Idiot Cube

But, erm... Look guys, look! One of my greatest achievements! Pizza Tower on the Steam Store! Hahahaha!
 

Seeing the word "TikTok" in a TF2 blog post made me feel scared and uncomfortable.

Heavy's face is appropriate: slight look of anticipation, but with a larger part of concern for oncoming disappointment.

Creature study sketches


 
And because I always overthink things that I make up, you get full descriptions for each which I'll just put in a spoiler I guess
 

Was doodling and decided to draw something ENA related since the game will be releasing soon. I think the presentation didn't turned out as great as I imagined.
 

Hey look there I am!

I only want it back because it was miles better than the current Steam Hub/Discussions thing.

The AI art drama is so surreal to me, I get introduced to it by talking to some colleagues who are working on it, and like the very next week it is all over the internet and currently both the best and worst new thing. I think it's cute it seems to have some of the same problems with generating new imagery that dreams have too, like creating hands.
 
I don't directly have an issue with it other than it getting trained on people's artwork without their permission. That needs to be prohibited or regulated in some way, even though the last thing this world needs is more terrible copyright laws written by dinosaurs

If you are going to trace something, at least don't make it look obvious.

Aaaand it's finished!

 
I'm so so happy with how this turned out! I feel like I'm really getting better, looking at this. I think I have my sketching process to thank. It's very thorough, for better or for worse.

Not been in the mood to draw recently, paying a bit more attention to my online classes, but I found this oldass drawing I did when I was like 14 or so? It was when I used to draw very often.
 
 
Some things never change, even 16 years later, I still love maid uniforms and android/cyborg vibes. I wish I could recapture her expression, I never manage to get that serious look when I try.
 
Also, I decided to make my own Minecraft skin for some reason. Decided to base it on a character from my old programing class project.
 
I think it turned out pretty good! Maybe I could make the gray parts a bit lighter, but I feel I managed to get the knight vibe into the skin. The "color noise" from the tool did help add texture to it.
 
And I also found this
 
What the fuck IS this? WHY did I make this? @Idiot Cube WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

I've got a friend who loves churning out AI art for D&D portraits. If he gives it a really long-winded description with lots of details, it can turn out several dozen images that more or less fit the concept, some of which don't have weird limbs or fucked up faces. But it works fine for a tiny image on Roll20 that just needs to passably resemble a dwarven archer or a light-themed human cleric.
 
Like Gyo said, the algorithm has to work with the data it's been trained on. And it has no idea how to make something new from two unrelated concepts. It not only lacks the creativity to imagine what Chef Kawasaki's supple, egg-shaped body would look like under that apron, it also lacks the intelligence to understand that it needs to do that.
 
The dirty secret of machine learning is that it's just letting the program fiddle with its own values, basically at random, until it produces desirable results. It doesn't know how it got the results we like, and adjusting any of the values manually probably won't result in any useful changes. There won't be a "Kawasaki cup size" value, for example.
 
Basically, I think the human artists don't have anything to worry about. Our brains, as slow and fallible as they are, can still do things that are simply unthinkable for a computer.

To put things another way, remember way back on bigSPUF when I made those 2hu comments using the walfas program?  I didn't draw a damn thing for those; I just used premade characters and models.  But I did compose shots, create dialogue, craft jokes, etc.  That's how I see AI being used down the line; it will be good at making the "elements" of your comic, but you'll still have to put them together.  Or if you want art of something very specific with many parts you'll have to take a lot of AI pictures and merge them together.  (I know some indie authors are already doing that to get cheap cover art.)

The reason that I take my position is the method used.  If something is not in the training set it can't be replicated by a machine learning AI, period.
 
There's a famous anecdote of a program that sorted pictures of dogs.  Given the initial pictures it was pretty accurate, but people noticed that every picture of a dog in the snow was classified as a husky, even if it was a poodle or a chihuahua or whatever.  The problem was that in the training set the only pictures of dogs in the snow were huskies.  Machine learning AI just looks for similarities to known categories.  It has no concept of, well anything really, but in particular nothing outside of the categories given to it.  In the example of the pictures with dogs it has no concept of "dog" vs. "snow" and so can't be told directly to just ignore the snow because it doesn't matter.  (This is also called the "frame problem" in AI.)
 
Now if we just want to classify pictures of dogs and nothing else we can fix the problem by including more pictures in the training set, making sure to include both huskies not in the snow and non-huskies in the snow.  The AI will never really have a concept of a breed of dog, but if we included a ginormous amount of data and make sure it is properly varied, then it can create an algorithm which is good enough for our purposes.  (But there will always be corner cases where it gets things spectacularly wrong in ways that no human ever would.)  We can't really manually update the algorithm to fix the issue because they are so complicated and bizarre, and it's not like there's a part of the code where the AI says "this is what I think a husky is."
 
Now let's apply these ideas to fanart.  The AI can only make variations of things which have appeared frequently in the fanart.  To give another example of how this can go wrong, there was a point in her stream where Pippa was trying to make art of Omaru Polka.  But every image came back as a loli, while Polka has adult proportions.  I can't be sure what is going on, but my very strong suspicion is that the "fennec fox" tag in the training data was dominated by Fennec Fox from Kemono Friends, and thus when the AI was told to make a Fennec Fox character it pushed it specifically to looking like the Kemono Friends Fennec Fox.  It doesn't have a concept of "give the character big ol' fennec ears and a tan colored fox tail."  The problem could be fixed by stuffing tons of varied fennec fox artwork into the algorithm, but there should be at least a little variation because of characters like Fenneko, Perfumer, Polka herself and some OCs (though I suspect that they might have removed furry characters like Fenneko to improve the output.)  But the Kemono Friends version so dominates the tag that you'd need a lot of extra fanart. Similarly "shark tail" is going to get you a character that looks like Gura Gawr, and if you try to make it different the shark tail is going to look all fucked up, because so much of the art with a shark tail is just art of Gura.
 
Don't get me wrong.  I'm not in the "AI art is crap and will never do anything."  It's already to the point where if I just want generic art of a character who isn't too unusual that it can easily fill my demands.  And it will get better from here.  But there are certain roadblocks in the way that the AI works that will prevent it from doing everything, no matter how much they refine it.  And that's without getting into really impossible feats, like having an AI that automatically generates a manga complete with panels, captions/speech bubbles and a coherent plot.  (On the other hand, AI probably will get to the point where you could use an AI to automatically create all the character and background art and then rearrange them into your own manga.  The most significant problem at the moment would be maintaining a consistent look across your OCs but that is a problem that I do think will be solved in a few years.)

right behind you

Soooo I decided to go ahead and flesh out that sketch from last night. And I'm so happy with how it turned out!

 
I feel like I'm starting to better develop my style and understand light and shading more. Very happy with this!

I used an "Ena as a giant robot" prompt on that AI thing but she looked more of a cyborg. Although, she looks sorta like a robot already.
 
 

Wow, its been only 7 years since I put something here?
Well, anyway, I got back to sketching and recently I had this dream about this insect humanoid character I apparently created. So in some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, here it is.
 
I call her Beatrix.
 
 
Notes: drawing sure got harder. I used to draw more detailed stuff as a kid but now I cant even get proportions and perspective right without help.

It's been awhile! I haven't drawn in quite some time, but lately I've found new inspiration! A lot has happened as well, and I feel so much more capable when it comes to drawing now. I've started using Krita; here's my first little batch of doodles:

 
There are a number of developments here. First off, you may notice...that I'm sketching! Yes, this is my big breakthrough! I've been drawn for years and never did I ever sketch, ever! I'd draw a stick figure frame and some rough environment and basically just build the final product directly on top of that. I've basically been drawing backwards this entire time. Why? Well, when it came to pencil-and-paper, I always held my pencil far, far too hard to sketch. So I was just sort of predisposed to this idea that I just couldn't sketch. I partly also figured that sketching was just something I'd do once I got better, because all the good artists, they always sketch. But then I realized: artists do not sketch because they are good, they are good because they sketch. And boy, sketching is just so, so freeing! Like, a way to draw where you don't have to worry about being perfect because what you are drawing is not representative of the final product? Insane! It's so much fun! And it makes drawing everything so much easier because you can actually set everything up before you draw the final! Gosh, what the hell was I doing!?
 
Secondly...I've started using Krita, as I mentioned. Up until now, I've been using Adobe Animate. Then I thought...why am I still using Adobe Animate? I originally started using it because I wanted to animate and make that cartoon, which I did. But for now, I just want to draw. And Animate is just balls for drawing. Even Paint.NET is better for full 2D art than Animate. Every simple thing in Animate takes like 10 steps compared to PDN or Krita, it's insane. I'm very much enjoying Krita and look forward to being able to expand my game now that I'm not restrained by Animate's shitty technical limitations.
 
And finally...I want to evolve my artstyle! As I've drawn I've gotten a lot better, but my artstyle has stayed the same. Which may sort of sound like the point of having an artstyle, but my artstyle was always very geometric, and as I got better, I developed the ability to draw less and less geometric characters. Basically, my skill had surpassed my artstyle. So I feel like it's time that I evolve my artstyle, into something that allows me to make full use of my ability. I'm still experimenting around, still playing with everything, but I'm excited to really develop my art. It's nice to draw again!

Okay my listening comprehension is a lot worse than my reading comprehension, and it's not at all easy when I'm just working with short clips with a bunch of people talking over them.  But here is what I can pick up on.
 
-The guy is not an alien, he's from the future, come to warn the kids about AIIIIIDS.
-I didn't catch why he said he brought the basketball initially, but from later context it was probably just to segue into discussing Magic Johnson (who, as we all know, should only be eaten well done.)
-He then shrinks the kids so they can enter his body and see what AIDS does.  So I guess futureman is HIV positive.  (I also learned the term for "red blood cells" here: 赤血球, literally "red blood ball.")
-The big blob thing attacking the children is an example of the body's defense attacking bacteria.
-The four colored cells are part of the immune system but I don't know which corresponds to what.  They are labeled by what they do (ex. 攻撃する細胞, "cell that attacks."  Maybe someone who watched Cells at Work can help here.)
-The subtitles say that the Burke couple (the white trash mullet Wisconsin couple) got AIDS because the husband, Patrick, shared needles and then he gave it to his wife, Lauren, through sexual intercourse.  I don't know if the baby got it through breastfeeding or something.  The only subtitle I saw for that said his name is Dwight and he's one and a half.
-The frame labeled "AIDS in Wisconsin" is actually the number of people with AIDS in Japan, by year.  I can't make out what is being said in the part of the audio interpreted as Wisconsin.  It starts with エイズの and I think ends with 関心 (i.e. "kanshin") but I don't know the part that sounds like "wis."  I think it's saying something along the lines of people concerned with getting AIDS, like previously in Japan no one was worried about getting AIDS but now that there's more cases people are more worried.  But my listening comprehension isn't great.
-The same term is used again.  After doing some digging the "wi" is from ウイルス, i.e. "virus" and the "consin" is not "kanshin" but 感染, i.e. infection.  So the phrase being used is エイズのウイルス感染, i.e. "AIDS virus infection" most commonly followed by 者 to make "person infected with AIDS."  So when Mike said "Wisconsin in Japanese means AIDS" he was actually pretty close to the mark. It's closer to say that "Wisconsin" sounds a lot like "Viral infection."
-I don't know why there were puppets.
-"Woman in Photo" is Allison Gertz.  Frustratingly they start talking over the video right after one of the kids says something like "She looks lovely, who is that?" but there's a subtitle with the name.
-I think the voiceover says that she got AIDS the first time she had sex.  I don't know anything about Allison Gertz other than she was an AIDS activist so I don't know if this lines up or if my translation is way off.
-One part where they aren't talking over is "そうです、ただ’ which basically means nothing. Literally it's like "that's so, but..." It's the type of meaningless filler you put between things and they start talking over as soon as the meaningful stuff comes in.

My Japanese level is high enough that I was able to recognize that the Japanese video on the Wheel of the Worst was about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS.
 
Somehow this feels like a major accomplishment.
 

We're saying goodbye to my first car ever, the 2000 ford mustang that was handed down from brother to brother until the very end. Of all of them, I adored it the most. While it was a pile of junk in all ways a car could be, it never entirely gave up on me. I will admit the most recent issue it began to develop, which is revving itself with no outside input and always wanting to go to 55 mph, was particularly concerning. I never really had any particular fond memories made in it, no high school kisses in the front seat or profound experiences or anything. The most fun I remember was driving home my brother and his friends after they ate way too much sushi and hitting every bump a little too fast just to mess with them. Other than that, a lot of driving to and from college, some scares when I thought it might break down, some moments of triumph when I fixed a little part of it like the A/C for one summer. Perhaps just the spirit of my dad always saying "when it that thing going to finally kick the bucket?" and me defiantly starting it up every time and it getting the job done was enough to have me come to love it as a car.
 
Unfortunately it wouldn't smog (even with our profound processes of getting it to smog that worked for several years in the past) and we have a replacement '00 mustang in much better shape just literally lying around, so... It was a little traumatic to cannibalize it for some parts but now I'm going off to get it scrapped. I suppose I can rest easy knowing at least some bits of it are with me in the new car.
 
Or I can stop being so dramatic because it's just a tool for moving from point a to point b and I'm replacing it with a nearly identical tool that has all the same functions as it. I did take a bunch of pictures and a video of it though so I can hopefully look back on it fondly one day.

I grew up in rural areas and even the "urban" areas where I've lived later on would be considered "small towns" by a lot of people on the coasts.  In my first house my "next door neighbors" were my Grandparents, who were a fifteen minute walk away.  The next house after that was about another half hour on foot, and getting to the nearest town (which had a gas station, three bars, and a convenience store) would take a couple hours (on foot).  Public transportation ain't gonna fix that, you need a car.  Even when we moved "into town" later on it was a half hour drive any time we wanted to go shopping for movies, music, computer games, etc.
 
And even during my childhood we never thought we were that isolated because we had a set of relatives who were really in the middle of nowhere.  I'm talking "better plan out when you fill up with gas because you might run out before you get there" isolated.
 
Unless you make America a fiftieth of its current size, you're going to need cars for the foreseeable future.
 
But the flip side of all of this is that getting a car is a real visible sign of independence, especially if you live in less sparsely populated areas.  Suddenly you can hop in your car, drive for an hour or two and end up somewhere completely different, almost like stepping into another world.
 
There's nothing wrong about getting sentimental about a crappy car.