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Forums > CSDb Entries > Release id #237341 : Future Ninja

2023-12-05 11:22

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4720

Release id #237341 : Future Ninja

User Comment
Submitted by hedning [PM] on 5 December 2023
Frostbyte: I think it was that it ended up as #3 in a compo and also was the #1 pic on csdb for a while. People also cheered for it on fb etc. ”Amazing”, ”outstanding”, etc. Then artists react I’d say.

User Comment
Submitted by Moloch [PM] on 5 December 2023
10!

User Comment
Submitted by Frostbyte [PM] on 5 December 2023
Whereas I think it is great that this picture finally sparked a serious conversation about possibly clarifying the scene's unwritten rulebook what comes to declaring use of sources and converters and providing workstages, I do get Oswald's point, D-Mage may just not know about the unwritten rules.

What I find a bit strange is that THIS particular image sparked the conversation, as there are many well established, praised talents in the scene who so blatantly obviously use online sources for their images as well as very heavily rely on advanced converters, and never provide workstages, but with them most of the scene remains silent. Maybe it's about which group you're in? ;)

User Comment
Submitted by Bob [PM] on 5 December 2023
I am not an artist.. but I can't help it.. I like this image.. and it would do great in a demo too...

User Comment
Submitted by rexbeng [PM] on 5 December 2023
Most artists wouldn't care about AI; it's just another tool added to the plethora of tools that over the years made the random pics we are used to look at, be less and less 'art'. If it's just 'joes' you're after with your creations, say on youtube, why spent hundreds of hours to make a video about something specific that interests you, when a random video with cats will generate a hell of a lot more appreciation and views and need just a fraction of the time to make? Would an artist opt to make videos with more of the same cats for Youtube?

Work stages is a joke when the talk is about digital images, I trust anybody can understand that. :)

User Comment
Submitted by Carrion [PM] on 5 December 2023
6 months ago at X'23 I was giving the presentation about my process of creating C64 images. I showed how I use Photoshop to cut and paste pieces of images (found on Internet) to produce some quick results that I later take to Timanthes for long process of detailing. Also a big part of my presentation was my thoughts on using AI and how it is a huge temptation on using it as a shortcut to create C64 gfx, and how I feel tempted to use it (and I probably will).
What I stated back then was that every time I use AI I will inform about it in release notes or CSDB comments. I also declared that I will include workstages and/or the source .psd files and references if used.

The feedback after my presentation was very good and together with few pixel-artists we had really interesting conversation after it.
And... 6 months later... nothing happened.

Partially my fault because a) I wasn't that active this year, b) the images I created for CD demos haven't used AI and but...
c) seams to me that majority of people don't really care about AI and workstages and source files.
Or do they? Do you care?

So... IMO this conversation we have here is a great opportunity to maybe start a new "tradition" to share the references, AI prompts/models used, .psd files, workstages etc to make it fully transparent. I also strongly believe that this will be also a great way to share knowledge, learn, and have even more fun.
What you say? Who's with me?

One more thing regarding this and similar converted pics. It worries me same way as Hein, The Sarge, and others already said, but hey, let people do what gives them fun of using C64. Is it converting, pixeling, wireing. Scene will judge anyway.

User Comment
Submitted by 4gentE [PM] on 5 December 2023
Perhaps y'all remember what I was saying here when I was told I was being a drama queen.
https://csdb.dk/forums/?roomid=12&topicid=158776&showallposts=1
Just sayin...

User Comment
Submitted by Wile Coyote [PM] on 5 December 2023
@The Sarge 'Maybe he did all by himself?'

Lol! ..absolutely not.

User Comment
Submitted by hedning [PM] on 5 December 2023
For me it’s about honesty. Do what you like, AI or not, but when you are competing in a compo: hell no. It’s also obvious to me that most joes (Sorry Joe) can’t tell a convert from original work, which must be frustrating for most artists.

Using converted AI instead of converting a googled pic also makes the source impossible to find, which adds to the frustration. Even work stages could be forged ofc, working backwards. I am sure that already happened somewhere. It’s sad all of it.

User Comment
Submitted by The Sarge [PM] on 5 December 2023
I think it would be great if D-Mage could step in and add to the conversation. That would maybe stop the speculation of how this was made. Maybe he did all by himself? But until he doesn’t we will not know.

Looking at the image it’s obvious for me it’s converted. You see it in the mathematical dithering that is all over the image. For some reason the author decided to enhance the eyebrows so those are most surely hand pixeled but the rest of the image is probably not.
IF D-mage made this image from scratch by himself, ie painted the original on another medium and then used a converter to make it appear on the C64 then it’s fine. It’s still not hand pixeled but he is the author of the art. It’s just that the conversion itself takes away a bit of the “magic” of the pixel art. And it sure is a shortcut.

And this is what it all boils down to, shortcuts.
If you use AI or someone else art then it is a major shortcut. It’s such a big shortcut that you can’t really compare this to art that is done by someone by hand, from a life long period of training the mind and hand to realise your vision and ideas. It takes a lot of effort making those hand made pixel art that people will hopefully remember and appreciate. For me it’s up to 40-50 hours per image and maybe a week or two trying to come up with an idea that I think would work. Before that its has been a life full of failed attempts. The life of an artist, being it code, music or visuals. It’s all the same. We try, we fail, we fail better. Then comes AI and converting and cuts all this down to 10 minutes of work.
Of course we get upset, sad and worried.

For me C64 art is where my cradle was and hopefully it will be with me until I die. So I hate to see it devolve into soulless AI art.

So please be careful in your judgment of images.

User Comment
Submitted by Hate Bush [PM] on 5 December 2023
if it's done by the supposed creator AND converted by AI - then finished by hand - i see no problem with this.
i don't ask if a musician tapped the tune into tracker (which would be correct, true, scene-wise and so on) or did the whole tune in DAW as MIDI and then imported into tracker of choice (which would be... spitting on those who swear by first option?)

User Comment
Submitted by Hein [PM] on 5 December 2023
I really hope AI conversions don't become the norm in graphics competitions. I can't keep up with that. :) Anyhow, as a motive this isn't that exciting either.

User Comment
Submitted by Flex [PM] on 5 December 2023
I think people are worried. It's been in the air for some time now and in general, converts / AI at this level brings up big questions about the future.
Still, myself not even being the "spokesman" on this (emotional) topic I'm after some more transparency and if there's any spit on this work, that's only there for the method and the end result being this good. This might be hard to accept and I pretty much understand from the point of true craftsmanship.

User Comment
Submitted by chatGPZ [PM] on 5 December 2023
I'd rather see a decent convert than another half-assed "hand pixelled" image.

What *really* stinks are those half-assed converts that don't even look good.

User Comment
Submitted by Oswald [PM] on 5 December 2023
if your work is spit on, then you wouldnt feel anything personally ?

User Comment
Submitted by Flex [PM] on 4 December 2023
@oswald, I see nothing personal here. I'm hoping this launched compo will work as an eye-opener for the scene as it seems to me now that conversion / AI business is starting to gain too much ground.
I think converting is ok but trying to make people believe something else is not.
As a multicolour picture this one is ace.

User Comment
Submitted by Oswald [PM] on 4 December 2023
this is d-mage's first pic after 30 years, probably he is not familiar with the current unwritten rules in the scene, maybe more patience would have been better instead of making laughing stock of him in the form of a compo.

... 57 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2023-12-10 12:52

rexbeng

Registered: Aug 2012
Posts: 35

@4gentE: Art will radicalize itself when it needs to, much like it happened numerous times in the past, so don't worry about it. :)

But this discussion is about the relation of the C64 scene with pixel pushing, and my mention of art being primarily an intellectual capacity was only to tell fellow sceners that if you want to judge the 'art' part of pixel images you have to start from that. To be able to read the picture, not stay at it's title and how the pixels are thrown. I guess that to many people this might sound very 'art institute', but it really is the only way to reward creators, and, yes, it's the only valid method for art professors to teach art students.

Take the 'future ninja' pic that started it all. How is this the image of a ninja? It could very well be a race driver, or a pilot. But not a ninja, because ninjas are supposed to need to be agile; therefore don't wear armor. So, in reality, it's a random face wearing a random helmet. You probably seen this thousands of times in real life, let alone medias. In your opinion, then, was this a product of outstanding intellectual activity? Nope. And it further seems half-done, because the dithering looks half-baked (/'wired'). 0/10 creativity, 5/10 technique. There!

BUT! There's another side to this coin. I'm choosing The Sarge because he is quite involved in this discussion and the example is recent. Take a look at Gimme Food. Now, take a look at the pic named Relax, that finished in 3rd place same compo. Let's write a very short description for what we see in each. 1) face of a cat asking to be fed, 2) a 'humanized' frog so relaxed that is taking a bath inside a pelicans beak.

2023-12-10 13:24

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 209

…And both of them outstanding examples you mention in the end paragraph are being fed to the AI machine as we speak, without authors’ consent, to be used in a way that in the future someone would not have to give any thought about how to visually express his/her ideas, to have the AI do it for him/her. And all that is colateral, real endgame being the big investors profit. Excuse moi dear people for personally being somewhat militantly against that.

2023-12-10 13:41

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4720

<Post edited by hedning on 10/12-2023 13:44>

My hope in these AI times is that things like craftmanship, artistry and skill in art will once again be something we look up to, 100 years after it got out of fashion through modernism and postmodernism. Perhaps AI stuff will be the poor man's soulless "art", and the elite will see it as the cheap mass produced kitsch it is, focusing on craftmanship by human hands instead. Hopefully we'll see the death of relativist postmodernism too, in the process. In my view postmodernism had driven the west away from truth, beauty, and into a anti-intellectual suicidal vortex potentially killing itself in the process. AI "art" is the emptiness of art that a postmodern world deserve.

2023-12-10 13:44

rexbeng

Registered: Aug 2012
Posts: 35

Well, that's not the reason I wrote the last paragraph. Hopefully people realize that. Also, I really wish there actually was some AI machine that was able or could learn to paint like me, it would save me a lot of time; sadly there isn't one. >_<

Edit: Interesting take by @hedning

2023-12-10 13:51

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 209

It doesn’t have to paint as good as you, it only needs to paint ‘good enough’.

Well, I feared maybe we’re starting to dig to deep, but hedning went a few floors deeper still…

2023-12-10 13:58

Hein

Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 942

@hedning, nothing wrong with good craftmanship, but honestly, the moves from perfect romanticism to impressionism to modernism (expressionism) to post-modernism have been great leaps forward for art.

2023-12-10 14:03

rexbeng

Registered: Aug 2012
Posts: 35

I didn't write 'as good as me' but rather 'like me'. There's a world of difference; many levels away from each other those two things.

Also, what @Hein says. This is radicalizing and moving away from, let's call them, 'achievements of the past'.

2023-12-10 14:06

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 209

@Hein :
I didn’t want to react to what hedning wrote, because I don’t think we should go to that discussion now and here. But since you said it, yes, I too agree with you, and I think that big modernistic art movements were the exact opposite of ‘kitsch’ contrary to what was written.

@rexbeng : You’re right I didn’t read your post exactly as it was written.

2023-12-10 14:14

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4720

Quote: @hedning, nothing wrong with good craftmanship, but honestly, the moves from perfect romanticism to impressionism to modernism (expressionism) to post-modernism have been great leaps forward for art.

That, sir, could be debated forever. One could also see modernism as the last big move in art, but also the end point for western art, as with postmodernism relativism and irony truth and even the definition of art itself goes down the drain. Perhaps this is not the place for that discussion. I have debated and fought postmodernism since 2006 in articles and books. It is an interesting road, indeed, especially as tradition and figurative art seem to grow stronger.

2023-12-10 14:21

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 209

@hedning
I don’t know if what bothers you is abstraction and simplification in art. This ‘economic’ way of thinking where one wants to express as much as possible with as few elements as possible. What I observed is that many great artists tend to go more and more abstract as they age. I always looked at this journey as a journey of knowledge, and not deterioration that comes with age.

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