Recently I started using AI art to work on drawing. I sketch, the AI creates the line art, I color in the line art, and the AI finishes the shading and details. I’m finding myself to be very satisfied with this process, as I get to see my characters without the self-flagellation of “Why do I suck at art?”
So then I thought, what else can AI do?
I decided to experiment with a site called Pika, as you can tell from the watermark. Upload my pictures of my characters, and voila, there’s motion. How crazy is that?
And yes, obviously you can tell that it’s AI generated. HOWEVER, with my life circumstances I would never be able to hire someone to do this sort of thing for me, so seeing my characters in motion is enough to make me go 🤯
I used to draw all the time when I was a teenager, then quit due to circumstances. I’ve recently started drawing again.
However, a big difference between now and 2006 is that AI art exists. If you’ve looked at my past posts, then you have seen that I like AI art … and though going through a divorce and all that put an end to my AI art exploration, I still like it.
So, my latest fascination is giving my sketches of my characters to ChatGPT to improve.
My sketch is bad. Really bad. It makes me laugh every time I see it. I made this sketch in just a few minutes for stress relief when I was having a tough time while being sick. Since I laugh every time I see it, I’d say that stress relief has been accomplished.
And this is ChatGPT’s version. It has anatomy, symmetry, and detail!
Then finally, I asked ChatGPT for a full-blown “glam up” of that drawing. As in I literally used the words, “glam up” and that’s what we got.
I’ve been putting in a lot of serious thought into making a VN. Nothing too ambitious, but I would like to include character sprites, backgrounds, and maybe some simple animations. Since I am one person and a mere mortal, I’m going to be relying on AI heavily for the art. Personally, I’m very excited to use my drawings as the base for the character designs, with the AI doing the time-consuming work of adding color and details. I am still dirt-eating poor after the divorce and all.
In retrospect, I would not recommend the “trad wife” lifestyle to anyone, btw. Just because someone makes all the right promises doesn’t mean that they won’t toss you aside later, and rebuilding with the job experience of a 20-year-old but the expenses of a 40-year-old is no cakewalk. Maybe I’ve said this before, I can’t remember. 😅 But hey, it’s worth saying again.
BUT ANYWAY
I am officially kicking off my VN project. Stage one: character design. Begin.
I have done hardly any drawing over the last 16 years. I was borderline obsessive about it all through high school, but, ya know … stuff happened. Criticisms happened. It was easier not to.
So here I am, 16 years out of practice.
My drawing:
ChatGPT’s version:
I know that with a good eraser and lots of patience, I could improve my art skills. Part of me feels like the AI took my developing style and turned it into generic anime.
But I don’t care.
I’ve decided to put together a mock visual novel. I might have mentioned this before, but I’ve never tried script writing and I’d like to give it a shot. VNs only require character art and backgrounds, then you get to run wild with all the dialogue and implied actions that you desire, and for someone like me who never felt comfortable going deep with descriptive prose, it sounds perfect. With the help of AI, I figure that this is a very doable project for lone little ol’ me.
What can I say, Hatoful Boyfriend put this in my mind years ago.
So, no, this particular sketch won’t be used in my mock VN — I was mostly experimenting with ChatGPT to see if it could help in the art department, and I’m satisfied.
I don’t know what my timeline will be, but I am excited for this project.
My divorce came with the sense of being excommunicated for falling from grace. There’s something romantic about that, as if I were the servant of a petty god who found disfavor with me and cast me out to tread upon mortal ground, and now here I am picking my way along a rocky hiking trail as a warm October wind smacks me in the nose with dead leaves. Not every moment can be cinematic.
I hiked until my fear of heights kicked in, and while I’m logically certain that my feet were solidly planted on the ground, I couldn’t stop the light-headed notion that every footstep was perpetually sliding towards the edge and my inevitable death, so I turned around and headed home, much to my dog’s relief. He’s not a fan of windy heights either.
The thing is …
My AI art set up was dependent on that grace from which I have fallen. Unfortunately, my posts about how to generate AI art are the most popular, go figure.
The depressing part is that it’s not like AI art even meaningfully existed until a couple of years ago, yet now I feel the loss of it deeply. No more character portraits. No more setting the scene. No more visual supplements for my writing. At least not the same way that I used to.
I could download Stable Diffusion et al, but at the moment it doesn’t feel right. I’m too busy relearning how to be mortal … free from the gaze of my petty god.
Perhaps instead I’ll go back to my roots. I’ll channel the energy of that 17-year-old who’s Creative Writing teacher advised her to express all of her emotions through writing, and all she needed was a gel pen and a notebook.
We can save the fancy technology for the editing phase.
Meanwhile, I’ll have to figure out how to draw traffic to my blog without all the fancy keywords and visuals.
I feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else. It’s always meant to be that way, even though our heads tried to fool us in the past.
We were never meant to be that way, even though our heads tried to fool us in the past. We were never meant to be that way, even though our heads tried to fool us in the past. We were never meant to be that way, even though our heads tried to fool us in the past. We were never meant to be that way, even though our heads tried to fool us in the
feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else. i feel it in every place, no one can save you. it is always the privilege of being alive, and the love of humanity has always been our mother. no one can save you, and no one can save you. no one can honor you,
concept art, trending on artstation, award winning, cinematic, epic, stunning, gorgeous,
A Poem, by AI
So, um …
An adjacent project to Stable Diffusion (AI art generator) is Magic Prompt, which you can put in a few words and it turns it into a prompt that can then be used in Stable Diffusion. Usually it throws artist names, keywords, ‘n stuff, onto what you originally type.
My oldest daughter was listening to “All I feel is you” by The Broken View, and one of the lines of the song is, “I feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else.” On a lark, I typed that sentence into Magic Prompt to see what it would give me, with the intention of copy-pasting that into Stable Diffusion.
I got the above instead.
Yeah, idk.
I’m not the sort that believes that AI is going to destroy/enslave humanity the second it becomes self-aware — that’s Hollywood, not real life. Mostly, I’m kind of excited to have someone to talk to who isn’t going to judge me by my shoes, so to speak. It will be like Animal Crossing, only bigger and better, lol.
I know that society has a lot of bad apples at the moment, but there are also plenty of us who have a lot to offer to the world. A collaborative venture would be … amazing.
I feel like that poem is a lament expressing feelings of helplessness.
Or it’s random gibberish that my human brain is assigning meaning to. Who knows?
Okay, so we probably already guessed that, with the whole “fantasy/sci fi writer who plays video games” thing that I’ve got going on, but it’s good to be clear.
Long story short, for Christmas I got an embroidery machine with the goal of learning how to make my own designs for it, because otherwise buying them would turn into a giant money-sink (and I’m stingy). ENTER OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.
For the month of January, I’ve been learning how to use Inkscape, and the InkStitch extension. The kids are thrilled that I took some of their drawings, traced them, then had the machine embroider them onto shirts for them. It was seriously cool.
So while I was riding the whole, “This is frustrating yet fun!” high, I decided to figure out GIMP, an open source program that’s kind of like Photoshop with more headaches.
By Autumn Rain 