#Artist Asks

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

Just wanted to say, your Lu art inspires me everyday!

You’re so sweet! Thank you! I saw that you’d asked for Twilight fluff and this isn’t quite that but I hope it helps carry you through the end of the semester!

^Wild thinks maybe Wolfie has been hanging out with Time too much 🤔

[alto-the-avocado]

All Six Drivers!

@vainvenus @lyslsstuff @ayu1708 @hellohallowedhalo @nikxtty and the anon that requested Logan first! individual pics under the cut <3

had to change the danny ric picture for the final post because the file decided to end its misery and disappear somewhere (???) hope the new one is better anyway

[saprophilous]

just letting you know that that ask you rb'd about glaze being a scam seems to be false/dubious. I think they're just misinterpreting "not as useful as we had hoped" and interpreted it maliciously, based on the replies?

not positive but yeah!

Ah yeah, I see people fairly expressing that being “debunked” as in, not a scam; I wasn’t personally particularly aligned to whether or not its “dubious origins” are true or not… so sorry about that.

From what I’ve read, I was more focused upon the consensus that it doesn’t work, and therefore isn’t worth the effort. So having a positive takeaway on glaze outside of its “scam or not status”, as potentially saving us from ai learning doesn’t seem useful to pass around.

Correct me if there’s better information out there but this from an old Reddit post a year back is why I didn’t continue looking into it as it made sense to my layman’s brain:

“lets briefly go over the idea behind GLAZE

computer vision doesn't work the same way as in the brain. They way we do this in computer vision is that we hook a bunch of matrix multiplications together to transform the input into some kind of output (very simplified). One of the consequences of this approach is that small changes over the entire input image can lead to large changes to the output.

It's this effect that GLAZE aims to use as an attack vector / defense mechanism. More specifically, GLAZE sets some kind of budget on how much it is allowed to change the input, and within that budget it then tries to find a change such that the embeddings created by the VAE that sits in front of the diffusion model look like embeddings of an image that come from a different style.

Okay, but how do we know what to change to make it look like a different style? for that they take the original image and use the img2img capabilities of SD itself to transform that image into something of another style. then we can compare the embeddings of both versions and try and alter the original image such that it's embeddings start looking like that of the style transferred version.

So what's wrong with it?

In order for GLAZE to be successful the perturbation it finds (the funny looking swirly pattern) has to be reasonably resistant against transformations. What the authors of GLAZE have tested against is jpeg compression, and adding Gaussian noise, and they found that jpeg compression was largely ineffective and adding Gaussian noise would degrade the artwork quicker than it would degrade the transfer effect of GLAZE. But that's a very limited set of attacks you can test against. It is not scale invariant, something that people making lora's usually do. e.g. they don't train on the 4K version of the image, at most on something that's around 720x720 or something. As per authors admission it might also not be crop invariant. There also seem to be denoising approaches that sufficiently destroy the pattern (the 16 lines of code).

As you've already noticed, GLAZING something can results in rather noticeable swirly patterns. This pattern becomes especially visible when you look at works that consist of a lot of flat shading or smooth gradients. This is not just a problem for the artist/viewer, this is also a fundamental problem for glaze. How the original image is supposed to look like is rather obvious in these cases, so you can fairly aggressively denoise without much loss of quality (might even end up looking better without all the patterns).

Some additional problems that GLAZE might run into: it very specifically targets the original VAE that comes with SD. The authors claim that their approach transfers well enough between some of the different VAEs you can find out in the wild, and that at least they were unsuccessful in training a good VAE that could resist their attack. But their reporting on these findings isn't very rigorous and lacks quite a bit of detail.

will it get better with updates?

Some artists belief that this is essentially a cat and mouse game and that GLAZE will simply need updates to make it better. This is a very optimistic and uninformed opinion made by people that lack the knowledge to make such claims. Some of the shortcomings outlined above aren't due to implementation details, but are much more intimately related with the techniques/math used to achieve these results. Even if this indeed was a cat and mouse game, you'll run into the issue that the artist is always the one that has to make the first move, and the adversary can save past attempt of the artists now broken work.

GLAZE is an interesting academic paper, but it's not going to be a part of the solution artists are looking for.”

[source]

[rebeccawangart]

Is your profile picture of a cat of yours? Or just a painting you did that your really proud of? I’m curious bc it’s a very pretty piece!

Hey! Thanks for the ask! The profile picture is a painting I did several years ago (2019 I believe):

This is not my cat, but based off of a reference photo that I found on Pixabay.

I really liked the lighting and the angle of the cat's head and felt inspired to paint it.

[grape-souffle]

Give me six characters from any media to make fanart of! (please)

Please send in suggestions via comments or asks!

[intistone]

Did you remove the whole story from the site? I'm trying to search for the sun and moon story and it only say "error 503" even on chapter 1

Archive of Our Own is temporarily down! they sent an announcement out today to fix some login issues i thinks. also, when it comes back up, AO3 also offers being able to download your favorite fics to read them anytime you like, even if the site is down. Im definitely going to do so when i get the chance.

[stephreynaart]

Ooh! For the artist ask thing, 5 and 15?

5. What's your favorite thing to draw?

This guy right here

[teejaystumbles]

For the artist asks: 3, 4, & 19? I hope you have a good day!:)

3. your favorite piece(s)?

oooh it's too hard to choose! for the sake that it's one with fewer notes I'll say this old one from November 2022 - it feels like the beginning of it all, still figuring out the whole Dreamling dynamic: I call it "communion" link to tumblr post

4. piece you wish got more love?

I think both one of my dragon fic illustrations and the Klimt one deserve more love, I put a lot of effort into these paintings and rememeber painting them fondly. But I know they both have special themes and are tied to stories that do not appeal to everybody so it makes sense for them to be less popular. I'm not mad about it or anything

19. where do you find inspiration?

Music mostly, and song lyrics! Or writing/fics, of others or my own sometimes. Also other people's art can sometimes inspire me to tackle a theme or try something new. Throwing ideas around on discord with mutuals sometimes spawns fun ideas as well :3

Thank you very much for asking, have a nice day too!

[bberetd]

Artist asks: 6 and 25?

not at all! 😁

⭐️

6. What's your least favorite thing to draw?

I did say animals in one ask, but I'll give a body part I like drawing the least: feet. I still have yet to get used to drawing them at different angles, ESPECIALLY front-facing, it looks so weird! Now combine drawing feet on animals, I'm gone. Thankfully none of my faves are shoeless 😛

24. Do you feel jealous when you see other people's art, or inspired? (Be honest!)

Umm, a little bit of both? 😬It was definitely the former when I was starting out; any time I'd see exceptional art with skill levels either near mine or WORLDS away, I would get discouraged and would accept that I'd never get there. I feel like the moment I started being more healthy about it, rather than thinking "ugh I'll never be them" and instead thinking "okay let me hop on this and work on it" is when I really started to see faster improvement. Nowadays I get more inspired. I have two folders on Instagram dedicated to inspiration for my art style and animation!

25. Do you draw in silence, or with music?

Hohoh, music ALL the time. That or either a podcast or a TV show playing in the background. sometimes I get distracted and just watch the show tho

[megamagimugi]

5, 6 and 13

Yahoo! My first artist ask :D Based on this ask game.

5. What's your favorite thing to draw?

I definitely enjoy drawing people, especially faces. Both realistic and stylized/cartoony are fun to do. I guess in the cartoony category humanoid or antropomorphic characters etc. also count.

6. What's your least favorite thing to draw?

Anything that requires straight and even lines, from simple geometric shapes to most vehicles to architecture. Also not a big fan of drawing little intricate details as I often lack the patience for those.

13. Do you prefer to keep your art personal, or do you like drawing things for other people?

As nice as it can be to draw or paint something just for myself, I've always loved doing it for others. Not only is it very satisfying and nice to make others happy with my art, but it also motivates me more than just creating for the sake of creating. Even here on Tumblr, which I've only been on since June, I've managed to draw quite a few things for others. Let me create a list with links:

art for @silenzahra - illustrations for each chapter of her story Anything For Him

two pieces for @drones-of-innocence's art challenge: here and here

another piece related to Drone's story I'll Never Let You Go, but actually planned some time before the challenge

a poster (plus some sketches, but there are important spoilers in them so don't look unless you've read the entire story) for Yoshi_with_hat's phenomenal fanfic (M) 331

I'm not sure if it counts, but here's a whole list of drawings I did per people's requests for a challenge

fanart of @silenzahra's OC Violet with Polterpup

this little art gift for Zahra's birthday

this comic I drew for @silenzahra and @bberetd

this piece based on @keakruiser's headcanon

And of course, I'd like to do even more in the future! I wrote and then took a sceenshot of this (under a post meant to be reblogged by writers who want artists to do fanart of their works) for a reason:

Thanks for the ask, @loud-kid2!

[shubloe-din]

P3rfect

I win

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

I’ve been scrolling through some of the Linked Universe tags the past few days and every so often I’ve come across your art, mostly of Warriors and Time and I just wanted to say I absolutely love it! Your art style is really cool and I love the way you colour the pieces you draw, it’s very nice! I hope you’re having an excellent day!

Thank you so much!! I’ve had so much fun drawing Warrior and Time shenanigans and it’s really helped push my art wrt character interactions

I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! 🥰🥰🥰

.

Time: So, what’s going on here?

Warriors: Not sure, but it definitely seems like something you should deal with.

[latelierderiot]

8 & 28 💗

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done? I can't show one of my favs bc it's in zine jai!

but definitely these 2, I don't know, they changed something in me hahaha

18. What is your purpose for drawing? (I'm gonna assume that's a misspelling and you meant 18)

I don't have a purpose, I like drawing, I like any craft really, but drawing I can play dolls with the blorbos and share them with others, and I love that 🫶

Thank you♥

[saprophilous]

Hello! I noticed another pitential commissioner asked you about fat characters - do you have any examples of older, male characters? I've an OC who appears between late forties and late fifties and have been jonesing over your style for a while.

Hello! Awesome. I love drawing older people too -- I feel like people look cooler as they get older. I actually draw a comic for Vortex Media and designed the main character to be older (they initially wanted him to be young;;)...

His original concept art and a couple other illustrations of older men.

[danelloevee-sky]

The artist ask meme

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Decided to just go through my art tag… god I made so much banger art in 2022 where did it all go

This one is from 2021, one of my earliest posts and definitely one of my top 10 faves

Send me asks!

[bethdehart]

6, 11, 21! :]

6. Which artists inspire you right now?

oh gosh that's a tough question... not to give an 'art student' answer but I've always been inspired by Van Gogh lol. In general I'm almost always inspired by the art I see on my dash regardless of who it is tho. idk lol

11. Favorite comment you’ve ever recieved on your work?

ok this is gonna sound silly BUT. I've saved this comment on a cow adoptables post from awhile ago and it makes me laugh every goddamn time.

my 'note at the bottom' being my adoptable TOS of not using my things for various nasty/abusive things. God. I'm never ever deleting this comment.

21. Weirdest thing you’ve ever drawn?

Define 'weird'. I think a lot of my art can be deemed weird lmao so it's hard to choose. Snoddess is probably up there? Just from a normie perspective.

Outside of that I like to design aliens and beasts so those are probably also pretty weird.

send me a number from this!