surodyTG
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I was sick again (Update, Refunds and AI)
🕑 Added 2023-04-25 22:33:40 +0000 UTCUpdate:
Like the headline says I was sick again. Without getting deep into detail, I had a gastrointestinal virus.
I'm healthy now and I'm proceeding work on the Magic Gender Potion animation.
Refunds:
I want to offer refunds between the 16th of march and the 15th of April. This doesn't apply to first time pledges but everybody else is eligible.
If you want a refund, please just write a quick PM here on Patreon.
AI:
Some of you may know that I'm not a big AI fan because using it to it's maximum capacity is insulting to every artist.
I wanted to understand it more and perhaps even find use cases where it's not morally condemnable or where it undermines my own creativity and style but is simply a extension of my workflow to improve what I usually already do by myself. I don't think it's wise to completely ignore new technology because some people abuse it to a morally reprehensible degree.
There's people who never were artists, type in a prompt, press a button and then profit off of that work of others without having done anything besides adjusting some AI settings.
IF I want to use AI myself I set a few rules:
- I don't feed any AI model publicly, it's all locally on my PC
- I don't use it as a replacement but as a extension of my workflow
- I don't want to throw away my own already established style
- I won't blatantly copy other artists styles
I did a few tests and the results are quite impressive. It fixes some areas of my art I personally have issues with or it's just generally a improvement.
This is currently limited to pinups, sequences and comics of course.
I can't see AI being stable enough for animations in the near future to also use it for them and considering that the motion of the transformations is also my own more or less unique style makes it even more complicated.
I want to share some of these tests in a separate post and have a discussion what you think and what's your opinion.
Anyway, as always thank you for the support and back to work!
Comments
Surody
Same to me. I think this should be generally the idea of this new technology. It should be a extension of what we already have and not replace things. It's just a corporate way of thinking to just want to get rid of work for easier money.
W C Purdy
I'll say this at least... you're the first person I've seen that's actually using this stuff as a "tool" rather than just replacing their art wholesale with it, so props for that. I've really grown to hate the "AI is just another tool" argument when most people use it to churn out "finished" products, effectively outsourcing creativity to computer programs. The way most people use AI is revolting to me.
Surody
I noticed the smoothness too. This was caused by using a wrong upscale model. Usually AI works with lower resolutions (Full HD is maximum) and you upscale afterwards. I already found a upscale model which preserves more details. :D In terms of loss of character it depends on how much I dial up the AI "denoising". If I keep it low it'll stay quite close to the original. For the images above I used values between 0.2 and 0.5 (1 is maximum). At 0.5 or lower it will stick to most if not to all original details and I got a few extensions to help preserving original details, poses and faces.
W C Purdy
Well, at least you're being more ethical about it than most. In general, I tend to rescind my patronage when i discover that an artist i pay is using AI. Looking at the examples you've given it's clear you are using it to supplement what you do rather than replace it entirely, so i respect that at least, but it seems to me that a lot of what it's doing is "sanding the edges" off of your work, leaving it looking almost uncannily smooth. I can't say if this is a good thing or not. There's a chance that, if you overuse this stuff then it could result in a lot of loss of character in your work, and i don't think anybody wants that. Personally, I think your work was great as it was. I wouldn't have subscribed otherwise.
