Check out OpenArt.ai it is character driven and in my limited experience is very good at using consistent characters in generative AI. Currently using it for 2D sprites for a math game I'm building for/with my 7 year old. There are a lot of features and once you get the hang of the tool for creating training data and training your character I think it could possibly meet your requirements.
I don’t have any artistic abilities but I can close my eyes and envision art. With Ai tools someone like me now how has the ability to create Art or at least art concepts. What’s the problem?
Maybe AI is a bit like the printing press? A professional handwriting wise man would always outperform a printing press when it comes to style, quality and soulfullness, but the printing press gave the average bourgeoisie access to books.
A good reminder of why truly great comic strips - Calvin, Far Side, Peanuts etc - are so rare. The ability to convey great wit or perspecacity AND be able to draw well and reliably are rare qualities to find together. Singer/songwriter too I suppose
I'm making games now, and having paid artists for years, and had them turn in better art on weekend side projects than they gave me over months, made me understand the nature of The Artist.
Now I only buy assets, or pay for art in very contractual "you do this for cheap quickly and if you don't I don't care because I gave it to 2 other people too" type of work for unique assets (cover art).
Artists who share their art, but dont sell asset packs, might as well be saying "Im unemployed and want to stay that way" instead of "open for commission".
The only artists I would commission would be ones I already bought their art as a pack, so I know they actualy know how to deliver usable asssets. Even then I would assume they are going to fuck it up, so I wouldn't depend on anything to be done as specified.
Everyone is their own worst enemy, but artists take pride in it.
Same here, brother. Every single game design I'm working on has come to a screeching halt over my unwillingness to put up with this bizarre recalcitrance of artists to do the thing they're good at. My current strategy (aside from the godsend of AI) is to work with a very reliable and professional graphic designer who subcontracts with artists - speaks their language presumably.
While it's sad that 4000 people were laid off by Benioff, I have to think that they weren't very good at their job to begin with. They could not fulfill the terms of the agreement for which they were hired. It is no different from being replaced by a person who does the job the way the boss wants it.
AI is a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and its effectiveness is dependent on the ability of the person using it. Mozart composed 41 symphonies and Beethoven 9 symphonies in his lifetime. Giving them AI would only have allowed them to compose more quickly, resulting in more music, increasing their productivity significantly. The key is that they already knew what they wanted and how it should sound. They just had to tweak it. AI enhances the great talents, allowing them to continue to do what they do best, removing barriers, and increasing efficiency.
Giving someone with limited talent AI does not make them into a great musician / writer / artist. The mediocre talents will likely get better results, if they can get out of their own way. They can earn a living, but they will never be great.
Other industries that require paperwork are seeing drastic improvements in productivity and fewer mistakes when utilizing generative AI tools appropriately. Knowing the limitations allows you to improve the quality of the product.
AI also lets ordinary people such as myself explore and have fun. Instead of watching TV these day I have AI help me write stories. And one chapter was a character who is a singer who sings a song and I thought “I wonder what the song would sound like?” so I used Grok for some lyrics, edited them and then Suno to put the song together. In less than an hour I had an OK song that is good enough for me to listen to it several times. No way that would have been possible without AI.
Mrs Keruru was a photographer who did reliable and good work. There is now zero money in photography, unless you are elite. She now is the front end for our business. We deliver when we promise.
We have a family friend who is a professional industrial photographer (mines in Africa, factories in China etc) and he fancies himself quite the artiste - even named his son Ansel. A true high functioning gamma.
I asked him to photograph our wedding, which was in a 17th century church. He jumped at the chance. Even did portraits of all the guests - except the bride. Oops, he said. And still asked for full payment. I try not to take it personally that I have 45 pictures of the architecture but not a single portrait of my wife...
The first day I started a new job in '99, I was told to get "The Manual" back on track. The Manual was a new manual for a very popular piece of software that had all sorts of issues because we never described how to install all the various options for all the different scenarios. I had complained incessantly about how this banger of a product was approaching D.O.A. status because nobody could sort through the random install order.
The Manual was a five-person vendor team: a project manager, an editor, and three writers. In pulling back the covers, one person was carrying the entire team with technical writing talent, but that was only when he bothered to show up.
This is just one example of creatives tossing torpedoes in the water that I have. I've run into flaky artists, photographers, writers, and editors. Everything AI models are going after with a vengeance.
The illustrators who can adapt to AI and ad it to their toolkit will still have work.
Somewhere along the line, something happened to set up the situation Vox Day is (accurately) describing. Dollars to donuts it'll be grabbler-y. I knew many pro-illustrators in SF/F and children's lit from before the convergence, and they were professionals.
Remember Codex's codicil to Burge's 3 Steps for SJWs: Once the skinsuit is stinking and visibly crawling with maggots, claim it was ever thus.
"Precisely four of them can be considered professional and reliable."
That is shocking. I knew artists could be flaky, but never realized it was that bad.
ETA: This shows once again that simply showing up and keeping your promises immediately puts you ahead of the vast majority of your competitors. If an artist wants to become successful, that's the bar he needs to pass. If he knows how to work with AI, he'll be miles ahead of anyone else.
Sales is about saying enough to make them buy the product or the service. As the meme, 'Be quiet and take my money.' Do not say a word more when you're there. Not a thing about anything you, the salesman's thoughts, views, feelings. If you bought something, you shouldn't remember anything about the salesman. Sales is about the customers' problems, thoughts, feelings and goals. Those who can't sell are sharing their own views.
I've never been the artist who's made things, but I've been in sales. Salesmen have the most freedom of all the professions, because there is no office politics about getting along. Just perform. The only thing that matters is what the customer wants and what they are willing to pay. And if you want to make more, be less frustrating to the customer.
However, if the artists aren't quick enough to respond, then they won't sell a thing.
"At Arkhaven Comics, I have employed dozens of illustrators, colorists, and letterers. Precisely four of them can be considered professional and reliable."
The days of artists like Curt Swan and Jim Aparo, who could deliver large amounts of quality pages each month, are long gone.
The images Vox posted here are vastly better than 99% of the art in comics today.
Excellent observation, and I bet you also had both the graciousness and (uncharacteristic) humility to refrain from mentioning that your astute argument could even more be applied to the vast majority of online content creators who fancy themselves influencers but will never influence anyone.
AI will never become sentient or take over the world, but it WILL replace a lot of mediocrity and unreliability.
Well, we saw Covid happen 5 years ago all that crazy stuff, now AI from out of nowhere and everyone praises it as the new information, technology, renaissance golden age…
There's an organic farm near me run by a bunch of former political science grads who thought that path would give them a career. They tried numerous careers, some in the arts, before pooling their money and buying the farm. Now they work hard, earn a decent living and eat well.
A lot of the former graphic artists might be best served to follow a similar path
💯
Check out OpenArt.ai it is character driven and in my limited experience is very good at using consistent characters in generative AI. Currently using it for 2D sprites for a math game I'm building for/with my 7 year old. There are a lot of features and once you get the hang of the tool for creating training data and training your character I think it could possibly meet your requirements.
I don’t have any artistic abilities but I can close my eyes and envision art. With Ai tools someone like me now how has the ability to create Art or at least art concepts. What’s the problem?
Maybe AI is a bit like the printing press? A professional handwriting wise man would always outperform a printing press when it comes to style, quality and soulfullness, but the printing press gave the average bourgeoisie access to books.
A good reminder of why truly great comic strips - Calvin, Far Side, Peanuts etc - are so rare. The ability to convey great wit or perspecacity AND be able to draw well and reliably are rare qualities to find together. Singer/songwriter too I suppose
I'm making games now, and having paid artists for years, and had them turn in better art on weekend side projects than they gave me over months, made me understand the nature of The Artist.
Now I only buy assets, or pay for art in very contractual "you do this for cheap quickly and if you don't I don't care because I gave it to 2 other people too" type of work for unique assets (cover art).
Artists who share their art, but dont sell asset packs, might as well be saying "Im unemployed and want to stay that way" instead of "open for commission".
The only artists I would commission would be ones I already bought their art as a pack, so I know they actualy know how to deliver usable asssets. Even then I would assume they are going to fuck it up, so I wouldn't depend on anything to be done as specified.
Everyone is their own worst enemy, but artists take pride in it.
Same here, brother. Every single game design I'm working on has come to a screeching halt over my unwillingness to put up with this bizarre recalcitrance of artists to do the thing they're good at. My current strategy (aside from the godsend of AI) is to work with a very reliable and professional graphic designer who subcontracts with artists - speaks their language presumably.
Just buy assets, there are a ton now. I design around the content I have.
While it's sad that 4000 people were laid off by Benioff, I have to think that they weren't very good at their job to begin with. They could not fulfill the terms of the agreement for which they were hired. It is no different from being replaced by a person who does the job the way the boss wants it.
AI is a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and its effectiveness is dependent on the ability of the person using it. Mozart composed 41 symphonies and Beethoven 9 symphonies in his lifetime. Giving them AI would only have allowed them to compose more quickly, resulting in more music, increasing their productivity significantly. The key is that they already knew what they wanted and how it should sound. They just had to tweak it. AI enhances the great talents, allowing them to continue to do what they do best, removing barriers, and increasing efficiency.
Giving someone with limited talent AI does not make them into a great musician / writer / artist. The mediocre talents will likely get better results, if they can get out of their own way. They can earn a living, but they will never be great.
Other industries that require paperwork are seeing drastic improvements in productivity and fewer mistakes when utilizing generative AI tools appropriately. Knowing the limitations allows you to improve the quality of the product.
AI also lets ordinary people such as myself explore and have fun. Instead of watching TV these day I have AI help me write stories. And one chapter was a character who is a singer who sings a song and I thought “I wonder what the song would sound like?” so I used Grok for some lyrics, edited them and then Suno to put the song together. In less than an hour I had an OK song that is good enough for me to listen to it several times. No way that would have been possible without AI.
Creating-as-entertainment should be more of a thing.
This is the opposite of Apple's "What is a computer?" add, where everyone only plays candy crush with their ipad and builds nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ
Mrs Keruru was a photographer who did reliable and good work. There is now zero money in photography, unless you are elite. She now is the front end for our business. We deliver when we promise.
We have a family friend who is a professional industrial photographer (mines in Africa, factories in China etc) and he fancies himself quite the artiste - even named his son Ansel. A true high functioning gamma.
I asked him to photograph our wedding, which was in a 17th century church. He jumped at the chance. Even did portraits of all the guests - except the bride. Oops, he said. And still asked for full payment. I try not to take it personally that I have 45 pictures of the architecture but not a single portrait of my wife...
Mrs Keruru hated weddings and but she knew to make the shot list of everyone who needed to be in a photo.
Musicians and artists will be like photographers... A hobby for most, an income for a very small number.
The first day I started a new job in '99, I was told to get "The Manual" back on track. The Manual was a new manual for a very popular piece of software that had all sorts of issues because we never described how to install all the various options for all the different scenarios. I had complained incessantly about how this banger of a product was approaching D.O.A. status because nobody could sort through the random install order.
The Manual was a five-person vendor team: a project manager, an editor, and three writers. In pulling back the covers, one person was carrying the entire team with technical writing talent, but that was only when he bothered to show up.
This is just one example of creatives tossing torpedoes in the water that I have. I've run into flaky artists, photographers, writers, and editors. Everything AI models are going after with a vengeance.
The illustrators who can adapt to AI and ad it to their toolkit will still have work.
Somewhere along the line, something happened to set up the situation Vox Day is (accurately) describing. Dollars to donuts it'll be grabbler-y. I knew many pro-illustrators in SF/F and children's lit from before the convergence, and they were professionals.
Remember Codex's codicil to Burge's 3 Steps for SJWs: Once the skinsuit is stinking and visibly crawling with maggots, claim it was ever thus.
"Precisely four of them can be considered professional and reliable."
That is shocking. I knew artists could be flaky, but never realized it was that bad.
ETA: This shows once again that simply showing up and keeping your promises immediately puts you ahead of the vast majority of your competitors. If an artist wants to become successful, that's the bar he needs to pass. If he knows how to work with AI, he'll be miles ahead of anyone else.
Sales is about saying enough to make them buy the product or the service. As the meme, 'Be quiet and take my money.' Do not say a word more when you're there. Not a thing about anything you, the salesman's thoughts, views, feelings. If you bought something, you shouldn't remember anything about the salesman. Sales is about the customers' problems, thoughts, feelings and goals. Those who can't sell are sharing their own views.
I've never been the artist who's made things, but I've been in sales. Salesmen have the most freedom of all the professions, because there is no office politics about getting along. Just perform. The only thing that matters is what the customer wants and what they are willing to pay. And if you want to make more, be less frustrating to the customer.
However, if the artists aren't quick enough to respond, then they won't sell a thing.
This maxim becomes more true every year between vaxx injuries, boomers aging out and cultural collapse.
"This shows once again that simply showing up and keeping your promises immediately puts you ahead of the vast majority of your competitors."
I've been saying something like this for year in relation to the trades. One could charge almost any price with that model.
"At Arkhaven Comics, I have employed dozens of illustrators, colorists, and letterers. Precisely four of them can be considered professional and reliable."
The days of artists like Curt Swan and Jim Aparo, who could deliver large amounts of quality pages each month, are long gone.
The images Vox posted here are vastly better than 99% of the art in comics today.
Excellent observation, and I bet you also had both the graciousness and (uncharacteristic) humility to refrain from mentioning that your astute argument could even more be applied to the vast majority of online content creators who fancy themselves influencers but will never influence anyone.
AI will never become sentient or take over the world, but it WILL replace a lot of mediocrity and unreliability.
Indeed. And indeed.
Well, we saw Covid happen 5 years ago all that crazy stuff, now AI from out of nowhere and everyone praises it as the new information, technology, renaissance golden age…
There's an organic farm near me run by a bunch of former political science grads who thought that path would give them a career. They tried numerous careers, some in the arts, before pooling their money and buying the farm. Now they work hard, earn a decent living and eat well.
A lot of the former graphic artists might be best served to follow a similar path