FA+
Shop
Thoughts based on FA policy update
3 years ago
I wanted this to be less specific, more random and more about where I see my own future, will do that some other time, but... Yeah, I got carried away.
Last night, I went on DeviantArt to try and find some interesting references for things like dresses and stuff, something on which I don't have a lot of saved reference. Going through DA made me think of a lot of things, including why I haven't and don't use it anymore apart for looking for reference. I have come to hate the current UI experience there. Everything just feels so clumped and inconsistent. And I hate DA's lack of a clear and rigid mature/adult content rating like FA has. I'll get back to DA further down.
Also last night, I saw FA's announcement on the upload policy changes and such. It's cool to see that FA is still keen on improving the site and kind of makes me think of FA Plus since it's pretty much the main place for all my artwork; there's no other site that really satisfies me in that regard, especially since FA doesn't have stupid requirements for artwork "quality" or anything like that. Yeah, there's a fair bit of "teen angst" and "cringe-y" art, but so what? I remember being that age not that long ago and it really sucks for someone to have to feel like they can't vent something through artwork because of arbitrary restrictions or even some kind of social pressure. We're not born mature or maestros either way; there has to be room for people to mess around and make mistakes and imperfect things.
As for the FA policy changes; I'm glad they want to cut down on reminder submissions. I don't personally mind them too much but they do become noise when looking through the site and new submissions. I do dislike reminders when they don't get removed or made difficult to find later, once they're not relevant anymore.
The policy update on content lacking artistic merit, I was more on the fence about. I've thought about it quite a lot since last night because actually I have been messing around with AI generated art for a while now. I have not posted any of it publically and likely will not anyway, but I do have use for it, as I find it to be very useful for just making new reference on the fly, especially reference in specific styles. I see generated art both as a tool for artists and non-artists. For one thing, non-artists can use it to communicate visually with artists, so they can have it make new things and say "I would like something like this element in this picture" to an artist; and artists can use it as a tool that helps with studying all the different aspects of art, not to mention as bases for compositions, colour palettes and so on, which as things by themselves, nobody "owns" anyway.
I don't feel threatened by generated art, certainly not in its current incarnation, but I do think that like any tool, there are good uses and less good uses. I do feel that art being more publically accessible for anyone is a good thing, even if it wasn't made by a person in the strictest sense. Something else to write about re. the value of art. There is still a human component with regards to the prompts; my main fear here would be that it might lock us into super-defined meanings and therefore further stereotype certain themes within art; this is something that already happens anyway but I could see it being made worse by generated art.
Maybe it's not fair to say that generated art lacks artistic merit even if it's partly pot luck (so is making my own ideas myself, you know), and I think that the argument that it samples content from hundreds or thousands of artists is not especially relevant. I have thoughts on copyright's inadequacies that will some day surface on some other written thing. But heck, I wish I could teach the things to do my own style so that I could reiterate on my own ideas more quickly and have quicker bases to work from, not to mention see how I could diverge from its "expectations" and how it diverges from mine. In any case, and sorry for the H word here, human artists already "generate" their own art very often by looking at and mimicing elements from artwork made by other artists. Isn't it a bit like arguing that human artists shouldn't make artwork that looks like anything that already exists? That would be impossible to satisfy, especially given that we have pretty much already gotten to a saturation point on what's possible as far as artistic style goes.
Still, in the end I do agree with FA when they say it's likely not in the community's best interest to allow generated art on the site, even though some people will likely still try I'd imagine. If I'm so pro-AI art, why would I think that? Well for two reasons at the very least;
- One is because like submission reminders, generated art becomes noise since it can be generated far more quickly than a living artist can conceive and create a new piece at the same technical level.
- Reason two goes back to DA, because as an artist, when you're made to look at existing artwork that is all polished to hell, because it's difficult to filter it out or not be grabbed by it, no matter the amount of effort and years of buildup that it took to make, it can be incredibly demotivating to then want to work on and conceive your own artwork. And since generated artwork is particularly decent at looking "polished" enough, even when it's a thematic turd, it can probably contribute to this demotivation factor if it's allowed on a site that is meant primarily for artwork made mostly by the artists themselves.
If I was my teen self and I saw my artwork from now as it being from a different person, I think I would feel demotivated. The problem is not conceiving a piece in your head, I think most people have a similar level of ability in that regard, in the same way that we can imagine someone else's voice with words they've never said. The problem is that training the arms and hands to actually put that outside of your head is not an easy process and unfortunately takes quite a while.
- A third reason for keeping it away from sites like this would be that generated art is actually quite good for the most part, so it becomes difficult to distinguish whether it's made by a person or just generated, though at the moment it doesn't make furry art very well from my experience. Maybe as an artist I have "more" ability to detect whether a piece is generated or not, but to be honest the current means I have of checking whether it was generated or not would fail me if the generated art became even more authentic than it already is. On DA today I almost fell for a few and I only didn't because I know that generated art is bad at certain elements and leaves certain noticeable artifacts that a human artist does not leave; human artists leave certain artifacts and flaws too, but of a different nature that is not replicated well by the generated art at present, especially given the typical resolutions and pixel quality.
Well, I've probably spent too long on this. Now I'm going to mess around with some stuff and then a bit later get back to making some progress on some art.
Posted using PostyBirb
Last night, I went on DeviantArt to try and find some interesting references for things like dresses and stuff, something on which I don't have a lot of saved reference. Going through DA made me think of a lot of things, including why I haven't and don't use it anymore apart for looking for reference. I have come to hate the current UI experience there. Everything just feels so clumped and inconsistent. And I hate DA's lack of a clear and rigid mature/adult content rating like FA has. I'll get back to DA further down.
Also last night, I saw FA's announcement on the upload policy changes and such. It's cool to see that FA is still keen on improving the site and kind of makes me think of FA Plus since it's pretty much the main place for all my artwork; there's no other site that really satisfies me in that regard, especially since FA doesn't have stupid requirements for artwork "quality" or anything like that. Yeah, there's a fair bit of "teen angst" and "cringe-y" art, but so what? I remember being that age not that long ago and it really sucks for someone to have to feel like they can't vent something through artwork because of arbitrary restrictions or even some kind of social pressure. We're not born mature or maestros either way; there has to be room for people to mess around and make mistakes and imperfect things.
As for the FA policy changes; I'm glad they want to cut down on reminder submissions. I don't personally mind them too much but they do become noise when looking through the site and new submissions. I do dislike reminders when they don't get removed or made difficult to find later, once they're not relevant anymore.
The policy update on content lacking artistic merit, I was more on the fence about. I've thought about it quite a lot since last night because actually I have been messing around with AI generated art for a while now. I have not posted any of it publically and likely will not anyway, but I do have use for it, as I find it to be very useful for just making new reference on the fly, especially reference in specific styles. I see generated art both as a tool for artists and non-artists. For one thing, non-artists can use it to communicate visually with artists, so they can have it make new things and say "I would like something like this element in this picture" to an artist; and artists can use it as a tool that helps with studying all the different aspects of art, not to mention as bases for compositions, colour palettes and so on, which as things by themselves, nobody "owns" anyway.
I don't feel threatened by generated art, certainly not in its current incarnation, but I do think that like any tool, there are good uses and less good uses. I do feel that art being more publically accessible for anyone is a good thing, even if it wasn't made by a person in the strictest sense. Something else to write about re. the value of art. There is still a human component with regards to the prompts; my main fear here would be that it might lock us into super-defined meanings and therefore further stereotype certain themes within art; this is something that already happens anyway but I could see it being made worse by generated art.
Maybe it's not fair to say that generated art lacks artistic merit even if it's partly pot luck (so is making my own ideas myself, you know), and I think that the argument that it samples content from hundreds or thousands of artists is not especially relevant. I have thoughts on copyright's inadequacies that will some day surface on some other written thing. But heck, I wish I could teach the things to do my own style so that I could reiterate on my own ideas more quickly and have quicker bases to work from, not to mention see how I could diverge from its "expectations" and how it diverges from mine. In any case, and sorry for the H word here, human artists already "generate" their own art very often by looking at and mimicing elements from artwork made by other artists. Isn't it a bit like arguing that human artists shouldn't make artwork that looks like anything that already exists? That would be impossible to satisfy, especially given that we have pretty much already gotten to a saturation point on what's possible as far as artistic style goes.
Still, in the end I do agree with FA when they say it's likely not in the community's best interest to allow generated art on the site, even though some people will likely still try I'd imagine. If I'm so pro-AI art, why would I think that? Well for two reasons at the very least;
- One is because like submission reminders, generated art becomes noise since it can be generated far more quickly than a living artist can conceive and create a new piece at the same technical level.
- Reason two goes back to DA, because as an artist, when you're made to look at existing artwork that is all polished to hell, because it's difficult to filter it out or not be grabbed by it, no matter the amount of effort and years of buildup that it took to make, it can be incredibly demotivating to then want to work on and conceive your own artwork. And since generated artwork is particularly decent at looking "polished" enough, even when it's a thematic turd, it can probably contribute to this demotivation factor if it's allowed on a site that is meant primarily for artwork made mostly by the artists themselves.
If I was my teen self and I saw my artwork from now as it being from a different person, I think I would feel demotivated. The problem is not conceiving a piece in your head, I think most people have a similar level of ability in that regard, in the same way that we can imagine someone else's voice with words they've never said. The problem is that training the arms and hands to actually put that outside of your head is not an easy process and unfortunately takes quite a while.
- A third reason for keeping it away from sites like this would be that generated art is actually quite good for the most part, so it becomes difficult to distinguish whether it's made by a person or just generated, though at the moment it doesn't make furry art very well from my experience. Maybe as an artist I have "more" ability to detect whether a piece is generated or not, but to be honest the current means I have of checking whether it was generated or not would fail me if the generated art became even more authentic than it already is. On DA today I almost fell for a few and I only didn't because I know that generated art is bad at certain elements and leaves certain noticeable artifacts that a human artist does not leave; human artists leave certain artifacts and flaws too, but of a different nature that is not replicated well by the generated art at present, especially given the typical resolutions and pixel quality.
Well, I've probably spent too long on this. Now I'm going to mess around with some stuff and then a bit later get back to making some progress on some art.
Posted using PostyBirb
Oh the problem IS that too. Even Ruaidri made a post about this, that he cannot imagine a scene in his head, or characters for that matter! That's why 3D helped him so much; he can play with the props and see things with his own eyes.
As for forbidding AI-generated art here...
...it is true that we as humans use everything we've seen as a basis for creating more work, but:
1.- the AI exclusively uses that, that's all it does, it's a massive copy-paste-collage engine.
2.- this website is for humans, not AIs.
3.- adding a prompt to the AI as a "creative effort" is akin to "commissioning the AI", but the website is for humans, not AIs, so this still doesn't belong here. Commissioning can have plenty of creativity involved, but we still consider the artist to be the main creative force there.
I also agree with your argumentation that seeing art that's too realistic, even though it's a thematic disaster, is not good for self-esteem, especially for teens and young adults, who are the main furry demographics.
I don't have much else to say, I roughly agree on everything else!
All your points there are fair regarding the forbidding.
I think I only really have two things to mention about them, one being that when I think of AI art I'm not thinking of art belonging to some actual "intelligent/sentient machine" or something. Is it even fair to call the present incarnations of an art AI intelligent at all? They're clever things, but so is a fly in its own domain and within its normally expected parameters... Intelligence tends to be about context, as I see it and is probably also separate to what we normally call sentience. Humans are pretty dumb in plenty of contexts. (Myself especially. :P)I'm not sure I can get across what I was thinking about, so you can take that paragraph as a dumb moment to be sure.The second thing is that you say that you consider the artist the main creative force in commissioning, but I think that really just depends on the dynamic between the commissioner and the artist. The rest of your point 3. there still stands. I just wanted to say that some of the ideas I've been given to work on have been well enough defined in advance that the only real creative effort on my part was to assemble the idea, in a sense; my problem-solving, i.e. creative role, was largely a technical one for some ideas. This is just my view in some cases, anyway. Sure, sometimes "creative freedom" is given and very broadly so, but you might also expect (correctly) that those aren't necessarily the best or most fun to work with. *It still varies because such free ideas will ultimately still have some restrictions in the commissioner's mind, it's just that it's not always laid out at first.
Good point regarding the main furry demographics. Self-esteem issues and so on certainly feel like a much bigger problem to deal with at certain ages (other contexts notwithstanding).
One thing I can see arising - and whether it is possible yet or not I don't know - is using these as a kind of very complex pattern fill, or to slightly move parts of 2d pictures in terms of 3d space, that kind of thing, especially when the task is boring and repetitive done manually. Not sure what the effect of this would be in terms of effort/motivation, but I do think it'd avoid the soullessness all AI generated art has. (And by "soullessness" I mean something that arises from context, not a visual property.)
On the major points I agree with you and Pentalis and FA.
As to practical consequences still need to reply to your reply to my PM.
Although I don't especially want to see them develop as tools that eliminate the thinking processes involved, it would be quite good if the tools themselves could reiterate further and further in a natural way on a specific piece until it's definitely down to where someone wants the piece to be; right now you can't tell it "well, you did the eye wrong, try like this instead", because right now it's disappointing that it's all mostly pot luck based on the prompt. I think all that would be good for people in general, rather than for artists.
Oh, and on the other hand, if as an artist I could fully draw a composition, maybe with hints of colour and some other things, and ask a tool to go from there with a prompt to deliver a result that made sense to me as an artist, that would be absolutely amazing too.