B-RYz-DA

You know those times where, as an artist, you’re either trying to get better or have your results match your ideas as closely as possible, to be met with something you’ll be happy with for at least a while… only to have everything crumble in frustration and dissatisfaction before you get any further?

Yea, even I go through that a couple times, especially when I really don’t want to. I wouldn’t call them art blocks, since that’s a lack of ideas. Given I’ve been trying and listing those out this year, it’s safe to say I already have a few, technically plenty.

I consider it to be a lack of art confidence (and maybe skills, but that’d be its own problem). Either way, it’s never pretty to deal with. I thought keeping a list of my ideas would help me boost my motivation. I’ll list my ideas whenever they arise, and have that be what to get done by the end of the year. I figured that would help me.

No… it’s done nothing but make my life even more overwhelming. I’m already overwhelmed enough with college and my weekend job.

I promise myself each week that I’ll get a specific idea done and over with, to be left satisfied. What happens? Almost always none of that. I sometimes restart whatever art I’m working on if left inactive for a little while, which only makes things worse.

I’m caught in a loop with this stuff, and there’s seemingly no way out.

There’s no middle ground that I’m consistently comfortable with. It also doesn’t help that dedication gets the best of me damn near constantly, which would explain my abhorrent sleep schedule.

These past several weeks in particular have been mentally grueling. This specific week, I wanted to get shit done for once. Summer semester was already done by then and Fall semester hasn’t started yet. My schedule was mostly free this week, so I figured I’d get a good chunk of things done… to maybe get back on track with my art hobby.

All that happened was me binging the first two seasons of Regular Show and, quite frankly, nothing else of note hobby-wise.

(Context: It was a DVD set I had borrowed from a friend of mine for who-knows-how-long, and I felt now was the time to finally watch all of it, since I really had nothing better to do then.)

My life’s a mess, and I keep trying my damnedest to turn at least some of it around. There are times where I don’t want to be a lazy ass, and I end up spiraling back to being lazy no matter what or how.

In the artist space especially, it’s hard for some people like me to maintain a wonderful art style and broaden our ideas and visions.

In my case, it’s even harder to do so while also restraining myself from breaking my art morals. By breaking them, I would end up like most of the freaks on DeviantArt already, and you’d rightfully be concerned.

Fate is supposedly sealed within me, and I always end up back where I’m at with my foggy hopes and dreams.

I want to mean something to everyone, while being happy with myself at the same time.

That’s all that I want.

– B-RY

It's no surprise to anyone here that AI is spitting in the face of those who work hard day-and-night to appeal to all of us.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Owl House... hell, even the upcoming Mario movie, just to name recent examples. That was all man-made work, and we appreciate it for its craft.

There's no point in scrawling a massive anti-AI art picture on my profile. Thousands have already mindlessly done that ad nauseam (it's practically spam at this point), so I feel just a long-winded writing will be enough. If it's not, that's your problem, not mine.

The line I draw, regarding AI as an art form, is it should only be used for experiment or just for funsies. In my case, I've tested DALL-E only a couple times to see how it would extend logo backgrounds. The only good example was when I tried it on a silently-killed and dormant Sony family division (left), while I got an iffy result with the logo of a sound QA company (right).

I hope you know the names without me explicitly stating them. Then again, look below you.

Safe to say, after the latter image failed to seamlessly blend both backgrounds in (I tried maybe a couple times after with other logos, but those memories are fuzzy, if even existent), I ultimately gave up on experimenting with AI art, having used the "alternates" generating feature only once to laughably bad results.

But I've used DALL-E mini before to do one thing... EXPERIMENT.

Aaaaand after the outrage I've heard of using AI for art and animation, I'm all up for avoiding further use completely. I didn't feel like going far with it to begin with.

I may have used one of GPT's text generators a few times, but that merely to test its accuracy with company information. From that objective alone, you can already draw the conclusion that it mostly failed to do even that. I've even tried AI Dungeon or something similar once, but the story already derailed not even a few minutes in.

Like I said already, use AI for experiment or just for fun. If you start to use it as a cheap-ass workaround for creating genuine art, then you've done nothing more than indirectly insult every artist you know and/or love, including me. For art to mean something, it needs to come from the heart, and it takes blood, sweat, tears and precious time to create a masterpiece.

Take me, for a quick example out of many, as one who spends his time hand-making his art pieces. People love 'em, and I feel a sense of worth that's completely void in AI-generated pieces. I'll show my most recent one here. It's not exactly original, but it's at least man-made.

Which is more genuine? This art piece up here that took a few days to a week minimum, pouring with heart and soul, crafted out of roughly hundreds of man hours... or a sluggish-looking blob of uncanny, possibly textually-warped, junk that took no more than a minute to shit out of an algorithm?

I may not be a professional artist, but even I find the general image laid by AI insulting.

Using a robot to take care of all those troubles is nothing more than lazy and demoralizing of various art forms.

I can dredge up two recent examples that most of y'all here should know about, though these concern more the animation side of art.

(Regardless, animation is still an art form, and I don't even have to tell you that to make it painfully clear. Old animation-business people don't know shit; it's not just for kids. If it were, we wouldn't have Family Guy or even The Simpsons, just to name two famous/infamous ones.)

Netflix's The Dog & The Boy and Corridor Crew's ANIME ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS.

Your irritated groans should already be setting in right about now, and if not, I feel sorry for you... whether that means you've seen one, the other, or both, and simply just don't get the issue... or you never seen any of them.

The former is very touching of a story... until you realize they copped out in the backdrop department. Yes, labor shortages are a valid issue to be concerned about, but it's no GODDAMN excuse to have AI involved in cutting the background-image slack in any way. You're avoiding to help in solving the problem by doing that.

Also, for the latter example, refrain from gloating how AI rotoscoping can change the medium forever; it doesn't, and we've seen why.

Of course, here on DeviantART, nothing's any better. Just do yourself a favor and avoid the DreamUp button. It's for the best.

Have a great day! Life's a struggle, so make your way through it, and live it to the fullest!

- B-RYzzle, 5-year DeviantARTist and counting