I’m not wrong though 
I haven’t read the rest of the 100+ posts in here, I decided to stop at this one and just state that I agree.
Besides, when you pay an artist to comission something for you, you pay for the hours they not only put into creating the actual piece, but also the hundreds if not thousands of hours they put into learning that specific craft.
I am beyond excited about the future and the technological advancements we’ve made (and continue to make), but when it comes to art and the direction it’s heading with AI, I’m skeptical. While there are some AI pieces out there that look incredible, I’d argue that it looses its soul, that special touch that only a human can give. Perhaps I view it this way because my job is to produce art, but it makes me worried considering that being an artist isn’t really something that is taken seriously as a job, and when someone who types prompts on a generator is praised for it, it feels a bit… weird.
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The direction I see for now is - training data will have to be opt-in and carefully checked for copyrighted content and privacy laws violations, works produced by generators likely won’t be copyrightable or attributable as intellectual property of the user unless the generator itself is (which can kick the ground from under big AI startups like Midjourney etc); one-click image-generation-as-art will tire people out and move out of the limelight, ML software will gradually get tailored for specific uses, become more controllable/art-directable and go into the hands of pro users / companies where it will settle as part of the process; It will affect labor in a complex way we don’t know yet
Non-commercially, enthusiasts will (and already do) shamelessly train model plugins based on specific artists (see CivitAI etc.) which is unavoidable but a nuisance at most; Hopefully we’ll eventually see at least a few court precedents around it
Artistically, we may both see some kind of “anti-AI” visual trend of people consciouslly steering away from styles and aesthetics “claimed” by typical image generators and into stuff that the machine decidedly can’t do; we may also see a mass general exhaustion from super polished inert artificial images and a chance for actual artists to recontextualize around it and shine. An interesting implication of AI images is that can be somewhat of a mirror for artists too focused on craftsmanship and fitting some “quality threshold” - “if a simplistic machine can produce the same thing, maybe I should refocus”. Hopefully it’ll nudge more people into exploring narrative, comics, moving media, worldbuilding, experiments etc. instead of just fitting existing high-quality-visual-trends.
This all may be a bit too optimistic but we’ll see
The lack of mass adoption of AI by artists, the general air of “annoying fad” around it and that evangelizing for AI is aggressive and eerily similar to crypto/NFT, is kinda telling that it’s not as transformative as some people claim, at least at this moment.
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Personally I have never thought that artists charge too much. Sure when you hear that a commission cost some people 200 or 300 euros you are like “wow that’s a bit much isn’t it”, but then you start to consider that those works have taken them on average (at least from the times I have spoken with Shuang and Acrona back in AD meets) 12+ hours.
In which case the hourly rate is anywhere between 15 to 20 euros or so, which is not the cheapest hourly rate in the market, but it is definitely not 30 +, which is something an economist or a doctor or a lawyer would make, and way more, easily.
And it’s not like they start at that level either- Just like any artisan, they start with cheaper doodles and commissions and when they become more established, then they can charge premium- Which, is the way it should be.
All about perspective.
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AI as it currently is cannot be ethical seeing as it’s trained on copyrighted works or without the consent of an artist. Then there’s the whole datascraping issue, which is how they get the images to train and the legal problem in regards to copyright.
Regardless of what “haha gotcha” you’re trying to pull in favour of AI it remains easily shut down by very upfront and simple reasonings as to why.
Also I will be frank and say people “Just doing it for a visual ref of their character” are equally bad at finding an excuse to use it, you already have a visual ref, it’s called your in-game character model and very often a written TRP profile.
As much as people still think artists are some rich snobs like a few hundred years ago it is just not true anymore and most work for pennies for the quality of work they have to provide.
An example of this is WOTC/MTG who offers around $1000 baserate (They have supposedly been raised a bit) per illustration with a fairly small turn around and extremely high quality expectations, with some being able to do 1-3 per month. That’s ridiculous and they’re even one of the better paying gigs out there.
So as you can tell, artists really are living in the lap of luxury /s
That’s you know, the proffesional aspect for an established franchise, freelancers and character portrait artists don’t even come close to a decent income from art alone on average.
Art is a luxury, support your local artist or stop whining about how expensive art is.
And before mention merch sales, those rarely account to much in a whole year.
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good artists copy, great artists steal
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Not really, a good artist refferences and adds their own touches, a bad artist steal.
Good to know you have no knowledge of the creative field or anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation.
it’s a picasso quote
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His posts on the topic are more inane than my average post, not worth engaging with on the topic.
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It’s the same word vomit without understanding the actual meaning behind the words, but frankly I don’t expect otherwise at this point from some people.
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culture war must go brrrr
Yeah, I agree with these notions. regarding the numbers you provided, I think today a finished, polished illustration could easily take 20+ hours for me. Mostly because I take more regularly breaks from a piece and get back to it with fresh eyes - and then I always see something to improve on and ready to tackle the issues with renewed energy compared to at 2am when I’ve already been working on it for 6 hours and just want to be done with it.
Due to having a full time job, taking commissions on my spare time currently doesn’t have enough carrot to it as far as compensation is concerned; I’d maybe make 12 euro per hour off of it because I’m not super fast at it. And those 20+ hours is time away from doing other things I like, such as gaming, roleplay, exercise, personal art or writing, etc.
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You have to admit I got you good with that one
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Elaborate please, what culture? What war?
Please be eloquent in your response to my question
A high praise but misgiven in this case my friend you yet bear the crown
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i’m referring to pullo’s posts in this thread all being gotcha attempts at an imagined “uppity twitter artist” opponent with no point to them
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Ah, makes sense. Thank you for explaining to my at times smooth brain.
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Better smooth than rough.
btw if you wanna read more about the the history of copying, theft and the drama of “you took my style” in art history here is a good article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141112-great-artists-steal
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“Here’s a BBC article on a totally unrelated topic to the problem. Checkmate artists.”
Be for real.
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