I get it now (AI Art)

[MultiMythos]

So I'll be real, I kind of just got annoyed with AI art for a long while. I also held a longstanding hate of it right from the start as I have many friends who are artists, multiple of which that struggle and others that work in professional fields for larger game studios or are regularly hired freelancers. So the idea and just everything going on (the environmental impact, the art stealing, etc) just made me vehemently hated it. Then I started seeing more and more games coming out with AI art and it just kept annoying me.

I'm what I consider a low level artist, I can draw very simple, easy and cute-ish characters, I drew a hollow knight OC the other day that came out great and looks very cute + edgy. However I'm much more of a technical person, I like dealing with code and making things in that way (as a result I have like 6 different personal projects game dev wise in 4 different basis' (1 in Twine, 2 in Ren'Py, 2 in RPGMaker and 1 in Godot) but the art for what I want to do is always where the hard part comes.

Well the last few days I decided to challenge my own opinion (as the few people I know of who do actually use AI art, 1 of them doesn't much talk about it at all and doesn't like to, while the others are the biggest shitters when it comes up in discussion, so I can't really come to them for said challenge in opinion anyway) as I'm one of those people that doesn't like to assume or think the worst unless I try it myself. So I downloaded Invoke, followed the AI Art guide here, and all I can really say is that I get it.

It took literally all day, 4 crashes and a blue screen of death before I finally got it all working and actually making images. They came out decent, way better then I thought they would, and with more experimentation I found that you could basically do whatever you can think of if you can get the prompt right and use the editing tools properly, even make stuff that looks close to what a real artist would output. On the environment front it was also a bit of a relief as since I did it locally hosted rather then a website hosted one, I don't have the slight "well their servers are destroying the environment" feeling I always got when I considered trying this before.

It also helps that it was completely free too, just time consuming and my computer did chug a long at some points but as long as your not doing something in absurd 8k res for no reason you'll be fine with most average gaming setups tbh.

Overall, my opinion that people who make and use AI art aren't artists hasn't changed, to me no they aren't artists but they are tech wizards which I can respect. I still immensely don't like that these machines use art taken from others to create their own either, especially with the art friends I have, and overall I still much prefer real art over AI art, however I'm much more open about AI Art overall (I've been considering using it in my own games as placeholders at least, until I can find actual artists to draw things and afford to pay them their dues).


I just wanted to get my thoughts and experience after trying it out out there! This is all objective opinion on my part, but it was an interesting foray into a field I never put much consideration into farther then "eugh no thanks" so it was neat to learn all this new stuff and challenge myself on it. I'm not expecting replies or anything to this post either (though they are welcome, I'd like to hear your own thoughts!).

Thanks for reading, and I'm pretty sure I'm posting this to the right section, but if I'm not then I'm immensely sorry to any mods!

 

[kinrean]

i think the problem is people too care about if a person is a artist or not, and not really understand what artist mean.

artist this word is use on almost on every thing that got to do with feeling. actor , voice actor, dance , music, song, singing, learning language , teaching, drawing, 3d, animation, and so many more.

in the end it just word that people like to use on people who work hard for it to get the skill, ai art does not make a person learn anything and the more you make the more you are confuse of choosing which drawing.

in short, human doing art is going deep on the thing, and ai is about going wide ( many) . there is use on using ai and people can see what ai art is use on the most, joke and porn.
so is up to artist to think of how to go deep with ai .

 

[mibc9394]

I think just see AI image generation as a very advanced filter, or render engine.

Art is about imitating our world with all the irrelevant removed. So ultimately it's about picking the right things and putting them together. Artists in the old days spent a lot of time in refining the craftsmanship to achieve this goal. Computers help reduce the effort required. AI reduce the effort even further, but if there is no good thought behind an art piece, that piece won't be great.

I think the process of making an art piece is always about answering two questions: what do you want to tell and what is needed to tell what you want to tell. If people spend enough time evaluating whether their arts could answer the two questions well, their arts won't be bad no matter what techniques they use.

AI arts can still have depth and be high quality if they answer the two questions above well. However, if you compares the artworks output by AI directly (with human prompts) with the artworks of the true masters, I think it should be quite obvious that the AI arts are not really comparable to the work by the masters, especially when you are trying to using AI to make your own arts while hoping to make your arts as good as the work of those masters

 

[Idyllune]

but they are tech wizards which I can respect

I disagree to the extent that they are not much different than someone(myself included) that utilizes a 3D program to make art. The totality of an endeavor is what earns someone respect, Starmaker Story for instance. On face value generating good images isn't hard, and it is only going to get easier as time goes on.

Similar to you, I tried a bunch of different models and programs. I was able to generate a lot of high quality images with Comfy and Krita. If it wasn't for my ego and roots as an artist, I could definitely see an alternate universe where I used AI visuals to make a game.

Training ethics aside

When you see so many genuine artists making art they themselves despise or find ugly, it's no wonder people gravitate towards making AI art. Aside from delusional artists who think hand to paper(or tablet) is the only way to create impactful art; Most people can see when something looks good, and something looks bad. Slop is slop, be it human or AI made. There are artists who spend years trying to make a living only for consumers to throw dirt in their face. To that end, why should a creator care about the tool if there is an audience for it? People often shit on AI while completely disregarding the reality of the average person who attempts to be an artist. Hard work rarely pays off.

It still boggles my mind that Beast Control has such an audience. That game alone shows how little people, consumers, care about AI generated content.

 

[Sentinel Sparrow]

same here im stuck on the art part despite having basic art skills. i want to own my character ip so im avoiding it (that and i fried my laptop charger running them ). i think it currently enhances rather than replaces. authorship and skill will always be greater then the baseline ai content, its just a tool to get to the baseline faster and takes way more effort and skill to make it authored to your vision/specifications (from what ive encountered).

 

[Non-UncannyValleyDazGuy]

I agree about AI art. It's like commissioning an artist to paint something you want, except the artist is a computer. I'd rather try to improve over time and just be alright at what I do for the time being.

 

[Anti-Villain Games]

It still boggles my mind that Beast Control has such an audience. That game alone shows how little people, consumers, care about AI generated content.

Not gonna lie...
Same.


'tho, if anyone wants my thoughts on... well, all of this AI stuff.

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[MultiMythos]

Yea I'll be honest, Beast Control seemed interesting in the beginning but it just got wildly out of hand. I'm starting to not mind AI art in games, but I much prefer actual art over it, even if it's something like koikatsu or honey select or something, cause that still took some effort from people to make characters and scenes with, kind of like using Blender or Maya, but with a premade character creator built in.