PaulEberhardt

Welcome to my profile page. Just call me Paul.

This is what the "100% Human Created Content" stamp in my title image is about: https://no-ai-icon.com/statement/?url=https://www.deviantart.com/pauleberhardt

I use it with permission. The statement that comes with it puts my current worries into words spot-on and elegantly, and additionally serves as a link to where I got the stamp from in case you want one, too.

A couple of years ago, I was rather fed up with DA but opted to keep my stuff online. While the site has become somewhat more usable again, I'll still be a while before I post anything new. This is partly because I've had little time to do anything art-wise in the past few years, and partly because I'm still figuring out how much sense it makes to post on a site that gets so rapidly cluttered with so-called AI art that us old farts who insist on using their own skills get buried underneath, becoming virtually invisible.

All my art is completely hand-made. This is partly because I'm constantly at war with computers and suchlike, but mostly because that's the way I like it. To me, doing it all the old-fashioned, traditional way with nothing getting in the way between me and what I produce is part of the fun, and even if the result may look less polished, streamlined, and whatever than it theoretically could, I wouldn't have it any other way. In this context it becomes almost needless to say that to my mind, using AI is wearing borrowed plumes at best and cheating/stealing at worst. This is something only a poser could even consider, not me! I know that new technologies are part of an ever-progressing world, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to think about what it does to us artists and everyone else, and it certainly doesn't mean I have to like what I arrive at. If you think differently and consider AI a great innovation, fine, you're just as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine, but don't expect me to call the results art, and especially don't even think of using it on my stuff. I'm not against progress, I'm just against worshipping new tech just for the sake of its newness, especially when it's plain to see that it'll be more disruptive than useful, adding to a general dumbing down on top, unless it's kept under very tight control indeed. This last part is mainly why I put such an emphasis on not using it. If everyone did that, it'd give people back some measure of that control I see us internet users in danger of losing.

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Everything below this paragraph is what I said back in 2020 or so. I'm leaving it here, because most of it, except for usability of the site, hasn't changed in any substantial way and it helps understanding my ranting motivations a little better.

I'm not going to post any new art here on DA for the time being. I stated my reasons more fully in my latest journal post below, but the gist is that at least with my computer this site in its Eclipse design has become too slow and impractical for me to bother with it. If this gets fixed some day I'll be happy to resume posting. Also there are one or two people I quite like (you know who you are) and who I want to keep in touch with. For these two reasons I haven't deactivated this account yet, and will continue to read my messages.

For anything else, including new artwork by me, you can find me at the Duck: https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PaulEberhardt/ . It works, you see.

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This is my bio:

I'd studied Forestry for some years, which continues to be something of an influence on my life and art, but eventually switched to becoming a teacher of English and Geography.

I'm fluent at German, Plattdütsch and English. I've also got reasonable skills in French and Latin. In this selection, Plattdütsch is special. It's the traditional minority language of my native Northern Germany, that miraculously keeps surviving due to the effort of people who hold it dear. I'm one of them, and that's why I'm the author of (to my knowledge) the only webcomic in Platt*, named Gundula un de Stuventiger: www.stuventiger.de

Since most people around the world of course don't speak Platt, I do an English version as well, known as Master the Tiger, which I post on the Duck: https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Master_the_Tiger/

Apart from drawing comics and cartoons I sometimes write stories and poems and play the electric guitar. In all of it I'm entirely self-taught.

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* Please note that a number of artists/authors have published print comics in Platt, all of which I can warmly recommend, however I haven't seen any of them online.