Traps in ART and I am wrong mega thread!

[Danioover9000]

   Share various traps you find in ART, and some things you were wrong about in your life! This manga for me is a nice showcase of a trap that even feels like a trap on that fictional world building and the characters caught in the abyss:

 

[Danioover9000]

   This is literally a cursed place, a spiritual trap that looks beautiful, but it's a nexus for dark entities. Unbelievable but true story:

   They really should've told that guy why they refused to sell, can't believe they kept their mouth shut about that haunted town to that guy. Now he lost his wife essentially. Take spiritual protection serious folks!

[integral]

I see a lot of artists aligning their life purpose with one specific narrow type of creation. Instead of having a life purpose aligned with Creativity. This is why they’re upset that AI is stealing their life purpose because their alignment is to let’s say drawing, which is a subcategory of creation. But if your life purpose is aligned with just bringing things into creation and the love of bringing your ideas into reality then you view AI as a powerful tool to speed up the creation process 100x.

it takes An unimaginable amount of effort to make even a simple game or movie, it takes even more effort to make it of high quality. AI Will drastically shorten the time to produce great work and artist need to expand there Horisons to meet it.

Edited May 30 by integral

[Danioover9000]

@integral

2 hours ago, integral said:

I see a lot of artists aligning their life purpose with one specific narrow type of creation. Instead of having a life purpose aligned with Creativity. This is why they’re upset that AI is stealing their life purpose because their alignment is to let’s say drawing, which is a subcategory of creation. But if your life purpose is aligned with just bringing things into creation and the love of bringing your ideas into reality then you view AI as a powerful tool to speed up the creation process 100x.

it takes An unimaginable amount of effort to make even a simple game or movie, it takes even more effort to make it of high quality. AI Will drastically shorten the time to produce great work and artist need to expand there Horisons to meet it.

   So you're saying that a too specific, clear, and too narrow mission statement/life purpose is weak versus a general, ambiguous, too broadly defined mission statement/life purpose? BTW mission statements/life purpose don't have to only align with creativity, there are thousands of other values and principles to align to besides creativity.

   Is those artists' feelings of upset justified though? For example, an artist with a specific alignment to drawing life purpose, who finally has a job of editing images and creating cover art, working in a medium sized art company, has been using years of traditional methods in editing and making cover art and illustrations, sometimes digitally, then get's the news from employers/employees rumors of an A.I generating image being implemented into the work space, and rumors of upcoming lay offs for more productivity and faster content creation. Then the next year lay offs happen, and in that list it's you, would you be justified in feeling a bit upset? Also, the main problem is not that A.I generation content lands into freelance people or indie artists independent working solo, but most realistic outcome on average is big tech companies in wolf of wall street fashion, use A.I to scrap as much from small businesses and smaller artists from the web, living and dead, and monopolize and squeeze their competitions down too much.

   I agree with digital/traditional methods of making movies or games, it's longer and more time/energy consuming, but higher quality. A.I would definitely shorten the time/energy/attention cost of making higher quality products, but again which group would immediately benefit and capitalize on A.I? the little small business owners and indie artists, or the bigger companies?

[Butters]

I think falling into the whole starving artist frame is a trap. 

[Danioover9000]

@DefinitelyNotARobot

3 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Okay let me rant. I think a big issue a lot of artists fall into is that they're far too associated with "their" creation, to a point where they think they own it for themselves. It will come with some problems, like accepting feedback without feeling attacked, gate keeping the creative process for other people and misunderstanding the creative process itself.

You can directly realize that when you're playing the keyboard, painting, writing some code, that it's not "your" doing, but that it's infinite potential unfolding through your hands. That's why the best art happens when you let go and let the art create itself. The subconscious is the source of your artistic potential, if you're too much in your head, or in the sense of "I, the human", it can hamper with your ability to let that potential flow freely. When I'm in a state of flow, playing music doesn't feel like a process of "creation" or "doing". It feels as effortless as listening to a song on a radio. Your hands are just moving on their own, knowing exactly where to go and how fast they should move. It's a miraculous state that lots of artist miss out on.

That also has some implications for the ownership of art. I think it's important to protect the ownership to some degree. If we didn't do that, big labels could just go to some Spotify artist with 100 followers, take a song of theirs and remake it with all of their money, equipment, artists, engineers, etc. That means that you as a small artist would NEVER stand a chance against a multi billion dollar company, because even if you did put out a great song, they could just take it and recreate it in higher quality.

On the other hand you've got the problem that this process of ownership can gate keep the creative process. I've modded for games before, and people asked me to use my code for their own mods. I had no problem with it. Today some of these mods are much more popular than the mods I made. That makes me happy. I made these mods for myself and my own enjoyment, but the moment I shared them with others they became more than "my" mods. They were part of the community now, and the fact that the community found inspiration in these mods to create even better mods using them, is exactly why I shared them. That's what creativity is about for me.

On the other hand you've got people who would say "no" if you asked them to use their code. That's their right, but I think that's rather shortsighted and hampers the community. It also completely misses the fact that you probably wrote your code with ideas you learned from other people as well, and if these people were able to tell you "no", you wouldn't have been able to write your code.

Similarly, when I'm playing on a keyboard... I didn't create that keyboard. I didn't create the musical scales that the keyboard was designed for. I didn't assign the frequency interval between each individual note. I'm playing using ideas other people had. Neither did I truly invent any of the musical ideas that are being used in my music. How these ideas come together might be unique to me (to a certain degree), but the foundation itself is a foundation of conditioning. I've been listening to music my whole life. I've been conditioned to hear notes and chords and rhythms in certain ways. Conditioning that I've received from other people and their creativity and ideas.

That's a difficult conversation. How to balance the realities of capitalism and consumerism, and the problems they pose for artists, with the realities of the creative process itself, which is a process of sharing and connecting? I think this is something artists have to realize internally for themselves, or else there won't be much of a change.

I see producers who stream their creation process on Twitch, or make YouTube videos about the process. Some of them will blur/block out the plugins they have on screen, because they don't want to "give away the sauce". That's stupid. Not only are you gate keeping other artists, but you're also potentially keeping the company whose product you're using from making extra money. Money that they probably deserve considering that you're calling their product "the sauce". 

Another example are the games "Shadow of Mordor" and "Shadow of War". They're games set in the Lord of the Rings universe and they feature Assassins Creed climbing and Arkham Knight style combat. By themselves they're not too interesting, but they've got an interesting feature called the Nemesis feature. Here is a video delivering a good explanation of the Nemesis feature and why it's so good. It's basically a tool for emergent story telling. Problem is... they trademarked it. Yes they somehow copyrighted a very broad and elaborate feature of the game, so that no other developer can use it in one of their games. To me that's outrageous and a crime against creativity itself.

   Ys, that spirituality and creativity bit IMO comes later, but when artists start out, or any type of worker, they have to put in some work and training first. Even in drawing and art they have fundamentals and history for a good reason, and progression for a good reason. They initially in their journey have to have a clear, concrete and specific life vision and LP, and mission statement they working towards, especially for young people! They WAY too soon to be worried over spirituality when they need massive action taking.

   Yes, in your second paragraph that's the relativity of survival, legal issues, intellectual property laws, and copyright issues. They all exist to protect the smaller artists from the bigger companies, for good reasons especially when that theft effects the income and livelihood of that artist.

   Yes , this is the epistemic problem of egalitarianism, and having equal rights across the board. That's in theory, but again those laws exist to protect the owner of the service/product, the copyright law, the intellectual property law, and other legalities around fair use, all very important for an artist's and even business's livelihood. You don't want someone or some company plagiarizing your work, effecting your income, and have little to no legal action back.

[Danioover9000]

   Great example shown by Hamza. Admitting wrong here is pretty difficult, but if he did he may have retained some credibility, but him lying about having a debate with Chris a year ago, and still dodging Chris, makes him look bad. Also the trap of debating:

 

[Basman]

Here are some traps in art in my experience:

• Being copycat. All artists have something they can trace their inspiration to, often another artist's work. The trap is not developing enough of your own style and becoming just a worse version of someone else. You can become very proficient at copying another artists style but you'll never match their execution due to them inventing it. It is also just very lame. Copycats always lose a ton of respect.
• Not being passionate about what you make. The trap is not making what you want to make but what you think others want you to make. You should always ask yourself how you can make a project more fun for yourself.
• Rushing the process. Art needs time to "breath". You need to give a work fresh eyes over and over again. Artists with deadlines need to learn to be consistent and pace themselves. Rushing towards a deadline delivers slop and burns you out (and can harm your health/personal life like in game development).
• Not studying. Studying and learning art fundamentals will speed up the rate of your growth as an artist. Personally, I don't study nearly enough and miss out on potential growth as an artist.
• Studying too much. It should be an 80/20 rule. 20% study and even that is arguably too much in my opinion. Getting really good at anything is a numbers game at the end of the day. Too much studying is a waste of time because you need experience to truly integrate a concept into your workflow. You can easily forget things you've studied without continuous practice. Sometimes an new concept can take years for you to truly grasp it. I only truly realized how important quantity is in terms of growing your skill as an artist only after a couple of years after first being hit with the insight.
• Not accepting money upfront and not having a "no refunds" policy when accepting commissions is a trap. Even if a client flakes, you deserve to be compensated for your time and effort.

I might list more if I can come up with more.

[Danioover9000]

@DefinitelyNotARobot

29 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

For sure. You're still using your body and mind as a conductor for the creativity. That means that you need to train your body and mind in order to allow them to express this creative potential as clearly as possible. All of the training is guiding you towards state of flow that I was talking about. When the time comes to perform, you have to be able to let go of the wheel and let body and mind to the work.

The reason I point out "being too associated with your art" as a problem is because it can lead to a lot of problems such as writers block, insecurity and closed mindedness. Taking feedback for example takes quiet a bit of confidence and open mindedness. Some artists take negative reviews as a personal insult, which can hinder their ability to grow . You have to be able to distance yourself from the art and to look at it, not as an artist, but as a consumer. That gives you some breathing room to reflect on the ideas, find ways to refine them, and increases your creative potential.

So even when it comes to learning it's important to step away from the process, as you need space for the learning to happen. The spirituality is engraved in the entire process of art. I realized very early on, far before I even got interested in spirituality, that becoming a better artist simultaneously required me to become a better person. If you've got motivation issues, you've got to work on them if you want to propel your art forwards. It's not something that comes later, but something that you have to work on parallel to the art. That's why so many artists are spiritual/spiritual people are artistic. These things go hand-in-hand.

I generally agree, but I think that the laws go a little too far at times. Nintendo is famous for stomping on fan projects with cease and desists. The interesting thing is that a lot of these fan projects regard games, that they don't even sell no more, like Pokemon Red. I'd understand it if we were talking about something that actively hurts their business, but they will go after fans and their passion projects for no reason other than "Hey, that's our IP, give that back!". IP laws originated from real world necessities. Problem is that lawyers, judges and companies will often times ignore these original necessities, and simply enforce these rules for the sake of the rule itself.

   Well, in the case of Nintendo them known for copy striking and issuing cease and desists on fan passion projects, they're an exception in that they sometimes go overboard with the issues, especially when  a few projects look like they might get popular enough, more so than the original work Nintendo did, for example Metroid ASMR is a fan game about Samus's story, and the event before Super Metroid and how she'd acquire the baby Metroid, and Nintendo had plans and a working project on that part of her story themselves without letting the public know the specific details. Nintendo didn't want some Argentinian sound engineer and game dev guy to essentially get ahead of their game product, beating them ahead of time so to speak, and feared that if they released their planned project which was quite similar to that guy's Metroid ASMR, that he'd sue back because he's was months ahead of Nintendo's release of their game, so in this specific instance Nintendo was a bit justified. However it's important these laws exist, like IP laws, copyright, for the smaller creators to use, and every small business and even big companies to use. 

   To some degree being artistic and being spiritual go hand in hand, few artists are naturally spiritual and different from most normal people, but also few people really put the work and struggle for their art work and who they are not as spiritual or even interested in spirituality, they just want to draw in a certain way or create music in a set way. It's not just that ALL artists are hippie spiritual and creative already, it's that a lot of people, across the board of art, are pretty diverse in mind, body, and other developmental factors. Even left brained people do art.

   I think that negative feedback, or 'constructive criticism' especially from online viewers or general public, is not actual constructive criticism. And IMO that comes later, what comes first is massive action taking plus life vision, and spirituality comes second until that process comes naturally to you, and just accumulate failures and experiences for the intuition mill. Attachment this early one is I think ok, they need to be as associated to their art works early as possible, which gives extra motivation to create more like their art work before. Later in life when they hit writers or creative blocks is when they can take a break, diversify their sources of inspiration, and maybe spirituality stuff and contemplation things and philosophy books.

[Danioover9000]

Actually sad no one wants to even talk about Made In Abyss, really IMO a good example of traps in manga and the story itself is a trap within a trap within another trap...

[Basman]

another trap:

• Being a blind dreamer. Artists tend to have obscure/fringe influences and tastes. This is the trap of having a dream project that doesn't have any value for anyone else. This is where artists go to starve.

[Juan]

On 5/30/2024 at 7:17 AM, integral said:

I see a lot of artists aligning their life purpose with one specific narrow type of creation. Instead of having a life purpose aligned with Creativity. This is why they’re upset that AI is stealing their life purpose because their alignment is to let’s say drawing, which is a subcategory of creation.

Oh so you’re telling the people who started let’s said as a kid doing art on paper: “Hey, I know this is fucked up, but do now other art genres or something else”. And throw away whatever X amount of years and decades perfecting him/herself in that category and art style, like telling Picasso to do another thing aside of his paintings, do cooking or something else. I consider this a bad take.

Edited June 2 by Juan

[Basman]

On 30/05/2024 at 1:17 PM, integral said:

I see a lot of artists aligning their life purpose with one specific narrow type of creation. Instead of having a life purpose aligned with Creativity. This is why they’re upset that AI is stealing their life purpose because their alignment is to let’s say drawing, which is a subcategory of creation. But if your life purpose is aligned with just bringing things into creation and the love of bringing your ideas into reality then you view AI as a powerful tool to speed up the creation process 100x.

it takes An unimaginable amount of effort to make even a simple game or movie, it takes even more effort to make it of high quality. AI Will drastically shorten the time to produce great work and artist need to expand there Horisons to meet it.

Your thinking is too reductive. You can't truly divorce art from its craft because art is defined by its medium.

A movie producer and a comic book artist have similarities, as they both work with a linear non-interactive visual medium but they are far from the same. There are huge differences in expertise between a veteran movie maker and a master comic book artist.

My main concern with the AI is data theft from small creators, largely for the benefit of big companies. The problem is the legal grey here as data theft is barely a concept legally.

And don't be too critical of artists who are upset over losing business over AI. Eventually your job security is going to be threatened by AI and then you'll be upset. Do unto others, etc.

Edited June 2 by Basman

[Danioover9000]

@Basman

14 hours ago, Basman said:

Your thinking is too reductive. You can't truly divorce art from its craft because art is defined by its medium.

A movie producer and a comic book artist have similarities, as they both work with a linear non-interactive visual medium but they are far from the same. There are huge differences in expertise between a veteran movie maker and a master comic book artist.

My main concern with the AI is data theft from small creators, largely for the benefit of big companies. The problem is the legal grey here as data theft is barely a concept legally.

And don't be too critical of artists who are upset over losing business over AI. Eventually your job security is going to be threatened by AI and then you'll be upset. Do unto others, etc.

True.

@Juan

16 hours ago, Juan said:

Oh so you’re telling the people who started let’s said as a kid doing art on paper: “Hey, I know this is fucked up, but do now other art genres or something else”. And throw away whatever X amount of years and decades perfecting him/herself in that category and art style, like telling Picasso to do another thing aside of his paintings, do cooking or something else. I consider this a bad take.

True, even though it's a straw man.

@integral You have 2 users who hate and troll on me, who supposed to side with you, are now turning against you. This is why at least you have to state that specification and generalization of an ART field, both the training specific to that craft is important, but also important taking principles and incorporating other ART fields if possible. If you started balanced like that instead of demonizing concrete, specific traditional/digital training of artists you wouldn't have this much push back.

[Juan]

1 hour ago, Danioover9000 said:

@integral You have 2 users who hate and troll on me, who supposed to side with you, are now turning against you. This is why at least you have to state that specification and generalization of an ART field, both the training specific to that craft is important, but also important taking principles and incorporating other ART fields if possible. If you started balanced like that instead of demonizing concrete, specific traditional/digital training of artists you wouldn't have this much push back.

You are not a referee so chill the f up. We know already that drama is your sugar candy here on the forum, but there is no need to throw gasoline where there isn’t a need. @integral is a good person, it just happened to have a weird take IMO on this thread.

It’s ok to have different takes, I myself am a server of creativity like the way he explained, but that’s because I’ve been doing that since a kid. Not everyone is multi-faceted, learning a new craft could take years, so I empathize with artists that they grow up learning just one specific skill or two, some of them have a very personal reason of why they do that specifically, so me telling them to do something else cuz of AI idk, is not that easy like he puts it. 

I’m not against AI, I had used to improve my art, but in some cases it gets out of hand easily like recently on twitter:

https://x.com/petravoice/status/1796537213410574787?s=46

We don’t know if she is actually the person of the picture, nor is she even a she. But the person clearly uses AI, we found the artist “she” likely was stealing from. So if you were Picasso, and you see your art being used to create AI pieces and they are making money from it, are you ok with that? 

[integral]

After thinking about it more AI is going to represent the replacement of all jobs where a person Can no longer aligned there true passions with their finances. Regardless of what their passion is unless it’s aligned with something General that uses AI to create things like a conductor.

So i was wrong

Like if my passion is chess it would be very difficult to align my life to it as the opportunities to make money are limited.

But if we remove all jobs entirely and rely on Government supplied basic income then everyone can pursue their passions freely.

Short term it’s going to be painful as society will slowly adapt and It will probably cause a lot of suffering and job loss but long-term if everything works out it’s going to work out for the best (ideally)

Edited June 3 by integral

[Juan]

50 minutes ago, integral said:

But if we remove all jobs entirely and rely on Government supplied basic income then everyone can pursue their passions freely.

Short term it’s going to be painful as society will slowly adapt and It will probably cause a lot of suffering and job loss but long-term if everything works out it’s going to work out for the best (ideally)

This is one of my theories too, if technology is gonna substitute all if not most human jobs, then humanity could focus on spirituality? So eventually we’ll become like aliens?  Idk

Edited June 3 by Juan

[integral]

6 minutes ago, Juan said:

substitute all human

😂 i randomly focussed in on this one part and it just has so much potential. Lol

Edited June 3 by integral

[Danioover9000]

@Juan

On 2024-06-03 at 3:51 PM, Juan said:

You are not a referee so chill the f up. We know already that drama is your sugar candy here on the forum, but there is no need to throw gasoline where there isn’t a need. @integral is a good person, it just happened to have a weird take IMO on this thread.

It’s ok to have different takes, I myself am a server of creativity like the way he explained, but that’s because I’ve been doing that since a kid. Not everyone is multi-faceted, learning a new craft could take years, so I empathize with artists that they grow up learning just one specific skill or two, some of them have a very personal reason of why they do that specifically, so me telling them to do something else cuz of AI idk, is not that easy like he puts it. 

I’m not against AI, I had used to improve my art, but in some cases it gets out of hand easily like recently on twitter:

https://x.com/petravoice/status/1796537213410574787?s=46

We don’t know if she is actually the person of the picture, nor is she even a she. But the person clearly uses AI, we found the artist “she” likely was stealing from. So if you were Picasso, and you see your art being used to create AI pieces and they are making money from it, are you ok with that? 

   @integral was just downplaying the severe negatives of too much A.I usage, and not mentioning when big companies scrap data and mass theft on smaller content creators without their permission, knowing, or even scrapping from dead artists. When it interferes their income, livelihood, and has IP and copyright issues is when that red line is cross for me. It's okay for a generalized LP, but it's more useful to train and have specific skills for a LP you are aiming towards.

   Also keep proving my point.

[Danioover9000]

   Classic example of being biased and being deep in a trap:

   No, it's mre so genetics that made him Cassius Clay, that height, weight, and ability to take punishment.