Hi Ash! Fantastic video, sir. When I did my first Dreadening Deck, I did use AI for some components. I do all of the composition myself always, but i did have a little help with assets back then. This was months before the story about how AI actually worked. The AI scandal was a HUGE driving factor in why Advanced Armory went to a second edition. I did a lot of overtime and invested a ton of my own money into real art assets from real artists. I refreshed my own skillset as well just by virtue of experience through working on my system. I create a lot of my own assets now as well. Since then I have remade that deck with fresh human creative goodness. One must be careful though, when shopping asset packs. As you mentioned, some asset creators have a little help. Most of the time, it's really obvious. Just be sure to screen a pack before you buy or download.
Very informative video. I was a bit disheartened and put a pause on my homebrew project after receiving multiple quotes on card art, ranging from $200-$600. per card. for one single image! Do you or maybe someone else has a recommendation for free or reasonably priced colored images? All the links are of black and white art?
Great video as always. Going to defend AI, so hold onto your hat. Something you didn't really talk about is style/consistency. Having access to hundreds of thousands of free assets is great! But if I need images featuring both an Orc and an Elf, chances are I'll need to use more than one artist/resource, which will make for an inconsistent style. Another thing is time. The time I get to homebrew stuff is severely limited. Spending hours upon hours doom-scrolling free art assets in the hope of finding the style I'm looking for is a huge waste of time. As is reaching out to a few dozen artists, working through personality conflicts, getting them to do up dozens of low-cost assets, doing the back-and-forth dance trying to get the right look/feel. Compare that to typing a few prompts into AI between 10:30 and 11:30 pm on Tuesday night (because that's my window) and getting something close to what I'm looking for within a few minutes. "Art" Theft? Something I am honestly curious about is whether you consider it art theft if you're requesting photorealistic images. I suppose they're coming from some artist's CGI or something but it's hardly a notable "style". In one of my earlier homebrew attempts, I was requesting images where the subjects were plastic minis. The results were indistinguishable from photos of minis, so is that theft? I honestly don't know. One last point against what you said specifically. You called using AI "Lazy" which isn't fair. How is it lazy to use AI but not lazy to just download free assets? Having spent literally dozens of hours in imaging programs tweaking AI art so it fits my homebrew, it hardly feels like the "lazy" option. Surely paying someone else to do it is "lazier". I honestly don't see AI art as that big of a deal. I'm a software engineer and we all use each other's code to do stuff. The best authors I've read blend elements from things they've read into their works. Every artist I've ever heard of gets their start copying other artists (visual, musicians, etc.). So here's my counter arguments for using AI: 1) Who is it hurting? I'm not talking feelings, I mean actual financial damages. I'm never paying for art because I can't. If free (including AI) art isn't an option, I'll make all text cards. So the idea that I'm ripping up stacks of cash that I was just about to Venmo to an artist is just not really a thing. But as you point out, there's tons of free assets out there. That's going to have the same exact financial impact on artists as my using AI art. How dare you list these free assets and steal food from starving artists?!?! ;) 2) Is it illegal usage/copying? I don't think so. If AI was generating unmodified stills from Disney movies for me to use, then sure. But all the tweaking AI does, followed by all my adjustments, how can anyone claim "Hey, that's my work!"? 3) Homebrew is 99% content to 1% visual. If I'm selling a Homebrew product with the world's worst art, it's still going to be worthwhile if the content is fun. If I'm making garbage content but paid thousands of dollars to get custom art from leading fantasy artists, it's still just garbage. Case in point, all the people (including you) that said "I hate First Light is using AI Art... but I'm going to buy it anyway because HQ content is awesome." Sorry for the length of this. It's been on my chest for a while. I don't think we'll ever agree on AI art, but I appreciate your point of view and thank you for making this video and for taking the time to read this.
Thabk you for the comment. Thats just what I asked for :] Lots of good points, points 1, 2 and 3 are excellent talking points as well. They are IMHO entirely too subjective to arrive to a clear cut consensus, so I can't really answer them without also kind of attempting to invalidate them which doesn't entirely work. But I can give a little more insight as to my perspective alone (not speaking on behalf of anyone else who may be against AI). Consistent style is something that a lot of prompters do struggle with and is actually a listed con of AI usage. This *might* be something that's improved over time with better prompts or if the AI is trained on the exact same subset of images, but in general there have been examples of AI not quite being able to (at least believably) render a consistent character in a variety of poses and situations. An artist should be able to do this, consistently if they're good, at least hopefully. Speaking on consistent style if you can't find enough of what you need from the examples I've shown.....well, fair point. The free weapon drawings might not mesh well with the free monsters and icons and whatnot, although realistically you will find different artists working on the various art between cards, expansions, covers, and so on for a commercial game project. Digital sampling has a definition legally, and while generally used in the context of music industry there's no reason the same logic shouldn't apply here. interestingly enough, large labels are currently involved in lawsuits against AI developers for using their files without permission, so I'd be quite surprised if we didn't get another legal precedent that disavows legal protection for AI created works of music (and prohibits unauthorized training, which is how the entire controversy began). I dislike large record companies, but thus is the one time I'm rooting for a win. The line is, at least from a legal standpoint in the context of man versus machine, definitely already drawn - and training on a library of Disney, even after hundreds of thousands of tweaks, would count as an unauthorized use of IP to create derivative works if it could be proven (as in, if you as an AI company had to provide what your training source was, which has happened and why at least one of the companies ate in hot water). What you can propose or attempt to do is simply make the artistic tweaks necessary to completely hide the reference used, which is of course a very human thing to do - no AI needed to begin with. And, if the developers of homebrew agreed that it was only 1% visual, I think there'd not be a point for the video to begin with. 😆 but to dig further into the comment, spending thousands isn't necessary at all as to the point made in the video. Being *accessible* is how an artist tries to maintain business, and business practices are how individual businesses live and die - give me a budget and a style and I can find at least a number of workable options to suit that 1%. A dollar that wasn't going to be spent on art to begin with is certainly not a dollar lost to the artist, but the AI isn't going to ask you where your line is - an artist would love to know, and the resultant conversation could be a great start to a partnership. These points won't affect anyone who is already sold on AI. Fighting that battle with the cons presented isn't really turning anyone away unfortunately. Those on that side of the fence will be as unmoveable as I am over here. But despite my case against it, I really wanted to instead just encourage people to try an alternative -- not try to prompt, or try to argue or justify, but genuinely try to seek options and at least see that there ARE viable alternatives. They were there before AI, after all. A LOT of folks were still going to buy First Light despite its cover art, and that's great. Great for who?...that's another debate. 😭 Thank you again and, ONWARD! ❤️
@@AshQuest Thanks for the response. Consistent style is pretty easy to get in AI, but yes, if you want a single character to appear similar in every pose, you're SOL. And so my homebrew cards have bearded barbs, and shirtless barbs, and fur covered barbs... This actually enhances the game for me though, because my mental image of the barb is not necessarily what's on the HQ core box, so seeing different characters (of the same class) representing the card's purpose, I don't know, I just like it more. Or maybe I'm just making the best of a bad situation. In my defense, there are a lot of females portrayed on the Core Game cards, but not many female minis in the box. My 1%/99% thing was a huge exaggeration, but I appreciate being called out on it. My only point is that, in my mind, very few people are going to hang around looking at the pretty art if the rest of the content is not that good. I've sunk close to 100 hours on creating my homebrew rules and when I get it cemented, I would love to turn around and sell it. If an artist wants to join up, and spend a comparable amount of time/effort on this project with me, I'll happily split any profit 50/50 with them. But as I had to do, they would need to do this on their own time for no pay. If there are artists out there willing to do this, I have never met one. I've only met the ones that think it's ridiculous to ask them to do anything without being paid up front. The whole "Do it for exposure" thing, which I agree is dumb and not what I'm proposing, but that's the paintbrush I've been hit with the 2 or 3 times I've asked artist friends/colleagues to help out with projects. My point in replying was certainly not meant to take away from the amazing work you did in this video and I'm glad you didn't take offense. Making these resources known and available is such a great idea. You sir are amazing! Thank you x 100. Knowing about the alternative is huge for people that want to avoid AI art. I will take a look at the resources you mentioned (and I myself have THOUSANDS of free assets on my PC from various give aways when I was doing hobby-game-dev stuff). So fear not, even "old" AI hacks like me will take an honest look at these alternatives. If I EVER get around to finishing my homebrew stuff, I'll send you a copy because I'm curious whether you'll feel the content is worth selling your artistic soul to the AI Devil every time you look at the art :D
Although I knew about public domain primary in literature, I am nearly completely ignorant on licensing. Thank you for providing some insight to what is available. As a small game designer that primarily uses copyrighted images and adds disclaimers to my game expansions pointing out that the original publisher retains all rights, I found this very interesting as a never charge for my creations and am interested in someday releasing something that is more unique and copyrighted. As for AI I have been mostly indifferent and lean closer to avoidance as both a artist and writer that sees AI generated content as theft equivalent to old school recordings of movies from a movie theater or burning a copy of a dvd or game (yes I’m old). I am intrigued by the cost effective options to make a game more visually appealing as my artistic skills have waned over the years and I simply do not have the time to create both the content and the visual graphics so again thank you for highlighting some available resources.
Thank you for creating a video on this topic. I believe it's crucial to have open discussions about AI art. It's important to remember that art is inherently subjective. I've noticed a growing trend of people online making definitive claims about whether a piece of art is AI-generated. This can be risky, especially as AI art becomes increasingly indistinguishable each year. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, falsely identifying an artwork as AI-generated can inadvertently undermine the artist's skill, which contradicts the goal of supporting real artists in the first place. In short, everyone is a critic, but I feel that few people truly understand the differences between an artist's choice / mistake and an AI's limitations in distinguishing nuances.
Agreed, and good point as this has unfortunately happened to a number of artists already. For some it is more clear cut than for others, and in some cases pretty obvious - but the gap is getting narrower, at least as prompt complexity grows.
Perfect timing for this video. I've been wondering how to start searching for art to home brew HQ. Searching by license type and even knowing what they are is extremely helpful.
I learned I have to win the lotto, buy the rights to Heroquest and just make it public domaine so we can all be happy!!!!!! Now I just need to win the lotto………. Hmmmm
@@AshQuest we shall all benefit from your insider knowledge of fortune cookie wisdom. Once the lotto is secured and the funds have been obtained, I shall begin negotiations with Zargon and to a lesser extent Hasbro. Thanks for the tip. More to come.
This was very helpful. I am designing/ playtesting an airship combat game and I could use some art. If I can spend a few bucks to make my game presentation better it is worth it.
I'm a bit tired of being singled out and receiving hate on social media for using AI. But since you've mentioned me and this video was made in response to my latest release of the "AGS," I'm going to respond. My AGS deck received a rating of 1 on BGG because it uses AI. Is that fair to me? Does all my work in creating the AGS boil down to whether the art is made by AI or not? It’s amusing how several people suggest that I must educate myself on how AI works or avoid using it at all costs. I can only say that I have enough knowledge of AI to know what I’m doing. You yourself did a review of my previous game, "HeirQuest Pocket," where all the art is licensed under CC0, so... It's false to say that AI copies artists. AI does not "memorize" and replicate existing art in a digital collage. Instead, it operates through probability distributions, a mathematical concept that allows for the generation of new data without directly copying from its training. How did human artists learn to draw when they were children? By copying drawings from others, which means that artists take reference from all the drawings they’ve learned from throughout their lives. Does drawing inspiration from all those works make them thieves? No. Lastly, I just want to say that if the only reason you have to choose between buying AGS or AxianQuest is that one uses AI and the other doesn’t, you should stop playing board games... I’m going to keep using AI in the next AGS decks despite all the hate it has generated. AI is legitimate and legal, and I’m as free to use it as people are not to buy my products.
I can definitely agree that for AGS the art is window dressing to the important part. I don't expect a non official product to completely match the look and feel of an official product. For me I think if I was generating it myself and had the better feel for the level of deviation from the sources it pulled from I would feel more comfortable with ai stuff. I'm not very educated on it, but I think its the feeling of no safety for proprietary work or having a good understanding of how much deviation from an original makes it your own that is the sticking point for me. Probably some fear like what famous voice actors must have that an ai could just steal their voice from under them and replace them without compensation. I don't consider myself a good artist, but I would be pretty ticked if someone took something I made and then turned around and copied it without compensation or consent and made a bunch of money off of it. I'll have to see if there are some real world examples to get a better feel on for immitation. Like could you trace Mario (something I did from coloring books when young) and give him a different color and claim it was your own? Game mechanics not being able to be copywrited but just their expression is even more difficult to parse fully.
Thanks for making this video Ash. I am just finishing up my RPG Skirmish game rule set. I have some art skills but its been years since i have drawn anything so this helps me out alot. I found some really good CCO tokens for my game that i edited, but I still need monster, items and weapons and armor images. This helps alot. Thanks!!
@@AshQuest yeah and maybe you could review card print companies etc . My dream would be you bringing out your own game or homebrew and reviewing and sharing the whole process step by step .
Yea I wish I would have seen a video like this years ago. I figured a lot of this stuff through trial and error. Hopefully this video will be helpful for people. :)
I'm close to releasing my own game line, 4 games set in two worlds. I didn't want to use AI art and my personal 2D art is cr@£ I have a friend however who is getting in to photography so he's volunteering to do photographic art using my models and scenery just for a credit mention. I'm a lucky pup😅
Thanks Ash, very much appreciated. I'm too far in on Cthulhu Quest 4, but will definately check this out for book 5 onwards. I think there will always be an element of AI in what I'm doing though, for unique looks I'm after (especially for an RPG I am working on with its take on Orcs especially). Having said that, this is most definately more than just food for thought, especially if there is an artist out there that fits that RPGs style. Any artists wanting to get in touch, especially for the RPG, let me know.
I haven't tried out Cthulhu Quest yet, how many art pieces go into a project like that? Do you go off of prompts and free form depending on if you have something quest related in mind to fill relevant space to evoke the mood you are aiming for? I do like the kind of inviting open door framing you use on the covers. I'm not very good at buildings so haven't done much with that kind of theme or the painterly look. Most of my recent work has been greeting cards with construction paper for holidays and such but those covers are giving me some ideas to play with so I'll have to set some time aside to experiment. I could see something like a 'wish you were here' or 'welcome to' card could be fun to make.
Thanks Ash. As far as AI is concerned I'm OK with it when used for personal non-commercial projects. I'm using it for my music personal demos. It helps me a lot for releasing a personal promo tape (which is not for sale or public diffusion) However, if I have the chance to be published by a label, then it has to be a proper cover and collaboration with an artist. So, ok for homebrewed stuff if freely shared, not for Avalon Hill to use. Only my personal opinion because, whether you like it or not AI is here to stay.
As a small artist, thanks for supporting artists!
Hi Ash! Fantastic video, sir. When I did my first Dreadening Deck, I did use AI for some components. I do all of the composition myself always, but i did have a little help with assets back then. This was months before the story about how AI actually worked. The AI scandal was a HUGE driving factor in why Advanced Armory went to a second edition. I did a lot of overtime and invested a ton of my own money into real art assets from real artists. I refreshed my own skillset as well just by virtue of experience through working on my system. I create a lot of my own assets now as well. Since then I have remade that deck with fresh human creative goodness. One must be careful though, when shopping asset packs. As you mentioned, some asset creators have a little help. Most of the time, it's really obvious. Just be sure to screen a pack before you buy or download.
This video was awesome! I had no idea about this CC0 stuff. Very useful.
Very informative video. I was a bit disheartened and put a pause on my homebrew project after receiving multiple quotes on card art, ranging from $200-$600. per card. for one single image! Do you or maybe someone else has a recommendation for free or reasonably priced colored images? All the links are of black and white art?
like, depends on what you are looking for. what's your budget?
Do you have a particular style or theme you are aiming for?
@@chrischristiansen6204 I'm a big fan of the original heroquest art but open to all ideas in colour
Great video as always.
Going to defend AI, so hold onto your hat.
Something you didn't really talk about is style/consistency. Having access to hundreds of thousands of free assets is great! But if I need images featuring both an Orc and an Elf, chances are I'll need to use more than one artist/resource, which will make for an inconsistent style.
Another thing is time. The time I get to homebrew stuff is severely limited. Spending hours upon hours doom-scrolling free art assets in the hope of finding the style I'm looking for is a huge waste of time. As is reaching out to a few dozen artists, working through personality conflicts, getting them to do up dozens of low-cost assets, doing the back-and-forth dance trying to get the right look/feel.
Compare that to typing a few prompts into AI between 10:30 and 11:30 pm on Tuesday night (because that's my window) and getting something close to what I'm looking for within a few minutes.
"Art" Theft? Something I am honestly curious about is whether you consider it art theft if you're requesting photorealistic images. I suppose they're coming from some artist's CGI or something but it's hardly a notable "style".
In one of my earlier homebrew attempts, I was requesting images where the subjects were plastic minis. The results were indistinguishable from photos of minis, so is that theft? I honestly don't know.
One last point against what you said specifically. You called using AI "Lazy" which isn't fair. How is it lazy to use AI but not lazy to just download free assets? Having spent literally dozens of hours in imaging programs tweaking AI art so it fits my homebrew, it hardly feels like the "lazy" option. Surely paying someone else to do it is "lazier".
I honestly don't see AI art as that big of a deal. I'm a software engineer and we all use each other's code to do stuff. The best authors I've read blend elements from things they've read into their works. Every artist I've ever heard of gets their start copying other artists (visual, musicians, etc.).
So here's my counter arguments for using AI:
1) Who is it hurting? I'm not talking feelings, I mean actual financial damages. I'm never paying for art because I can't. If free (including AI) art isn't an option, I'll make all text cards. So the idea that I'm ripping up stacks of cash that I was just about to Venmo to an artist is just not really a thing. But as you point out, there's tons of free assets out there. That's going to have the same exact financial impact on artists as my using AI art. How dare you list these free assets and steal food from starving artists?!?! ;)
2) Is it illegal usage/copying? I don't think so. If AI was generating unmodified stills from Disney movies for me to use, then sure. But all the tweaking AI does, followed by all my adjustments, how can anyone claim "Hey, that's my work!"?
3) Homebrew is 99% content to 1% visual. If I'm selling a Homebrew product with the world's worst art, it's still going to be worthwhile if the content is fun. If I'm making garbage content but paid thousands of dollars to get custom art from leading fantasy artists, it's still just garbage. Case in point, all the people (including you) that said "I hate First Light is using AI Art... but I'm going to buy it anyway because HQ content is awesome."
Sorry for the length of this. It's been on my chest for a while. I don't think we'll ever agree on AI art, but I appreciate your point of view and thank you for making this video and for taking the time to read this.
Thabk you for the comment. Thats just what I asked for :]
Lots of good points, points 1, 2 and 3 are excellent talking points as well. They are IMHO entirely too subjective to arrive to a clear cut consensus, so I can't really answer them without also kind of attempting to invalidate them which doesn't entirely work. But I can give a little more insight as to my perspective alone (not speaking on behalf of anyone else who may be against AI).
Consistent style is something that a lot of prompters do struggle with and is actually a listed con of AI usage. This *might* be something that's improved over time with better prompts or if the AI is trained on the exact same subset of images, but in general there have been examples of AI not quite being able to (at least believably) render a consistent character in a variety of poses and situations. An artist should be able to do this, consistently if they're good, at least hopefully. Speaking on consistent style if you can't find enough of what you need from the examples I've shown.....well, fair point. The free weapon drawings might not mesh well with the free monsters and icons and whatnot, although realistically you will find different artists working on the various art between cards, expansions, covers, and so on for a commercial game project.
Digital sampling has a definition legally, and while generally used in the context of music industry there's no reason the same logic shouldn't apply here. interestingly enough, large labels are currently involved in lawsuits against AI developers for using their files without permission, so I'd be quite surprised if we didn't get another legal precedent that disavows legal protection for AI created works of music (and prohibits unauthorized training, which is how the entire controversy began). I dislike large record companies, but thus is the one time I'm rooting for a win.
The line is, at least from a legal standpoint in the context of man versus machine, definitely already drawn - and training on a library of Disney, even after hundreds of thousands of tweaks, would count as an unauthorized use of IP to create derivative works if it could be proven (as in, if you as an AI company had to provide what your training source was, which has happened and why at least one of the companies ate in hot water). What you can propose or attempt to do is simply make the artistic tweaks necessary to completely hide the reference used, which is of course a very human thing to do - no AI needed to begin with.
And, if the developers of homebrew agreed that it was only 1% visual, I think there'd not be a point for the video to begin with. 😆 but to dig further into the comment, spending thousands isn't necessary at all as to the point made in the video. Being *accessible* is how an artist tries to maintain business, and business practices are how individual businesses live and die - give me a budget and a style and I can find at least a number of workable options to suit that 1%. A dollar that wasn't going to be spent on art to begin with is certainly not a dollar lost to the artist, but the AI isn't going to ask you where your line is - an artist would love to know, and the resultant conversation could be a great start to a partnership.
These points won't affect anyone who is already sold on AI. Fighting that battle with the cons presented isn't really turning anyone away unfortunately. Those on that side of the fence will be as unmoveable as I am over here. But despite my case against it, I really wanted to instead just encourage people to try an alternative -- not try to prompt, or try to argue or justify, but genuinely try to seek options and at least see that there ARE viable alternatives.
They were there before AI, after all.
A LOT of folks were still going to buy First Light despite its cover art, and that's great. Great for who?...that's another debate. 😭
Thank you again and, ONWARD! ❤️
@@AshQuest Thanks for the response.
Consistent style is pretty easy to get in AI, but yes, if you want a single character to appear similar in every pose, you're SOL. And so my homebrew cards have bearded barbs, and shirtless barbs, and fur covered barbs... This actually enhances the game for me though, because my mental image of the barb is not necessarily what's on the HQ core box, so seeing different characters (of the same class) representing the card's purpose, I don't know, I just like it more. Or maybe I'm just making the best of a bad situation. In my defense, there are a lot of females portrayed on the Core Game cards, but not many female minis in the box.
My 1%/99% thing was a huge exaggeration, but I appreciate being called out on it. My only point is that, in my mind, very few people are going to hang around looking at the pretty art if the rest of the content is not that good. I've sunk close to 100 hours on creating my homebrew rules and when I get it cemented, I would love to turn around and sell it. If an artist wants to join up, and spend a comparable amount of time/effort on this project with me, I'll happily split any profit 50/50 with them. But as I had to do, they would need to do this on their own time for no pay. If there are artists out there willing to do this, I have never met one. I've only met the ones that think it's ridiculous to ask them to do anything without being paid up front. The whole "Do it for exposure" thing, which I agree is dumb and not what I'm proposing, but that's the paintbrush I've been hit with the 2 or 3 times I've asked artist friends/colleagues to help out with projects.
My point in replying was certainly not meant to take away from the amazing work you did in this video and I'm glad you didn't take offense. Making these resources known and available is such a great idea. You sir are amazing! Thank you x 100. Knowing about the alternative is huge for people that want to avoid AI art. I will take a look at the resources you mentioned (and I myself have THOUSANDS of free assets on my PC from various give aways when I was doing hobby-game-dev stuff). So fear not, even "old" AI hacks like me will take an honest look at these alternatives.
If I EVER get around to finishing my homebrew stuff, I'll send you a copy because I'm curious whether you'll feel the content is worth selling your artistic soul to the AI Devil every time you look at the art :D
I love AI art generators for the exact reasons that you state.
Although I knew about public domain primary in literature, I am nearly completely ignorant on licensing. Thank you for providing some insight to what is available. As a small game designer that primarily uses copyrighted images and adds disclaimers to my game expansions pointing out that the original publisher retains all rights, I found this very interesting as a never charge for my creations and am interested in someday releasing something that is more unique and copyrighted. As for AI I have been mostly indifferent and lean closer to avoidance as both a artist and writer that sees AI generated content as theft equivalent to old school recordings of movies from a movie theater or burning a copy of a dvd or game (yes I’m old). I am intrigued by the cost effective options to make a game more visually appealing as my artistic skills have waned over the years and I simply do not have the time to create both the content and the visual graphics so again thank you for highlighting some available resources.
Thank you for creating a video on this topic. I believe it's crucial to have open discussions about AI art. It's important to remember that art is inherently subjective. I've noticed a growing trend of people online making definitive claims about whether a piece of art is AI-generated. This can be risky, especially as AI art becomes increasingly indistinguishable each year. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, falsely identifying an artwork as AI-generated can inadvertently undermine the artist's skill, which contradicts the goal of supporting real artists in the first place. In short, everyone is a critic, but I feel that few people truly understand the differences between an artist's choice / mistake and an AI's limitations in distinguishing nuances.
Agreed, and good point as this has unfortunately happened to a number of artists already. For some it is more clear cut than for others, and in some cases pretty obvious - but the gap is getting narrower, at least as prompt complexity grows.
Perfect timing for this video. I've been wondering how to start searching for art to home brew HQ. Searching by license type and even knowing what they are is extremely helpful.
I learned I have to win the lotto, buy the rights to Heroquest and just make it public domaine so we can all be happy!!!!!! Now I just need to win the lotto………. Hmmmm
Fortune cookies. they ALWAYS have the right numbers.
Did you also know that game mechanics can't be copyright protected?
@@AshQuest we shall all benefit from your insider knowledge of fortune cookie wisdom. Once the lotto is secured and the funds have been obtained, I shall begin negotiations with Zargon and to a lesser extent Hasbro. Thanks for the tip. More to come.
I love how it's Zargon first, then Hasbro to a lesser extent 😆
^this!
This was very helpful. I am designing/ playtesting an airship combat game and I could use some art. If I can spend a few bucks to make my game presentation better it is worth it.
Any good resources for comic book like art for a superhero TTRPG?
I miss when AI was mostly the subject of dystopian sci-fi.
20% wants WAAAGH!! *edit* you forgot to mention also being an esteemed author while mentioning your other channel. ;)
I'm a bit tired of being singled out and receiving hate on social media for using AI. But since you've mentioned me and this video was made in response to my latest release of the "AGS," I'm going to respond.
My AGS deck received a rating of 1 on BGG because it uses AI. Is that fair to me? Does all my work in creating the AGS boil down to whether the art is made by AI or not?
It’s amusing how several people suggest that I must educate myself on how AI works or avoid using it at all costs. I can only say that I have enough knowledge of AI to know what I’m doing. You yourself did a review of my previous game, "HeirQuest Pocket," where all the art is licensed under CC0, so...
It's false to say that AI copies artists. AI does not "memorize" and replicate existing art in a digital collage. Instead, it operates through probability distributions, a mathematical concept that allows for the generation of new data without directly copying from its training. How did human artists learn to draw when they were children? By copying drawings from others, which means that artists take reference from all the drawings they’ve learned from throughout their lives. Does drawing inspiration from all those works make them thieves? No.
Lastly, I just want to say that if the only reason you have to choose between buying AGS or AxianQuest is that one uses AI and the other doesn’t, you should stop playing board games... I’m going to keep using AI in the next AGS decks despite all the hate it has generated. AI is legitimate and legal, and I’m as free to use it as people are not to buy my products.
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
I can definitely agree that for AGS the art is window dressing to the important part. I don't expect a non official product to completely match the look and feel of an official product. For me I think if I was generating it myself and had the better feel for the level of deviation from the sources it pulled from I would feel more comfortable with ai stuff. I'm not very educated on it, but I think its the feeling of no safety for proprietary work or having a good understanding of how much deviation from an original makes it your own that is the sticking point for me. Probably some fear like what famous voice actors must have that an ai could just steal their voice from under them and replace them without compensation. I don't consider myself a good artist, but I would be pretty ticked if someone took something I made and then turned around and copied it without compensation or consent and made a bunch of money off of it.
I'll have to see if there are some real world examples to get a better feel on for immitation. Like could you trace Mario (something I did from coloring books when young) and give him a different color and claim it was your own? Game mechanics not being able to be copywrited but just their expression is even more difficult to parse fully.
>>I'm a bit tired of being singled out and receiving hate on social media for using AI.
"I'm a bit tired of being singled out and receiving hate on social media for using AI."
Don't use it then.
@@Rampawn And why exactly should I stop using it? Because the people who are against AI don’t respect those of us who are in favor of it?
Thanks for making this video Ash. I am just finishing up my RPG Skirmish game rule set. I have some art skills but its been years since i have drawn anything so this helps me out alot. I found some really good CCO tokens for my game that i edited, but I still need monster, items and weapons and armor images. This helps alot. Thanks!!
Real nice vid . You should make more vids about tools and stuff that help making the live of the homebrewer easier and stuff
True, I did cover the heroquest card maker but would love to cover more tools like that
@@AshQuest yeah and maybe you could review card print companies etc .
My dream would be you bringing out your own game or homebrew and reviewing and sharing the whole process step by step .
Good info. A topic that I could definitely needed to hear about
Very cool video, had no idea so much content was out there for people to use. Well done.
Ty Ash
Great video. Ash truly has his pulse on the HeroQuest community
Yea I wish I would have seen a video like this years ago. I figured a lot of this stuff through trial and error. Hopefully this video will be helpful for people. :)
Very useful video! Thank you Ash!
I'm close to releasing my own game line, 4 games set in two worlds. I didn't want to use AI art and my personal 2D art is cr@£ I have a friend however who is getting in to photography so he's volunteering to do photographic art using my models and scenery just for a credit mention. I'm a lucky pup😅
Thanks Ash, very much appreciated. I'm too far in on Cthulhu Quest 4, but will definately check this out for book 5 onwards.
I think there will always be an element of AI in what I'm doing though, for unique looks I'm after (especially for an RPG I am working on with its take on Orcs especially). Having said that, this is most definately more than just food for thought, especially if there is an artist out there that fits that RPGs style.
Any artists wanting to get in touch, especially for the RPG, let me know.
I haven't tried out Cthulhu Quest yet, how many art pieces go into a project like that? Do you go off of prompts and free form depending on if you have something quest related in mind to fill relevant space to evoke the mood you are aiming for? I do like the kind of inviting open door framing you use on the covers. I'm not very good at buildings so haven't done much with that kind of theme or the painterly look. Most of my recent work has been greeting cards with construction paper for holidays and such but those covers are giving me some ideas to play with so I'll have to set some time aside to experiment. I could see something like a 'wish you were here' or 'welcome to' card could be fun to make.
Thanks Ash. As far as AI is concerned I'm OK with it when used for personal non-commercial projects. I'm using it for my music personal demos. It helps me a lot for releasing a personal promo tape (which is not for sale or public diffusion) However, if I have the chance to be published by a label, then it has to be a proper cover and collaboration with an artist. So, ok for homebrewed stuff if freely shared, not for Avalon Hill to use. Only my personal opinion because, whether you like it or not AI is here to stay.
It certainly is! Thank you for your input :]