[desindol]

Maybe I can shine some light on the debate from an concept artist standpoint that works in VFX and advertising. I worked on feature films (3 of them in the imdb top 100), tv shows (like game of thrones) and hundreds of AD campaigns.

In the last 10 year the work of a concept artist changed dramatically we have gone from purely painted concept art to mostly "photobashed". Photobashed means basically that you rip apart other images and stitch them together to get the desired image. Some start with a rough sketch for the composition or make really rough grey shade 3d model and "overpaint" them. When it comes to "photobashing" the disregard for copyrights was always there and it's the worst in smaller studios and a bit better in the leading ones. Still most of the time everyone argues that if you only use really small parts of the images it is covered by fair use. There are some examples were studios got sued but mostly without bigger financial impact.

A few months ago I started working with "DiscoDiffusion" to generate the images I use to photobash. "DiscoDiffusion" can produce great "painterly" images but struggles with photorealism and is slower, not as coherent as "StableDiffusion". Still the adoption rate in the concept art community was insanely fast. This all got topped by "StableDiffusion" in the last week. Ofc there are still people that want to do it the "right" way and not use AI but we had the same discussion years ago when "photobashing" came into place and some artists still wanted to paint the whole image. As concept artist you are mostly paid for your design thinking that means it is less about the process and more about the finished product. The turnaround time for styleframes got reduced from 3-4 hours while painting to 45 min - 1 hour when photobashing with stable diffusion me and my peers in the studio are now at 20-45 min per styleframe. When "photobashing" most people constrain themselves on their image library and ressources like Photobashing Kits. Not only does "StableDiffusion" cut the time in half it also gives greater freedom in composition and design especially if you are using img2img.

So where does this leave us? For the work in fast paced art environments like VFX, games, conept art or advertising "StableDiffusion" is a welcome gamechanger. Tradionalists and Artists outside of the industry might feel threatened but for us in these industries it's a god send.

[shlip]

I think Tradionalists and Artists do what they do because they enjoy the process of creating/creating something unique, not because they want to be productive/fast.

So yeah, StableDif is great for commercially constrained environments, plus, it frees some of your time so you can enjoy creating art that matters to you :p

[cerol]

> So yeah, StableDif is great for commercially constrained environments

For me, that's the big insight.

Not just SD, but any synthetic media. My take? The "upcoming revolution" is not one of a boss firing their artists and making prompts themselves. It's a shift from addictive art" to subtractive art* in commercial environments.

[dougmwne]

Awesome perspective. Would you be able to link to an an example of what a finished style frame looks like using Stable Diffusion? I am curious what human and machine can achieve in 20 minutes.

[VBprogrammer]

I wondered if we were suffering from a collective blind spot where, for example, an outsider looking at copilot might decide that it's revolutionary for writing code where, in practice, I don't know anyone using it in anger.

On the other hand artists are amazingly adept at leveraging new technology, mediums and techniques to create art so it's probably less surprising if they jump at Stable Diffusion in a lot of corners of the industry.

[qqqwerty]

Almost certainly, in the near term, these tools are going to make folks a little more productive and will not be replacing anyones job. Every digital product, whether it be SAAS software, games, or whatever, is heavily constrained by labor availability. Show me one product that was feature complete and exactly matched the scope and scale of the original vision, and I will show you 100's that needed to prioritize features and downsize scope in order to deliver in a timely manner.

And FWIW, I think these tools are still a little too limited to replace even a single person. They might make someone slightly more productive, but the modern stack for both programmers and digital artists is many levels deep. Automating any one of those levels is not sufficient to replace a human. You would need to automate every slice of the stack, plus the work required to stitch those slices together.

[madelyn]

100% agreed!

My first thoughts when I saw DALL-E were, "Wow, I can't wait to matte paint with this!"

A texture here, something robot like here, some technical or magical doodads there. Smash them all together and even use img2img to blend things, then do the finishing touches and lighting by hand. It's so nice for speed "painting".

As a programmer, it honestly reminds me of the situation with Copilot.

[belter]

Thanks a lot for your insight, it's great to hear from somebody in the industry. This same industry, is logically, also quite keen on enforcing the rights of creators and media copyright.

Most of the discussion, has been on the technical details of these very interesting advances.

Do you think it will be concern for the production process, the origin of the source data used to train these models?

[desindol]

The most images are made in preproduction and there won’t be concern but there is a lot going on creating datasets specific to clients like marvel or Star Wars for which they have millions of images in archives.

[Llamamoe]

This sounds like exactly what I always wanted to learn to do, but never knew it existed as a field enough to actually get into it. Honestly thank you so much for this comment.

Do you have resources about getting into this style of art as a novice?

Also what StableDiffusion and other AI tools do you recommend?

[omnimus]

This honestly only confirms their fears. What you are saying is "yeah we have been photobashing all those artist for a long time anyway now its just much more efficient and automated".

I would be pretty afraid and angry if i was artist too.

[desindol]

We are these artists or better art directors.

[omnimus]

The way VFX industry called everyone artist because they are working in with visuals has always been confusing.

You have many professions who work with visuals and never would call themselves artist - designers, illustrators.

If you photobash all day to generate ideas its much closer to design than to what people would call artist.

Maybe thats a cultural difference but i always thought that distinction is clear. Anyone working in anything pop culture, commercial, “industry” is those other professions. People independly doing visuals (anything really) for visuals sake are called arists.

So when i mention artist i imagine completely different group of people than you.

[Llamamoe]

Can I ask again about your recommendations for getting into photobashing and AI-assisted air again?

[quadcore]

I think people here are confusing everything. And Parent you dont realize that 10 years from now you might lose your job not because of some external factors but because you mindlessly got yourself out of your own job by using tools you dont understand. So let me clarify a few points.

0. Parent, every input you put in that box is an input you soon wont have to make (and that will feel great at first) until you have no input to give anymore.

0.5 By art, I mean entertainment mainly. Not constrained to fine art.

1. Of course this looks like a tool now. And tools are great. We gota make sure they stay tools though.

2. Whatever work you do now with them, the AI will learn to do it by itself without you. You are training the AI.

3. The copyright issue is not unlike music and games in the early 2000'. You would pay if you were proposed the right delivery method.

3.5 the AI isnt creative, this is sophisticated plagiarism.

4. Moore's law. Moore's law. Moore's law. There are for-profit companies behind these AI that have no limit in the amount of value they wanna grab. Their goal is that we can click on a button and voila, you have a movie.

5. Please automate my job you may think. Absolutely, I wish mine (software developer) was. But art / entertainment is different. Now I cant explain it entirely, Im not philosopher (there is something about we still gota control what we do and do not) but if you automate art, our brain becomes useless. Our soul dies. And nature tend to recycle whats useless. Turns it into food.

6. "We ll just do some new art / entertainment". Which the AI will mimic the next day. So you cant even hope to work on entertainment anymore. It's a death I cant qualify.

The core of whats wrong here is ultimately, in a perfect world, an artist could choose if he wants the AI to scan its work (i.e. integrate its work in the tool) and be payed for it. That way we would choose what we like to do and automate everything else. If we cant do this, the AI will do everything even what we should be doing. So we should ban those models (or improve their practicality).

[desindol]

See I am not a concept artist I am an Art/Creative Director… if I tell a machine what to do or a person doesn’t change my job. Even if it goes away it’s fine I’ll do something else. Crazy I know.

[quadcore]

Added point 5 I forgot, thanks to your comment.

[desindol]

I am not an artist people might interpret my work as art but for me it’s a craft. The thing with real art is you do art because you want to do art and with luck you can make a living of it. If you do art for the money you always had bad luck maybe now even more. As long as people need a way to express themselves there will be art in one form or another.

[quadcore]

Added point 0.5 I forgot because of your comment.