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How long before AI is used to draw comics?
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27 posts in this topic

On 9/18/2022 at 8:28 AM, Rick2you2 said:

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if AI is being used already for backgrounds which are somewhat repetitive? It wouldn’t surprise me, and I wouldn’t be offended. Some artists use assistants for backgrounds, so I don’t know if there is much of a difference.

Not sure about AI exactly (it doesn’t seem like AI art is great at keeping things consistent between prompts), but a lot of artist use digital tools for the background. For a more obvious example… in his Daredevil run, Alex Maleev used photos (that he’d taken himself) for many of the backgrounds. He drew the figures traditionally, scanned and adjusted them, and inserted the background digitally. I feel like it worked for noir-like atmosphere of the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil run, and the art was praised in that comic, but for comics in general, something like that probably wouldn’t work very well because the resulting art is more static.

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With any luck, someone will get spanked hard enough over this to never let computers generate art ever again. I know, I'm dreaming, but a guy's gotta have hope.

These artists found out their work was used to train AI. Now they’re furious

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Well, we would comment on those ebay auctions with crappy art "signed Jack Kirby". 

Or especially drawn "in the style of Jack Kirby".  Now you can get an AI to actually do it.  You can't stop it.  And it'll be really hard to stop people from buying the "product", which is really the motivation for stuff like this.  Including those "deep fakes", although likenesses have been trademarked.  Can't really claim copyright infringement by AI art unless the AI comes up with something so similar that the artist has a case.  And I don't think I ever heard that Jack Kirby even took offense to people trying to draw like him

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On 10/21/2022 at 8:29 PM, Will_K said:

Well, we would comment on those ebay auctions with crappy art "signed Jack Kirby". 

Or especially drawn "in the style of Jack Kirby".  Now you can get an AI to actually do it.  You can't stop it.  And it'll be really hard to stop people from buying the "product", which is really the motivation for stuff like this.

Gah. You're right. These scenarios remind of the MR. Cavett quote: "As long as people accept cr*p, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."

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On 9/14/2022 at 7:38 AM, Dr. Balls said:

I read this article and it's bothersome to me.

I was a traditional artist for many years, went to school as an illustrator - and ultimately changed my focus to Graphic Design in order to get a full-time job to pay the bills. In that, I started working in digital art (as an aside to my day job at an ad agency) back in 1995 and worked in that genre for nearly 20 years. I was at the beginning of the argument of people saying it's not "real" art. I had to either deal with or fight against this idea - as I would sometimes spend up to 40 hours working on a piece. I used photography (mine and stock), scanography, hand-illustrated elements, etc, so there was some sense of tactile integration of things intermixed with assemblage on the computer - it required advanced skills of Photoshop and Illustrator as well as some practical drawing skills as well.

This AI version of art created with human-input seems to have as much personal artistic expression as going to a frozen yogurt shop and picking your favorite toppings. Sitting in front of a computer thinking about what does or doesn't work, and then inputting that thought process is not artistic. It's a form of deductive reasoning to what compositionally is effective or not. Having your prescription dialed in at the eye doctor by saying which letter looks sharper is not a creative process.

"Which background looks better, the right or the left?"

"Left"

"Which planetary body looks better, the right or the left?"

"Right"

There is no forethought to the process. It's being presented with options and the "artist" chose to try it out, accept it or discard the result. Doing this 4,000 times does not constitute as "artistic expression". I fully admit that creating digital art required less hand skills than painting the same style of illustration by hand. Using a computer also allowed me to add/remove elements that did/did not work in a way that was much easier than traditional art. But I still had to collect, photograph or draw things to put my artwork together. It required me to visually plan out and execute the story I wanted to tell - this is the basis for art. It tells a story in some fashion and I don't agree that AI will ever have that ability, or understand that need to tell a tale. A computer, no matter how advanced, will never have the ability to be inspired by a story, a visual or an experience, apply previous memories, feelings and philosophies to put forth their own take on an artistic expression. A computer will not be able to have abstract thoughts and turn them into a representational articulation. That requires the element of the human brain that can't be replicated even in the craziest, outlandish science fiction.

Someday, it may want to ask things like "Why am I alive?" or "Why isn't the air conditioning on?" - while they could signify sentience, there's no passion to those questions. There's no soul behind the query. AI is a tool - super advanced, yes, but nothing more. This "artist" used a super advanced tool to assemble his work, it doesn't matter if it was AI or not. There's no passion from the computer or the assembler behind the piece - it's just the result of moving things around for 30 hours.

Absolutely right. I have 0 artistic talent as a painter. I spent 40 hours looking at a blank canvas and a tray of acrylic colors while browsing a book of master artists works. Than I put together my masterpiece.

Why is it a masterpiece? Because I put 40 hours of study into it and lifted different images from real artists. The results speak for themselves.

                     B E H O L D

DECFD05F-0BA1-4ED8-AB30-B444B2FADE8D.jpeg.fc279a09b3e9e995022d84e2a7bc6f89.jpeg

 

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A friend showed me one of these programs through discord called MidJourney, and I have to say I was completely blown away by how well it works and how high quality the pictures it returns within 20-30 seconds are.   You can type in pretty much any text string with a only few details, or paragraphs long and you will get something very close to what you asked for.  It's amazing but also very disturbing.... kind of one of those moments where you realize we're getting close to the end times where the AIs take over.

 I'm not sure the best of the best artists will be threatened but if I worked in graphic design or advertising, I'd be very troubled.  Pretty soon the janitor will be able to come up with better than they can and 1000 times faster just by typing in a few words.  If any of the companies running these programs can work out the legal issues they could make some serious money, the applications are limitless. 

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On 9/6/2022 at 9:11 AM, Taylor G said:

Mad Max: Fury Road was done without CGI because George Miller also hates it.  He even wanted to do it without color.

Dune shows how CGI can be done well, when you start paying careful attention to sources of light and the light being reflected back (e.g. use of sand screen instead of green screen).  No doubt, with Marvel underpaying their CGI suppliers, they will continue to be lowest common denominator, it's what they do.  

As with any technology, there's room for careful and artistic touches, and room for sloppy rush jobs.

There was a tremendous amount of CGI in Mad Max: Fury Road. 

Edited by Lobstrosity
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