Resource Roundup January Blues
Another resource roundup post of random yet interconnected things in the world of digital art.
This months digital art resource roundup includes news on resources for digital painting, 3D art and my early thoughts on the current AI art generation trend.
Digital Painting
Ramon Miranda is working on another set of brushes over at the Krita Artists forum. This time he is doing a coloured pencil variant for the pencil sketching brushes he made last year. I tried them out by drawing (guess what?) a squirrel and I think they are pretty good. The behave very like coloured pencils but in digital form.
You can test them out and give him feedback on the forum.
David Revoy has made another set of brushes and let people use them for free.
Proko has a great guide on how to make your digital art look more traditional. This is not a new guide but it is very useful to anyone interested in the subject of using traditional art knowledge in digital form.
There is an interesting web based demo for a fluid paint simulation called Vervette Fluid Sandbox. This is developed by Timur Baysal (Taron) who also works on an experimental painting software called Verve Painter.
Another cool tip I found for digital painting in Krita was made last year by Wojtek Trybus.
3D Art
I found out about a new website for making 3D designs including AV/VR, games, web, apps and ads and banners called PixCap recently. I haven’t tried it yet, but it also has a rigging and animation tool built in which caught my attention so maybe I’ll give that a go at some point.
Icon Clothed Human Digitization is a demo for turning single 2D images of people into 3D models. Still very experimental but worth knowing that this technology is being worked on.
I found the Blender Smoothie 3D YouTube channel which has some interesting videos for Blender users.
AI Art Generation
These were my early thoughts on this subject and I tried to be as unbiased as possible by looking at different sides of the argument for it.
This is a touchy subject so I have been avoiding writing about it on the blog because quite frankly I’m a shy and reserved no drama sort of person. That said, I’m currently more interested in 3D sculpting and drawing and I don’t really have a use for it unless I could use it with my own images somehow.
Ideally I want to wait and see what happens regarding copyright and ethics but I think it would be strange if I didn’t mention it or have curiosity about it as someone who has been doing digital art in some form since I was a child. It would be hypocritical of me to ignore it given that I have looked into some “AI” tools on this blog before, albeit none as yet of the current image generation ones.
Things are progressing rather fast with the technology, I’ve seen a few artists and game developers express an interest in using it as a concept art tool as part of a process on social media. I’ve also seen them get shut down in real time on twitter which is frustrating as I think an open discussion rather than a toxic bullying atmosphere would be more constructive.
I aim to be unbiased on this blog, I like to keep an open mind and I also like to try different digital art technology. I have been educating myself about the subject over the last few weeks and I suggest whether you are for or against the technology it is worth learning about it to know what it is and isn’t capable of (yet). There are countless resources for doing so which are all over the internet.
There is a class action lawsuit which was started by some artists against stability AI, DeviantArt and Midjourney that is worth knowing about. I think everyone needs to be able to get their points across on both sides. Hopefully the big corporations don’t end up owning everyone and censoring all creative expression or something (I read 1984 this year).
I also found a long article about the subject of technology and art changing, written by Aaron Hertzmann: When Machines Change Art. I thought that had some interesting points to consider. Just as a side note, AI did not just spring up out of nowhere, it has been developed over many years. It is a pretty interesting subject albeit a controversial one. The current AI art generators are not real AI in any sense, AI seems to be a buzz word they are using to promote it.
One channel I’ve been looking at to learn about what AI art generation is capable of is Olivio Sarikas who talks about the new technology and he has also made a video about the lawsuit which I think is pretty well done and unbiased and fair out of many I have watched so far. I think he also recommends people to watch one Proko did recently.
Edit March 2024
I think image generation AI is gross and unethical in its current form.
Thanks for reading.
