term highly associated with gay content). Which featured a column where letters of female readers would be published. At first these letters expressed the desires of these women to marry gay men, or become gay men themselves to enjoy a freedom they believed gay men enjoyed (they would usually be referred to as okoge or fag hags). Despite its problematic nature, the chief editor of the magazine went against advice and requests to stop publishing such letters. From there on started to appear letters from lesbian women (which ended up being the only kind of letters that woul d be featured) who, interested in depictions of homosexual love would realize their own desire for the same sex. This column was then changed to the name Yurizoku (the Lily Tribe, yuri is a term highly associated with lesbian content). 

The 1990s were also when there was a “gay boom” in japan (lgbt movie festivals and other things started happening). Many of the manga magazines that published BL would feature articles that introduced the japanese gay lifestyle to its women readers. Like, gay bars, Shinjuku Ni-Choume (the gay district of Tokyo), or art popular among gays or even foreign gay communities. Gay men and women has been learned from each other in this way for a number of years now. 

Academics noticed the impact of the Yaoi Ronso on BL as they started to observe gay characters who reached a happy ending emerging. The Yaoi Ronso had a definite impact on the evolution of the gerne as it started to take into account that (having meant to or not) they had a power of influence that affected real people. 

sources Kayo Takeuchi James Welker Wim Lunsing

However, Wim Lunsing brings an important point to the table:

“Gay manga are not essentially different from BLB manga.”

It is true that BL is the most popular form in which we find gay stories in Japan. However, gay comics had existed for almost the same amount of time as yaoi. 

Short introduction to Male Love (ML)

ML, Gei Komi and Bara are the terms with which gay content made by and for gay men are refered to. Gengoroh Tagame is one of the most prominent figures of it. Before he started publishing his very sexual BDSM comics, the beauty ideal that was pursued was the bishonen aesthetic. However, Tagame’s characters where big, muscle-y, fat, hairy men, with a clear influence by Tom of Finland, and its popularity changed the tastes of japanese gay men.

Gengoroh Tagame also started writing slice of life manga in an effort to educate japanese society about gay life and LGBT issues. He is the author of the manga My Brother’s Husband (which was later turned into a 4 episode series).

Another notable manga is Until I Met my Husband, based on an autobiographic essay by Ryousuke Nanansaki.

Akiko Mizoguchi, the Rape Fantasy Expert - An Extra

Akiko Mizoguchi is a notable researcher of BL studies. She is the expert in regards to the analysis of depictions of rape, however she writes mostly in japanese, and my comprehesion of it is very limited for academic readings. 

She has wrote an extensive book: Theorizing BL As a Transformative Genre: Male-Male Fictions by and for Women - which is currently being translated to english.

Summary:

Identifying Mari Mori's 1961 short novel as the origin of the genre and the 1970's-1980's "Beautiful Boy" manga within the girls' (shojo) manga as the precursor, Dr. Akiko Mizoguchi discusses how the commercial BL genre has transformed into an unprecedented genre with feminist and queer activist potential. Recent commercial BL genre has produced stories that portray strong female characters and gay-identified characters who come out and engage in other realistic negotations. Mizoguchi argues that while BL represents beautiful male characters at the center, for veteran women fans and authors, it functions as a female sexualized discursive space in which they exchange pleasure to the extent that these women can be called "virtual gay men" and "virtual lesbians."

source

Mizoguchi is a lesbian woman trying to bring a new type of analysis of BL taking lesbianism into account. 

Other academic authors with a lot on yaoi manga/BL are Mark McLelland and Thomas Baudinette. 

Conclusion (of sorts)

Even though The Yaoi Debates ended, it is still being had up to these days. Both in academics and within the BL fandom. If we change the exhange of letters in magazines for the internet, we find ourselves in a similar situation. I hope that through this post the Debates have become clearer and easier to understand for those who didn’t know about it. 

I close with this quote from one of the text I read for this post:

“The implication that gay sex is objectified for the purpose of the sexual liberation of women surely is a queer use of male homosexuality par excellence.”

Together with a longer version of the previous quote:

“It rather seems that gay men like Satō have difficulty with the idea that women may look at them as sex objects. Gay manga are not essentially different from BLB manga.”

Make with it what you will, but it is indeed food for thought.

Closing Remarks

For those curious ones, wanting to look into how the gay community of Japan was in the 70′s, check out Funeral Parade of Roses. And if anyone is interested in male prostitution in Japan, check out Boys for Sale (if you can, if not here’s an interview).

If you’ve made it to this point, I hope you found this post interesting or helpful in whichever way it may be needed. I have mainly summarized what little I know on the topic but if anybody is curious about the big details in an academic way, here is the best article on it I have been able to find: The Yaoi Ronso (by Wim Lunsing).

Edit: this post has been updated to correct some mistakes. If you happen to see any more please do point them out

[play-now-my-lord]

all the arguing for AI art because other dweebs you respect have collectively decided it's a neat tool (and I'm not disputing that it is) is going to look really stupid in 10 years. capitalism uses new tools to further its own ends, and the ends of capitalism in the art and design space are "pay artists less", "arrogate the fruits of creative work to brand owners", and "homogenize as much as possible".

in ten years, if AI art isn't a flash in the pan or strangled in the crib (both seem increasingly unlikely), my conservative estimation on the results will be: - pro design pay rates will stagnate at their current levels in real dollars, losing out to inflation gradually until the sort of person who gets published in magazines or commissioned to design storefront art will not be able to pay rent alone even on a good month - freelance rates will, considered hourly, likely decline in real dollars between now and 2030, making work outside of highly specialized fields like furry erotica or technical illustration more or less uneconomical - at least temporarily, there will be a profound self-similarity in the visual language of new art, and cultural production in the 2020s and 2030s will come to be regarded as a nadir of artistic taste, think "magazine ads from the 1950s" and you won't be far off - bigoted decisions will continue to be fake-outsourced to machines, and AI art will become both a tool and driver for them. as a trivial example, every model i've played with has had way more trouble generating recognizable or consistent images of Black celebrities than non-Black ones; it's trivial to imagine this amplifying existing biases in stock photography or art even without any actively malicious intent on anyone's part, and you're kidding yourself if you think the market for commercial art isn't kinda racist already. also, just thinking about how the existing inadequacies in trans/queer representation will be amplified to funhouse mirror proportions makes my brain hurt - in all likelihood, the better-trained AI is to make art, the better-trained it will be to recognize art, which means we are approaching a point at which it will be both legally and technologically feasible for Disney et al to start suing/C&Ding children for fanart more or less automatically, making websites like Deviantart and Tumblr - and art aggregators more generally - difficult or punitive to run. i'm not confident that point is between now and 2033 but i'm confident it will happen within my lifetime

[mmmskulljuice]

Added part of this rant to another post but it really needs its own because imo nobody's been asking the right questions about AI art and its insanely frustrating to me

It's not about 'one tool replaced with another', it's that large companies will use it to employ fewer human artists, and fewer people will commission independent artists, lets not even get started on how it effects nsfw artists.

However every single goddamn post I see about it on this website basically boils down to "Okay Boomer" as if there's no reason for actual concern and if you argue back you'll get called anti technology or some stupid shit.

It's not about the tools, it's about who owns the tools. We don't own the tools.

Mind that AI art is also just the tip of the iceberg, consider that it's replacing other aspects of social life, running your social media feed, or what happens now that it's good enough to create convincing "news" stories. Consider the current political environment and let that really sink in.

[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. 💖💖

[theothin]

Iteration in AI Art

I've found that using loosely defined prompts can feel like wandering into an unfamiliar place, taking photos of things found there, and then picking directions to venture further. To demonstrate, let's start with a simple prompt and see what comes up.

a ghost

Rather than getting one ghost, we're getting a whole lot of them, all in the sort of rainbow colors that come up a lot with this style setting on the AI in question. There's no real environment around the ghosts, so let's try adding one.

a ghost floating in the field at night

Now we've got a more conventional sort of background. The type of ghost also changes completely, to the bedsheet type. The two versions of the scene have a number of similarities, but very different vibes.

ghosts patrolling a city at night

Another big style shift. This time, we're getting elements of both of the previous two: a cartoony bedsheet ghost, in an actual environment, but with the left one taking a more abstract rainbow approach like the first set while the second one goes for more detail, and also brings in a number of other ghostly figures.

What about an environment between these two?

ghost wizards casting spells in a village at night

Hmm. I wanted to see what it would do with magic ghosts, but here, it looks like the "wizard" part overrode the "ghost" aspect entirely. I like the witchy buildings, though.

ghosts arguing in a village at night

Here, I wanted to try to get the ghosts to interact with each other, but with limited success. We're getting a similar setting to the fourth set, but in two distinct styles like the ones in the third batch.

What else might these ghosts do here?

ghosts haunting the mayor's house in a village at night

I seem to have lost track of my ghostly friends again. This time, the mention of the house seems to have taken the focus. I like the colors of the house on the right, but the actual construction leaves some things to be desired.

ghosts haunting a family in a village at night

A different set of wires crossed here: it seems the ghosts are the family. The left one's mostly monochrome style is new to this journey.

ghosts haunting a person in a village at night

Maybe this kind of subject-object relation is beyond this AI's capabilities, at least in the free version. The right one seems to have gone off in a very different direction, including in terms of style.

ghosts swordfighting in a village at night

This time, the concept finally gets across clearly, but the action leads to the ghosts looking very different. They do still look kind of ghostly, but much more human-like than in the previous images.

ghosts fading from a village in the morning

And now, it's time to leave. On to daytime, as the ghosts are off to bed. Who knows what they'll do tomorrow.