How are we not at a point where you have to show your progress for such a contest? Concept sketches, mid work saves, illustrator layers etc... How can I be this smart but a guy running a multi million dollar business can't come up with these safe guards to insure a fair competition?
must of been some pretty low quality entries if that won. I remember people getting upset about photoshop and other digital art programs when I was doing newspaper art by hand. I moved on and now work digitally those that did not no longer have jobs. I remember when we used to hand model everything from cubes rather than using mudbox and meta balls as it was considered cheating. How times have change.d
I did videos going through the entries for the covers and they were really good. There was a wide gamut of entries from professionals to beginners but there were plenty to choose from. Some 5K entries or more
To answer the question of what happens with the payed account on midjourney. It's still hosted and accessed through their discord server but your images are not added to the midjourney public db.
I don't think that Todd will do anything. In the grand scheme of things it makes him look bad or lazy. So be ready to stop supporting Spawn or McFarlane. According to a person that's worked closely with TMF, he don't care about how many bridges he burns. So I wouldn't hold my breath. More videos on art topics in the comics industry or covering your favorite comic artist. Your pretty good at making these videos Eric. I enjoyed these video thank you God bless.
Thanks brotha. Appreciate it. It's sad to hear that's the case and that he'll turn a blind eye to the rules HE put out for his own contest... it's the world we live in. Guys lie, cheat, steal... can't wait for heaven! 😄
All this silence speaks for itself, Todd doesn't seem to care, he has already achieved his goal, he has 20 covers without spending a single dollar, having more than enough conditions to pay for them. Never lose context.
Midjourney is a service, not something you actually buy and own. When you enter a prompt, it's sent off to their servers where their computers do the processing and then send you back results. So somebody doing a prompt on Midjourney might get a result back in two minutes. Whereas if I was running something on my own personal computer, it may take an hour or longer to run that same prompt because the processing power I'm using is so much less. There are subscription tiers (at least three). The third tier allows you to work in a stealth mode where it's not visible to other users what you're making (mods, staff, etc. can still see it). Also, afaik AI generated work is not currently protected by US copyright law. If you yoink something from another MJ user, the company might ban you or something because that goes against their terms of service. But that person wouldn't have any recourse outside of the service. They couldn't sue you for using their generated image because, with regards to the law, it's not something that a person can claim is theirs.
Much appreciated, thanks for the info. I have a friend who works in copyright law and I hope to have him on so we can discuss all this stuff. I have so many questions! XD
@@EricNinaltowskiArt So Midjourney has features where you can submit an image as a style ref or a character ref. This makes it easy to lock down a certain visual style or make a character consistent. If Todd doesn't address this rules violation, maybe wait until the next competition and then do an image based off of Todd's actual work. See if he notices and/or cares. lol.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt "The only people that need to hide something... have something to hide." Terrible terrible terrible argument. There are far better. Just go look at history. Anne Frank was only hiding because she had something to hide. Alan Turing was only hiding because he had something to hide. Is you house made of glass? Would you be okay with the government installing cameras in every persons house? Im using extreme examples so you understand why your argument for your position is bad. Im not saying your position is wrong, but dont use the old, cliche, authoritarian/nazi argument of "if you dont have anything to hide, you dont need to hide anything". Its the same bullshit used by cops overstepping laws, governments like north korea, people who want to inspect childrens genitals in schools before they play sports. Midjourney has a privacy setting if you have a subscription. its not local to your computer, but they just dont display your generations publicly. Stable Diffusion on the other hand can be locally installed and run, so its all private. That wont change. Its like that, and it wont ever change, even if the government were to enact some absurdly draconian reactionary law about it. Wanting to force all ai generations to be public data is insane. Imagine how many people who maybe werent the same religion as their parent, or other such things were found out and attacked for their beliefs or who they are. There are repurcussions beyond your competition, and besides, cheaters can use stable diffusion offline on a local computer that isnt even attached to the internet - make the image, put it on a thumbdrive, bring it to another computer and upload it. AI is here to stay. I empathize with your emotions, but your opinions (as you have commendably admitted) are uninformed, and thats ok, but understand that people who just spout out hate for ai without knowledge are WEAKENING their own position. Its super frustrating, as a computer scientist and artist who understands many ethical and other concerns about ai to see people spout crazy things, it just turns people against the ai haters.
I really hope this backfires on McFarlane. You have been in the business too long to pull off this kind of bs. I read somewhere the "human error" fact but it's also bs. After they picked their top 50 its unacceptable not to run a profile check 🤡🤡🤡. I was expecting those kind of things to happen eventually (because money and shit) but not so fast( DC is also accused of using AI at Joker Year One). It's a shame.
AI definitely doesn't make you an artist hahaha. I do think midjourney should have a private option because you can upload private images and use it to tweak them. I've uploaded my own art (concepts, characters etc.) to it and used it to make adjustments, or merge multiple images/iterations that i already made which is an option that I dont see a lot of people use but is really neat. Also its a great tool for photobashing and getting textures if your doing a quick mockup or concept. Sucks to see this technology misused so much! it has a vast number of applications that dont involve screwing over the art community.. but then i suppose you could argue that from the very second they used everyones art in their datasets it was already too late..
True. Unlike previous tools, though, pencils, for instance, they couldn't complete something by themselves. They needed a whole lot of human influence to create something with it. The guy who created the pencil isn't influncing the artwork created with his tool all that much. Now, this new tool (Ai art programs) are able to do all the things previous tools could do and have taken the human influence to a minimum. It's taken the artist out of the equation completely. Artists can use Ai, but not all who use Ai are artists.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I once tried to demonstrate this by giving Stable Diffusion the prompt "a line". I wanted to show that it is not a tool, because when you use a pencil to draw a line, it draws exactly the line you want it to draw, but the AI will give you something unexpected. What Stable Diffusion gave me was four variants of semi-abstract, colorful pictures (all using the same color scheme), which were neither what I expected, nor what I wanted. A tool will not do that. Unfortunately, they "improved" Stable Diffusion and now it's a lot more boring.
Why are prompts not considered human influence when making AI art? I find it odd that someone could describe the aesthetic of a character they're imagining and some people find it creative, but when that description is used to generate AI art the art itself is no longer thought of as being creative by those very same people.
Great question. 👍 I think it's similar to or could be compared to when someone who doesn't have any artistic skill but they have an idea-- They come to me to commission me to illustrate it. They will describe it to me in detail and then let me do the work of putting pen to paper and actually illustrate it, create it, and bring it to life in a sense. While there may be some human influence in those prompts and descriptions, I think the point is who or what is doing the art. It's not the prompt entered, though that might guide the process. It's the actual artist, or the Ai generator. But you can also see how Ai generators can and will affect the jobs of artists like me who live on commissions from people to create something they can't.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I believe that AI art generators should be classified as media creation tools rather than as media creators. Like any other media creation tool, AI art generators are useful for easily expressing creative ideas without having to put as much time, effort, or money into said expression. While some AI art generators are ethically questionable, some are trained entirely off of datasets that they have permission to use and generate interesting pieces based on prompts. In terms of whether or not AI art tools will consume the jobs of artists, I think they will in some cases and won't in others. Any tool is only as good as the person using it, so I could definitely see people, who use AI art generators but can't quite capture what they're imagining, pay an artist to craft what they're envisioning.
@nickabenson Yeah. Its a tough one. Ai as a tool is tricky because, unlike other tools (ruler, pencil, Photoshop) the level of human effort put into that tool is dropped to such a minimal level. Ai does a great deal of creating.
Why is the client who commissions a work of art from an artist not considered an artist? In both cases, you are giving instructions to someone or something else to produce an image to your specifications. When someone looks at an AI-produced image, they are not going to think, "What a talented artist!" They are going to think "What amazing technology" and, in some cases, "What an interesting/clever idea." The fact that you have an interesting idea for an image or a story does not make you an artist or writer simply because AI exists, any more than it would make you an artist or writer if you used another person (instead of AI) to bring your idea to life.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I agree that the level of human effort put into AI as a tool is much lower than with other tools, but that's been true for every new and innovative creative tool. The amount of effort becomes lower and lower as the tools continue to advance. It is entirely possible that the amount of effort will become even lower with the next advancement of creative tools.
I have lost quite a lot of respect for Todd because of this
Todd become business first artists second a long time ago unfortunately
@@ilovepatlabor2 yeah and that the sad thing
Why? He wasn’t the one to create the AI art.
How are we not at a point where you have to show your progress for such a contest? Concept sketches, mid work saves, illustrator layers etc... How can I be this smart but a guy running a multi million dollar business can't come up with these safe guards to insure a fair competition?
Agreed. 👍
Its sad that this has yet to be addressed. Guess we'll see this cover on the shelves in the fall......smh.....I dont buy any McFarlane stuff anymore.
must of been some pretty low quality entries if that won.
I remember people getting upset about photoshop and other digital art programs when I was doing newspaper art by hand. I moved on and now work digitally those that did not no longer have jobs. I remember when we used to hand model everything from cubes rather than using mudbox and meta balls as it was considered cheating. How times have change.d
I did videos going through the entries for the covers and they were really good. There was a wide gamut of entries from professionals to beginners but there were plenty to choose from. Some 5K entries or more
I really hope this isn't a suggestion that other artists should "improve" with AI.
To answer the question of what happens with the payed account on midjourney. It's still hosted and accessed through their discord server but your images are not added to the midjourney public db.
Thank you, I appreciate the clarification. So you're basically paying a fee at one point so it's not public.
All submissions should be accompanied with a time-lapse
That would certainly help. A lot of people who submitted their work on Instagram actually uploaded Reels showing their progress too.
I don't think that Todd will do anything. In the grand scheme of things it makes him look bad or lazy. So be ready to stop supporting Spawn or McFarlane. According to a person that's worked closely with TMF, he don't care about how many bridges he burns. So I wouldn't hold my breath. More videos on art topics in the comics industry or covering your favorite comic artist. Your pretty good at making these videos Eric. I enjoyed these video thank you God bless.
Thanks brotha. Appreciate it. It's sad to hear that's the case and that he'll turn a blind eye to the rules HE put out for his own contest... it's the world we live in. Guys lie, cheat, steal... can't wait for heaven! 😄
All this silence speaks for itself, Todd doesn't seem to care, he has already achieved his goal, he has 20 covers without spending a single dollar, having more than enough conditions to pay for them. Never lose context.
@@El_The_Best Yup
Midjourney is a service, not something you actually buy and own. When you enter a prompt, it's sent off to their servers where their computers do the processing and then send you back results. So somebody doing a prompt on Midjourney might get a result back in two minutes. Whereas if I was running something on my own personal computer, it may take an hour or longer to run that same prompt because the processing power I'm using is so much less. There are subscription tiers (at least three). The third tier allows you to work in a stealth mode where it's not visible to other users what you're making (mods, staff, etc. can still see it). Also, afaik AI generated work is not currently protected by US copyright law. If you yoink something from another MJ user, the company might ban you or something because that goes against their terms of service. But that person wouldn't have any recourse outside of the service. They couldn't sue you for using their generated image because, with regards to the law, it's not something that a person can claim is theirs.
Much appreciated, thanks for the info. I have a friend who works in copyright law and I hope to have him on so we can discuss all this stuff. I have so many questions! XD
@@EricNinaltowskiArt So Midjourney has features where you can submit an image as a style ref or a character ref. This makes it easy to lock down a certain visual style or make a character consistent. If Todd doesn't address this rules violation, maybe wait until the next competition and then do an image based off of Todd's actual work. See if he notices and/or cares. lol.
“Protect us against fake Art by making sure that we can’t have private accounts or private content.”
yeah that makes sense.
So people can't protect themselves from being found out their fake artists... yup makes sense
The only people that need to hide something... have something to hide.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt "The only people that need to hide something... have something to hide." Terrible terrible terrible argument. There are far better. Just go look at history.
Anne Frank was only hiding because she had something to hide. Alan Turing was only hiding because he had something to hide. Is you house made of glass? Would you be okay with the government installing cameras in every persons house?
Im using extreme examples so you understand why your argument for your position is bad. Im not saying your position is wrong, but dont use the old, cliche, authoritarian/nazi argument of "if you dont have anything to hide, you dont need to hide anything".
Its the same bullshit used by cops overstepping laws, governments like north korea, people who want to inspect childrens genitals in schools before they play sports.
Midjourney has a privacy setting if you have a subscription. its not local to your computer, but they just dont display your generations publicly.
Stable Diffusion on the other hand can be locally installed and run, so its all private. That wont change. Its like that, and it wont ever change, even if the government were to enact some absurdly draconian reactionary law about it.
Wanting to force all ai generations to be public data is insane. Imagine how many people who maybe werent the same religion as their parent, or other such things were found out and attacked for their beliefs or who they are. There are repurcussions beyond your competition, and besides, cheaters can use stable diffusion offline on a local computer that isnt even attached to the internet - make the image, put it on a thumbdrive, bring it to another computer and upload it.
AI is here to stay. I empathize with your emotions, but your opinions (as you have commendably admitted) are uninformed, and thats ok, but understand that people who just spout out hate for ai without knowledge are WEAKENING their own position.
Its super frustrating, as a computer scientist and artist who understands many ethical and other concerns about ai to see people spout crazy things, it just turns people against the ai haters.
Oh OK, so give up privacy and freedom so that you're safe? Got it.
Don't enter a public contest if you can't put a name behind it.
I really hope this backfires on McFarlane. You have been in the business too long to pull off this kind of bs. I read somewhere the "human error" fact but it's also bs. After they picked their top 50 its unacceptable not to run a profile check 🤡🤡🤡. I was expecting those kind of things to happen eventually (because money and shit) but not so fast( DC is also accused of using AI at Joker Year One). It's a shame.
It's funny to see hidebound artists twist themselves into knots like other craftsmen before them.
AI definitely doesn't make you an artist hahaha. I do think midjourney should have a private option because you can upload private images and use it to tweak them. I've uploaded my own art (concepts, characters etc.) to it and used it to make adjustments, or merge multiple images/iterations that i already made which is an option that I dont see a lot of people use but is really neat. Also its a great tool for photobashing and getting textures if your doing a quick mockup or concept. Sucks to see this technology misused so much! it has a vast number of applications that dont involve screwing over the art community.. but then i suppose you could argue that from the very second they used everyones art in their datasets it was already too late..
I agree AI is not art. It's an image generator and you're not an artist if you use it and claim it as your own.
They are definitely not an artist...... AI art is not art and all you're doing is typing prompts into a search
Honestly just proof that Midjourney and AI art is just really advanced and this good.
humans built all the tools .....its just a tool ..... it all has human influence. But there are lazy artists in the world and they are everywhere.
True. Unlike previous tools, though, pencils, for instance, they couldn't complete something by themselves. They needed a whole lot of human influence to create something with it. The guy who created the pencil isn't influncing the artwork created with his tool all that much. Now, this new tool (Ai art programs) are able to do all the things previous tools could do and have taken the human influence to a minimum. It's taken the artist out of the equation completely. Artists can use Ai, but not all who use Ai are artists.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I once tried to demonstrate this by giving Stable Diffusion the prompt "a line". I wanted to show that it is not a tool, because when you use a pencil to draw a line, it draws exactly the line you want it to draw, but the AI will give you something unexpected. What Stable Diffusion gave me was four variants of semi-abstract, colorful pictures (all using the same color scheme), which were neither what I expected, nor what I wanted. A tool will not do that. Unfortunately, they "improved" Stable Diffusion and now it's a lot more boring.
Why are prompts not considered human influence when making AI art?
I find it odd that someone could describe the aesthetic of a character they're imagining and some people find it creative, but when that description is used to generate AI art the art itself is no longer thought of as being creative by those very same people.
Great question. 👍 I think it's similar to or could be compared to when someone who doesn't have any artistic skill but they have an idea-- They come to me to commission me to illustrate it. They will describe it to me in detail and then let me do the work of putting pen to paper and actually illustrate it, create it, and bring it to life in a sense.
While there may be some human influence in those prompts and descriptions, I think the point is who or what is doing the art. It's not the prompt entered, though that might guide the process. It's the actual artist, or the Ai generator. But you can also see how Ai generators can and will affect the jobs of artists like me who live on commissions from people to create something they can't.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I believe that AI art generators should be classified as media creation tools rather than as media creators.
Like any other media creation tool, AI art generators are useful for easily expressing creative ideas without having to put as much time, effort, or money into said expression.
While some AI art generators are ethically questionable, some are trained entirely off of datasets that they have permission to use and generate interesting pieces based on prompts.
In terms of whether or not AI art tools will consume the jobs of artists, I think they will in some cases and won't in others.
Any tool is only as good as the person using it, so I could definitely see people, who use AI art generators but can't quite capture what they're imagining, pay an artist to craft what they're envisioning.
@nickabenson Yeah. Its a tough one. Ai as a tool is tricky because, unlike other tools (ruler, pencil, Photoshop) the level of human effort put into that tool is dropped to such a minimal level. Ai does a great deal of creating.
Why is the client who commissions a work of art from an artist not considered an artist? In both cases, you are giving instructions to someone or something else to produce an image to your specifications. When someone looks at an AI-produced image, they are not going to think, "What a talented artist!" They are going to think "What amazing technology" and, in some cases, "What an interesting/clever idea." The fact that you have an interesting idea for an image or a story does not make you an artist or writer simply because AI exists, any more than it would make you an artist or writer if you used another person (instead of AI) to bring your idea to life.
@@EricNinaltowskiArt I agree that the level of human effort put into AI as a tool is much lower than with other tools, but that's been true for every new and innovative creative tool. The amount of effort becomes lower and lower as the tools continue to advance. It is entirely possible that the amount of effort will become even lower with the next advancement of creative tools.