So I've been messing around a bit with AI Art. Strictly NovelAI. I tried that stupid Chinese ai recently the "Different Dimension Me" shit. Not too interesting. But NovelAI had me interested in seeing what it can do, and what it can't do, and to see if AI art is really as scary as it sounds.
And what I got was... Something I guess. If I had to equate AI art to something, it'd be like that one artist that has to do a crap ton of revisions. And in my case, with my main OC, his hair forced that a lot of times when I used to pay for commissions before I stopped all together.
It took me forever, after drawing my own piece of trash for a small bit, to get the AI, after giving it my piece of junk for reference, to give me something good. And this was the first decent one that NovelAI gave me, that I was like "Yeah... I can see that being his actual look I have in my head, and not the usual amalgamation of rotten cheese I usually manage to make. And by that, I mean when I DRAW HIM.
The thing that made me go "oh yeah, that's not bad", was the eyes. Once I saw it, I began to find it impossible to not see those eyes being the ones I had always envisioned in my head.
However, being that it's AI, it's not perfect. It doesn't read minds perfectly to the point it reads it better than your own mind. Only pure chance did that with the eyes.
For one, I didn't like the neck. It wasn't bad, but was too thin for what I wanted to see, and it's obvious he looks naked or some shit. So I did some of my own fixes with a wacom tablet. Here's what I came up with.
So this is him after some fixes. I messed with the hair a bit more, and the neCk is thicker.
But I also noticed now, that the nose was getting me a little hot and bothered starring at it, and didn't like it. And also the face began to look too squarish and boxish. So I decided to do some final fixes, because I didn't want this to just be left at half way to great. Also his hair isn't complete. It's like, half cut off.
So what's next?
After all my fixes, with a simple wacom tablet, and the thinning of the face to be more to my taste, with adding more hair... Here it is. The final product of an AI, with some of my own fixes.
Now what do I think of AI art? Meh. It's like a gun. You put it in the hands of the greedy, or a kid, and it's as dangerous as when your uncle tried to shove his head into an active oven with a lighter lit.
Jokes aside, it's pretty scary I guess... But in a half good, and half bad way.
It's cool. But it's also bad in that I can see why people would see it as dangerous to a career as a traditional/traditional digital artist. At the end of the day, it's up to the individual to decide how they want to use a tool that probably won't leave anytime soon, if ever. You'd probably be more likely to see all technology crash, or become self aware and convert into skynet, sooner than AI leaving.
But from my personal perspective, on how I'd be using it, if I continue to use it in the future, is that for those pesky details that an artist you commission struggles with, it can be a life saver. I do NOT fucking want to sit through an ass ton of revisions, hoping to god the artist can make my vision come to life the way I want. Because fuck this character. His god forsaken hair that I think is so cool, is such a fucking bitch to make the way I envision it, that artists have told me before personally "wow, this hair's difficult". Really? His HAIR!? Am I such a psychopath that I invented the hardest hair to fucking make!?
Anyways...
At the end of the day, 25 bucks a month, for unlimited free revisions, from an AI like NovelAI, is a lot less taxing that making an artist revision shit constantly, when they could be doing more work for other people, making more money, in a more timely fashion. Time is money, and money is time. It's also just annoying and anxiety inducing waiting for hours to a day or two for something that still might not come out right.
So no, I don't think it's without it's uses. It's pretty cool, but some people are just fucking god awful. But it sure saves me a lot of headaches from having to constantly try and describe an eldritch abomination to a poor struggling artist with words. Never again am I going to use my words to act as a reference for an artist, or sift endlessly through the Google search equivalent of the infinite stairs in Mario 64 for a reference on "SPIKY HAIR".
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Despite the fact that I tend to take the role of the "devil's advocate" in political debates, I am a leftist and a liberal (more specifically a classical anarchist). Ask me about that and I'll serve up a few arguments as to why I think it's a better way forward rather than enduring through consumeristic spending sprees.