This is one of the first down-to-earth discussion I've seen about AI art. This has brought me a lot of peace of mind. Thank you, Jason. STILL very skeptical about trying to make art my career with AI around, but I've decided to never give up on drawing my own stories in some way, shape, or form. For better or worse.
I've tried it, but it lacks a lot of "artistic direction", it never comes up with something as detailed and precise, a "vision", it lacks vision, direction, personnality, it does some general ideas, and you allways have to rework all of the pictures to make it personnalized or give it "soul" and life
What people need to understand is that these are NOT AGI but are algorithms that people are training. True AI would not need human prompt but would be self thinking. True developers of AI predict that these algorithms will be used by a True AI as part of its learning process. Once quantum computing development speeds up (and that is happening) and is integrated with these algorithms then we may see a true AI.
As regards trying it out, there's a concept in the world of religion that sometimes things can be cursed or attached to evil in a way that makes using them open up one's life to evil--like portals to the demonic. I always felt that there was something evil about AI and so I never touched it, and recently I learned that at least some of it (stable diffusion, for example) was trained the Lion data set which includes stuff like child pornography. So, I have an inkling that there may be reason not to even experiment with it.
This all could be transported to other fields and fit perfectly. What Anthony says is exactly what happens with sound packs - you can get, say, a Kraftwerk pack with all the original sounds and build your own Kraftwerk-sounding music. And deconstructing a piece you like the sound of, and trying to reproduce it, is a common way to build your mental toolbox. Of course art is imitation; some times you're a copycat, other times you're an innovator, but you're rarely a creator. AI is doing to our brains what machines did to our muscles. You know when in school they were telling us calculators would make us dumb? We started to accept ready-made (vs. handmade) objects, to the point we consider handmade the poor man's substitute to a shiny machined object. Of course, shiny machined objects have their own merits - would you trust a handmade car over a normal one? A handmade heart monitor? :D Automated is good - as in, convenient - from a production POV. Every art has its in-betweens. But if we're talking about our perception of things: we've been led to appreciate a robot and despise an artisan, and that's definitely not good. I listen to music and watch a lot of anime (but by the few movies I watch, cinema seems to go the same way) and the number of slight variations on the same theme is absolutely overwhelming original ideas, to the point where if something doesn't look/sound like the last blockbuster it's "indie", "experimental". Well, experimental is synonymous with art in my mind. Art is not a sport. We're not measuring how well-drawn a comic is, or how fast you can churn out stories. We shouldn't, at least; but look around: your yt channel gets ignored if you don't publish every day; your comic gets deserted if you stop updating for a while; new models of anything every season; people seem to rely more on "abundant" than on "good". So I would not be surprised if shiny machined fully AI-generated "art" became the new normal, and real artists the "indie experimental". Oh, btw: hi Jason, happy new years 2005-2023, or something like that :D
I'm using Chat GPT if I am trying to find some new idea's or scenario's for my comics story. I know how I want it to start, how it will end and some highlights I want to include. But sometimes I get stuck in thinking of how I can further expand the story into a complete comic and thats when I ask Chat GPT to give me a couple of scenario's and when it gives me a few good idea's I can build the story further. So it is good if writing gets a bit stuck at some point.
I think comics is going to be one of the least affected visual mediums. Unlike concept art, sequential art usually involves low detail imagery, but the placement of every detail is critical to the storytelling. It would actually be harder to get an ai to create a perfectly flowing layout in my cartoony style than it would be to just do it myself. I can see it being used to assist artists, but any full ai comic books are probably going to feel like those movie adaptation comics- nice pictures awkwardly stitched together.
I don't feel threatened by AI art because I don't really feel anything when I look at it. And I know it took no emotion and no fun to create. It also makes me appreciate the imperfectness of human art. I will say, considering the generic visuals that big movies have been leaning on for years it makes sense that AI will act as a generic farming software for films that don't have good creative direction. This further enforces the value of a good creative director. I also don't have much of my art online so it makes the projects I am planning feel more special and un-farmed in a way. It's a tool like any other software, it will change a lot of things, but it isn't going to stop you from creating anything.
I think that comic publishers may first introduce A.I. generated art in the form of variant covers. Presently, cosplay covers are used in the industry to generate variant covers & is now an acceptable practice in the industry. I assume that the advent of cosplay covers were challenged by cover artist before it became an acceptable means of expression. Presently, computer software is used by creators as a tool to implement comic art as demonstrated by Jason 2.0 during this presentation. A.I. will be implement by artist in the industry as just another creative tool. Let's face it A.I. is here to stay & it's best to jump on the bandwagon & master the technology!
Thanks for the discussion on AI art. Please check out Mac Smith's Scurry GN that is being released this week. This is a webcomic from years ago that is finally getting the treatment it deserves with Skybound. It reminds me of The Secret of Nimh movie and has elements of Watership Down. Your Dreams of Enoch GN is so good.
Hi Jason. Your two books on drawing male and female figures drew my attention and saw you were going to make available to buy on your website later this year. I went to Coffee Table Comics but it was down. Do you know what happened and when it’ll be back up and running?
hey, this is COMICAI!!! Comicai will be launching a lot of new features in October and we would like to invite you to become an Event Experience Partner, Are you interested?
