ABitWhippet

FAQ: Do you use AI? Yes, well no - I use machine learning, but that’s what people have been calling AI, so I will use the term incorrectly just because aparently that’s what we’re doing. I absolutely do use AI in the following ways:

1) The camera in my smartphone uses AI generated algorithms to generate a better picture than the budget, small sensor would otherwise allow for. The colours it chooses inevitably make it into my final landscapes/backgrounds

2) I used “Artbreeder” heavily to teach me how to draw faces. Before that I used “This person does not exist”. The reason I use these tools and not models is because I have autism, and I get really anxious using pictures of real life people. You will notice I have made some pieces of real life actors and the like, this was achieved by using art of the character I was interested it. That’s just how it is with me

3) I have written my own AI, and I have turned it to the task of generating art. It’s not a peer to Midjourney or Dalle, not even close. It’s a peer to my central heating though, it really warms the house! I have trained it only with pictures for which I had permission to train it on. While it does produce pictures, and even on occasion, pictures that actually could pass for coherent, I would never upload the raw output of an AI*. I use it to create my own pictures. What I upload, every pixel you see, every shape was created by my stylus. I do use colours that were generated however, and I also use brushes created by others.

* Some of the Artbreeder portraits may contain parts of the picture that were not traced over, but none of them are raw artbreeder output. I just didn’t think anything I did would get a single view on here so I didn’t think about making sure that my practice pictures were complete.

How long does your work take you to complete?

I’m going to break this into three parts:

1) Landscape Photography. I will first use google earth to identify something that I want to take a photograph of. Sometimes I browse other people’s pictures, other times I will study contour lines and map symbols to find a good shot. This can take anywhere from 1 hour - I am using google for something else and I stumble across something inspiring - to 12 hours plus.

I will make a preliminary journey to the site to check it out, I will take a very rough photograph of the scene and work out the precise angle I want to get. I will photograph the route (because there is a high likelihood I will be retracing it in the dark) and I will identify any private land that I wish to access. This is usually the work of a full day.

Next I will study sunrise/sunset times and angles. I will identify the date and time I wish to take the photograph. This usually only takes 20 minutes or so.

Then I will contact any private land owner whose land I wish to access. I will ask permission and explain what I want to do and why. The contact email usually takes an hour to write, finding the correct email address to write too will take a day.

I will pack my bag, including any climbing equipment that I require, as sometimes the perfect shot is from up the top of a tree or halfway down a cliff - and get up at 3 in the morning to go and take the golden hour shot.

I would estimate that - if we don’t add any time for failed attempts, each landscape photograph takes 24 hours of time to create, at a minimum - but more realistically I will need to set aside 3-5 days in which I can’t do much else.

(2) From one extreme to the other - the artbreeder tracings I used to help me to learn how to draw faces take me 4-5 hours each.

(3) And somewhere in the middle - The AI generated art:

I’ve been writing my AI since I started it’s creation in University for a project, back in 1998, and I spend hours working on it every single week. I won’t count that time, but be aware that this time contributed to the art.

I first send an inquiry to the AI and wait a full 2-3 hours while it turns my server into a storage heater. The “picture“ it spits out is unrecognisable as anything coherent. My homemade AI is not a peer to any text to picture AI’s you are familiar with. It’s shapes and lines. It looks like you let a child free on paint. However, these are not random shapes and lines, and in the noise, you can discern shapes. An outline of an eye here and a lock of hair there, all hopelessly tangled into nothingness. Most of these generations are utter junk, there is nothing redeeming in them, but it takes me an hour of studying them to decide that. I reckon that I average 5 generations for one picture. It used to be much worse but constant AI tweaks and learning how to correctly set it up for the tasks have brought it down.

Next, I import the output into procreate. I create a “sketch” layer and I use the shapes and lines to rough out a composition. Each time I want a generated shape in one particular area, I will copy the output layer and delete all but the shapes and lines that I want and move them to the right place, then merge them down into the sketch layer. Finally, when I have what looks like a coherent picture, I will finally take out my stylus and on a new layer, create a sketch by my own hand. This process takes 2 hours ish.

I now have three layers - a raw output, a colour sketch, entirely generated by AI and arranged by me and a ”pencil” sketch drawn by me. From these I paint in what you would consider a traditional art, following whichever layer is most helpful in any moment. I use, as I‘ve mentioned, colours from the AI generation, I grab them and use them freely. I never use palettes in Procreate anymore, I find them frustrating. The AI output is my palette now. This takes 8 hours on average.

So I would say that the most controversial pictures on my account take me 12 hours a piece.

I know you two were only asking to try to make out that there is no effort in my work - but here is an honest answer to your dishonest questions.

Why don’t you tag your work? Tags suck because people use them to try to artificially boost their views. I have spoken to artists I respect and their advice to someone like me who has no intention of making money from my hobby, no intention of increasing my “popularity” (LMAO) on any social media and only wishes to use this site as a repository for myself and my friends and as a side effect, anyone else who plays RPG’s - their advice is to not use tags at all - my stats and my appearance in search will suffer desperately by not using them, but as I don’t care about my stats, that is the only downside. The upside is not appearing in searches - sorry, I actively don’t want to be found and looked at or any of that nonsense. I neither have the time or the energy as it is to keep up with your lovely (and not so lovely) PM’s, the last thing I need is more!!

But you not using tags means you are clogging up my feed

And that’s my problem because? Seriously, I don’t want to sound like I don’t care, but I don’t care. If you are trying to filter out entire categories of art, use a search. It’s why the search function exists. The front pages are designed and exist specifically to draw your attention to art that you wouldn’t ordinarily encounter. They are there to shove into your eyeline art that you won’t put there voluntarily, that is what makes Deviantart profitable. Your attempts to control what can be put there is not using the site as it was designed, and antithetical to the way it is functioning. That’s why you’re struggling with it. The tags system is a remnant of a way the site once worked and no longer does. Now if I could be filtered out of your front pages in a way that didnt add me into searches I don’t want to be a part of, I would do it in a heartbeat. But the fact is, that can’t happen. So frankly, your laziness is not my problem. Want precision control as to what you see, use the search function, the function of the site designed and supported to give you precise control over what you see on the site. Too lazy to search, suck it up. The tone of my answer to this question is deliberately hostile, because everyone who has asked me to use tags has done so in a hostile way, and every single last one of you LIES IN YOUR TAGS, the very thing preventing myself or Deviantart from using and supporting them. Your lying tags are the cause of your problems. Your desperation to make more money from your art, or to stroke your ego with popularity, your laziness is exactly why my work is clogging up your eyeline. so I repeat, That’s my problem because? Seriously, if you are basing your happiness on other people doing something that they have every right to not do (or not doing something that they are not bound to do) then you are doing life wrong, never let yourself be in that position.

Do you take commissions?

No. If you have a great idea, send it to me and I’ll do my best, but I’ll never take your money for that. The reason is, and don’t tell anyone because I don’t think anyone has noticed yet, I’m not very good and my art isn’t worth your hard earned money!

Is your art for sale/can I use your art in my book?

I’m not actively selling my art (See above). It’s created for my own personal private use in my pen and paper/tabletop rpg’s, and I share them freely so that other GM’s or players may use them.

That said, if you really want to use it in your commercial venture, make me a complete and serious offer. If you vaguely ask me how much I want, I’ll ignore your email. I’m not going to haggle or negotiate with you. I’m not interested in royalties or shares. Give me a price, and if I say yes, transfer the money in advance of using it, and it’s yours, for life, royalty free. Your only obligation will be to ensure I have access to a copy of it in whatever form you used it. If you wrote a book, send me a copy - if you spray painted it onto a Ferrari, send me a ferr… that would be lovely, but just send me a pic :). I retain all rights to sell it to others and use it myself. I don’t understand NFT’s and if your commercial venture is one, make sure you and your buyers understand that by buying an NFT, they aren’t buying the right to use my work - unless you transfer the right that you paid for. If you’ve already used my work, say in a book, then you may not resell the lifetime royalty free use of it, even if you sell it as an NFT after. If you bought it as an NFT, same applies. You may not claim to have created the work under any circumstances. The above text isn’t a contract, but it’s what you can expect a contract to say.

I don’t count YouTube rpg sessions or similar as a “commercial venture“, even if you earn money from it, even if it#s your sole source of income, please do use away freely! You are exactly who I make these for and why they are made freely available! Please do send me a link though, and I’ll enjoy watching!

If you are using it freely, I would be really thrilled if you made sure people know I made it and they can come use my art as well!

Are you really getting “Frequently asked Questions”?

I can’t believe it either. Technically this one counts as well because my gaming group have asked it more than once while I’m writing it!

Why is your uploading so weird?

I don’t know? I have a load of stuff I made a while ago that I upload every now and again, usually in batches when I find them lurking in some long forgotten folder. I also tend to upload pictures that I am making now. So it’s weird because my life isn’t particularly structured!

When I zoom into your pictures, they have jaggies and artefacting. Can I get a clean copy?

Yeah, they do, sorry about that. I would dearly love to upload only clean copies but I have a good friend, a professional artist who has had work stolen in the past. Even though I am delighted to let anyone use my art freely, I want to maintain a situation where I can produce an original that anyone who seeks to claim credit cannot possibly produce. Therefore I apply a compression algorithm that if the picture is used as intended, does not impact on the use, and also saves me a lot of space on my tiny hard drive! That said, if you really want a heavy crop, just ask! I’ll do my best to crop the original for you if and when I have time!

((Generic copy pasted rant about AI Art))

Your opinion is welcomed, I understand, I really do. I was like you once - I was in my youth a professional photographer. I had a dark room with a vent that cost more than my parents paid for their house, a chemical store for which I needed licences to keep. To me, that was 9/10 of the skill of photography. Then digital cameras came along, and took all that skill and bundled it into an algorithm, that was so quick, you could review the shot you just took on the back of the camera, correct and take it again. And I was saying much the same thing you are to me, to digital photographers. And I’ve seen it time and time again. Anime artists were snubbed, then Chibi artists were told that they were child abusers. People who used poser with purchased assets were victims for a while, and I’m sure plenty of other sub-cultures have been the target of mainstream ire in the past - I remember that there was a time when you couldn’t move on here for pictures of fat/inflated women taken to extremes, and another time when it was all about vore for a couple of years. I bet they got a tonne of nastiness too.

Yes, I use AI, and yes, I know exactly how that makes you feel. Yes, you’re welcome to tell me all about it, but no, I will not get into an argument with you. Your opinion and your right to voice it are sacrosanct to me. As is my right to ignore you if you have nothing to say that I find inspiring. All I would suggest is that I regret the energy I poured into being angry that photography went digital. Maybe you might regret spending so much of your energy on this negativity one day.