Artists ...Stop Wasting Time On AI

Intro there's something really nice about using something really simple like a pencil to draw you can get in the creative flow and there's just something very pure about being able to create an entire world an Infinity of imagination from a really really simple thing AI art is pretty much exactly the opposite of that no matter which way you Dice it and no matter which way you use it personally I always wanted to draw from imagination I come from that school of thought and by that I mean no reference no nothing just me and a pencil that's actually what I imagined everyone was doing it's what I always aspired to do it's why I put so much time into learning to draw things like comics and developing my own style trying to really figure out how to just sit down and draw kind of anything I wanted although I did sort of start my career in development at the dawn of the digital art Revolution and I saw a lot of these different movements come in as I tried to develop my craft people started using photos really heavily as reference and then they started just photob bashing and just combining photos into the work this was ESP specially prevalent in concept art which was an industry I was really interested in getting into learning to draw and more importantly to create pictures from our imagination to really sort of have something to say and be able to communicate it through a medium is immensely challenging we have to learn a whole bunch of craft we have to learn about ourselves about our Artistry we have to integrate all these things and we have to practice a huge huge amount and I really think one of the things that makes this even harder is all this AI nonsense spending a lot of time worrying about it thinking about it commenting about it and just kind of letting it fill your brain this is not helpful recently there has been another one of these little waves of air AI controversy about how much you can actually integrate AI into your workflow and is it good and isn't I don't know but I thought look I haven't made an AI video in a while so what I want to do in this video is try and share with you a slightly different take slightly different Viewpoint that I don't see a lot of people really sort of addressing or taking in a lot of the drama there are people out there who are pursuing this on a legal level and they're doing a really good job of that as are people who have sort of addressed the moral and the ethical issues involved with AI and I think that's all really important I agree with pretty much all of it if AI would just sort of disappear and go away again you know that would be just fine as far as I'm concerned I guess where I can see my viewpoint being sort of a little bit different is that you know I come from a background of wanting to as I said just draw with pencil I'm not really interested in using 3D or all these sort of other technological things but you know I've developed a lot of my career in this sea of technological advancement and right now I'm actually probably more exposed to both sort of job threat from Ai and I'm sort of surrounded by people who are probably more Pro AI than sort of most other artists out there um so yeah anyway hopefully that sounds interesting hopefully you en jooin me let's jump in and get started all right welcome to the drawing critics my name is Tim MC Bernie I've Welcome been a professional working artist for over 20 years and on this channel we're all about drawing cool stuff from our imagination embracing the challenge of drawing and mastering the craft of line and color illustration now interestingly enough a lot of this topic actually has to do with illustration Theory illustration process and I guess you know one of the controversial issues is like you know does AI have any place in sort of being a real artist you know and and actually creating real illustrations or whatever that means um spoiler alert you know I I don't think there's a lot there there um it seems like mostly it's just going of sort of waste time but if you want to sort of hear my thoughts in general on illustration Theory and kind of some of the processes and tips that I've kind of learned over a 20-year career as a professional artist you can check out my free illustration Workshop I talk a lot about how you know I've thought about things like secondary form um how to get more detailed and polish in your work and so of what role planning and thumbnails have in being able to get the idea from your head down onto the page so again if you're interested in that stuff and you want a little bit more background on like what I think about sort of a good illustration person process might be you can check that out link will be in the description all right so before we jump in let me just preface this with you Where I'm Coming From know a little bit of background information because I think who we are and where we're at and sort of especially a lot of what our incentives are how we make money as professionals is really going to influence what we kind of think about these sort of llms and generative imagery um but also I'd say I'm going to record this in a fairly sort of loose manner I'm not going to try and edit this too much so if even more so for a drawing codex video this is probably going to be not heavily edited and not fast-paced so apologies for that but again um I just thought it would be good to kind of talk through some of these in a little bit more of a casual setting so grab a Sketchbook do some drawing do some good in the world um and yeah I'll sort of share with you some of my thoughts on this um you know quote unquote AI stuff now the first thing I kind of see about myself and and again the reason I think this is so important is depending on where you are in your career and depending on kind of really a lot of it comes down to like where you make your money where the bottom line is it's it's just drastically going to going to affect the things that you say and the things that you teach and and your opinions and I remember being you know very early on in my career and I remember you know getting fired from a video game company sort of really early on that's like a major part of my story you know I remember getting fired and getting all sort of like teary and and people people would say like that's it for video games in Australia you know like it's all over and the industry kind of completely collapsed and I you know I was just like that's it you know my life is over um this is the end and you know it was really hard to know like what's true what's not you know the the one of the tldrs I'd sort of give you is like over the 25 30 years that I've really been sitting here trying to be like oh what am I going to do you know probably again more like sort of 25 years you know going from high school to you know being where I am now was like people say a lot of nonsense right about like what is and what isn't going to happen I remember after a lot of the Rings came out people were saying that's it Hollywood's never going to make a blockbuster film again they're never going to make money on it that's it it's only going to be sort of lowbudget things from now on and then you get all these sort of Marvel films that like have way higher budget so like people say all sorts of stuff about like where the industry is going and where it's not people are dooming people are hyping people are going crazy one of my sort of I guess unhealthy passions is um Silicon Valley hype cycles and the Silicon Valley sort of hustle culture and that whole thing the whole thing is fascinating to me I think people are going to write books about all the nonsense that's happening right now um about sort of psychology and human greed and human stupidity and it's going to be super fascinating but you can kind of look at it in real time uh and uh yeah it's just one of the most fascinating things for me and uh you know so I've kind of put I've sort of noticed a lot of these things happening um and yeah I'd say like the bottom line is it's really hard to know what's going to happen uh I've seen people say all sorts of nonsense about what isn't isn't going to happen in terms of Technology yeah all this kind of stuff so you know it is really challenging but but I will say that again as a bit of background on me um you know I've been a professional comic book artist I've done sort of professional illustration I've worked for sort of video games as a concept artist um you know I've worked in sort of feature animation as a concept artist I've worked on Pitch work for sort of animated TV shows like I've done a whole bunch of stuff right um and and most of it just using very simple processes right that are almost identical to like let's just you know get some pencil and paper and some markers and watercolor right that's mostly what I do so um you know I have seen a lot of the technology evolve you know I started out using Photoshop really ear early on and people would say you know you just pressing this button and then you're getting all these lens flares and all this art it was it was really people really viewed digital art as like Terri and you're not a real artist so you know and the same for photo bashing and 3D and all that kind of stuff I'll get into a little bit of that in so the first point I want to make but yeah you know I've seen a whole bunch of people say a whole bunch of stuff I think it's so important to understand that who's saying the things is very much based on their reality and like for instance you know if you're a working illustrator if you're an artist who's like your your entire income and everything you do is just based around like you making art and understand understanding how to make it more efficiently how to get better at it how to get better at dealing with clients all of this stuff like that is literally your life um you know that's kind of where I'm at like most of my sort of income like most of what I do comes from me being an artist and you know it for the most of my career that's exactly what's happened I'm not a full-time YouTuber I'm a full-time artist I work in video games I've done a whole bunch of different sort of full-time art over the years sometimes I've made no money sometimes I've made you know like decent money at it but I think you know as you separate yourself from that world you know it the the realities of being an artist for the full time I think it becomes harder to see that um you see people kind of you know getting separated from the fact that you you you a big part of being an illustrator is doing a thumbnail right like if you can't make your finished image look exactly like your thumbnail like it's really hard to make it as an illustrator like that's just such an obvious thing but you know again if you've never really worked in those Industries you know if you've never really done that it's easy to kind of you know just kind of have this weird view of being an artist and you know just be very kind of separated from it and again you know that's a valid sort of point of view to have but you just got to understand you know like people are coming from all sorts of different perspectives and you know um you have to wait what they're saying with what they're actually doing um and that's just so important and I would imagine you know if I kind of separated myself from that you know it's just it would be very easy to kind of just not be quite as connected with the the realities of how production is actually going and and I think you know the more you get involved and understand what it actually takes to make a video game or a movie what it takes to write a story The more you kind of understand how complicated it is and how pathetic and lacking a lot of the AI output that is actually meant to sort of replace us is um although what I will say is you know probably more than most artists I am both exposed to a lot of AI from a career sort of danger point of view um I'm sort of surrounded by people who are probably more Pro AI than most and you know I I also sort of use it more than most people so again I think people have done a really good job of looking at the ethical the legal side of it I agree with all of that I guess my sort of approach is a bit more like I got really worried about this stuff um because you'd see all these people posting videos about like hey you know I've managed I just pressed a button and all of a sudden I got like a fully rigged video game character and you know uh illustrations over and and and I think like the more I actually was like okay let me try that let me actually go and look at it and again my sort of I guess point of view on that is this way I can present better opinions to you know people who are in my community um people who are you know learning from me Etc um you know I actually wanted to go and see how to use it and see what the actual the reality of it is so that's kind of my perspective is less on the ethical Less on the legal side or I think that's super valid and more on just like what can it do is it actually useful is it ever going to replace anyone is it any good um or is it just a huge waste of time right is it just fully 100% Silicon Valley hype cycle is it going to go nowhere like what's actually going to happen so in order to do that I think you have to use it I've used it quite a bit and I'm also because I sort of teach courses and I use a lot of sort of different SAS software to do that people are in SAS like software as a service like like Adobe um sort of like notion even a lot of the course platforms are really fully into AI they're like oh we can generate a whole course for you with AI and it's like you try it and it's terrible right um and uh you know I I use it for a variety of things I'm always playing around with it and whenever I see some you know sort of AI bro guy make a video and be like oh you can easily do this and do that you know I look into it and I try and figure out like how and what is going on and uh you know if ever I actually think about like okay do do I think that AI could actually do this and and make my life easier in some way I I often go try it and I'd see 100% of the cases I've just like this doesn't work this is not helping me it's not doing what I imagine it's going to do the output if I compare it to me actually just doing it myself is always just like so woefully inadequate and again I think that's also part of the perspective that you might get depending on where you are like I can make the illustrations I can write the stories I've written and Illustrated entire Comics by myself without any assistance right without any you know I did a lot of it by hand right just sort of typing um you know or sort of writing notes and you know when you can do that when you don't need a lot of these AIDS and tools you see how limiting they are and how pathetic they are and that's a major difference in how you're going to view things right if you're constantly looking for like reference to drawer Anatomy if you're constantly sort of you know not having a decent process for your illustration and you're kind of just struggling all the time then like having some Guiding Light of like oh okay I can just make an AI image to kind of help me or or you know oh this thing can write my story for me or like oh I can't be bother doing research or I don't know how to do research so like you know this thing does it does it for me and like it does it instantly it's really good the problem is it mostly does a really bad job of it it's terrible um and if you aspired to be a terrible writer or a terrible artist or someone who's very formulaic or sort of generic and you know the images you're creating don't say a lot because they're all geared towards some kind of mythical sort of Pinnacle of like what will make your eyes bleed um yeah like yeah you're in trouble right but you know I I just don't think it's that good um yet anyway and and I don't see um any future where it's going to get sort of really good and some exponential curve that's me personally so um and I think a lot of that is based around actually being on the front lines I would say the company I work for is full of super interesting people highly intelligent highly talented people but it is a super tech forward Company the company I work for is essentially one of the past vestages of the web 3 um sort of blockchain Technologies and um you know they're still we're still building uh blockchain game right um what I do on it is I help create the story and the law and actually create using very old school processes um a comic book which is a prequel to the story so that's kind of my role but I'm talking to people who are fully on board the AI train and and they're super passionate and interested in it people who are developers coders and um you know basically if if if AI could do my job I I would probably get fired right I'm sort of on the on the on the tip of the spear there so again and I know that's you know a lot of people have sort of lost their jobs through due to AI it's very hard to know why a lot of that stuff is happening we're in a very particular Rocky sort of economic situation political situation um the free money era is over there's a lot of stuff that's kind of changing it's really hard to find causality in a lot of these things um and I know that's sort of a massive challenge it and again I'm not trying to go there too much but uh yeah that that is just problematic right um people are you know it is a reality that some people are probably going to lose their jobs depending on what they're doing but I'm saying like from someone who has like a fully developed career I'm one of these people where probably like to me I I always feel like tomorrow it could all be over right um and I'd have to go find some other job and and other people probably most people who would view my career like oh you're fully established like you know you don't have to worry um where I am right now if AI could do my job in any way shape or form um I would be gone right like that's that's as far as I'm concerned that's kind of where it is so again that's a little bit about me apologies for again not being quite so concise here but uh yeah I just want kind of want to share with you you know a little bit about sort of my background so you can understand where I'm coming from I think this is at the Crux of a lot of these sort of confusion and the fud and and all of that kind of stuff that's out there is you really have to understand what people are actually doing are you full-time YouTuber are you actually working professionally which industry are you working in how exposed is it to AI where are you in your career how formulaic was your art to begin with like what were you trying to do it's really tricky um and again it's always been tricky to be an artist to have any one of these sort of creative jobs it it's probably you know one of the the least kind of stable careers you can have but uh you know it is what it is and uh you know I've sort of managed to survive it over the years um and this is where I am right now okay so with that Is AI Just Another Tool? out of the way the first issue I guess the first idea that really sort of comes up for me is you know like can we as artists utilize or sort of incorporate AI in some way shape or form into our process like is it going to make us better is it just another one of these tools like 3D photob bashing whatever it is like all these sort of digital things like digital art itself you know is it just another Evolution and and we sort of being Lites to sort of you know resist it or complain about it or whatever um again you know I think that's sort of an interesting sort of point of view and you know it's important to understand again from my perspective you know I come from a fairly puritanical especially these days view of like what we should be trying to do as artists and this there not something I'm trying to defend or Justify I'm just saying like this is kind of where I come from I grew up wanting to be a comic book artist and and that was I just sort of thought people didn't use reference right I was like I'd see people like Jack Kirby or like o cre Tintin and you know Tintin used a lot of photographic reference like I Now understand a lot of people use a lot of photographic reference um and often you know wherever they can people often use assistance right like the ethical idea of like you're just being this pure artist where you just do everything and there's no it's just 100% from your imagination like that's a little bit polyana right um it might be a little bit unrealistic um and you know I I sort of understand the realities of how a lot of that stuff is created has also you know I sort of had to embrace a lot of those technological tools like 3D um for all sorts of reasons and I've sort of worked in video games where I have you know sort of Incorporated 3D as blockouts um as part of the design process um both for set of ships environments characters all sorts of things um I've also gotten to the point where like okay we can like build an entire environment in 3D in blender and we're going to render that we're going to use you know the lighting and the material and the surfacing and all that stuff as like a major way to kind of get 90% of the way to finish painting um you know so I've sort of played around with a lot of this stuff uh I don't view myself as being sort of a lite but funnily enough again like still my view of like what drawing is is like pencil and paper no nothing right like no you know I don't know why that that is the case but um there's just a purity to that that's always sort of appealed to me um and also it's really fun it's really fun to just be able to draw stuff like again this is me sharing like my experience of drawing is that it's really fun to just not have to worry about looking at reference um you know my anatomy is not the best but you know I can do illustrations and I can draw the things that I kind of want because I studied Anatomy a lot and you know I built my entire process and a lot of my teaching process is is based around like building visual Library not building reference and understanding perspective and and form drawing and construction and having multiple stages in an illustration process developing your thumbnailing and that we have these creative ways that we can sort of build up and construct things and that like yes you need to understand how the world works but you don't always need to be looking at reference as you're drawing um and again that's just me that's just sort of my Approach that's what I kind of actually like doing the feeling of just having a blank page and knowing I had the tools to make that into something really fun and interesting um that's what gets me excited about art um you know building it all out in blender and sort of assigning materials and stuff kind of uh yeah it's like it's sort of yeah it's not that fun for me right um it is it's a challenge it's sort of interesting but uh yeah you know if I never have to do that again I'm fine um you know if I can't drawer with a pencil and paper uh ever again then I'll be very very very unhappy but I guess the key thing here is that we have seen a lot of Art and a lot of artists There IS a History of Artists Using Technological Assists. be assisted by technology over the years uh the classic thing is your sort of camera your camera obscura where um again you know I think a lot of people had this idea that you know these old MERS could all draw really well and there must be some treat some cheat to it some trick and I think there was some documentary where someone sort of recreated some you know famous sort of old Master painting and was like oh they're using the camera obscure and you know they're just sort of tracing it and and all this kind of stuff and um you know the reality is like yeah some people probably did that some people probably also just really good at drawing and painting like there is this inability for a lot of people to just accept that you can just paintt and figure it all out yourself right um but people have always used references life life drawing um you know like using live models as part of the process um and you know as soon as people could they used a lot of photo reference um and I think you know this again is something I have no interest in but it certainly is something that has allowed people to create particular looks um you know like sort of one of my favorite artists that I'm often sharing is like Robert mcginness who created a lot of sort of the James Bond covers a lot of just a huge variety like hugely Pro prolific artist and um you know I think a big part of his process was actually just projecting photos and kind of you know basically tracing them um onto canvases and stuff again like I I don't I don't know exactly how his process worked but you know um this has been a major part of how everyone has done stuff people trace things uh yeah like you know and and also again looking at modern concept art uh you know I always like to use this as an example I feel like there's a good sort of video in here that I haven't made yet but you know if you look at like Star Wars you if you look at like the original Ralph mcquarry art for Star Wars Like A New Hope the original trilogy you know it's all done in you know sort of traditional painting traditional medium looks really good it still works today right you can open those those books and it's like wow this is amazing um you know and and then you sort of look at the episode one um you know sort of op book from you know sort of late '90s and it's mostly traditional and you know again I think that's one of the best art books out there and then you can kind of look at like the concept art for something like uh you know sort of Rogue one um or the Mandalorian or whatever it actually has a lot of the same people working on it but it's much more 3D it's much more photob bashing it's much more sort of practical right that there's less painting it's kind of less of the sort of art that I I thought thought I really wanted to do as a concept artist and technology has drastically changed the way we do art a lot of illustrators these days are basically building their all their figures in dash 3D um and then they're sort of importing it into blender they're putting skin shaders on it you know simulating all the cloth uh you know putting back building castles in the background you know like rendering it all out and kind of doing just sort of touch-ups in the end and you know making it feel a bit more sort of stylized or whatever um and I I think the problem that I've always said that you need to watch out for cuz one of the things again if the other thing I've sort of done that maybe I sort of didn't mention is you know I spent a lot of time maybe sort of 10 years of my life was spent with the concept design Workshop um in Adelaide Australia and that sort of was a place where we were sort of teaching people how to do concept art how to do illustration Comics Etc and it quickly became part of like a university or college degree and we'd have like hundreds of people come through every year and you know you'd see people developing different styles for different things different Industries people got into VFX animation it got quite big and you know a lot of what I would obsess over is stepping people through these kind of career options and kind of trying to help them build processes and and figure out what their style was and stuff and you know the number one thing I'd kind of say to everyone is like a lot of these crutches like using 3D um you know again using Daz 3D as a base for your sort of characters it's like that's good but you're really formulating your art you're really making it into this commodified thing where your ability for your style or your personality to come through um across all of those different um technological crutches you're using is is is much harder it's much harder for you to be unique and stand out in the marketplace and I think you know a lot of what um you're kind of seeing is like that is kind of happening right there is a commodification um of sort of Art in general where a lot of people are using the same tools same Styles and you get this kind of stuff where like one artist work is very similar to another artist's work and we're kind of being pushed there again in a lot of video game Industries a lot of things where like yeah if you're all kind of aiming for one sort of generic look one generic sort of concept art process it's very easy to get replaced right like this is a dangerous place to be and I've always tried to move away from that and try and say yes I'm going to be a concept artist but I'm going to try and develop a style that's kind of unique and and combine the fact that I just happened to work in French comics for 10 years and you know build this sort of different career that where like what I'm doing is looks a little bit more different to what everyone's doing and I think like obviously that's something that we should all try and do it is try and be a little bit more unique and you know that that from a career perspective is probably going to be a better idea but people have been really moving towards this commodified art style commodified art processes especially in concept art and entertainment design and there's just a huge amount of danger there right um and I think often when you you see a lot of sort of AI come along it does kind of just replace a lot of these very commodified generic looking illustrations that don't have a lot of personality in them that kind of aren't really doing anything different but you know we've kind of been pushed into making art this way um so that to me has been something where I've kind of been saying to people like don't go there like like don't that it it's not a great place to be to be just making art that looks exactly the same as everyone else's using exactly the same processes and using a huge amount of Automation in the process where you know you're using a lot of 3D um you know a lot of sort of rendering from sort of realtime rendering ents or you know a lot of the rendering looks the same and people are then using kit bash parts and it it's like it's not a good recipe right for creating original art and you know building a career where you know you're not easily replaceable what I would say Where Technology Fits Into The Process Is Key though the real interesting thing to me is like yes people have been using for every crutch they can find like any way you can kind of create uh easier or faster people often do it but but if you look at a lot of these sort of traditional illustrators right this is often the argument is like oh AI is just like using reference or it's just like doing this if you look at the processes that a lot of old illustrators had like people using very different styles would still use Photo reference right like the hilderbrandt brothers like Tim hilderbrandt um like amazing sort of fantasy artist created Lord of the Ring um sort of calendar illustrations and a whole bunch of other stuff like super colorful stylized but very realistic looks they used heaps of photo reference but their art is very unique it's very very specifically Hilder Brandt art um and I can see that style likewise if you look at Robert mcginness example uh who created all these kind of book cover illustrations like yes he used a lot of photo reference I think there's a big part of tracing photos but the surface of the paint is uniquely Robert mcginness it has a very distinct style and you can see that there's a couple of things that happen is that firstly the sort of reference the sort of crutches are a very specific part of a process and they are helping the artist to get a particular look to make it look realistic in a particular way to get a particular type of thing to happen um and not everyone uses photo reference not everyone uses all of these crutches sometimes you don't want to do that right sometimes you want things to be more exaggerated more cartoony um you know likewise like a lot of traditional Disney Animation was essentially rotoscoped you know it was like very closely you can see it was very closely based on reference of of people from movies and things again this has been a part of it but it's always the fact that like the finnished Disney film doesn't look like the photo right it's something unique they're really trying to build something that is unique and interesting and I think the best illustrators do this they have a really distinct process and they use particular crutches but they get used to using it in a very particular systematic way and they understand sort of where it helps them and where it doesn't and you can see when you look at people who are really good at like like literally they will shoot photo reference exactly the way they need it and then they will trace it to create a finished painting a traditional painting this is how a lot of illustrators worked um Andrew Lumis from you know the figure drawing for all it's worth and creative illustration talks about this right he like yeah you're going to shoot reference you can see where they're pling the reference right you can look at your classic Norman rockwells uh your JC land deers who used reference they always made it better right they made it better than the reference they plused it to the point where like again a lesser artist wouldn't be able to get what they got out of the reference they were always able to make it better and you can see that right um yeah so artists use use Photo reference and live models it's a major thing but the good ones made it better they made it more Fantastical more interesting they added more depth more clarity again photos aren't always the best thing sometimes they they're wrong right sometimes you're better off reposing the character for clarity and emotion and mood and good artists know how to do that um if you're just kind of photob bashing a whole bunch of stuff if you're just kind of 3D mocking things up um often again people don't have that same dis discipline the other thing that's so important to understand is I would say 100% of those people who use those processes and had a lot of tracing or photo bashing um or photo reference or whatever you want to call it they had thumbnails and this is just a major part that a lot of people are kind of missing is like you need to have an idea in your head from a process standpoint and yes there may be things that you're using along the way but you need to start with an idea and you need to be able to execute on that idea and I think this is even important if you're just working by yourself it's super critical if you're working professionally but just planning the image you can see this going back to the Old Masters people plann their images they did little sketches they figured it out they got reference they got more reference they got more models to refine all the details but it starts with the thumbnail with the idea with what I'm creating and if we kind of miss that creative process it's so easy for the tail to wag the dog to be using 3D as a base or using um again sort of 3D mockups and stuff and I think a lot of what happens is people let the tools make a lot of the decisions so it's less a matter of you know having the thumbnail and then figuring out like okay now I now I have the really hard job of making my tools do what was my Creative Vision often what happens I think is people kind of mock a bunch of stuff up and then they're just sort of zooming around in blender and they're kind of like taking photos of this thing and there's not that creative intention and they're not often dealing with the challenges that come from having to sort of realize a vision that you sort of created early on now again there's lots of different processes some people really like working in different ways but I think that that's a major aspect where you have to be sure that the tail is not wagging the dog that these crutches you're using 3D photo bashing they're not making the decisions cuz otherwise you you're not really doing hard work and if you're not really sitting there struggling and making creative decisions and having to be creative then what you find is you're not really living the artistic creative life you're kind of letting these things do the work for you and that works early on when you're ahead of the curve and you know how to use these tools and other people don't but soon there's hundreds thousands of other people who can do exactly the same thing and the more you lean on those crutches especially for the finished look um the more you're just kind of being Obsolete and it's just you've all that's happened if is you've created a process that's so easy to use that now a 100,000 other people who are far less skilled than you um can just go along and copy and use it and and so I think this is a really challenging issue and I think you have to look at like not like oh what is possible and like this can help me and like this makes it easier but look more at like what are you doing as an artist like who are you trying to be like what are you trying to do and how can you use a lot of these tools to really create something unique and interesting um and again you know I I think that if you look at sort of the limitations that AI often has and actually getting a very specific result um I haven't seen any situation where I think it's actually going to be useful um in that way um I think looking at you know the traditional processes that people had where you do a sketch and the sketch looks pretty good and then you actually shoot the photo reference based on the sketch and then you use the photo reference for your finish like that seems the most reliable way to actually come up with an idea and sort of create something that's very close to that um and there's probably a lot of other ways 3D and photob bashing and that kind of stuff can kind of help us with that but again I think the real danger is people letting the Tail Wag the Dog you let these tools Define both sort of the compositions like what is possible what is easy and also a lot of the finished look like you're losing yourself in the tool and I think that's just like no way you want to be you want to be as far far away from that as humanly possible the The Importance of A Plan... last thing I would say is that as part of sort of running workshops and being part of like a fairly large entertainment design school I actually got to meet and see and sit into workshops for a lot of like really really talented artists people who are much much better than me um and had really sort of high level careers working you know at the top of all the video game companies and stuff they come to adate Australia they do workshops and I get to see the process right and and often the process and they show their process and I'd be like always surprised by how like even artists who you know you'd sort of see their process and then they' be like oh and also I have this little thumbnail sketch that I did in a Sketchbook and you kind of find out that every single image they've ever done is based on a little thumbnail in a traditional Sketchbook even though you never actually see it right they don't show that as part of the process but it's actually part of their creative process they just don't show it because the the little thumbnail is awful right it just looks ugly and also even when you look at artists who I think have gotten really good results and kind of kicked off a lot of this let's use 3D let's build like the majority of the image in 3D let's reuse the lighting all this stuff um you'd be surprised the degree to which they are creating all of that in the thumbnail and that that is I think why a lot of the images look really good and have that kind of highend look is it's not just kind of throwing a whole bunch of stuff together it's like here's the vision and now I'm going to use my process to build that and I'd say in in almost all cases um you see like a really solid Reliance on a very sort of linear technical process and Al always the thumbnail is like a major major part of the vision and what they're trying to do and they will try and figure out how to realize that Vision yes it changes yes you have happy accidents yes you can modify things that's often where a lot of the fun is but again you'd be surprised the degree to where for most really good illustrations most really good concept art and stuff you know that there's often a really nice little thumbnail Can You Use AI As A 'Real' Artist? that kind of leads the way so a lot of I guess the actual controversy here um that really surrounds like can you use AI as part of a real sort of artists creative process um and if so sort of what does that look like and where are the lines um I guess there's probably a a variety of different sort of facets to this one would be the moral or the ethical legal side of it which again I'm not really sort of talking about I think other people have made very good cases for that other people are pursuing that and for the most part I'd sort of agree I'd be like yeah probably can't use that ethically or morally um If you're sort of trying to really you know sort of stand up for artist rights and and make that sort of moral argument um I'm much more interested in like the Practical side of it like does it actually help you like is it actually any good and um yeah a lot of this will seem maybe like a little bit sort of salty or a little bit harsh um and again normally I don't sort of go there so let me know whether this kind of sounds harsh or how this but again the the reason I kind of talk about a lot of the teaching experience I've had is that you know I I see a lot of different students come from a lot lot of different sort of perspectives and I've sort of seen everyone's I've seen every opinion you can have on this every sort of place that people get locked in um from a process standpoint or where they're just not going to commit to the fun Foundation I've kind of seen it all I've seen people lie to my face that they drew this thing without reference and I'm like I I can tell you traced it right like we could probably find we could probably Google and find that the photo you used I've had people you know sort of be having to draw a a vehicle as part of sort of their final assignment that often we have like 6 months this is a major assignment draw the whole car um you know and render it all from scratch um and we show the whole process and we like we're doing this like every week we're doing sort of feedbacks and some people just try and use 3D just going to trace it um and like to my face I'm like ah so how did you do that and they're like oh I drew it you know and then I've had people say like can I just use 3D to to do this and it's like no you can't like it's interesting like the number of different ways that people try and wriggle out of learning the foundations I guess and that's why I sort of point that and again depending on where you're you're at right if you're like you know not a professional artist and you're not a professional illustrator um you can see someone um and I think again like this the the video that kind of sparked a lot of this was a particular artist um kind of showing their sort of process for creating an illustration and it was just like simple figurative female illustration um with some sort of flowy hair um really sort of cool image you know I I like that artist's work I like the sort of YouTube um stuff they do um but yeah you know if you're not an experienced sort of artist and you kind of look at that again that may seem sort of Fairly standard right I think a lot of people do rely on reference in in various ways um but what I see um again based on my understanding of like where people are at and I see a lot of like just not having a very solid process right not having a foundational process to use not using a thumbnail not having a proper illustrative you know step-by-step way to do things not really understanding why you would need that in the first place and subsequently also not really committing to the foundational stuff right that's kind of what I see um again that may feel like sort of super harsh but you know that to me is just really clear when I sort of see that is there's a serious lack of committing to the foundation um and a lot of students I've sort of Jed and and had to be exactly the same and a lot of students can be really good they can actually come in with really good skills like I can make this but it It's tricky to translate that to now you actually want to become a professional artist because they often have to unlearn a lot of stuff and figure out how to work professionally and also commit to these foundational things you know if you have a process that's very much based on like constantly looking for reference I can see the AI might feel really sort of enticing um but also you know in this case this is a style it's very stylized right often there's referencing artists who don't use reference right so it's like it's a weird thing where um yeah it's like not you're kind of doing art in a way that's not really following how the artists that you're kind of you're following and admire actually create their art I think it's so important to actually look at the artists who you really want to be like look at how they actually make their art like do they use 3D like do they use reference like how do they do it um and yeah a lot of people just get stuck there where they just not not really going to commit to the foundation um and this is completely separate from what they say but just what is actually happening is just not committing to those foundational things um not practicing and doing all the foundational exercises that you would typically do to improve your perspective rendering um form drawing understand Anatomy uh composition illustration Theory illustration process and to find something that really works for you and develop your own style and way of making things um yeah I mean everyone's got their own process everyone's got their own sort of what way of making it but again what I see when I look at that video is that yeah you you probably would be really interested in how AI can help you um because I think a lot of it seemed like there's a lot of struggle there right this image was taking a huge amount of time uh like ungodly amount of time for sort of what it was um be very hard to you know as a as a professional illustrator who's like trying to actually get jobs to make money spending that much time on that level of complexity of image as an example again let completely your results May Vary but that would be my experience um and yeah to me what I see is just not really doubling down on having a simple process um simple way of making images and I think if you're really struggling with foundational things like kind of how to draw hair how to create Dimension how to you know understand perspective like if you're always using the crutches if you're always using reference to find the pose and you can't really figure out how to modify it yourself then your process is about finding better reference right and again AI may be really good for that um but again the elephant in the room is just that like probably also what would solve this is doubling down on Foundation understanding dimensionality like building your visual library for how to draw particular things like Anatomy poses and you know these things it's like a lot of this work is very female figurative art right there's not a lot of visual Library you actually need for a lot of that so it would be pretty easy to sort of build that um and again a lot of the sort of aspirational art that is trying to be created is very much similar to artists who often don't use a lot of reference right are just kind of building those figures themselves building those faal facial structures and all that kind of stuff it's not realistic it's not based on reference um the lighting is not realistic the the lighting is not really you know adhering to realistic lighting so it seems like um a style and a process that would be much better suited to you know sort of learning foundational comic book style Anatomy um and uh you know just being able to sort of build a very sort of simple figure and that that would actually probably give you a lot more creative freedom in that instance so that's really what I see there and I think this is more often the Trap that a lot of people get into I see a lot of students get stuck in this mud and they can't get out which is like instead of going through the fire and learning to draw properly um and again by properly I just mean like you you can draw perspective stuff pretty easily you understand rendering you can make stuff look dimensional um you understand that a breakdown visual your library you have a process right again you know there's many different valid types of art um not all of it is realistic or form based um a lot of my favorite artists uh have very naive Styles a lot of my favorite comic book artists have very simple Styles but you know a lot of people just refuse to actually learn the fundamentals they refuse to learn to draw um and they just end up using a lot of these different sort of crutches like 3D like reference I'm using this I'm using that and sort of frankensteining reference and always trying to find stuff and yeah um I think if you're in that case you you're going to really think like AI is great um and you know maybe it's it's big creative thing because you can solve this problem that's what I see and you know what I would see if I was using AI is like and I have tried this for various things I've been like I wonder whether AI would help uh again I've sort of never used mid Journey um I've never been that sort of into it but there's lots of ways you can kind of um you know through chat GPT and different sort of things you can get it to create images with it um so I'm probably not doing a very good job of it um but it's super boring I sort of hate doing it it's like so miserable would be typing and trying to get an image but yeah you know I I think uh every time I've tried to do this you just see like oh this would be so much e if I just drew it like I know how to draw this better than this and I think the result that was gotten in that video is very indicative of AI which is like it's not really what you wanted it doesn't really help you that much the reference in general just finding different bits of reference is like not a very effective efficient way to make art um it makes it very hard to kind of exactly get the pose you want and and kind of say the things exactly that you want um and you know like that to me is just like the the biggest sort of elephant in the room is like so why is this even happening in the first place and every experience I've had with trying to use AI in any way shape or form in my creative process has just been that like oh this is a huge huge huge waste of time it would just be so much easier if I drew it um and yeah you in most cases uh you know that's just kind of what I end up doing and I think this is the Delta you see between if you have a solid foundation if you kind of know what you're doing if you have a process if you practiced a lot you're committed to the actual process of being an artist um you know what you'll find is like AI is just pretty useless because you you see it just gives you these generic results and it's really hard to actually utilize it in any real way shape or form and the solution is always just draw better um understand dimensionality better practice more um iterate more right do 10 images do 20 images in that time going through the process and stepping through it and understanding how to get dimensionality um you know doing more thumbnail sketches thinking through the problem more like what actually is going to create the effect you want um is going to actually build a muscle that will mean the next time you go to draw that you can just draw it and it's easy and it's done as opposed to next time time just trying to have to you know squeeze blood from a stone um with all these different sort of methodologies and this sort of uh frenetic crazy way of sort of creating what is a very simple image um in a very sort of simpli simplified style that is often built um off the backs um of artists who are probably you know just sort of drawing it from imagination because it's very sort of stylized basic figurative stuff so again Every Crutch Helps... But Not If You Need It. that's probably like pretty harsh um but I think it's just so important to understand understand that because if you're involved in that drama or if you're thinking like oh hey is this going to help or is that going to help um it will help every crutch will help right being able to use 3D can be super useful in some ways I often use 3D as a base um in some of my Comics to get the spaceships right because again you know my spaceship drawing is not as good as it could be but I sort of realize where that starts and stops and again uh the other thing that's really important to understand about using any of these crutches is like a lot of people and a lot of students will think oh I just need to model this in 3D and then I can just draw over it and sort of add details and what you'll find is that's really really freaking hard that's really hard and most of the time when people see someone else doing that the thing that will make the difference between you being able to utilize 3D in your process or utilize reference in your process is like if you kind of didn't need to use it and you were using the 3D just to make it a little bit faster a little bit quicker a little bit easier um and the same thing with the sort of anatomy reference the photographic reference like if you're just using it to get the lighting a little bit more accurate or a little bit better that's when you're really going to see the benefits both in speed and efficiency um and that really is the difference is like if you're using 3D as a base because you couldn't draw that without it that's when you're probably going to find the results are going to really be challenging and you're going to be relying on that so much um if you're using it more for Speed and efficiency that's when probably um yeah like people aren't going to notice okay that you've used it and it's not really going to matter as much anyway that's been my experience at the very least the other narrative that I The 'But I'm A Director' Argument think I see a lot of people talk about when it comes to Ai and this is especially the case when when you sort of look at like the AI bro like Pro AI art sort of thing where they're like well we're just directors um I'm just a director you know it doesn't really matter how I'm doing this you know I've just got this sort of vision in my head um okay but the problem with a lot of AI is it doesn't actually get very close to the image you have in your head if you have no idea in your head or you're not an artist you're not an experienced a and you haven't really gone through the process of figuring out how to actually get an idea from your head onto the page often what happens is people have a super vague idea and then they sort of press the button or type the thing um and they get this image and they're like oh that's really good that is what I was thinking and it's like no that's what the AI was thinking that's what the llm was thinking that's what the gener generative algorithm was thinking you weren't thinking that you were just thinking something similar and you do like that and it's very easy to make that jump and I can imagine that being very enticing for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience actually creating images like as a director as someone who's thinking um but okay if if we if we sort of step back from that and go like okay well maybe the future is artists being more directorial um um let's look at you know what the directors actually do um the first thing they do is they often have a really freaking clear idea in their head of what this thing is going to be um and they have a very clear idea of how that's going to occur um in terms of you know the cinematography right as a director the sort of exact way that they're going to you know light the scene they're going to shoot it um where the actors are going to be how the set is going to be created and it's not some thing where you're kind of like messing around anding a whole bunch of creative stuff the power of a good director is that they have a really Clear Vision in their head and this goes for video games and all these kind of creative things the thing that will make the difference is that you do act like a director you do have a clear picture in your head of what this thing is going to be and often when you see video game projects fail and movies fail it's because the person who was making a lot of decisions didn't really know what they wanted they didn't have a clear picture they didn't really trust what they had in their head and so you get all of this editing this kind of chopping and changing and you see this with these movies where they're edited to the nth degree and they're like you know V fxing people and changing the whole scene um all this happens is because people don't actually know what the story they're telling is they don't know what they're doing now do now figuring that out is immensely challenging becoming a good director is immensely challenging I'm not saying I'm at that level um or I know how to do that or that's easy but you if if you kind of mess around and you don't have a clear picture of how you're going to make this thing then uh you're not really a director you're just kind of messing around right and that's exactly the kind of approach you would see from a lot of directors who fail and don't become directors or people who think they know how to make a video game and uh yeah they just don't really have a clear picture of what they're going to do a lot of creative intent uh and making good things is about having a really clear picture as a director as an aor of what you're trying to do and yes it's going to deviate yes there's going to be a creative process yes you're going to modify and change and a lot of films are drastically modified in the edit um it's only when you have everything come together that you really figure it out and you do have to reconstruct that original image with like the sound the V effects the pacing the editing all that's true but if you don't have a really clear picture and you're not actually trying to achieve something very specific you're not going to magically just kind of run into a good movie or something like that so I think like yes that's true but a lot of people were saying like oh it's more like I'm I'm more like I'm a director uh yeah they're just not actually really acting like directors or understanding the clarity of vision that you would need to have and for instance most directors use storyboards or are really good at planning and proving a vertical slice of a game or a prototype and you know just very quickly being like this is what it is guys this is what we're making we're going over here let's go um I know where we're going and again that's the kind of visionary sort of leader and game designers that often create the really good games that Everyone likes um the stuff where people don't have a Clear Vision H it often doesn't even get made right people it just falls apart um and when it does you you kind of see often it's just chopped and mangled um and it's a wreck and um yeah so again the other thing you could say is that I think our real value as artists is as aurs who um are kind of actually coming up with our own unique things right um there is this kind of Mystique around the cuz I grew up um and the first sort of real sort of course and education I had was in graphic design and there was a lot of this Mystique about you know these really highlevel Maverick graphic designers who would do like logos um and you know these would be people where you could paid a million dollars you know in the 1980s or something like that to design a logo right and you'd have this story where like you know the the top person right the person whose name is at the creative um Ad Agency um or the design agency like these sort of real top level designers and all they do is they just like Walts in there um and they do a little sort of sketch of the logo right with a with a pen and they just be like right that's it my job's done I'm going to collect my million dollars and I'll just have a bunch of peons actually kind of make that into real art and it was the same for a lot of designers a lot of good designers and a lot of this ethos was like I'm going to do a little sketch of how this sort of brochure would be and I'll give it to a technical artist a finished artist and I'll just make it and the value is in me being a director me being able to understand what's going on yes I think that that that does exist a lot of the value is in the thumbnail is in the sketch that's why you need a thumbnail that's why you need a sketch and you won't be able to get there to that point where you are a director where you are able to just do a little sketch and then send it off to a finished artist to make a finished logo and get paid someone Godly amount for it because you're just some big name you won't get there unless you've worked in the trenches in general unless you've been able to make it yourself and you understand the process good directors understand often the process for cinematography script writing story they understand a lot of the moving parts and they've often worked extensively at smaller scales making the logos themselves building the brochures doing all that stuff on the ground level and then they build up slowly to the point where now they're some big name and they can say I know how to solve this problem with a little sketch I'm just a director and everyone else all the AI all the little peons all the little finished artists um can just Scurry around like ants and kind of make the real thing and I'm just going to sit up here with my big idea is very hard to get there if you haven't worked in the Don't Mistake Correlation With Causation trenches so the last thing I'd say is as I kind of touched on earlier i' I've spent a lot of time trying to teach people how to draw and more specifically that one of the reasons I kind of started trying to you know build my own courses and do stuff on YouTube was cuz I often found that people would go through a lot of curriculums for entertainment design and they would really not truly understand who they were as an artist and they sort of lost their own style it's very easy to learn a lot of those foundations and fundamentals and kind of lose the uniqueness of your style and I think a lot of our Pursuits to become professional artists um they really do mean that you kind of lose a lot of your personality and especially when you start relying on a lot of these crutches again not always cuz I think what we often see is we see really talented artists using a lot of these sort of 3D crutches and other ways of making imagery and the same way people use photographics to reference you know hundreds and hundreds of years ago um you kind of see people do a really good job but often it's based on the fact that they already worked in the trenches they already understood how to make imagery they'd already developed a lot of creative muscle a lot of um good thought processes and it was always interesting early on in AI that like the really good artists who were playing around with it made much better imagery than sort of all the AI Bros and everyone else it was always like how's that even possible you know um but I think that's often what you're seeing when you see people make really good work and they're relying on a lot of these kind of I'm calling it a crutch but it's just a tool like whatever it is um the reason it's good is often because they kind of understand how to do the work without it and I think that's the most important thing to understand and the more you can kind of build and develop your own process your own creativity to understand kind of what makes you tick and how to get the ideas you have in your head down onto the page in an effective efficient time uh timely manner um and in a way that you can kind of share with other people you know have the thumbnails have a process the more you can do that I think the more you're going to actually be able to express yourself as an artist so again it's not to say any of these tools maybe AI who knows I don't think so I see no evidence of that but like maybe in the future it'll sort of become useful but it's only going to become useful for people who actually understand how to sort of get those results without it so it's either going to be like a time-saving tool or something like that where it kind of is just creating everything uh yeah I just for me the math is just not there I just don't see any future in that actually creating any value or any use for artists so like a lot of technology I think the best thing to do is just completely forget about it um if it becomes really sort of useful later on you'll be able to pick it up really really easily if we have ai assisted artistic Tools in some way like again Photoshop actually becomes really good at like you know helping you in some way as opposed to just generating sort of art garbage um you know you'll just be able to pick that up and the skills that you need to build are always those foundational creative skills and this has been the case for like thousands of years right we always have tools we always have technology but you're only able to use them well when you kind of understand how to do the job without them right it's often that foundational stuff it's understanding yourself it's building your own creative processes that are going to actually make the difference anyway that's all we got time Let Me Know What You Think for in this particular video this is probably the most rambling like least structured video I've made um on this channel in a while so again I do apologize for that if you're still here if you're still listening uh much much appreciation I'd be really Keen to know what you think about these issues and whether this has kind of helped you to think through it in some way um again a lot of this is completely separate to the legal the ethical and the moral concerns um around this which I think are very sort of real and palpable um but again the approach I'm trying to take and again let me what you think of this is you know I'm much more interested in the Practical side like can it actually do what people are saying and if so like is this good is this bad um that's kind of what is really sort of interesting to me um and also you know the hype cycle sort of aspect of it that's what's been the most interesting to me sort of over the years so again my goal here is to kind of test it out like see whether it actually does any of this stuff and as I said uh from my experience uh if you can actually do even a half decent job at what it's sort of trying to do do uh it might be able to save you some time especially if you're interested in a really generic result but in most cases if I really think about it if I just kind of sat down and wrote that if I just actually kind of you know did that thing it's going to be more effective more unique um I'm going to build my own skills I'm going to build the right muscles and uh you know again I think the marketplace is going to sort a lot of this stuff out um and that'll be really interesting to see over the next few years so again let me know what you think I'm genuinely interested to hear where you sort of land um I would recommend kind of in general just to do more drawing have more fun uh spend less time sort of worrying about uh you know sort of YouTube drama but uh yeah so I do apologize for contributing to that um yeah but yeah anyway other than that catch you around happy drawing