Jinn’s AI Swamp

[Jinn]

I was wondering if you reached that point yet. The lustre of creating AI images ends very quickly when you realise how easy it is to create the fantasy images that you always wanted - and they all end up being the same. Step back and look at your gallery, and it's Supergirl with more or less the same outfit (Supergirl upper torso with bikini), in generally the same pose with the same O-face. The narration eventually ends up being the same too.

These are truths. I’ve thrown away easily a thousand images of incredible quality just because I already have hundreds of virtually the same thing. Twenty years ago I’d have paid cash for what I consider ‘garbage’ now. It’s insane. I like to think even in my niche gallery the images are somewhat unique but that’s only my perspective. To someone else it probably all looks like the same shit.

The written narration is all the same fundamentals, for sure. I try to create different scenarios based on whatever inspiration I get from the each individual image, but most of the time the structure is three chord rock n’ roll. But like the Ramones or Buddy Holly, I think they do what they’re trying to do very well.

The simple act of creating them is the thrill - but like playing with your own Barbie doll, it's the sort of thing that is fun for you but not for someone watching doing it for the 100th time.

It’s tempting to want to post everything I think is hot or awesome but I really don’t want to start watering down forum threads, galleries and new image feeds. It’s an atrocious habit with AI image creators. I find focusing on one at a time preserves quality over quantity and is way more engaging. If I create a thousand images I’ll download 100 of those, I’ll keep maybe 10 and possibly post 1.

I think everyone who delves into AI art will find this honeymoon period where everything they make is wonderful and needs to be shared. But like with photomanips, everyone can do it now with some basic skills and knowing which apps to use, and they become less art and more fantasy fulfillment.

It makes you wonder - how do you raise the bar?

I won’t lie, my efforts are mainly personal fantasy fodder. I’m thankful though that at least some people enjoy what I’m serving.

As far as raising the bar, I think the key is to keep conversations like this one going, adhere to your standards, continue to learn from past mistakes, keep things fresh and unique, lead by example and the bar will seem like it’s raising itself.

[Jinn]

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Kara thought the jungle swamp seemed particularly animated as the boggy sand beneath her boots heaved and quaked. She remembered that the swamp was prone to sinkholes caused by an underground spring. No sooner had that thought entered her head when the ground beneath her caved in, sending her falling backward into the middle of a developing pit. Kara tried to get up but her arms and legs just sank into the quickly dissolving ground beneath her. Water was gushing up from below and had turned the bottom of the sinkhole into quicksand. The hole continued to collapse deeper into the ground as Kara battled to keep from sinking into the slurry. The walls of the sinkhole began to crumble in and was burying Supergirl in a tomb of quicksand.

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Lucky to be breathing let alone walking, Supergirl would have to venture through the jungle on foot until her powers returned. While thankful that she was still alive, she wandered through the swampy forest cautiously aware of her current vulnerability. Without her abilities Kara would be defenseless against the jungle‘s many local dangers; giant carnivorous plants, toxic insects, voracious beasts and treacherous… ‘Quicksand!’ exclaimed Kara, as she felt her legs suddenly sinking into the shifting sand beneath her. She cried out and struggled, only causing her trapped legs to sink faster. Kara watched in terror as the sandy bog had seemed to open up like the mouth of a ravenous mud monster to suck down and swallow her thighs. Panic and desperation ensued, Supergirl anxiously bit her lip. Nothing could be done now to stop the hungry quicksand from devouring the vulnerable superheroine.

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Kara made her way back to the jungle clearing where Lena was resting her legs, to tell her the bad news. She had failed to find any recognizable landmarks, let alone the path they strayed from when their attention had turned to each other’s playful flirting, hand holding and that one gentle kiss. Their blossoming special friendship took precedence over their sense of direction, resulting in them getting lost under the jungle canopy.
‘Lena?’ Kara inquired, finding herself alone in the damp, sandy clearing. Kara called out into the jungle, ‘Lena?!’
No answer. Kara was perplexed, and concerned. ‘That’s weird,’ stated Kara, ‘Maybe she went…. (GASP)!’ Kara looked down at the wet sand that had suddenly swallowed her hiking boots and was quickly gobbling up her long legs.
‘Quicksand!’ exclaimed Kara, ‘Ohmygod! No! LENA!!’ Kara feared the worst for her pretty new friend as she fell back into the quivering quagmire. She tried to push down with her hands but the sand only trapped her arms. She could feel herself slowly sinking. Kara whimpered fearfully…
Covered from head to toe in gritty goo, hiding behind a fern and unable to refrain from touching herself, Lena secretly watched her new girlfriend struggle and sink in the awful quicksand.
‘I’ll save her (Uhn!) …in a sec,’ Lena quietly promised herself, biting her lip and moaning, ‘(mMm!) …Just a (UHN!!) …little bit deeper…’

[sixgunzloaded]

Once you have the prompt, you can make endless generations of the same thing. The simple act of creating them is the thrill - but like playing with your own Barbie doll, it's the sort of thing that is fun for you but not for someone watching doing it for the 100th time.

In one night I might generate a hundred decent images, but I'll only pick one. And even that one will feel like I've done it before.

It makes you wonder - how do you raise the bar?

I too, have thought and worried about this. And it seems like this is a question we've pondered before, just on a broader scale - the QS fetish in general. We used to spend hours and days (before internet) scouring everywhere for a new scene, then making our own real-life scenes with actresses (those who could), then manips, then 3D stills and animations, and sharing all those after the advent of the internet. Until we reached a saturation point and the diminishment of our thrill. Then AI comes along and very quickly reignites it because we can now simply ask for exactly what we want - assuming we know how to ask - and there it is. And just as quickly, for some, there's that saturation point again. For some, (not me, thankfully) it may even become boring. Especially if there are individuals out there flooding the 'market' with every single thing they make.

I've worried about this plenty of times with my own creations: 'Are people tired of my art?' 'Are they tired of Susan?' 'Are they tired of my style or of 3D in general?' 'How can I keep it interesting to a sizeable audience?'
Yeah, I do it first and foremost because I enjoy it, but I do still want to contribute something that others will actually like as well.
I've tried to combat it by at least making some sort of small change in either style, or setting, or new prop or figure or character, or new twist on the same storytelling method (like a larger, expanded universe) in every story I tell. And other stuff. Always trying to make it a little different in some way.
But I also try not to go with the latest and greatest in whatever is available for 3D artists. I feel if I did that, I too would hit that saturation point with nowhere to go next.

So, how do you keep raising the bar? Especially if you're already on the cutting edge? That sort of seems to be where so many AI artists are now.

P.S. These Supergirls continue to be freakin' awesome! Thank you, Jinn!

[Jinn]

Yeah, I do it first and foremost because I enjoy it, but I do still want to contribute something that others will actually like as well.

I concur. No sense in doing anything you don’t enjoy. I’ve had a few requests but I’ve turned them down because I thought the subject matter was boring or I wasn’t into it, and I literally don’t have the time to work on stuff I don’t like if I’m not getting paid for it.

P.S. These Supergirls continue to be freakin' awesome! Thank you, Jinn!

Very welcome. Glad you like the Supergirl stuff. I’m going to keep pumping them out for a little while.

[Acidtester]

The Supergirl pieces are awesome, and they keep getting better.
If the medium is getting stagnant, and you want to push it to the next level, the next logical step would be to make something sequential. If it’s that easy to keep pumping out stand alone images, somebody has got to figure out a way to make storyboards or something out of them. That’s what I would do.
I felt similarly about drawing the same shit over and over again. Redhead in quicksand, redhead in quicksand, redhead in a different outfit in quicksand, (switch it up a little with a ) Superheroine in quicksand, redhead in quicksand again…etc. I still love doing it, when I can, but yeah it’s just been the same shit over and over again. There must be something wrong with my brain.
But the Supergirl images, and Viridian’s safari girl images, are consistently making my days!!

[Viridian]

Twenty years ago I’d have paid cash for what I consider ‘garbage’ now. It’s insane.

This is the absolute truth. The issue with AI taking away from the income of artists isn't because casual art creators like you and I are selling work - we're not. It's that we're not spending money on other people's work because we can make our own - if we spent money on others' work to begin with. Either way, the notion that artists are threatened by AI would be the same if anyone started creating art for themselves. AI opens the playing field to many more people to do it themselves instead of paying commissions (read: harassing) artists to make their fantasies.

Some of the early 3D renders of Quicky Sanders by OSS and Rusty Shackleford were among my favourite depictions, but they weren't going to create more renders anytime soon and I wasn't going to throw money at them to take them away from their own projects. I drew my own, and with AI, I now create my own photorealistic scenes.

Then AI comes along and very quickly reignites it because we can now simply ask for exactly what we want - assuming we know how to ask - and there it is.

Also a truth. I've defended AI art in that it's not as easy at it looks. The ones who are still testing are getting very erratic results. Jinn is seeing some of the limitations through the Supergirl renders. I've probably got the more dynamic and complex composite images because I use a multi-step AI process that puts images through multiple AI models and steps plus Photoshop to direct it with the output, and even then there's a lot of tweaking. But once I nail the base level for the product I want, I can spit out a hundred reasonably good ones.That is the kind of thing flooding DeviantART. That's something that lots its allure to me very quickly, and these days I create AI content less frequently because I don't want to make something I've already made.

I still have creator's block because I feel I "need" a unique story that allows me to use my characters (and OCs I borrow) in a different way. I kind of can't make another Susan image in a grey shirt in the desert because it'll end up looking the same as what I've already done. I need *something* else to work with to make each one enticing to look at and read.

But while I'm at it.

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But the Supergirl images, and Viridian’s safari girl images, are consistently making my days!!

I actually thought you were getting bored of the Safari Girl pics!

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[MadMax359]

something that would not bore me is solving the issue of bound damsels; earlier this year i requested a re-make of a fantastic Quicky Sanders scene where she is suspended, half sunk by the villain; you explained the difficulties of getting the program to do this, but maybe with more experience it's more feasible?

[Viridian]

something that would not bore me is solving the issue of bound damsels; earlier this year i requested a re-make of a fantastic Quicky Sanders scene where she is suspended, half sunk by the villain; you explained the difficulties of getting the program to do this, but maybe with more experience it's more feasible?

The improved AI models can create better outputs. Creating the scene is still going to take artistic skill to get the AI to recognise it. The issues remain the same: the AI doesn't recognise what we mean by being bound, so it will begin to draw ropes dangling in weird ways because it doesn't understand what "wrists" are and how ropes can be tied around them. So it's possible, but something like the Mine scene will contain multiple elements that need to be individually specific wit lots of fine tuning. But it should be doable.

[Jinn]

There must be something wrong with my brain.

It’s a sickness. The mental image of Melissa Benoist wearing Supergirl tights and getting sucked into goo lives in my head rent free. All. The fucking. Days. There are others in there too but right now I have a Supergirl short circuit issue in my cerebral cortex.

…the Supergirl images, and Viridian’s safari girl images, are consistently making my days!!

Awesome! I’m not bored of her yet so I’m going to just keep pumping them out.

[sixgunzloaded]

something that would not bore me is solving the issue of bound damsels; earlier this year i requested a re-make of a fantastic Quicky Sanders scene where she is suspended, half sunk by the villain; you explained the difficulties of getting the program to do this, but maybe with more experience it's more feasible?

The improved AI models can create better outputs. Creating the scene is still going to take artistic skill to get the AI to recognise it. The issues remain the same: the AI doesn't recognise what we mean by being bound, so it will begin to draw ropes dangling in weird ways because it doesn't understand what "wrists" are and how ropes can be tied around them. So it's possible, but something like the Mine scene will contain multiple elements that need to be individually specific wit lots of fine tuning. But it should be doable.

I'm going to throw out a guess here and you guys can tell me if I'm wrong.
At least one of the issues with this might be the 'morals' and social leanings of those who write the AI algorithms. There are plenty of sites out there (ahem... Renderosity) that impose their own sense of what's 'acceptable' - what's 'right or wrong' - on contributing artists. I tried posting a single image in the Horror Gallery of a bound damsel being menaced by a monster and it was removed in less than twelve hours. They sent me a warning and told me to read their rules on what's considered acceptable. (--Yeah, fuck you Rendo.--)
Anyway, my guess is there may be some of that going on with AI programmers too. I've seen a couple of instances mentioned of difficulties because the algorithm wouldn't accept prompts that it deemed 'inappropriate'.
You may need to do some pretty fancy word-play to get it to give you something so controversial... oooo!. Especially if it's centered around a female subject.

But while I'm at it.

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Thank you, Viridian! There's something about a soaked and grungy grey blouse in qs that will never get old for me. lol

The mental image of Melissa Benoist wearing Supergirl tights and getting sucked into goo lives in my head rent free.

Same. I wish they had come up with a better scenario, and better execution of it, for her in the show. But that's what we have you and Acidtester for! lol You guys do a far better and much more appreciated job.
I'm really loving "Quick Trick". That outfit and expression are phenomenal.