- Joined
- Jun 17, 2021
I'm actually setting up a Huggingface account that I'll be uploading my models to. I've gotten written permission from several of the artists I've been building models from for personal training and use, but there's a few I have on deck that'll be fine with me posting public models for.
I'd be more than happy to link you to the models I upload so you can add them to your archive. I doubt my work's enough to attract vultures trying to scalp models for their apps, but you never know what'll happen to these sites.
The big thing driving me with these experiments is I really fucking hate how most of the "creators" using AI art are just trying to play it safe playing using NAI/Midjourney styles. But due to how the training for these models works, the actual "soul" of the art gets smooshed together and homogenized as different vibes and aesthetics get overwritten and averaged out.
Like this looks cool
But to me, as someone that likes collecting giclee prints, I don't feel anything when I look at it. It's a cool image, but it feels like looking at a graphic tee at Target: Neat design, but it won't stick with your mind.
Compare that to something like this:
This is unsettling, and when I bought the print of it a few years back I felt kinda gross handling it. It's probably a result of me being a weirdo, but when I pick up the print, I get like this uncomfortable feeling when I actually touch the art. Now, in my opinion there's a reason I feel this way beyond being a fucking weirdo:
Anson Maddocks, the artist of this piece, built his style off of surreal anatomical horror a la HR Giger. When he paints a character, it's very seldom a "beautiful" character: His elves have features more fitting for vampires and ghouls, his minotaurs have intricate warpaint and horn carvings, and his humans are often gaunt and pale. Even in cases where the character is "beautiful", the painting will often be cold and melancholy or sickening and disturbing.
When you look at an Anson Maddocks painting, you can immediately recognize it as an Anson Maddocks painting because of the style that he employs with his works. And when you look at the painting, whether it's on a card or print, you can appreciate the unsettling vibes it gives off. Even with abstract art like Maze of Ith, you can see the same concepts in it that you see in the Volrath art I posted above.
It probably sounds autistically self-righteous, but when I'm building these AI models I'm trying to train and tweak them to create art that can make you feel something when you look at it. Even if I'm using another artist's work as the brick and mortar for a model, I want to insert my own ideas and preferences into it so that the art it creates can be recognized and stick out from the rest of the typical AI art that's churned out from the other models.
There's also the fact that I myself am a watercolor artist, and I'd argue a pretty decent one. I've got a good grasp on composition and color theory, but there's a few things that I don't like painting or can't do quite right. For instance, I and many others absolutely hate drawing complex mechanical things like mechs and clockwork machinery. But if I use an AI model trained on my natural art style to generate the lineart for, say, a Gundam or SCP-914, I can create the basis for a complex scene that I myself couldn't visualize normally. I can then do the lineart I can draw normally, transfer the AI lineart onto the watercolor paper, and continue on with my normal inkwash.
And most importantly, I think the juxtaposition of being a user on a site like Kiwifarms going between laughing at trannies/lolcows/etc and working passionately to share their artistic endeavors while helping others do the same is absolutely hilarious. Doubly so when I put more effort into perfecting my work than most artists sneeding about AI have
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