Furry Fandom and Drama General

[Pukebucket]

I have to admit, I'm curious about the whole neural network fursona generator thing because I'm not super familiar with how those programs work and I want to know how it goes about what it's doing.

Spoiler: big art sperg ahoy

I'm mostly curious because art isn't the same as feeding it photographs because it's working with a bunch of images using a different... language, I guess? With photos of people, there's all sorts of variation in color and feature and so on, but it's all photos; the general style of how forms exist in space is the same, the way light acts on the surfaces is more or less the same, etc etc.

With these fursonas, if the output is any indication then the source images are absolutely all over the place in terms of rendering. There's absolutely flat lineart stuff with minimal cel shading, there's very cartoony disney smooth-rendered 3d, there's very painterly stuff with a much more realistic look. Here's a screenshot for an example, you can see a bunch of different 'styles' and they're all pretty distinct.

View attachment 1276015

I could totally see a program spitting out an ungodly mishmash of these different styles because it's treating things like [smooth, pleasing rounded shapes of ears rendered in x style] and [outlined spiky anime hair with no shading in y style] as individual features, but what's wierd to me is that even when they're comically a little skewed, almost all of the generated images pick one style and are consistent in applying it to the design? And it's good at it too, especially for complex structures like more realistically rendered hair or fur where it's maintaining the light source and application.

Could anyone who understands the process of neural network stuff better than me (so, anyone) help explain how this works? From an art perspective and as a total idiot when it comes to tech I'd legit love to know how that works, do they divide the input images into categories, run the results, and then jam the end results together? I know people were talking about seeing repeats so is it preloaded images rather than on the spot generation, or did someone just troll the entire furry fandom by cropping and filtering a bunch of fap material?

Not an expert, just someone who has seen a lot of procedural generated stuff and noticed certain trends.

You've more or less hit it on the head; it is just random traits that are "matched up" on a likelihood basis with things like style and color elements, with some blending/tweaking involved to make it look more viable. A lot of it also runs on probability algorithms, which is why the vast majority of the proceedurally-generated furries spat out by the system have got pointed cat/dog ears, for instance; because the algorithm gets way more hits on pointed ears than flopped or rounded. Likewise, tan furries often have brown or red hair; longer muzzle types generally don't have tiger markings (at least not as often), "softer" art styles typically favor pastel colortones. There are some probability aspects to it regarding styles as well but that's the basic explanation.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Right now This Fursona Does Not Exist is on the front of Hacker News. The comments are quite interesting so I've archived the page, but here's some choice comments. The responses from techie furries are interesting.

https://archive.fo/lkuSq

One claims that shared culture is going to die from deep learning:


Being Hacker News, the topic becomes about trolls and glowies "Russian Bot Farms" using furry icons:


With regards to the content, there were both those praising it's diversity of styles while also questioning why it only focused on a few species.


Zootopia fanart is common for most:


"Fursonas are unique and special":


One HN furfag also posted their analysis of why this dataset draws from certain characters more. It makes a good point on why some characters come off as fanart: copyrighted cartoon characters tend to have more body differences than the average fursona does so the AI trips on them hard and churns out lookalikes.

 

[Corn Flakes]

One HN furfag also posted their analysis of why this dataset draws from certain characters more. It makes a good point on why some characters come off as fanart: copyrighted cartoon characters tend to have more body differences than the average fursona does so the AI trips on them hard and churns out lookalikes.

I think they hit the nail on the head with that one. How much do you want to bet that the bunny girl from Zootopia is a good 75% or more of all bunnies in the sample material, particularly since it's all from SFW pictures?

 

[Stock Photo James]

Right now This Fursona Does Not Exist is on the front of Hacker News. The comments are quite interesting so I've archived the page, but here's some choice comments. The responses from techie furries are interesting.

https://archive.fo/lkuSq

One claims that shared culture is going to die from deep learning:
View attachment 1276120

Being Hacker News, the topic becomes about trolls and glowies "Russian Bot Farms" using furry icons:
View attachment 1276125View attachment 1276126View attachment 1276128

With regards to the content, there were both those praising it's diversity of styles while also questioning why it only focused on a few species.
View attachment 1276132

Zootopia fanart is common for most:
View attachment 1276133

"Fursonas are unique and special":
View attachment 1276136

One HN furfag also posted their analysis of why this dataset draws from certain characters more. It makes a good point on why some characters come off as fanart: copyrighted cartoon characters tend to have more body differences than the average fursona does so the AI trips on them hard and churns out lookalikes.

Oh hey, this is indeed perfect for burner accounts. More useful for generic trolls though, I'm sure Russian PR shills have no reason to pretend they're furries.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Oh hey, this is indeed perfect for burner accounts. More useful for generic trolls though, I'm sure Russian PR shills have no reason to pretend they're furries.

I'd argue that FBI agents/glowies would be more likely to do this and even then as others have said what's stopping them from just drawing their own icon? Furries might have autism about which artists have which styles, but as mentioned buried in the pages of the infamous PK/Glip thread it is in fact possible for artists to imitate/lift another artists style. There was fighting on if some artist was Glip because they lifted Glip's style and brush settings at her peak.

 

[Pukebucket]

I'd argue that FBI agents/glowies would be more likely to do this and even then as others have said what's stopping them from just drawing their own icon? Furries might have autism about which artists have which styles, but as mentioned buried in the pages of the infamous PK/Glip thread it is in fact possible for artists to imitate/lift another artists style. There was fighting on if some artist was Glip because they lifted Glip's style and brush settings at her peak.

Drawing a fursona for gay ops is probably more reliable than hoping a rng system spit out more art of the same type of character; I can see there being a major upswing of furries wanting "proof" that your icon is part of a bigger piece of art after this in order to snoop out anyone who might be a troll.

That said, if you are going to create a fursona purely for the sake of screwing with the fandom then you're really going to want to be careful; if you're already an active artist in the community or just wants to make bank of horny furries at some point in the future, you'd want to pick a style you aren't already emulating and try to avoid having too many "tells" that could be traced back to you. If nothing else this is a good excuse to branch out and challenge your artistic skills if you want to play around with new styles and programs, but why anyone would go to that length just to troll some fucking furries is beyond me.

 

[CIA Nigger]

TFDNE has been going viral. Alongside numerous smaller examples of furries chimping out about how it's an art theft engine:

https://archive.fo/iaaeP

It's gotten both a Vice Motherboard article discussing it, and a /r/hobbydrama post discussing it. The most fascinating thing is that it's caused a furry to make fake edits to try to take this site down.

The creator's reply to the situation has mostly been laughing at the threads where furry artists misrepresent or misunderstand AI-generated imagery (such as the commenter who believed that the website was just copying and pasting furry art, despite multiple people trying to explain to them the process the images go through and how it differs from traced art) and as a jab to the detractors changed one of the website's loading texts to "Hiding Crimes". They've yet to say anything about receiving actual legal notice to take down the site.

And finally, the fake stolen art. The furry going by Ramune who claims to know artists that are filing DMCA takedowns posted two images to Twitter, the first being a statement made by an artist on facebook who says they do not support the website, and that the art it generates is not edited enough to not be a simple edit of an existing work by an original artist. The second, and more damning image, is a side-by-side comparison of one of the AI-generated furry portraits juxtaposed with what they are implying (but not giving detail towards) an original piece of art by an artist who goes by "smiler" according to the signature on the right.

The website creator responded soon after, asking for the source of the image/who the artist was as they were unable to find the image on the net anywhere but in this post. Were the image to exist, it would be on e621. Ramune responded to arfa with the facebook image - except the image lacks the context of the artist claiming this is their art. The independent researcher Gwern Branwen (of gwern.net) replied, pointing out that the image Ramune claims was stolen has several marks exposing it as a GAN-generated composition. The image is, unmistakably, an edited version of one of the images generated by This Fursona Does Not Exist, with colouring and a signature slapped on to make it appear as if it was original art. When asked for the source of the image, Ramune simply replies "Ask the OP who stole all the art. <3" and deflecting by saying they never go on e621 so they would not be able to find the original source.

There were some good comments on the /r/hobbydrama post but I think this one sums it up:

The other common complaint I've seen pop up is furries saying "Hey, that art looks exactly like (artist name)'s art! It must have been based on their art and barely changed it!" and all I can say to that is furries are astoundingly blind to how cookie cutter and derivative the art in their community is. The furry art community has a lack of identifiable style and originality, if that art "looks exactly like" the art your friend makes it's because your friend's art looks like every other piece of furry art on the internet.

 

[Just Another Furgag Alog]

There were some good comments on the /r/hobbydrama post

Can confirm this. I used to know an artist, every now and then see something that looks like their art. It's happened by at least 3 different artists.

 

[Adam The Ticket Seller]

For the TFDNE, why are there so many knockoff Toriel/Nick/Judy pictures?

 

[Spoonomancer]

For the TFDNE, why are there so many knockoff Toriel/Nick/Judy pictures?

for Nick and Judy, it's because they both have 20,000 results on the website TFDNE pulls from, e621, while Toriel has merely 6,000 pictures.

 

[Stock Photo James]

TFDNE has been going viral. Alongside numerous smaller examples of furries chimping out about how it's an art theft engine:
View attachment 1277170

https://archive.fo/iaaeP

It's gotten both a Vice Motherboard article discussing it, and a /r/hobbydrama post discussing it. The most fascinating thing is that it's caused a furry to make fake edits to try to take this site down.



There were some good comments on the /r/hobbydrama post but I think this one sums it up:

I'm going to be honest, when it comes to art style variation, furries got it pretty varied. There's more stylistic homogeneity in weeb and concept artist circles than furry ones.

The problem isn't as much in styles as it is in furry characters all being generic crap. Eighty percent of time it's either a canine, a fox, a dragon or a cat, with a garish colour palette slapped on to make it less generic. Unless the character owner has a fetish for a particular build or body part, the characters are defined solely by colour and species, with absolutely generic proportions.

 

[Adam The Ticket Seller]

I'm going to be honest, when it comes to art style variation, furries got it pretty varied. There's more stylistic homogeneity in weeb and concept artist circles than furry ones.

The problem isn't as much in styles as it is in furry characters all being generic crap. Eighty percent of time it's either a canine, a fox, a dragon or a cat, with a garish colour palette slapped on to make it less generic. Unless the character owner has a fetish for a particular build or body part, the characters are defined solely by colour and species, with absolutely generic proportions.

Exactly. While anime artists (hell anime as a whole) tend to have a very similar artstyle, the characters are usually distinct enough most of the time to the point to where you can know the series they're from, assuming you know about it. Furries are the exact opposite; diverse artstyles but the characters almost always follow the cookie cutter formula of "X species with Y colors", with very few exceptions.

 

[AnOminous]

for Nick and Judy, it's because they both have 20,000 results on the website TFDNE pulls from, e621, while Toriel has merely 6,000 pictures.

Someone else was speculating since most of these are drawn from actual professionally done movies/games rather than repetitive fan art, the AI can't easily just melt these features into a generic sludge, so instead it generates copies of them over and over. So not only do you have more Nick/Judy in the input, but it's also more distinctive.

 

[Bliniboy]

For the TFDNE, why are there so many knockoff Toriel/Nick/Judy pictures?

I saw this and the first thing I thought of was this exceptional being and her "partner" (who apparently worked on it) being literally palette swaps of Nick and Judy. She's worked so hard to draw someone else's character.

 

[D.Va]

LOL how has this caused so much asshurt? I checked twitter user RamuneTigress's reply timeline and gave up after hitting page down for the thirtieth time because he has just been arguing with twitter users all day and reposting the fake art theft facebook post.

At least Gwern knows enough about derivative work fair use laws so I hope he doesn't buckle and take it down over the autism

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

This just keeps on getting better. I looked further into that dust-up in the subreddit link.

Someone took an image generated by TFDNE, made little edits to it, put a signature on it, then posted it as "Hey, so this can be done with an image from the generator so stuff looks more authentic:"

Why they did that, I cannot tell. But other people grabbed the above image, proclaimed that the rendering on the right was authentic and the rendering on the left was posted by the AI, and started screaming art theft. Until this got posted:

The response:

(tweet) (archive)

Reflexively doubled right the fuck down. In the face of every response and question, Ramune's response is simply "ART THEFT." It's some Goebbels shit.

e: see attached for added context.

 

[D.Va]

Not only has that idiot been trolling twitter threads for the entire literal day, they are an actual, honest-to-god parent. A few minutes scouring their replies and it is a single mother who spends an awful amount of time begging for free art and panhandling online by posting pictures of herself with her child, despite having enough disposable income to own seven fursuits:



That is not her actual hair. She deliberately shaves her head owing to "trichotillomania" and just wears wigs:




The eccentricity levels are off the charts on this one. Everyone getting mad at this just seems to have natural lolcow tendencies

 

[camopattern]

Not only has that idiot been trolling twitter threads for the entire literal day, they are an actual, honest-to-god parent. A few minutes scouring their replies and it is a single mother who spends an awful amount of time begging for free art and panhandling online by posting pictures of herself with her child, despite having enough disposable income to own seven fursuits:

View attachment 1277447

That is not her actual hair. She deliberately shaves her head owing to "trichotillomania" and just wears wigs:

View attachment 1277448
View attachment 1277446

The eccentricity levels are off the charts on this one. Everyone getting mad at this just seems to have natural lolcow tendencies

She certainly seems like worthy lolcow material. She sticks her business into every piece of furry discourse that pops up but isn't smart enough to research before replying. She's made some dumb fuck comments in the past and she's still replying to everyone who mentions the AI like she's now the fandom police.

 

[Lapis Lazuli]

Not only has that idiot been trolling twitter threads for the entire literal day, they are an actual, honest-to-god parent. A few minutes scouring their replies and it is a single mother who spends an awful amount of time begging for free art and panhandling online by posting pictures of herself with her child, despite having enough disposable income to own seven fursuits:

View attachment 1277447

Jesus Christ, that poor child. Hopefully he doesn't grow up to become a serial killer or something.

 

[Wheezy Asthmatic]

Jesus Christ, that poor child. Hopefully he doesn't grow up to become a serial killer or something.

I think the bigger problem would be if he grew up to be a Kevin or Scumbag Steve. Serial killer is more of if she was doing what this cunt was doing (and a step further) by giving him a fursuit and then leaving him alone in a cub room party.