How Will AI Art Impact the Concept Art Industry? DON'T PANIC - featuring @AdamDuffArt

what's up guys let's talk about a topic that has our entire industry freaking out AI art now opinions are all over the map on this ranging from this is just a fun tool that will help artists be even more creative two well we're all the reality is probably somewhere in between now I'm late to the online conversation here because I've been very deliberately taking a slow approach here it's tempting to have a very quick emotional reaction to something shaking the very foundations of this skill that I have devoted my life to so today I'd like to provide some substantive perspective on this some of the things I know for sure and some of the things I don't but the main point is Don't Panic I'm very lucky to be joined today by one of my favorite artists and teachers who also happens to be one of the most reassuring art voices on YouTube Adam Duff yeah well I think I want to throw my opinion on the pile because I've been I've been um I've been kind of almost ignoring the subject I've been a bit disinterested in it it's just some other Tech you know and that's probably the perspective of just an old guy right um but uh I've seen a lot of I've seen advancements in Tech when I first started when I first started my career was pencil and paper it was traditional animation using an overhead camera you know shooting things with a bolex or something like that and then we moved then all of a sudden tablets became a thing in Photoshop and then people were complaining that oh we've lost touch with the paint because we're doing everything digitally and there's always been this hesitation when it came to uh technology you know when new technology gets thrown into onto the pile and there is I think for perfectly understandable reasons and yes there's Gimli having his little fit right um but um there's a fear like what does this mean for us you know how does this impact the big picture of our career and stuff like that AI I think is probably one of the biggest ones we've experienced in our day and age where they were saying like five years ago the one thing that AI can't come close to to uh approaching is creative creativity well here we are we were the first to go I had that same thought it's like wait they they swore this would never happen yeah and uh I've been I've been watching a lot of different videos I've been watching uh Anthony Jones talked about it I watched Steve Zapata's video on it somebody had sent me an email asked me to check it out um borodonti has his own take on it a lot of artists have their own take I've had my own little take on it when it first started becoming a thing probably will another another one seeing as how it's still a very you know it's still a very uh controversial topic and stuff everybody's got very conflicting opinions like Steve has a much more you know be weary type of uh type of feeling about it um borodante is creating in it and noodling around with the software Anthony Jones was critiquing that it wasn't good enough yet you know that it's he wanted to help he wants us to help the algorithmic algorithm and uh to get it to service better my opinion is it's and I have a feeling like some people would disagree with me on this it's a tool it's a tool that we have the choice of using or not it's up to us to decide and some people will embrace it some people love technology and really embrace it and other people are very they prefer the Hands-On more pure approach to things um I see it as an optional tool at our disposal and it really I really do believe and I really feel that it's really up to the individual it's up to the artist to decide how they implemented or not into their own workflow it's probably really my kind of take on it yeah totally I I've been so all over the map I'm kind of late to the internet conversation on this just because I've been really slow to form an opinion on this I've been waiting and seeing old guy mode a little bit myself too I'm kind of sticking my head in the sand like I I like using this just fine and I don't want things to change um also finding myself I keep almost jumping into well here just to give my own perspective I had this college teacher who we had an assignment where it was we could create an illustration using any medium now I made a Photoshop painting and he absolutely shot it down and I mean it was oh nothing exactly like well I meant any real medium like this isn't art you just click some buttons and it made this image and I mean obviously I know it didn't I I really created this I painted this I used my hands I picked the colors I made a composition this is absolutely valid as art and I mean I have started the sentence almost exactly what my teacher said when somebody posts an AI image this is an art this is something you just click some buttons and it generated and then I stopped myself you hypocrite like how am I on the other side of this all of a sudden yeah but at the same time it kind of seems like they didn't really make this it it really is maybe we're at that place where it's just typing in clicking some buttons and it it shoots this out so I don't know what to feel about this but it's profoundly weird and for me I just don't feel I'm not looking at it feeling threatened I'm not looking at it feeling like I'm being replaced I'm just looking at it and saying oh cool it's another little it's a gimmick you know need and and good for them and I don't I go I I watch it and then I go I I watch it then I pet my cat and I go back and I draw again and that's kind of how I feel about that um that said um I've never been one to shy away from technology and even some of the most like I've spoken about it on my channel before in the past uh G-spot big shinsuke the artist too I mentioned at least once in every video right um uh the famous polish fine artist uh when Photoshop became a thing he immediately jumped on board right and he started doing these because it came from Photography in a fine art background so if he he jumped into it and he all of a sudden started creating in Photoshop and fiddling around with this Tech and it didn't look nearly as good as his traditional art because Photoshop hadn't matured enough yet at that point but he had no prejudice against it whatsoever if you look up G suave's work online you'll see these kind of cringy looking Photoshop images that you'd think some kid did in Photoshop to try to mimic G suave Style no it was actually his artwork but he embraced it right when when uh when uh VR came out and stuff like that uh Anthony Jones he immediately jumped on board and decided to do like creature designs and he had this you know like when you can pan your phone around and it kind of gives you this this panoramic view of it so you as you pan around you'd see creatures appear in your shot which is kind of neat like looking through a window and and witnessing these things for me uh when it comes to I don't know I really I'm just looking at it I don't feel threatened by it I think it's I've seen so many different technological breakthroughs I'm kind of like very indifferent to it to be honest with you I don't care I'm still drawing so yeah well that's kind of uh what I keep coming back to is that no matter what I I don't think I am going to be doing anything differently 10 years from now if the industry changes completely uh I am going to be at this seat holding my stylus so uh there's some comfort in that but yeah all of this uh is just so profoundly weird uh the ethics and the morality of it of uh like specific artists there's so their uh Styles being like trained into AI have you read any of this stuff about like uh Greg Rutkowski for example are you familiar with his work he does this really awesome like oil painterly Style and he has the unfortunate honor of being the the artist who is most invoked is like a prompt like mimic Greg Rutkowski and um you know he's appropriately kind of angry about this um yeah it's just weird it's such a fundamentally different way to create imagery that is essentially like this giant mashup of everything on the internet that was scraped out of there and it just kind of leads me in this uh this kind of Tangled place of you know what is what is art what are we you know what what is our actual role if uh if that's where this is headed I would argue that that's forging somebody's brain to a certain degree and that should that should cross the Ethics Line of of that should cross a legal line not just an ethical line that's a legal line that's that's plagiarism that's theft right of a person's style of a person's thing um yeah all of a sudden Adams starts getting involved doesn't he Hardy just had to give me the right trigger where it didn't off because yeah that feels like pitchforks are coming out yeah no yeah I agree I've seen some people think uh they should change the rules so that no living artist can be like trained into an AI um yep what else I actually recently saw one that was trained over my own work and it is weird it looks really familiar you know I recognize it but it's like I would never have done this too um it's just so weird I keep coming back how did that feel like what was your reaction to it hated it hated it really uh it's yeah it's bizarre and the fact that I know that that is you know recorded somewhere on a server and can be just you know you can hit return over and over again and make as many Hardy Fowler or Adam Duff ish images um now it was not a total Doom moment for me because it was still weird um all of this seems like you can you can easily spot it still I don't know if that's going to change the more sophisticated these get but yeah there's something off about pretty much all AI art even the ones that win art contests it's just something strange about it which visually you mean yeah I don't know if it's just at the core of how this is created or if it's just uh some bugs that are still being worked out but it always seems like something sort of misses the mark even if it's got beautiful brush Strokes you know a believable atmospheric perspective every artistic tool that we train ourselves to use the end result always feels weird to me um yeah yeah and that's something that us humans have that AI can't and that is we feel things it's a feeling you know I sit down and I have a conversation with somebody objectively the words that are coming out of the mouth seem perfectly kind you know they shook my hand it wasn't too strong or too or too hard they don't have they're not clammy they're not dry they're not they're not this or that I'm just getting a weird vibe about this guy there's something off about him and that is where we I you know they're gonna get stuck getting hippie and spiritual about the whole conversation but that's where we can where where human beings become more than just just objective traits we're an energy source right and maybe that's what we're tapping into maybe maybe what AI is doing is it's exposing a deeper Humanity humans are a lot more impressive than we give it credit you know there's something going on there so I don't know what's your what's your thoughts about that no I'm with you I'm I'm not at all I just find the act of entering words into a prompt a long list of prompts to be the farthest thing possible from creating art that I can imagine it's just the actual Act is is very sterile and lifeless the end results are undeniably some of them are just cool images but I think I think we may have keyed in on something that that that human element that weird office is just missing and I think yeah that uh now maybe where this ends up going it it's a kind of a a rush like a gold rush this big uh shiny object of the moment there's Zeitgeist and then a gradual return to creatives people engaging with people uh as it has been probably with some permanent changes built in but yeah that I think more than anything else has me very encouraged or at least not panicked that this is not the artpocalypse or or anything I think if anything when something is threatened when something is threatened something that you love is threatened it it strengthens your bonds to it and this is a threat this is this is a substantial threat to our existence our purpose you know the legacy of what it is to be to be an artist on this planet a profession that's one of the the most ancient if not the most ancient human profession we've had AKA you know cave drawings right we've been artists since we've existed and this is a kind of an existential existent existential threat there that's English and um so it makes you re-evaluate the purpose behind it and to me you said some you you said a word that's very important that's kind of grazed over a little bit too quickly when it comes especially in today's day and age and that's the word communication you and I are visual communicators we communicate in this medium predominantly right you're not looking at at my work and thinking this is perfection no you see me in the way I express myself the same way I watch your videos and I see the way you express yourself and I identify you through that this is Hardy's work I know it I can I can look at a splash page with 7 000 thumbnails and I go that's Hardies I know it right away I can pick it out and it's because you have identified yourself and I I I connect the face and the voice and the mannerisms to the creation and that's not that's not subjective this is an objective thing that I can pick out quickly and immediately in your stuff because we're it's a human exchange and these are all the little things that that are sending making your Spidey senses tingle when you look at AI art and incidentally that's what I see too I look at it and I can I can see yeah objectively this is interesting looking imagery I can see how they slapped it together and they did it in a in a visually convincing way but I have zero emotional connection to it it's just imagery there's no human there's no Humanity in that at all do you see yourself being a professional prompter in the next 15 years I sure don't want to be that's the thing I I am like trying to I think the smart decision is to try and get on board and at least be familiar and sort of like know your enemy context but yeah I just don't enjoy this all of the stuff that makes art meaningful to me isn't there so I don't want to but I feel like I should feel like it's the smart thing to do and I I want to be educated on it so that I can be an advocate for for younger artists who I work with who who are looking for guidance through all this that's kind of mainly what's motivating me here much more than just my own personal interest in the subject um I could totally brush this aside and just say not interested but I have an obligation yeah no you have a responsibility yeah in that regard I'm kind of excited maybe this is the little jolt of night of of nitro we needed to to to redefine our purpose as artists as visual communicators so to speak you know what are we gonna do I don't know but we have to we have to we have to sink or swim we jump in the water and figure out figure it out from there and we will because that's what we excel at so what this all boils down to is can an artist really be replaced and if you want a career in art is that still worth pursuing in my honest best guessed answer is that some of these art jobs will go away because of AI art AI will be a very cheap alternative to artist art and there will always be businesses and clients out there who are looking for the cheapest possible thing so a lot of that low hanging fruit may go away at least for a while things like repetitive tasks like creating dozens of iterations on something like a weapon or a spaceship these tasks traditionally go to Junior concept artists at a studio those things might be well suited for AI so that could be at risk but here's what gives me a lot of comfort when I consider these things when a studio invests in concept art they are defining the entire vision for a much larger product there is a lot of money at stake and it all hinges on these really early visual steps finding that cool factor that will resonate with an audience on a human level some of that stuff that Adam and I were talking about and I think something that important needs to be in the hands of a professionally trained human artist so let's say that a studio fires their concept artist and they use mid-journey to come up with like a dish like initial character art or environment art are they really willing to bet the entire visual identity of their game or movie on written prompts that they enter into an AI app and look AI art is incredibly impressive it can do things that I would have said are impossible six months ago but it all just still seems to be kind of weird something about it always seems slightly Off the Mark or just strange would a studio really want that as the foundation for their project will their investors be excited if they see a pitch in the entire slideshow is obviously AI art and a lot of what makes me feel like all of this is going to be okay comes down to the business side of art a studio putting their project into the hands of a professional so that it will be successful so that their investors will be excited so that their audiences will love it on a very real human level AI art is not going away but I don't think it will be the artpocalypse that many artists fear things may get harder for a while especially as there's this initial rush to adopt all of this new technology but once this shiny new thing isn't so new anymore I think also just because due to our like Collective human attention span I definitely see a gradual return to valuing creatives people like dealing with people a creative meeting between an artist and an art director is this fun collaborative inspired process let's make something cool let's draw upon all of our memories our pop culture knowledge our sense of humor the things that scare us the games and movies that we love the books that we've read the places we have visited the museum mediums that we have smelled the lives we've touched That's What Makes You unique as an artist that is your selling point that is something that an algorithm or entering prompts into Discord can't replace all of the actual measurable indicators of our industry still look great like for now the phone is still ringing I haven't seen any real drop off the in the amount of freelance work that I'm getting among my artist friends or former students I haven't heard of anybody being fired or laid off because of AI replacing their role and that daily art station jobs email still has dozens of new posts every day so at least for the time being our job market is as healthy as ever by all indications and the world will still have this increasing and insatiable need for cool visuals that you artists can create one final thought concept art illustration creative careers have always been competitive AI art may make them more competitive at least for a while but guess what a huge chunk of your competitors are likely going to be discouraged right out of the game precisely because of a art don't quit be that tree left standing After the Storm weather this and you may be in an even stronger position than you are today I hope you found these perspectives useful huge thanks to Adam Duff for chiming in on this I will continue to stay as informed on this as I can so that I can be a resource for artists trying to navigate this exceptionally weird and uncertain point in the history of our industry in the meantime keep doing what you're doing be your awesome artist self pick up that stylus and paint something cool today [Music]

Channel: Hardy Fowler - Digital Painting Studio

Views: 24,690

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Id: 6w43_WxH3tU

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022