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Card game developer says it paid an 'AI artist' $90,000 to generate card art because 'no one comes close to the quality he delivers'

Makes sense. Despite what a lot of creatives say about AI being crap and avoid at all costs, I knew that some would use it for the brunt of work and then they edit it later with their final touch.

As long as AI (like any tech) can do a good job helping out with doing stuff I’m all for it.

It just looks bad if any VFX or artists say they use AI to help them do stuff because it makes the human touch and brainy ideas look overshadowed by a bot. Who cares. If it helps with work do it.
Yeap this is just people seething because AI has gotten so good it could threaten many jobs.
 

Felessan

Member
I've seen actual fucking children doing this.
We have done this shit for fun on this board. You are typing in some shit in a generator, something shows up....lets stop acting as if something deeper is happening here.
Soooo it sounds like this CEO is fucking slow AF, you'll see that price drop and that position disappear as soon as he realizes this man is just typing some shit lol
Same something children often draws?
There is a large gap between "something" and "something you can sell"

Soooo it sounds like this CEO is fucking slow AF, you'll see that price drop and that position disappear as soon as he realizes this man is just typing some shit lol
And... no. Data scientists who "typing some shit" are in high demand and have quite substantial salaries
 

amigastar

Member
No, that’s why it’s art 🤣. Someone ate the banana after it was bought by someone else and then the artist said the art was not the banana itself, but the idea behind the banana
We have different views on what is art, then. If it is art then its a very low effort art.:messenger_grinning:
 

ANDS

Banned
Alicia Silverstone Reaction GIF


There's a recent fan-made, free Jurassic Park board/card game that relied heavily on AI, and that's been the truly eye opening realization for me..

For a one person team, I think it is pretty impressive what the guy has managed to come up with; definitely a singular visual style probably helps tell a more cohesive story. Tthe Jurassic Park cards are indeed quite nice, but they still clearly are "training" on shit they have no rights to - I can see Kurt Russel, Angela Lansbury and Michael C. Hall immediately in some of those, at a minimum.

For me, given that AI generated art is absolutely not going anywhere, that is where I'm most comfortable: pay someone to develop a visual training set that can then develop out key art at scale with fewer resources. Will this be used by corps to cut costs? Of course, but it also - in the case of the JP folks - gives indie and smaller (possible single person) developers a road to getting involved in the industry that didn't exist before. As long as gamers demand transparency in how the AI art was generated - and using what copyrighted work if any - then this is just the future (if'n you ask me).

Also, if you notice, ALL of the poses and camera angles/perspectives are practically the same. Guess the AI can't come up with varied, dynamic or inventive illustration angles huh?

Hmm, I wonder why? 🤔......

By "all" do you mean the single instance of a single card with multiple "themes" specifically called out by the developer?

. . .some interesting kneejerk reactions here.
 
I like good AI art. To me, most of it, ironically, seems a lot more inspired, convincing & creative compared to art created by actual (videogame) artists, but as someone mentioned this seems like clickbait marketing. I've never heard of this game before.
 
Wouldn't be surprised if they trained his own model based on with Blizzards work alongside Magic the Gathering art. And changing them just enough not to get into legal issues. I can already see Deathwing in one of the monster card design.
And Blizzard wasn't inspired by Warhammer? While Warhammer did probably take some inspiration by some knights' armor, stylized it somehow and or whatever fantasy drawings where available then on book covers.

Almost no one really comes up with anything truly new. It's mostly just iterating stuff. Real artists study photos of exotic animals, their pets, crawl around the floor and make photos of themselves. And also look at what work exists in that genre, probably are fans of piece a b and c. AI uses the same sources just on another massive scale, and since it does not truly understand what it actually makes, makes errors that let's often photorealistic works drift into bizarrely broken pieces and for now require an actual artist that isn't too stubborn to assist or supervise and repair that questionable shit and make big dough right now until some cheaper labour countries drive the prices to the bottom.
 
I envy you for being so open minded about the banana, haha. I just can't consider that as art idk.
You don’t read me right. I don’t see it as art, but apparently some other people do, and then it is art for those people. I just see a banana that should be eaten before it spoils 🙂.

Here is the full story. Pretty interesting:

 
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By "all" do you mean the single instance of a single card with multiple "themes" specifically called out by the developer?

. . .some interesting kneejerk reactions here.

rbtvKUSwuWufKho8rg8iiH-650-80.png.webp


I mean this. Look at the composition; it's ALL the same. The top two center are mirrored but otherwise the framing & composition is exactly the same.

I know that you've only got a limited amount of space on a card for your art, but considering the drawings are done full-sized before getting scaled down for the card, that excuse doesn't hold up even when the artist has to account for readability. There's nothing unique or varied if these compositions, aside maybe the "Zapicide" card.

Well, hard disagree. Nothing wrong with slightly different styles in a cards series, if desired by the client, and what I see there is a blend of some of the different styles seen in the last 30 years between JP comics, cards, the recent Jaroslav Kosmina art pieces, or even videogames.
Ironically since we're speaking of AI, each and any of those perfectly captures the IP soul to me, be it the Crichton book, 35mm movie, and the tons of EU material. Maybe not for a casual who ony saw the movie, I guess.

The recent Magic cards, those were not "stylistically uniform" in the slightest.

lDpAFmZ.png


The style difference we see in the AI board/card game is more akin to the one you'd see between the main Kenner cards (the vertical ones in the picture below), and the Die-Cast ones (the horizontal ones).

phTqghD.jpg

Well, look...I'm not going to say I'm the most invested in intimate knowledge WRT Jurassic Park. I have only seen the movies, so in that sense yeah, maybe I am a casual to the IP. I'll admit that.

However, the 'Kenner' cards you list here...you can say the AI-based cards of similar of the newer ilk you originally posted look virtually identical. But this is what I start to mean when I say AI can be a "decent imitator" but lacks the "soul" of what it's imitating.

OcIz73E.jpg

I'm comparing the Kenner card art to this particular artwork from the initial post you made. The artwork on the Kenner cards look more clearly like detailed colored pencil or maybe acrylics. They have a quality that works well with the natural properties and limitations of those mediums.

The pic I have here seems like it's emulating something like an oil paint medium-wise but it has a color palette more in line with colored pencils or pastels. But that isn't actually the issue IMO; the issue is that the AI pic here is (IMO) trying to emulate aspects of those mediums, and maybe the specific art style of those Kenner cards, but without any of the inherent properties or 'limitations' of those actual mediums IRL.

So if it's trying to emulate a style specific to those cards, it just ends up looking kind of uncanny to me. Inhuman. Like I can tell a human didn't create the piece, even assuming it were a person doing the drawing digitally.

It doesn't matter because we'll never find out, and speculation just creates bias; only thing we do know, is that he's getting paid good for the time being, which also means he doesn't need to "prove" anything to anyone, cept deliver the work his employer requests.

Yes.

I'm not necessarily in disagreement with you on this point. On the business side of the topic, yes, them leveraging the tech is "smart" and they don't have to prove anything to others, including myself. They just need to prove they can provide the content their employer is paying them for.

However, I'm very confident in saying this artist wouldn't be very well respected by many of their fellow peers, and compared to artists I know and admire, can't say their artwork impresses me at a creative level especially knowing what specific thing they're using to help make it.
 
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sachos

Member
I totally get people getting emotional over AI art but i find a lot of the arguments against it too "human centric", like what does it mean for art "to have soul"? Maybe the "soul" the AI art is lacking right now is just it not being good enough and it is a matter of time for it to get there, im sure there is already a lot of AI art being used that people do not recognize it as being AI since its good enough.

I also do not fully buy the argument that AI art is stealing from artists. Sure you can force it to make really similar art to the original training material, but isnt that the same as taking any artist and making them copy a classic?
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
Card games are a perfect use case for AI art. Just a single image that doesn't need to be animated or replicated in different environments. He seems to pump out a lot for that amount of time. I could kind of see how you'd approach that, but not in 10hrs. His stuff looks cool considering the limited amount of time he's investing.

As for the "nobody come close to the quality", I can't agree with that.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I totally get people getting emotional over AI art but i find a lot of the arguments against it too "human centric", like what does it mean for art "to have soul"? Maybe the "soul" the AI art is lacking right now is just it not being good enough and it is a matter of time for it to get there, im sure there is already a lot of AI art being used that people do not recognize it as being AI since its good enough.

I also do not fully buy the argument that AI art is stealing from artists. Sure you can force it to make really similar art to the original training material, but isnt that the same as taking any artist and making them copy a classic?
The thing about grassroots creative art, AI art at the push of a button, and everything in between has a few key points IMO:

1. As long as it's good, who gives a shit if it's AI or some guy painting it from scratch like Bob Ross

2. For all the creatives that try to push the grassroots human brain art, well at what point of the process is it considered human and PC? By the sounds of it sure seems a lot of VFX use PCs, photoshop or whatever fancy computer tools to do the work for them anyway. So unless someone is drawing and animating things from scratch like an old Disney animator holding a brush, it can be argued PC AI is already helping them churn out stuff and do fancy effects and shading for them
 

Caffeine

Gold Member
That's a lot to spend on it. I think my buddy only spent a grand on his card game universe 3 all the art was ai generated and got a publishing deal for it. It's actually a card game they had written up over the last 20 years.
 

Braag

Member
That looks like AI art 😭
To me Gwent will always have some of the most beautiful card art. Each card also named who did the art for it when viewing it.
 
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