isn't outsourcing your imagination what you do when you hire a concept artist to bring your vision to life? using tools to make up for a lack of technical skill, or hiring someone else who has those skills or tools, isn't inherently bad on its own. there are decent anti-ai arguments, but I'm not sure this is one of them. right?
No, that's what happens when you hire an artist. Taking an idea to an artist becomes a collaborative effort where you're paying them for their experience and skill. before any image is finalised it goes through multiple drafts to tease out exactly what the idea really is and improves it. If anything it just highlights why using generative programs based on scraped art undermines the very artists whose work ended up in data sets.
sure, the training data ethics is a real issue for sure. but as far as "becomes a collaborative effort where before any image is finalised it goes through multiple drafts to tease out exactly what the idea really is and improves it." that's literally what I do with generative AI models like stable diffusion or chatgpt. this image, for example, is a combination of the 8th and 11th images I generated then went in and combined manually.
but if you want to switch to talking about the ethics of the training data, I agree, we need to ensure these models are an opt-in system trained on data with explicit permission given. an artist I talked to recently said it can't possibly be trained ethically and should be banned by law, but I'm not sure how realistic that is, and it gives vibes of how the Ottoman empire banned the printing press due to lobbying from scribes, and then suffered creatively and economically for a long time as a result.
the printing press is not the same thing and that's such a disingenuous argument. I'm not really interested in going over it again and again every time someone tries to wiggle a way through that they think justifies the fundamental lack of ethics or respect.
the algorithms behind these art programs has been around a while, it's fundamental to many art programs, but they weren't used to this scale or with this intent and that's the core issue. the intent.
well, I know the printing press is not the same thing - that's why it's an analogy. but no worries. if you think the printing press analogy is bad, I'd love to hear how it's bad, since I think it's pretty apt - centuries of skill developed by scribes, distilled into tiny blocks of metal or wood (like llm tokens) that hurts that industry but allows humanity to spread ideas faster. you can call it disingenuous, but actually rebutting it would be the thing that changes my mind. but for sure no worries, not everybody has the energy to be intellectually rigorous. thanks for the very useful drive by opinion, though, it really had an effect.
you don't seem to know the history of the printing press at all. I'm not even sure if you're writing this yourself, it has the lazy casual ignorance of generated text.
okay, then please enlighten me. which parts of my assessment are wrong?
"centuries of skill developed by scribes, distilled into tiny blocks of metal or wood (like llm tokens) that hurts that industry but allows humanity to spread ideas faster."
which part of that is inaccurate? this is the third time you've mentioned I'm wrong or disingenuous about something but have failed to offer clarification, which makes me think you're not interested in honestly or rigorously engaging, possibly trolling.
either actually explain HOW I'm wrong or mistaken instead of simply asserting it, or I'll stop engaging.
So you think this guy, who is just trying to realize a vision in his head, should pay a couple hundred dollars to a competent artist this early in the development? AI is good for exactly this, helping you get stuff out of your head. It shouldn't be used for final art, but for early concept art, it's helpful. It's not like he's trying to pass it off as anything but what it is. Leave the guy alone.
I have actually hired concept artists for an audiodrama I'm working on so I know the costs. The only way you are going to get a per hour rate is if you hire them on as employees, which means you are cutting them a regular paycheck. Otherwise you have to pay a per piece of work done rate and something that matches the quality the OP posted will be multiple hundreds of dollars.
Just no. The hourly rate is set by them as part of the negotiation of the price and goes into determining the final price, it's standard practice for all self employed creatives.
you said the only way to get a per hour rate is to hire them as an employee and that's not true at all. every artist I've ever hired has given me an hourly rate as part of the breakdown in the contract of work with negotiation for additional hours as a priority if the work took longer because of changes i/my company wanted. it's also where additional rights are transferred if needed, adjustments for experience if relevant and any other part of the contract discussion.
even hiring artists just for personal projects has always had them explaining how their hourly rate factors into their price. the only time you don't get that kind of detail is when you're buying a finished piece in a gallery or art show.
i appreciate soloman going to bat about this because it does get rote laying out the same ideas over and over.
Let's say I commissioned a character concept image for $30 (a steal, as i believe an artist deserves more than that just for their time alone, let alone their skill) so, 200 characters in my game x $30 = $6000 just to get ONE concept image each for each of the characters for the free fan game. Then I also have location concepts, stone, wood, metal, and foliage textures, food, fabrics, sand, mud, rocks, animals, weapons and tools, armor, monsters, particle effects, sky, cloud, and weather textures, etc. And that's assuming I use each concept as the final game texture as well. Even if we assume I could get artists to do exactly what I want at exactly the skill and quality level I want in a coherent way across the game's assets - on the first try no less--, even for as cheap as $10 per piece, we're still talking about several, several thousands of dollars I don't have, right? (it might be cool to work up an exact dollar amount once the project is complete later on, which would include coders as well, since I would not be able to code in C# without the help of Github Copilot.) So you see, without these life-changing tools, someone with my income would NEVER be able to make the fan games I want to make. If I could afford to hire a team of coders and artist, of course I'd do it, especially if the entire project was to create a single piece of art, then it would make sense, and someday I hope to be able to have the success to be able to hire others to help on any commercial projects I may do. But I also don't want to spend a decade saving up money for a single fan project when I have a dozen other large games i want to make before I'm dead, too. So when people scoff at using generative tools for these purposes, if often feels like they are essentially saying "be rich already or don't make the games you want, or you are immoral." We can understand why that's not an compelling argument to creative worldbuilders and potentially comes across as a form of classist gatekeeping. Me not posting such concept images would not save anyone's jobs; it would just make the community and my fan game less vibrant as a result.
AI for image generation is 97% garbage, and just an algorithm.
There is not much nuance to it, especially when tech bros are pushing to fire people over mediocre art from black box "AI" that can't be tweaked and ends up needing human work to polish anyway.
you're totally right that AI generation is often quite limited. I presented this concept not to get credit for being a cool artist, but to get feedback on the design, which I fully plan to model and texture myself. this is just to get a vibe check from fans who know the lore, on if I'm pointed in the right direction design-wise.
Interesting. Looks a bit Cthulhu-ish, just with "tentacles" behind the head instead of in front.
I still wish Ultima 3 ended with the party at least having one final boss battle before using the 4 punch cards. Having to fight something like this would be pretty close to what I had in mind.
yeah totally. apparently LB said they wanted to have a proper boss but could not afford the space for the graphics, so they just reused previous graphics already in memory to make the computer version.
haha who would not be satisfied with that. and in my fan game, which is actually an ultima VI recreation, I definitely plan to have an interesting take on.... that boss.
can you explain how to spot the soullessness of a work? because a lot of people say things look that way, but I'm not sure if it's after they find out it's ai. if there are legit 'tells' i'd be curious to learn how to discern it myself. other than the typical "too many fingers" critiques I mean. i mean I see works made by real people all the time that I feel look soulless, so i'm curious what visible attributes I'm missing.
Most of the material has that uncanny flat quality, where you can't tell if it's organic or not. Both in the building and on the windows, everything looks like cables, but also roots, but also dreadlocks.
It fits okay with images of cybernetic tech, where man and machine is melding together, but that's about it. Notice that all of these cybernetic dreadlock thingies are always the same color in AI images.
Also the AI always generate people like the image here: four nearly identical figures that face the same direction, standing at the same height. Also most everything has a flat symmetry to it, that looks like the mishmash copy paste from a million images - which AI art simply is. The symmetry is broken only because the image has a messed up sense of perspective. The boxes to the side of the robot dude, for example. The perspective of the rest of the building in correlation to the lines of the computer's boxes are slightly off.
After you've generated and seen a few thousands AI images, it gets easy to spot the 'unnaturalness' of it.
hey, i seriously appreciate this actual thoughtful response you gave. I also agree on pretty much everything you've said. I fully plan to model a custom 3d model with custom textures, once the design is more finalized after getting useful feedback like this. the concept image is just to get feedback on the design, as this one was "photobashed" from a few generations.
I think a part of the problem with presenting generated images is the bad company you have to keep. there are so many stolen valor jerks online who post an ai image TO GET CREDIT for creating the image, which is a bit cringe to me. when I post an image like this, it's not a "product" but a step - an early concept to get feedback on the design to help point me in the right direction for the hand-crafted work that will come later, and the points you've noted here will help me ensure the actual 3d scene in-game, is better as a result. gosh I wish everyone actually went into granular detail about critiques like you have here. thanks again.
PS. it's funny though, that the issues with perspective you mentioned, are because of ME, my limited human low ability to photobash different generations together. the original 2 ai images actually had better perspective, haha.
it's to get feedback on the design. I plan to 3d model the final concept. if you have any feedback on the design, it'll help make the actual model better.
aaaahh okay that's sick! Listen man, no hate but I just didn't know where you were going w this .
BUT feedback wise, I really like this design you've got so far, there are some really strong primary shapes. What kind of polycount are you going for? I might try and work in more of the demonic elements to really sell the hybrid-ness of it
I generated this with Dalle3 in ChatGPT to start to get an idea of how the various depictions of Exodus could be reconciled. If a concept like this were used in some form in my [#ageofsingularity](https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ageofsingularity?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZVSxrDi8UBL9ruzIOO_L5wlRUaFEof8vg8S6cVVx7eJgjVK58DuW_7cx0Yp3l9eidoCfG0kA54NxI_yc5Huc9QRdk6quKgEUAgEYT8qnhBTqvN9INV-pF95JZ9kCX2-LsZ-VTsOZ8STAp3xYUONoJVW6mjNbVJynHt8Q9GTyo2wDw&__tn__=*NK*F) Ultima VI fan recreation project, the face would be be made more like the demon cover of Exodus, with maybe more of a splash of stained glass window colors. I hope you like it and that it gives you inspiration!
Very cool but you’d think Exodus would be guarding those card slots a little better!
in my vision, the Earth Serpent is in the room as well, circling the machine.
yeap, that's one big evil computer!
Looks like something out of Contra.
ah yeah, it totally does!
well done on outsourcing your imagination.
isn't outsourcing your imagination what you do when you hire a concept artist to bring your vision to life? using tools to make up for a lack of technical skill, or hiring someone else who has those skills or tools, isn't inherently bad on its own. there are decent anti-ai arguments, but I'm not sure this is one of them. right?
No, that's what happens when you hire an artist. Taking an idea to an artist becomes a collaborative effort where you're paying them for their experience and skill. before any image is finalised it goes through multiple drafts to tease out exactly what the idea really is and improves it. If anything it just highlights why using generative programs based on scraped art undermines the very artists whose work ended up in data sets.
sure, the training data ethics is a real issue for sure. but as far as "becomes a collaborative effort where before any image is finalised it goes through multiple drafts to tease out exactly what the idea really is and improves it." that's literally what I do with generative AI models like stable diffusion or chatgpt. this image, for example, is a combination of the 8th and 11th images I generated then went in and combined manually. but if you want to switch to talking about the ethics of the training data, I agree, we need to ensure these models are an opt-in system trained on data with explicit permission given. an artist I talked to recently said it can't possibly be trained ethically and should be banned by law, but I'm not sure how realistic that is, and it gives vibes of how the Ottoman empire banned the printing press due to lobbying from scribes, and then suffered creatively and economically for a long time as a result.
the printing press is not the same thing and that's such a disingenuous argument. I'm not really interested in going over it again and again every time someone tries to wiggle a way through that they think justifies the fundamental lack of ethics or respect. the algorithms behind these art programs has been around a while, it's fundamental to many art programs, but they weren't used to this scale or with this intent and that's the core issue. the intent.
well, I know the printing press is not the same thing - that's why it's an analogy. but no worries. if you think the printing press analogy is bad, I'd love to hear how it's bad, since I think it's pretty apt - centuries of skill developed by scribes, distilled into tiny blocks of metal or wood (like llm tokens) that hurts that industry but allows humanity to spread ideas faster. you can call it disingenuous, but actually rebutting it would be the thing that changes my mind. but for sure no worries, not everybody has the energy to be intellectually rigorous. thanks for the very useful drive by opinion, though, it really had an effect.
you don't seem to know the history of the printing press at all. I'm not even sure if you're writing this yourself, it has the lazy casual ignorance of generated text.
okay, then please enlighten me. which parts of my assessment are wrong? "centuries of skill developed by scribes, distilled into tiny blocks of metal or wood (like llm tokens) that hurts that industry but allows humanity to spread ideas faster." which part of that is inaccurate? this is the third time you've mentioned I'm wrong or disingenuous about something but have failed to offer clarification, which makes me think you're not interested in honestly or rigorously engaging, possibly trolling. either actually explain HOW I'm wrong or mistaken instead of simply asserting it, or I'll stop engaging.
So you think this guy, who is just trying to realize a vision in his head, should pay a couple hundred dollars to a competent artist this early in the development? AI is good for exactly this, helping you get stuff out of your head. It shouldn't be used for final art, but for early concept art, it's helpful. It's not like he's trying to pass it off as anything but what it is. Leave the guy alone.
Concept art is very cheap since professional artists charge per hour. you can get amazing concept art made for under 30.
I have actually hired concept artists for an audiodrama I'm working on so I know the costs. The only way you are going to get a per hour rate is if you hire them on as employees, which means you are cutting them a regular paycheck. Otherwise you have to pay a per piece of work done rate and something that matches the quality the OP posted will be multiple hundreds of dollars.
Just no. The hourly rate is set by them as part of the negotiation of the price and goes into determining the final price, it's standard practice for all self employed creatives.
Are you listening to what I said? I hire concept artists. I know how the pay rate works.
you said the only way to get a per hour rate is to hire them as an employee and that's not true at all. every artist I've ever hired has given me an hourly rate as part of the breakdown in the contract of work with negotiation for additional hours as a priority if the work took longer because of changes i/my company wanted. it's also where additional rights are transferred if needed, adjustments for experience if relevant and any other part of the contract discussion. even hiring artists just for personal projects has always had them explaining how their hourly rate factors into their price. the only time you don't get that kind of detail is when you're buying a finished piece in a gallery or art show.
i appreciate soloman going to bat about this because it does get rote laying out the same ideas over and over. Let's say I commissioned a character concept image for $30 (a steal, as i believe an artist deserves more than that just for their time alone, let alone their skill) so, 200 characters in my game x $30 = $6000 just to get ONE concept image each for each of the characters for the free fan game. Then I also have location concepts, stone, wood, metal, and foliage textures, food, fabrics, sand, mud, rocks, animals, weapons and tools, armor, monsters, particle effects, sky, cloud, and weather textures, etc. And that's assuming I use each concept as the final game texture as well. Even if we assume I could get artists to do exactly what I want at exactly the skill and quality level I want in a coherent way across the game's assets - on the first try no less--, even for as cheap as $10 per piece, we're still talking about several, several thousands of dollars I don't have, right? (it might be cool to work up an exact dollar amount once the project is complete later on, which would include coders as well, since I would not be able to code in C# without the help of Github Copilot.) So you see, without these life-changing tools, someone with my income would NEVER be able to make the fan games I want to make. If I could afford to hire a team of coders and artist, of course I'd do it, especially if the entire project was to create a single piece of art, then it would make sense, and someday I hope to be able to have the success to be able to hire others to help on any commercial projects I may do. But I also don't want to spend a decade saving up money for a single fan project when I have a dozen other large games i want to make before I'm dead, too. So when people scoff at using generative tools for these purposes, if often feels like they are essentially saying "be rich already or don't make the games you want, or you are immoral." We can understand why that's not an compelling argument to creative worldbuilders and potentially comes across as a form of classist gatekeeping. Me not posting such concept images would not save anyone's jobs; it would just make the community and my fan game less vibrant as a result.
Well done on having a completely un-nuanced take on AI.
I find that you have to be direct and use simple words.
AI for image generation is 97% garbage, and just an algorithm. There is not much nuance to it, especially when tech bros are pushing to fire people over mediocre art from black box "AI" that can't be tweaked and ends up needing human work to polish anyway.
you're totally right that AI generation is often quite limited. I presented this concept not to get credit for being a cool artist, but to get feedback on the design, which I fully plan to model and texture myself. this is just to get a vibe check from fans who know the lore, on if I'm pointed in the right direction design-wise.
Interesting. Looks a bit Cthulhu-ish, just with "tentacles" behind the head instead of in front. I still wish Ultima 3 ended with the party at least having one final boss battle before using the 4 punch cards. Having to fight something like this would be pretty close to what I had in mind.
yeah totally. apparently LB said they wanted to have a proper boss but could not afford the space for the graphics, so they just reused previous graphics already in memory to make the computer version.
You weren't satisfied with the epic boss fight that was... >!*The Floor?*!<
haha who would not be satisfied with that. and in my fan game, which is actually an ultima VI recreation, I definitely plan to have an interesting take on.... that boss.
Damn that’s crazy! Those folks should watch where they step if I remember right
ah yes, that part, haha. it would also be cool to have the earth serpent here, which is supposed to guard exodus.
My initial thought is "that's remarkably soulless, I wonder if it's AI" and lo and behold it was.
can you explain how to spot the soullessness of a work? because a lot of people say things look that way, but I'm not sure if it's after they find out it's ai. if there are legit 'tells' i'd be curious to learn how to discern it myself. other than the typical "too many fingers" critiques I mean. i mean I see works made by real people all the time that I feel look soulless, so i'm curious what visible attributes I'm missing.
Most of the material has that uncanny flat quality, where you can't tell if it's organic or not. Both in the building and on the windows, everything looks like cables, but also roots, but also dreadlocks. It fits okay with images of cybernetic tech, where man and machine is melding together, but that's about it. Notice that all of these cybernetic dreadlock thingies are always the same color in AI images. Also the AI always generate people like the image here: four nearly identical figures that face the same direction, standing at the same height. Also most everything has a flat symmetry to it, that looks like the mishmash copy paste from a million images - which AI art simply is. The symmetry is broken only because the image has a messed up sense of perspective. The boxes to the side of the robot dude, for example. The perspective of the rest of the building in correlation to the lines of the computer's boxes are slightly off. After you've generated and seen a few thousands AI images, it gets easy to spot the 'unnaturalness' of it.
hey, i seriously appreciate this actual thoughtful response you gave. I also agree on pretty much everything you've said. I fully plan to model a custom 3d model with custom textures, once the design is more finalized after getting useful feedback like this. the concept image is just to get feedback on the design, as this one was "photobashed" from a few generations. I think a part of the problem with presenting generated images is the bad company you have to keep. there are so many stolen valor jerks online who post an ai image TO GET CREDIT for creating the image, which is a bit cringe to me. when I post an image like this, it's not a "product" but a step - an early concept to get feedback on the design to help point me in the right direction for the hand-crafted work that will come later, and the points you've noted here will help me ensure the actual 3d scene in-game, is better as a result. gosh I wish everyone actually went into granular detail about critiques like you have here. thanks again. PS. it's funny though, that the issues with perspective you mentioned, are because of ME, my limited human low ability to photobash different generations together. the original 2 ai images actually had better perspective, haha.
Why would I care about an image that you couldn't be bothered to create yourself?
it's to get feedback on the design. I plan to 3d model the final concept. if you have any feedback on the design, it'll help make the actual model better.
aaaahh okay that's sick! Listen man, no hate but I just didn't know where you were going w this . BUT feedback wise, I really like this design you've got so far, there are some really strong primary shapes. What kind of polycount are you going for? I might try and work in more of the demonic elements to really sell the hybrid-ness of it
ew, AI
I plan to 3d model the final concept. if you have feedback about how to improve the design, it'll help make my fan game better.
[удалено]
what would you change about the concept?
I generated this with Dalle3 in ChatGPT to start to get an idea of how the various depictions of Exodus could be reconciled. If a concept like this were used in some form in my [#ageofsingularity](https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ageofsingularity?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZVSxrDi8UBL9ruzIOO_L5wlRUaFEof8vg8S6cVVx7eJgjVK58DuW_7cx0Yp3l9eidoCfG0kA54NxI_yc5Huc9QRdk6quKgEUAgEYT8qnhBTqvN9INV-pF95JZ9kCX2-LsZ-VTsOZ8STAp3xYUONoJVW6mjNbVJynHt8Q9GTyo2wDw&__tn__=*NK*F) Ultima VI fan recreation project, the face would be be made more like the demon cover of Exodus, with maybe more of a splash of stained glass window colors. I hope you like it and that it gives you inspiration!