Views: 4964
Submissions: 171
Favs: 878
~Stratadrake
Favorite letter: R, because it's used in just about everything I like to draw. Creatures, dragons, gryphons, anthros, birds, etc.... And, of course, because there're two of 'em in my name (both here and IRL).
Furry? I reject your labels and substitute my own. I don't maintain a fursona, I don't attend conventions or know any "fur"-iends IRL. I just draw.
Other places to find me:
- National Novel Writing Month
- DeviantART
- Fanart Central
- I'm a lurker by habit, and alternatively go by "Stratelier" on some sites.
Do I take requests? ... Buckle up.
TLDR the answer is "no" BUT I won't stop you from asking either.
Got any prompts? These ears are always open:
- In most cases, when I get notified I review your comment, then ... ignore it and just go about the rest of my day as usual. No offense!
- It's technically possible to win the "motivation lottery", meaning I'll actually draw it (or something similar) and, voila, some new gallery content! Just keep in mind that this happens at my discretion, not yours, these aren't commissions, and you don't acquire any rights over the result.
- Maybe someone else stopping by my userpage will see your comment, so it's technically possible to win their "motivation lottery" instead. If the previous example sounded rare enough, this is a rare on top of rare event.
- If for some reason you absolutely just can't wait, maybe go search up one of those AI art generators (Stable Diffusion, etc) and see what it spits out? Now there is a bit of a learning curve to engineering a good image prompt (example: how to write prompts, with results) but you'll be surprised (if also frightened) by just what modern generators are capable of.
- Last but DEFINITELY NOT least, there's always the option to create the art yourself! If you're "not an artist" then your first steps will look pretty ugly, but -- that's to be expected! We all went through that -- we STILL go through that. Constantly. And you don't have to listen to me saying it (maybe listen to a gray wolf-fox-dragon saying it instead?) . The good thing about learning to make your own art is there really isn't anything to lose, you only stand to gain for trying.
Wait. Did you ... really just advocate in favor of "AI art"?
No.
But it's complicated, and there are some nuances to explain -- see this journal entry for details.
Furaffinity doesn't allow AI generated art. At all. I support that! There should always be a firm line between something that a human spent their time producing, vs. something that was machine-generated.
deviantART does allow AI generated art, but also requires you to disclose that fact during submission (which enables users to specifically exclude them from general browsing/searching). So ... I actually don't have a problem with that! Let deviantART do deviantART things.
But, ultimately, you don't let the existence of AI dictate what YOU do with YOUR time and YOUR art skills. It's tempting to just throw prompts into an image generator instead of spending time on art yourself (and I've done so more than I care to admit) -- and, indeed, if this helps you better your own art in the process then by all means give it a whirl! But while AI image generators can produce an end result, they don't (arguably, can't) simulate the process, and the Real Art is the process you spent along the way to create your result.
Random tip to finish things off: Draw the tail first, THEN add legs. You're welcome.
Furry? I reject your labels and substitute my own. I don't maintain a fursona, I don't attend conventions or know any "fur"-iends IRL. I just draw.
Other places to find me:
- National Novel Writing Month
- DeviantART
- Fanart Central
- I'm a lurker by habit, and alternatively go by "Stratelier" on some sites.
Do I take requests? ... Buckle up.
TLDR the answer is "no" BUT I won't stop you from asking either.
Got any prompts? These ears are always open:
- In most cases, when I get notified I review your comment, then ... ignore it and just go about the rest of my day as usual. No offense!
- It's technically possible to win the "motivation lottery", meaning I'll actually draw it (or something similar) and, voila, some new gallery content! Just keep in mind that this happens at my discretion, not yours, these aren't commissions, and you don't acquire any rights over the result.
- Maybe someone else stopping by my userpage will see your comment, so it's technically possible to win their "motivation lottery" instead. If the previous example sounded rare enough, this is a rare on top of rare event.
- If for some reason you absolutely just can't wait, maybe go search up one of those AI art generators (Stable Diffusion, etc) and see what it spits out? Now there is a bit of a learning curve to engineering a good image prompt (example: how to write prompts, with results) but you'll be surprised (if also frightened) by just what modern generators are capable of.
- Last but DEFINITELY NOT least, there's always the option to create the art yourself! If you're "not an artist" then your first steps will look pretty ugly, but -- that's to be expected! We all went through that -- we STILL go through that. Constantly. And you don't have to listen to me saying it (maybe listen to a gray wolf-fox-dragon saying it instead?) . The good thing about learning to make your own art is there really isn't anything to lose, you only stand to gain for trying.
Wait. Did you ... really just advocate in favor of "AI art"?
No.
But it's complicated, and there are some nuances to explain -- see this journal entry for details.
Furaffinity doesn't allow AI generated art. At all. I support that! There should always be a firm line between something that a human spent their time producing, vs. something that was machine-generated.
deviantART does allow AI generated art, but also requires you to disclose that fact during submission (which enables users to specifically exclude them from general browsing/searching). So ... I actually don't have a problem with that! Let deviantART do deviantART things.
But, ultimately, you don't let the existence of AI dictate what YOU do with YOUR time and YOUR art skills. It's tempting to just throw prompts into an image generator instead of spending time on art yourself (and I've done so more than I care to admit) -- and, indeed, if this helps you better your own art in the process then by all means give it a whirl! But while AI image generators can produce an end result, they don't (arguably, can't) simulate the process, and the Real Art is the process you spent along the way to create your result.
Random tip to finish things off: Draw the tail first, THEN add legs. You're welcome.
Featured Submission
Stats
Comments Earned: 469
Comments Made: 539
Journals: 30
Comments Made: 539
Journals: 30
Recent Journal
Random thoughts about "AI art"
a month ago
Semi-recently I had a chance to experiment with a few of those modern AI image generators, so it's high time I collect some of my thoughts on the matter.
Several conflicting thoughts on the matter, that is.
So on one hand, it's actually fascinating to see these generators work, having reached a point where they actually "work as advertised". Did you know that these generators can draw protogens? Various Pokemon or Digimon by name? You can literally prompt something like "sergal taur" and it will draw a -taur shape with sergal features, proving that it has "knows" what the "-taur" suffix means generally.
On another, it is (and SHOULD BE) uncanny that these trained AI models can simulate the results of real artists, and do so in only a fraction of the same time. And there is a legitimate, worthwhile argument that because of the (ironically) timeless mindset of "time is money", commercial culture will always gravitate toward the cheaper options, accepting their shortcomings as a worthwhile price to pay for a greater savings on the ultimate non-refundable resource: time itself.
And there's a certain risk of "addiction" to the sheer convenience of these image generators. Why spend hours-to-weeks composing and producing a single piece when you can submit a like description to an AI and get a resulting image in minutes to seconds?
...Because when you make art yourself, you're in full control of your artistic process? Because it's not the end result, but the process itself that's worth your time?
Yeah, about that. Despite their capabilities, these image generators still have easy-to-spot limitations, and will tend to commit errors that a human artist would be certain to get right on their first attempt. People meme about AI generators horribly misunderstanding how hands and fingers work -- yes, hands and fingers are legitimately complicated parts of the body that even human artists struggle to get right. But this is actually a subset of a broader flaw of the generator handling fine details in general, and it also (especially!) applies to generating text. An image generator can get individual letters and glyphs right, but stringing them together to form coherent words has ZERO room for error.
Because AIs trained from tagged images taken from across the Internet, the AI is not so much trained to understand what something "is" (on a compositional or structural level), so much as it's trained on what something "looks like" (as an end result). The AI gravitates towards certain compositions (portrait, 3/4's view, etc) not unlike a human artist does, and trying to specify an unusual composition in detail increases the likelihood that there will be certain elements the AI just can't effectively model, or which it seems to ignore entirely (compared to other elements in the same prompt). And trying to battle/workaround these limitations is ironically a timesink unto itself -- I could (and have!) spent literal hours experimenting with a single prompt, tweaking and iterating and refining it over and over again to minimize whatever mistakes the AI might make along the way, evaluate what compositions it picks, even growing quite frustrated with the AI's inability to get 95% of the way there but not close out that last 5%. When in the same 4 hours, I could have sketched, refined, inked and colored a 5x8" pencil sketch, even scanned, prepped, and uploaded!
In some ways, AI image generators are not too different conceptually from those old Flash character-creators/editors we had back in the 2000s -- remember them? I tried a few and maybe you did too. So if they're not that different fundamentally, then the remaining difference must be the sheer scale/scope of what these image generators are capable of, right?
And that they may be reaching a certain tipping point or "critical mass", some trifecta of power, convenience, and accessibility that enables them to provide some real competition to real artists.
If somebody says that the AI training process (which involves analyzing images across the Internet, including both amateur and professional art, and a point of serious contention from said artists) isn't too different conceptually from a human artist studying and learning from material, well ... they're not wrong. To this day science still can't identify exactly how biological neurons physically encode knowledge and techniques in the brain, but we all (quite literally sub-consciously) enjoy the fact that "it just works". But AIs are still just a model or simulation with some useful correlations, even if its underlying design is wrong (much like the difference between polygonal 3D rendering, which can be calculated and displayed in real time, and 3D ray-tracing, which accurately simulates the underlying physics of light but is far more work-intensive for the same result).
But again, if the above is not too different from a real human artist, then by definition the remaining difference must be the sheer speed at which an AI models ("learns") its training data. New tools have always created an ability to do the same work faster (if not better) than a person doing it by hand, and "time is money". And for creative endeavors like art, maybe this difference in speed really IS what matters. We value human-made art knowing the process and time that was spent to get to that end result; "AI art" is valued for its end result ignoring whatever process and time was spent on generating it.
On which note, remember that AI image generators are also actually a super expensive piece of kit computationally (comparable to the aforementioned 3D raytracing), and this is why most places running a generator cost some kind of a subscription fee to use it (or place other limitations, like a max # of prompts). In which regard the Stable Diffusion model is actually much more efficient than DALL-E or Midjourney, but it's still one expensive piece of work that you're unlikely to be capable of running on consumer-grade hardware.
This is not a conclusion to the topic, but it's all I have on my mind for now. I may return to update this journal with more thoughts later.
Several conflicting thoughts on the matter, that is.
So on one hand, it's actually fascinating to see these generators work, having reached a point where they actually "work as advertised". Did you know that these generators can draw protogens? Various Pokemon or Digimon by name? You can literally prompt something like "sergal taur" and it will draw a -taur shape with sergal features, proving that it has "knows" what the "-taur" suffix means generally.
On another, it is (and SHOULD BE) uncanny that these trained AI models can simulate the results of real artists, and do so in only a fraction of the same time. And there is a legitimate, worthwhile argument that because of the (ironically) timeless mindset of "time is money", commercial culture will always gravitate toward the cheaper options, accepting their shortcomings as a worthwhile price to pay for a greater savings on the ultimate non-refundable resource: time itself.
And there's a certain risk of "addiction" to the sheer convenience of these image generators. Why spend hours-to-weeks composing and producing a single piece when you can submit a like description to an AI and get a resulting image in minutes to seconds?
...Because when you make art yourself, you're in full control of your artistic process? Because it's not the end result, but the process itself that's worth your time?
Yeah, about that. Despite their capabilities, these image generators still have easy-to-spot limitations, and will tend to commit errors that a human artist would be certain to get right on their first attempt. People meme about AI generators horribly misunderstanding how hands and fingers work -- yes, hands and fingers are legitimately complicated parts of the body that even human artists struggle to get right. But this is actually a subset of a broader flaw of the generator handling fine details in general, and it also (especially!) applies to generating text. An image generator can get individual letters and glyphs right, but stringing them together to form coherent words has ZERO room for error.
Because AIs trained from tagged images taken from across the Internet, the AI is not so much trained to understand what something "is" (on a compositional or structural level), so much as it's trained on what something "looks like" (as an end result). The AI gravitates towards certain compositions (portrait, 3/4's view, etc) not unlike a human artist does, and trying to specify an unusual composition in detail increases the likelihood that there will be certain elements the AI just can't effectively model, or which it seems to ignore entirely (compared to other elements in the same prompt). And trying to battle/workaround these limitations is ironically a timesink unto itself -- I could (and have!) spent literal hours experimenting with a single prompt, tweaking and iterating and refining it over and over again to minimize whatever mistakes the AI might make along the way, evaluate what compositions it picks, even growing quite frustrated with the AI's inability to get 95% of the way there but not close out that last 5%. When in the same 4 hours, I could have sketched, refined, inked and colored a 5x8" pencil sketch, even scanned, prepped, and uploaded!
In some ways, AI image generators are not too different conceptually from those old Flash character-creators/editors we had back in the 2000s -- remember them? I tried a few and maybe you did too. So if they're not that different fundamentally, then the remaining difference must be the sheer scale/scope of what these image generators are capable of, right?
And that they may be reaching a certain tipping point or "critical mass", some trifecta of power, convenience, and accessibility that enables them to provide some real competition to real artists.
If somebody says that the AI training process (which involves analyzing images across the Internet, including both amateur and professional art, and a point of serious contention from said artists) isn't too different conceptually from a human artist studying and learning from material, well ... they're not wrong. To this day science still can't identify exactly how biological neurons physically encode knowledge and techniques in the brain, but we all (quite literally sub-consciously) enjoy the fact that "it just works". But AIs are still just a model or simulation with some useful correlations, even if its underlying design is wrong (much like the difference between polygonal 3D rendering, which can be calculated and displayed in real time, and 3D ray-tracing, which accurately simulates the underlying physics of light but is far more work-intensive for the same result).
But again, if the above is not too different from a real human artist, then by definition the remaining difference must be the sheer speed at which an AI models ("learns") its training data. New tools have always created an ability to do the same work faster (if not better) than a person doing it by hand, and "time is money". And for creative endeavors like art, maybe this difference in speed really IS what matters. We value human-made art knowing the process and time that was spent to get to that end result; "AI art" is valued for its end result ignoring whatever process and time was spent on generating it.
On which note, remember that AI image generators are also actually a super expensive piece of kit computationally (comparable to the aforementioned 3D raytracing), and this is why most places running a generator cost some kind of a subscription fee to use it (or place other limitations, like a max # of prompts). In which regard the Stable Diffusion model is actually much more efficient than DALL-E or Midjourney, but it's still one expensive piece of work that you're unlikely to be capable of running on consumer-grade hardware.
This is not a conclusion to the topic, but it's all I have on my mind for now. I may return to update this journal with more thoughts later.
User Profile
Accepting Trades
No Accepting Commissions
No Character Species
Artist
Favorite Music
instrumental (classical or modern)
Favorite Games
Okami, Chicory: A Colorful Tale (a must-play when you're an artist), too many others to name
Favorite Gaming Platforms
Switch, Steamdeck, etc.
Favorite Animals
I draw what I like.
Favorite Quote
'You must learn the rules like a master . . . before you can break them like an artist.'
Contact Information
_then i'll appreciate your activity in my gallery even more : з
It came out as a quick doodle. Hope you like!
Fenro