Pen and ink on Bristol board, scanned, cleaned & prepped in Clip Studio. Text added, and watercolor washes applied to the background.
Printed on textured paper, hand colored with copic markers, embellished with sparkle accents.
It's one of a kind, and would have taken me a week to make pre-digital art, instead of an afternoon.
AI will be the same, once we figure out how to get the thing to do what we want. Move it seamlessly into a digital editing program to clean up the details, and Bob's your uncle.
As a writer, I consider my words the primary point. For many things, I *need* to have a cover illustration, but that is secondary. If I had to pay a visual artist to draw it, a lot of my stuff would simply never have cover art at all.
Buckethead has now released hundreds of ~30 minute "Pikes" as he calls them, since he's no longer under contract, and no one is telling him to space out his releases. The guy spends most of his days playing guitar, recording everything he does, then grabbing the best 30 minutes to release. He's going to end up with 1000 albums by the time he's done. Replacing Slash in GnR for a couple of years has set him for life. The guy's weird as hell, but very talented.
I recently did some research on serialized novels in the Nineteenth Century. When a new installment was published in a newspaper or magazine, it was always accompanied by an illustration. When it came time to publish the story in book form, the publisher already had their disposal a collection of illustrations. No need to commission new artwork.
Sometime in the Twentieth Century, publishers decided that fiction for adults should have no illustrations. Not even a frontispiece.
In an ideal world, every book should have a frontispiece and every chapter should have at least one illustration. The Folio Society does this, but most of their artwork leaves me cold. Maybe we’re reaching a point where we see generously illustrated novels again. Although I’m not sure how that would play out in ebooks, since file size can be an issue.
Pretty clearly the left image is AI. Even with the extra leg the image looks good, though it still doesn't match Whelan's level.
The illustration project I've been working on this year has drawn heavily from AI resources. I can only be grateful because too often, the references in either my or the author's heads don't exist and would be difficult to recreate. Even so, the AI is more often miss than hit.
Also, it's been instructional seeing the process Cerberus has been undertaking from behind the scenes. The amount of time, refinement, dedication and patience it takes to get the right image for a particular illustration, especially in a specific style, is not insignificant, and bad results are often downright horrific.
I made a music album with 28 songs. It took just over four months, with far more dead ends than successes. I also made a digital booklet with art to go with each song. Some songs got one image, others got two, but even so I expected the art would take less time than the music. Using four different AI image generators, it took another four months.
"the references in either my or the author's heads don't exist"
It took two or three weeks of trying to get a good image for "a woman experiencing synesthesia."
I went to a small exhibition of Caravaggio paintings. He didn’t make that many paintings, IIRC. Most of the paintings at the exhibit were of the artists of his day that were inspired by his work. Had he not discovered his new way of looking at the world, these other painters, masterful craftsmen themselves, would not have had anything to “work with.” He taught them how to see.
Excellent point. The fact is that humans were copying "look and feel" long before copyright law or AI ever existed.
Which is why the courts were absolutely right to refuse to deny anyone the right to engage in AI training on copyrighted works. AI training is not a violation of copyright.
“But the fact that better tools are now available and affordable to those who are not part of the tiny elite hand-selected by a small group of publishing industry professionals in New York City is just not a bad thing.”
Having had tangential contact with some of these people, this is a wonderful thing.
Algorithmic illustration is scary-high quality, but the biggest thing is the speed and quantity. Instead of paying an artist a massive sum for one painting, and waiting weeks, I can generate 5000 images overnight and pick the best 50-100 to illustrate my books. I kind of feel guilty about just deleting thousands of really good images that back in the day people would've paid huge sums of money for and publishing the books with only a few of them.
Ultimately all this tech is moving towards direct brain stimulation in entertainment as life becomes a type of augmented reality, individually custom waking dream spaces, likely sanctioned. Perhaps you'll have a creative director for group immersion, some branding. Most will simply be overtaken by or synchronized to by their digital twin predictive model. Nearly full auto humans in all EMF/signal zones. After a life time of Ai interaction the modified brain won't have the foundation of genius as say a classical musician who learned the old way. In 2018 we were not far off full time Golden Compass type Ai demons training the children to interact integrate with the coming smart city tech. IRL artisans will hopefully make a come back in the soon to be highly revered unelectrified analogue acustic natural world. Personally I've stopped consuming moving pictures on 2d screens and digital music, yawn. Ai has killed the already dead digital art space. If it's not alive and in front of me it's not interesting, not that we'll be able to tell. Induced dreaming get ready it changes everything.
I just finished a handmade card for my sister.
Pen and ink on Bristol board, scanned, cleaned & prepped in Clip Studio. Text added, and watercolor washes applied to the background.
Printed on textured paper, hand colored with copic markers, embellished with sparkle accents.
It's one of a kind, and would have taken me a week to make pre-digital art, instead of an afternoon.
AI will be the same, once we figure out how to get the thing to do what we want. Move it seamlessly into a digital editing program to clean up the details, and Bob's your uncle.
As a writer, I consider my words the primary point. For many things, I *need* to have a cover illustration, but that is secondary. If I had to pay a visual artist to draw it, a lot of my stuff would simply never have cover art at all.
I mean, the choice is clear.
Which is the best AI for cover and interior illustration?
Midjourney. Bing is great for Internet stuff, but it doesn't do 3/2 vertical.
The conclusion is the key.
This does nothing to stop the rich patron. It helps the author with an idea who would have no cover, have a pretty good one.
Now there is outsider leverage, you can run it on a sub 2k dollar gaming rig, and it can also run LLM to edit your writing and help with prose.
No ticket to ride.
It is similar logic to when the internet started and record companies freaked out. "How will bands make money?".
Bad for the gatekeepers, but great for the musician trying to build something on his own
Buckethead has now released hundreds of ~30 minute "Pikes" as he calls them, since he's no longer under contract, and no one is telling him to space out his releases. The guy spends most of his days playing guitar, recording everything he does, then grabbing the best 30 minutes to release. He's going to end up with 1000 albums by the time he's done. Replacing Slash in GnR for a couple of years has set him for life. The guy's weird as hell, but very talented.
I recently did some research on serialized novels in the Nineteenth Century. When a new installment was published in a newspaper or magazine, it was always accompanied by an illustration. When it came time to publish the story in book form, the publisher already had their disposal a collection of illustrations. No need to commission new artwork.
Sometime in the Twentieth Century, publishers decided that fiction for adults should have no illustrations. Not even a frontispiece.
In an ideal world, every book should have a frontispiece and every chapter should have at least one illustration. The Folio Society does this, but most of their artwork leaves me cold. Maybe we’re reaching a point where we see generously illustrated novels again. Although I’m not sure how that would play out in ebooks, since file size can be an issue.
Castalia Library's DRACULA will feature 21 illustrations. And we always have nice frontispieces and colophons.
Pretty clearly the left image is AI. Even with the extra leg the image looks good, though it still doesn't match Whelan's level.
The illustration project I've been working on this year has drawn heavily from AI resources. I can only be grateful because too often, the references in either my or the author's heads don't exist and would be difficult to recreate. Even so, the AI is more often miss than hit.
Threat? No. Useful tool on occasion? Yes, very.
Also, it's been instructional seeing the process Cerberus has been undertaking from behind the scenes. The amount of time, refinement, dedication and patience it takes to get the right image for a particular illustration, especially in a specific style, is not insignificant, and bad results are often downright horrific.
I made a music album with 28 songs. It took just over four months, with far more dead ends than successes. I also made a digital booklet with art to go with each song. Some songs got one image, others got two, but even so I expected the art would take less time than the music. Using four different AI image generators, it took another four months.
"the references in either my or the author's heads don't exist"
It took two or three weeks of trying to get a good image for "a woman experiencing synesthesia."
Autumn queen is beautiful. Now do spring so we have a full set.
I went to a small exhibition of Caravaggio paintings. He didn’t make that many paintings, IIRC. Most of the paintings at the exhibit were of the artists of his day that were inspired by his work. Had he not discovered his new way of looking at the world, these other painters, masterful craftsmen themselves, would not have had anything to “work with.” He taught them how to see.
Excellent point. The fact is that humans were copying "look and feel" long before copyright law or AI ever existed.
Which is why the courts were absolutely right to refuse to deny anyone the right to engage in AI training on copyrighted works. AI training is not a violation of copyright.
Will the education of an AI artist in the future be learning to identify the styles of hundreds of different artists and use them in prompts?
“But the fact that better tools are now available and affordable to those who are not part of the tiny elite hand-selected by a small group of publishing industry professionals in New York City is just not a bad thing.”
Having had tangential contact with some of these people, this is a wonderful thing.
Yes, it's worth noting that when Whelan finally came back and accepted commissions again, about the only author he did work for was Brandon Sanderson.
Algorithmic illustration is scary-high quality, but the biggest thing is the speed and quantity. Instead of paying an artist a massive sum for one painting, and waiting weeks, I can generate 5000 images overnight and pick the best 50-100 to illustrate my books. I kind of feel guilty about just deleting thousands of really good images that back in the day people would've paid huge sums of money for and publishing the books with only a few of them.
Indeed. I point out the same thing about music. It's the speed and quantity that means AI will reliably produce higher quality end product.
Ultimately all this tech is moving towards direct brain stimulation in entertainment as life becomes a type of augmented reality, individually custom waking dream spaces, likely sanctioned. Perhaps you'll have a creative director for group immersion, some branding. Most will simply be overtaken by or synchronized to by their digital twin predictive model. Nearly full auto humans in all EMF/signal zones. After a life time of Ai interaction the modified brain won't have the foundation of genius as say a classical musician who learned the old way. In 2018 we were not far off full time Golden Compass type Ai demons training the children to interact integrate with the coming smart city tech. IRL artisans will hopefully make a come back in the soon to be highly revered unelectrified analogue acustic natural world. Personally I've stopped consuming moving pictures on 2d screens and digital music, yawn. Ai has killed the already dead digital art space. If it's not alive and in front of me it's not interesting, not that we'll be able to tell. Induced dreaming get ready it changes everything.
mostly. because we know the prompt and the left had no saddle.
Left is AI, right is MW. 💯
Me too