#and not just generic machine learning

[amplexadversary]

Honestly the "wear womens clothes as a man, take the fashion you want" thing wouldn't be a terrible idea if they were sized relatively the same.

The problem is, they're not, so unless you are a twig of a man whom an M sits loose on you're not going to fit in the womens' XXXL pants, because they're smaller than the men's M.

It's irritating too because I'm too short for most mens' pants, but womens' pants are sized like.

well.

like the designer is trying to give someone an eating disorder.

So I'm either looking at something that doesn't go up to my waist size, or that I have to hem, which sucks and is annoying, and is not even possible for a lot of pants that have things printed on them.

[maeamian]

Becoming deeply radicalized against the idea of crewed Mars missions, y'know how the Rovers keep sending back better and better data what if instead of that we made an even bigger one and devoted nearly 90% of its capacity to holding a guy in a bubble on top of it instead of sending back useful data, but wait! They'll eliminate like a half hour of latency and also almost certainly contaminate the landing site and possibly the entire planet, so it's not all downside.

[sablegear0]

I think old machine-generated art was more interesting. Back when forms bled and twisted into one another and portrayals of humans and animals were soupy messes of fur- or flesh-tones and half-defined curves with the wrong number of almost-parts.

Not just because it was clearly less directly stolen but because it was more evocative. Evocative both of the surreal in general but also of how a [supposedly intelligent] machine might perceive a human.

It made you ask yourself “Is that how they see us?” To a machine, are we just soft amorphous things, just masses of curves and flesh with few truly defined features? Do they imagine us with dark, beady eyes not unlike camera lenses? With curling, fidgeting fingers too often in motion to count or depict correctly? Do they disdain our malleable, flexible forms? Do they simply not understand them?

[spearxwind]

i think also a huge part of why artists majorly refuse machine-learning (bc that’s what it is, i refuse to call it ai bc it’s inaccurate and gives tech bros too much credit) is that the people currently championing and developing those tools actively want it to replace artists. They loudly and proudly hate the arts and want every creative professional put out of work. They want every creative HOBBYIST to give up. I have seen machine-learning art generators call us artoids (like ‘femoids’ incels or unhealthily online misogynists use to refer to women. To give you the idea of the kind of hate-fueled superiority we’re dealing with) and circle-jerk to the idea of art no longer being a career and no one being able to ask for commissions anymore.

Machine-learning tools are currently a symbol of people who see creativity and art as an enemy, a boogeyman to be slain. They are designed accordingly - stealing human work to create the data, designing it so that people can generate ‘sketches’ or ‘doodles’ to deceive the layman that it was hand-drawn, using real-world likenesses without consent, etc. When tech bros get tired of weaponizing machine-learning because they think we need to get ‘real jobs’ or that furry porn artists charge too much for comms and need to be stopped, it will probably be a lot easier for artists to embrace it as it’ll be a lot easier to develop ethical tools. On top of making development easier, it could become a great tool to make the visual arts accessible for people that have disabilities affecting drawing ability. It could be a wonderful technology.

But as it stands we’re not there yet.

WHATTTT.... ARTOIDS 💀.............................. that is THE most cringe fucking word ever im gonna start calling them fucking inceloids or something

Arent these the people who also have hentai addictions and collect all sorts of images of anime women breasting boobily? Do they think before AI that those images just popped up from the aether? They should also get real jobs that arent living in their moms basements and being a hateful little bitch

It's kind of hilarious that they think machine learning models will be the the end of art though. As if art hasnt been a core human function from prehistoric age and as if it hasnt survived hundreds of purges, demonizations, and attempts to erase certain styles and movements and people. We're going to prevail no matter what and they can die mad about it

[reel-fear]

Wow, so umm... This looks bad, not only is it inaccurate due to using the wrong ink demon design [unless this is confirmation BATIM Ink Demon has been outright retconned... Which would make me pissed enough to make a new post just about THAT] but from an art standpoint this is just... Confusing and poorly done.

I wouldn't care if this was fanart, of course you should support young, indie artists... But for a Graphic Novel making sure your cover doesn't look like something Butch Hartman shat out in an afternoon is kind of important. Remember they're going to be asking us to give money to them to read this. The artist likely won't see any of that money and neither do the authors most of the time, not to mention this art screams of the artist being underpaid and overworked.

Like they Had to get something on someone's desk and their boss said 'good enough'. A concept Joey Drew Studios is very familiar with considering the allegations of poor working environments that Kindly Beast. Not to mention Mike Mood admitting in a Reddit AMA that they did in fact rush projects like Showdown Bandit. [Which they sold at full price]

He also says they can in fact say no or yes to designs involving their IP. Either Mike or Meatly had to say yes to this cover, according to his own damn words.

And do you really think this company in particular would care enough about its fanbase to not sell them garbage? They have done exactly that on several occasions. It's not like they care particularly about art either, considering their previous use of AI Art. There was no apology or even posts addressing it... Instead, they just rushed out an archives update to their game to get people to stop talking about it... Even forgetting an entire character in it. Again

This company is [or at least SHOULD BE] on thin ice when it comes to being suspected of misleading their fans or rushing out crappy products to them.

So with all that context in mind, I'm gonna talk about why this cover sucks ass.

The light sources are all over the place? Why does it look like someone put maces or knight armor on his shoulders but it's just flesh?? It looks both gross and weird [not in a good way either]

To explain more I'm going on a rant below but sadly this seems to have been confirmed to not just be a rough pass but the final cover and man... I am not excited about this graphic novel just at all. This felt like it really drained any possibility of it turning out good for me and I already had expectations low.

Okay first point, the light sources?? And there is no consistency here with the shadows or lighting, it looks like there's a hundred light sources all at once but none of them are even consistent!

the arrows here represent all the different light sources I can make out and yet the the shadow clearly implies there's only one. I understand wanting to use highlights to give the character a more clear shape but then just give him one or two lights behind him or in front of him? No matter how u follow the light sources, the highlights make no sense and the shadows make even less sense.

Why are the shoulders like that? Like on the legs it's a little understandable, at least those are clearly very heavily affected by perspective, for me I think they are so exaggerated it makes it look like one of the legs is either huge or one is small but that's maybe subjective.

However, the shoulders are unjustifiable, what happened there, what did they do??

I could pick on so much more honestly, how the color choices of piss yellow with no other colors being used, and the harsh pitch black being used for every part of his body is weird. How it looks straight out of Butch Hartman's recent crappy art. But to put bluntly bad start! Also what the HELL is going on with this background??

Seems once again the Bendy team is fine with sending out stuff thinking it's "Good Enough" for Bendy fans and honestly the people trying to tell me to "Be Grateful" for this are just proving that no matter how many times you betray your audience some of em will defend you!

Which is sad tbh. If anything we should be putting MORE pressure on the Bendy team to do better. Cause we deserve better than this, honestly we do. There are amazing artists in the bendy community who could do so much better for a cover. They've employed their fan artists before... Wouldn't it be great to do that for such a lore important book? The book that gives us the identity of one of the main characters in BATIM? The character you spend the entirety of Chapter 4 fighting to save? Not to mention will give several major characters their human designs?

But I guess this is... Good enough...

[harvestmoth]

nothing to this, i just like putting her in situations

[local-magpie]

"i like to packbond with everything" is um. a really fucking concerning statement to make when discussing AI, especially the question of if AI can reach sentience. that really should be the very first alarm bell you learn to watch for when you get into studying AI 😬

[bandtrees]

my opinion on the manga-to-anime mogami arc adaptation changes depending on who im talking to. when it’s people who lament them getting rid of the more brutal parts i have my whole speech about how mogami shouldn’t be this cartoonishly violent strawman who just wants to play dirty and an important part of his character is that, while he’s wrong, he has genuine points that mob needs to hear that help further his development through the season and that’s better expressed when mogamiland is more down to earth and realistic and not just senselessly brutal and knife twisting

however when it’s people who discredit the arc just because of its darker tone and because bad things happen to mob i just go like “YOU KNOW WHAT? THEY SHOULDV KILLED TWO CATS”

[self-spaghettification]

anyone else have a playlist of just a few songs that in the context of the dragon prince emotionally wrench them like a lot or just me 😃

[kerosene-saint]

queer history is very important to me and I love finding new things like websites and books and comics and photos and profiles and posts

[darkwood-hollows]

It is so depressing to see entire writing communities give into AI slop.

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Have you got predictions about how Rasputin's meeting with other people from his past might go? We already got some very insightful morsels regarding how Osiris and possibly Saladin feel about it, but I'd so love more more more exploration of how Red feels about it... and maybe his meeting with Shaxx also (I am filthy Shaxxwinter shipper). There is so much introspection and self exploration potential and I want all of it.

There are so many possibilities. There always are when it comes to Rasputin! That's part of what makes him so delicious as a character.

First off I think Osiris/Saladin/Shaxx/anyone else will take some time to get used to the idea that Felwinter is back to some degree and it's not just Rasputin mimicking or puppeting dead memories. Being distributed and able to fragment and rejoin means Red’s concept of identity and self is more fluid than humans/Guardians are used to - we're already seeing that with the subminds - and Osiris, Saladin, and Shaxx will need to deal with what's not quite the person they once knew, but what is also not just a recording or hologram. Felwinter's experiences are now part of the huge shifting web of thought and connection that is Rasputin proper. Red seems to have been desperate to “wake up” in time to warn us about Clovis’ deception, and as previously noted Rasputin is terrible at talking to people, but Felwinter figured it out, so in order to communicate Red probably integrated Felwinter a lot faster and more fully than he otherwise might have. So we might see some turbulence as this new complex of thoughts and memories settles in as part of him, and that’s going to look weird to us non-distributed entities. Seeing how Red deals with the other subminds will help Osiris understand how Rasputin’s consciousness differs, but Saladin will probably call it malicious or insulting to Felwinter’s memory without understanding how much Felwinter and Rasputin overlap.

Once they're over that hurdle, it's time for the difficult emotional journey of Felwinter's past comrades squaring themselves with what and who Felwinter really was. Osiris acts like he's hoping Rasputin learned from Felwinter without letting himself acknowledge the idea that maybe a lot of the traits he admired in Felwinter and values in himself - fearlessness, intensity, tenacity, independent judgement, a willingness to cross boundaries - came from Rasputin in the first place. I don’t know how that’ll shake out for all of them long-term. 

On Rasputin's side of things, right now I think he doesn't care how mad people are as long as they're talking to him. For a being created to be a singular authority and tending by nature to solitude Rasputin feels loneliness quite keenly. He forms connections despite himself, same as Felwinter, and those connections give him strength. He needs friends. Once upon a time he had a lot of friends, and they all died, and then even when one or two came back it was just one or two, and then he got gut-punched into a box and trapped barely conscious for a while, and so now Felwinter has sort of automatically brought in new friendship bonds that Red wants to keep badly enough to forge through a minefield of pain and guilt. So he'll probably keep talking to Osiris, and either try to talk to Saladin or split off a process to listen to him rant if he doesn't want to talk, and perhaps even say hello to Shaxx and Efrideet, partly because he feels an obligation to talk to those affected by his actions but also because Rasputin is lonely and scared right now and these are people who once mattered a great deal to part of him.

[jinzouacting]

periodically people have to be reminded that you should be against these large generative ai models because its aggregate content theft and not because of like "laziness" or whatever

[alta-et-astra]

What fresh hell is this, Microsoft?????? I did not consent to having this shit installed on my computer! And I can't find an option to burn it with fire either! What the actual fuck?????? Get it offf

[onewomancitadel]

I haven't even listened to the music but I do have a strange fondness for Charli XCX's new album cover

because the relative lack of artistic effort is inversely proportional to the fact that you know somebody did make it, because it's not actually something even worth machine generating (and text itself it really struggles with). Maybe all those postmodern artists actually knew what they were talking about, because I doubt machine is ever going to output an empty canvas.

Like, something lesser or resisting form is actually indicative of a human agent, contrary to maximalist Escher nightmares. It's sort of similar to how machine generated prose is always overwrought borderline purple prose and actually inefficient in construction. Writers who value minimalist prose can't be imitated. (To be fair, neither can any author really be meaningfully imitated, but I'm talking about style here; it's a total giveaway). I think it's interesting because inherent to the issue is the idea that there is 'one' way to produce art, which there isn't, which a lot of people greatly misunderstand - well, yeah there is, it involves a human agent (I'm even excluding animals here, sorry, I hear the objections and I'm not expanding) - but also what it tends to output means you can look at something like 'Brat' and pretty much definitively say a human did it. Because it's bad. And consequently I like it.

I probably should've just sent this thought to my best friend instead of writing a Tumblr post about it, so I'll just do that and send this post to her. Hahahaha.

[unopenablebox]

in theory there is a series of next classes on sewing machine use to take, featuring instructions on various techniques

but as far as i can tell learning to assemble a tote bag has taught me everything i need to assemble drawstring project bags, which is what i actually got into this to learn to make in the first place

so im just going to book sewing machine time for next week, pre-cut some fabric i already have at home according to a drawstring bag pattern i found, and just. try making things?