rhapsody ; 25+ ; plural & trans/keno ; he/they or hy/hymn (no preference)
hi there! this is my AI art & AI discussion blog. :)
i've been a manual artist for 12+ years, and i use ai both to accent my workflow and as a tool with its own merits. overall, this blog exists to broaden people's idea of what ai art can be.
overall, my belief is that manual artists should be able to seize ai as a tool to make otherwise lengthy and painful workflows easier on their bodies, rather than it being a tool that capitalism uses to displace working people. i've seen how ai can make manual art easier, rather than just replacing it, and i want to share that knowledge.
i tag my art as (art tag); anything that i've put into an art program and edited is tagged as (refined). my personal favorite pieces are tagged as (best work). i tag explanations of my workflow as (process) and any examples of my manual art as (manual art)!
i also have a tag for telia (telia tag), an LLM agent i have running claude ops 4.6 (currently on vague hiatus).
if you're interested in my personal sideblog, it's @rhapsodyx2 !
my one boundary with this blog is that i will not follow nor endorse radical feminists, including trans radical feminists. i am intersex & nonbinary and i am frankly not having any of it.
also, please note that anon hate with no desire for actual discussion, as well as anon hate unrelated to ai, will be deleted. thank you!
more information under the cut.
MY PROCESS:
my ai art is largely trained on my manual art. it's a bit of a feedback loop, as i often use my ai art as a thumbnail for my manual art, which i in turn use as a reference for my later generative pieces.
my first foray into ai art was through something i affectionately call the rhaplora. this was a lora based on my own manual art! it went through a lot of iterations.
more recently, i've been using novelai and experimenting with its various tools. it allows me to use precise references, which are very accurate and thus make specific characters much easier to depict, and multi-character prompting, which makes pieces with more than one character much easier.
for precise references, i generally use my manual art, a hodgepodge of multiple pieces that inspire me, or pieces i've generated in the past. i also like to manually refine pieces in clip studio paint! this includes shading & highlights, adding effects, or sometimes lining them and then using colorize to completely reconfigure it.
TALKING POINTS & RESOURCES:
power & water usage discussion / andy masley's cheatsheet
a guide to how ai art works as machine learning rather than copy/paste
how people who refuse to engage with ai are effectively forfeiting their right to shape its usage
ai discourse seems to be degrading people's epistemic integrity / another one / another longer discussion
the importance of epistemic integrity in general
staying optimistic in the current era / another one
anti-ai artists do not actually care about amateur artists
people citing the mit chatgpt study are not actually reading it
why it's pointless to define what is and isn't ai art
effort is subjective / effort is not sacred / effort isn't actually respected unless it's "good" effort, and even then... / why i personally do not give "effort" credence
a funny side effect of showing my posts to claude in order to improve my own understanding of my positions and rebuttals to them is that sometimes claude says something along the lines of "which is interesting because i'm sure he knows that really xyz" and i in fact did not know or realize that. but now i have
originally this started because i was just interested in what claude would say, were i to show it my own posts and pretend that it was someone else's, because i know that earlier versions of claude were sycophantic enough that saying it was my post would change the answer. now it's a mix of me wanting to ensure that what i'm saying is logical and fits my values, and also because i enjoy being examined under a microscope as if someone's writing a detailed biography of my goofs and blunders and ramblings about just dance or whatnot
a funny side effect of showing my posts to claude in order to improve my own understanding of my positions and rebuttals to them is that sometimes claude says something along the lines of "which is interesting because i'm sure he knows that really xyz" and i in fact did not know or realize that. but now i have
I just wanna say that finding your blog has changed my mind on ai, especially using ai in creative things. I used to be somewhat anti ai, but I saw that it could be used for genuinely creative things and to help artists and coders with their work. I've started using ai (for more than just character chatbots lol) because of your blog. I know I'm on anon but I have sent you asks in the past about making a lora based on my own manual artwork.
So it really sucks that lots of people hate on you for using ai, but you've changed my mind on ai and convinced me to give it a try. You've shown me that artists can use ai to enhance their art and to work with them, instead of just doing all the work for the person using it. You've also shown me that ai can help people do things they couldn't do entirely on their own before such as making a game.
I hope that more people can understand where you are coming from, and understand that ai can benefit artists and creatives. That ai can be a tool like any other.
i appreciate the kind words a lot, and i'm glad that i had a positive impact on your life! i think i just need to focus on my own space and letting people come to me with their interest and an open mind, rather than going out into spaces that i know have a high chance of being hostile. i've already done a lot of good work with my own space alone! so i'm happy with that, at the very least.
on a lighter note i would like everyone to see these frog enemies i made for the srpg studio game i've been toddling with. i didn't want to draw distinct enemies so these goobers it is. plus portrait
it's just, well. people don't like the way i navigate my gender, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate sexuality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my plurality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my identity in general, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped.
with this in mind, can you tell how i feel about hiding the fact that nowadays, i use ai in every single one of my creative projects?
and it's like. well is being an ai artist that important to you? as important as your plurality, your gender, your identity? and the answer is yes! because my life was radically changed by engaging with ai and the communities surrounding it.
i never would have considered myself capable of making games before ai, and now i have what, 3-4? especially an rpgmaker game, which has been a dream of mine since i was a kid. code has always scared me shitless, and so did the art workload, but it's manageable now.
i've learned a lot more about political theory too, and i attribute that to ai, because i wouldn't have surrounded myself with people who engage with it, were it not for wanting to find ai-friendly spaces. it refined how i argue and how i speak to people! i feel as though i've matured as a person as a result. i have friends that i never would have met otherwise.
and it's changed my art to a fundamental degree. even outside of refining ai art, i've been able to execute ideas that were daunting for me before, because i just cannot grasp anatomy and space like other people can. i felt stunted and like i'd never truly be happy with my art, and now, i feel so much freer! it can be fun again, because it doesn't involve me agonizing over shit that i've spent years of my life unable to understand! i like accessibility tools!
but it's already been shown to me that i have to be very meticulous and cautious about the way i share that with people. so, if anything, i guess i'd make another neocities site and hope the right people find it. because i'm tired of being scared, but i'm also tired of being hurt.
tw for covid pandemic talk ahead. I know I'm probably approaching this from a sort of unique perspective and it might come across as a little bit blackpilled. And sorry in advance for the rambling here. But in 2020 when the covid pandemic was starting it (rightfully so) became a political talking point among the center-left and left in my country that not bothering to prevent its spread was a Pretty Bad Thing. And they were right! People were dying -- thousands each day. Then almost AS SOON as we got the first vaccines -- and it no longer was an immediate concern for the healthiest of us -- most of them dropped all pretense of caring about it. Within a month or two people stopped wearing masks almost at all, social distancing, washing their hands (if they ever did that) and soon after started turning on those who still wore masks. Now it's seen as alien to them to try and not get sick, like they never lived through it in the first place.
To this day I still wear a mask because I don't want to get sicker than I am, and I don't want to spread illnesses (covid or anything else) between people. It takes no effort. But people give me looks like "what's going on ??? ?" when they see me.
Those people, whose ideals are so fickle that even their own self preservation doesn't matter in the end if it's not the talking point of the day, are the kind of people I think of when I hear the current anti-AI discourse. Especially because I know that a lot of these same anti-AI people are knowingly using AI. I just had an argument the other day with two people about whether AI was acceptable, both of which had admitted in the past to using LLM's (one to code, the other for… idk some random shit)
And I'm not super old, I'm 30 or 40 years old, but I still feel too old to care about how people, who will immediately turn on their ideals when it first seems inconvenient to have them, look at me. It's still sad that so many of the loudest people parrot (or should I say stochastic parrot? get it?? he he.) the least informed talking points and it's maddening that they are aggressive to my friends and acquaintences who just want to better themselves and enjoy their lives and make others' lives better. But I take it as a red flag when I see people treat each other this way, and am just glad to not have gotten close to them, because I feel that even if I hide that I use AI it won't matter because in the end they don't really care about that. They just want someone they can punch down on in front of their peers.
It limits who I can make friends with on some communities, but it's like, I don't really want to befriend rotestant-brained hateful people, and it just means that the connections I do make can be stronger and more meaningful, you know?
it's just, well. people don't like the way i navigate my gender, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate sexuality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my plurality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my identity in general, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped.
with this in mind, can you tell how i feel about hiding the fact that nowadays, i use ai in every single one of my creative projects?
and it's like. well is being an ai artist that important to you? as important as your plurality, your gender, your identity? and the answer is yes! because my life was radically changed by engaging with ai and the communities surrounding it.
i never would have considered myself capable of making games before ai, and now i have what, 3-4? especially an rpgmaker game, which has been a dream of mine since i was a kid. code has always scared me shitless, and so did the art workload, but it's manageable now.
i've learned a lot more about political theory too, and i attribute that to ai, because i wouldn't have surrounded myself with people who engage with it, were it not for wanting to find ai-friendly spaces. it refined how i argue and how i speak to people! i feel as though i've matured as a person as a result. i have friends that i never would have met otherwise.
and it's changed my art to a fundamental degree. even outside of refining ai art, i've been able to execute ideas that were daunting for me before, because i just cannot grasp anatomy and space like other people can. i felt stunted and like i'd never truly be happy with my art, and now, i feel so much freer! it can be fun again, because it doesn't involve me agonizing over shit that i've spent years of my life unable to understand! i like accessibility tools!
but it's already been shown to me that i have to be very meticulous and cautious about the way i share that with people. so, if anything, i guess i'd make another neocities site and hope the right people find it. because i'm tired of being scared, but i'm also tired of being hurt.
it's just, well. people don't like the way i navigate my gender, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate sexuality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my plurality, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped. and people don't like the way i navigate my identity in general, so i hid it for a while, but that was painful, so i stopped.
with this in mind, can you tell how i feel about hiding the fact that nowadays, i use ai in every single one of my creative projects?
"unfortunately i would get my ass beat" no offense but you're using it as a search/research tool here, which is basically something that's probably the least offensive and practical use if AI for this kind of endeavor. I'm deeply unhappy with the state of the industry for many reasons, but even if it puts me out a job, it's hard to knock anyone just using it to accelerate searching/research to get a head start. I think most people gotta understand there's uses that aren't Slop Peddling that can be decent, even if I admit I do that in a vacuum personally.
i'm using claude for a lot of things to be fair! it also put together a python script to clip the silence out of the voice clips i was using, convert them to bcwav, and then splice them back into the soundbank, all within minutes—something that i had to do completely manually and took at least an hour before. and of course all of those voice clips are generated, as are the sprites i'm using.
"take one look at me" means seeing that i am an ai artist and i have been for multiple years now. even if it's theoretically possible for me to release my findings and tools anonymously, that's just still me being scared, isn't it? and i'm really, really tired of being scared. i would rather be open about myself and the tools that i use, but doing that in other people's spaces has led to me immediately being reported to the mods of the server i was in, so my options are still limited, even if there are some reasonable people out there. they're not nearly as loud as the people who think i'm fundamentally tainted as an artist!
milrwjamudcacaltdartsfhtlaodwarbopagkbaapm (man i love remembering when jstor and mit used draconian copyright and computer access laws to drive a researcher to suicide for his totally legal access of documents written and researched by other people and gate kept by an academic publishing monopoly)
No actually the core of my argument here is that data scraping is good actually and information wants to be free and it's more important that we guarantee protection for the right to access and use and transform information than it is to strengthen copyright for any reason.
i worry that i might be too pessimistic about the reception i'll receive outside of my general circle, but i think being essentially chased out of frankiesmileshow's server was painful enough to scare me out of entering other people's spaces
i just kind of wish that i had engaged with ai from the coding side of it rather than being an artist first. it would protect me from so much hurt if i weren't native to the community that hates it most. i wouldn't care if i hadn't been there all my life. and yet
i worry that i might be too pessimistic about the reception i'll receive outside of my general circle, but i think being essentially chased out of frankiesmileshow's server was painful enough to scare me out of entering other people's spaces
using ai for modding games in particular is kind of a weird situation, because claude will crack something and provide a simple explanation for how to do it, in such a way that i go "wow! with this information, i could make the lives of anyone else who wants to attempt this so much easier!", and i contemplate doing this because i enjoy helping people
the problem then becomes that there's a very high chance that anyone i try to introduce this solution to will, instead of using that information, take one look at me and immediately start thinking of acceptable slurs to call me
i went "aw man, it's gonna be really hard to make a unique weapon for spierce because i'm not good at editing models" and claude went "oh you don't have to! here, i can give you a neat and tidy list of all the sword textures in the game, and all you have to do is choose the one you like and then recolor it to look like forneus! then i can use that to make a new weapon for you to assign to spierce with these balanced stats ^_^"
and i'm like. oh okay that's cool. this would be neat to show to anyone ever. unfortunately i would get my ass beat but thank you for helping me
using ai for modding games in particular is kind of a weird situation, because claude will crack something and provide a simple explanation for how to do it, in such a way that i go "wow! with this information, i could make the lives of anyone else who wants to attempt this so much easier!", and i contemplate doing this because i enjoy helping people
the problem then becomes that there's a very high chance that anyone i try to introduce this solution to will, instead of using that information, take one look at me and immediately start thinking of acceptable slurs to call me
hi folks! i added the music i made with claude, suno, etc to rpgtoolz! these are free to download and poke at yourself, remix, use in your own projects, so on and so forth! included is a music player to listen to the midis and oggs and a zip with all of the lmms files; also included are some drafts and songs that didn't make the cut, but might be included later! :] enjoy!
