The Artist's Struggle for Visibility in the world of AI
Episode 34 - Sonic, King Arthur and the infinite inspirations of AI. Good or Bad?
Hey,
Welcome back. It’s been some time.
And if you’re new here: welcome to the campfire. Stay close to the flames, for dawn is yet far. And darkness is ever close. But here, at least, it’s comforting. You’re in a forest grove, surrounded by dark trees and the only light you can see is that of the bonfire.
Where have I been?
My main writing efforts have been dedicated to the Grammaticon project, in an effort to actually goddamn finish it. This project is the most complex, engaging and difficult thing I’ve ever worked on, and I need breaks between each article. It’s also one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever written and designed, and so it must be completed before I attempt anything else. As of the time of writing this, 17/24 chapters are done.
Because of this, everything else took a backseat, including my fiction work. At the time of writing this, as some of you may know, two books have been released: Meliade and Dreamwalker, with the latter taking more out of me than expected (one year later I’m still recovering). As time passes, I notice many shortcomings with these books and I feel the need to address them, especially in the art department and grammar. I’d like to have the time to release an update, like for videogames - a patch, so to speak.
But there’s more, because as any artist can probably relate, my spiritual inner work takes a main priority in life. This is my real full-time job and I don’t get holiday pay.
The Struggle for Visibility
Many artists nowadays can probably relate to this: the internet feels like the only place for our art, and at the same time it’s like an infinitely crowded marketplace, with everyone shouting at each other for attention.
And there’s no shortage of ‘strategies’ and ‘courses’ and ‘knowledge’ out there for how to make it work. There’s so many solutions to this problem in fact, that it makes you feel guilty for not making it work. At this point, it all feels part of the same noise to me.
My little Grammaticon project is, honestly, so far removed from anything marketable or mainstream that its destiny is entirely in the hands of the Gods. What I’m tryin’ to say is: I’m not doing it for the views or attention. It feels more like something done because it needs to be done, it needs to come out and it needs to look as good as I can make it.
Sonic’s Lesson
Over the last few months, as I was sitting in Hell (more on that with previous episodes), I was visited by many thoughts concerning the past. Some had to do with childhood, of course. And in these scattered memories there were lessons I had failed to see.
When I was little I had a friend in school. He was very awkward and nowadays, in our extremely civilized society, we would say he had ‘learning difficulties’ and a ‘disability’. Back then, in small-town Romania in the early 2000s we just called him a ‘weirdo’ and bullied the fu** out of him.
I was part of the problem, yes. Because my classmates bullied him, I also bullied him. This guy had a passion for drawing, he loved old videogames (because that’s the only thing he had access to back then) and especially the character of Sonic the Hedgehog (from SEGA) was his favourite. He’d spent hours and hours and hours repeatedly drawing him. Me and my classmates would sometimes steal his paper drawings and run away, making him chase us.
Fun, right?
But as years went by I changed and grew into becoming quite awkward and isolated too. And we became very good friends. Despite what I did to him in the past, he never held any grudges. Instead, he gifted me a few pirated CDs of old videogames, one of which completely changed my life for the next decades (it contained Warcraft III and introduced me to that world).
Anyway,
We became good friends and we’d often make our little art at the back of notebooks. Often I was praised for my skills, but he wasn’t. He didn’t care about making realistic drawings or even changing much of his subject: it was either Sonic the Hedgehog or some other Sonic-related character. And you know what? He didn’t care. He just loved drawing Sonic.
There was such a purity and simplicity to his art. Sonic represented something to his eight-year old brain of course - Sonic was fast, nimble and smart and he could always outrun and fight his way through any obstacle. Maybe my friend wanted to run away too, especially from a world that inherently disliked him. But all this psychologising aside, it’s only now that this tale came back and helped me see a different way of looking at art.
Art is Sacred… right?
I’ve said this before and will keep saying it. The fact that now robots can make detailed images matters very little to our relationship with the Sacred Unconscious. The Unconscious is the realm where ideas and art come from. This is Asgard, in mythological terms, the lands of the gods. Beware, for you sacrifice this relationship at your peril.
…and yet, is it really that simple?
Well, I don’t know. Because the AI robots can now be interacted with at very complex levels, and in truth I’ve been experimenting with some of these.
Let’s take an example. Say I’d like to insert an image of a knight going to battle. So I’d ask the AI to create one for me, because screw what the gods have to offer me and, like, I ain’t got no time, right?
So here goes:
Wow! Much art. Lovely. Do you wanna buy it? Okay, I’m joking. It’s pretty shit actually, if you look at it closely. But that’s because it’s lazy af.
Okay, so let’s try a different approach. Let’s take a screenshot from an old videogame (that I’ve been obsessed with in the past year) called ‘King Arthur: the Roleplaying Wargame’ (2009). This strategy Arthurian game has very dated graphics but very interesting character models. It looks like this:
Nice, right? Okay, now I took this screenshot and asked Gemini to re-make it but preserve all the character designs. Just make it ‘better’. I literally used that word in the prompt: ‘better’.
It made this:
Now: there are some changes to the character models, especially in places where there wasn’t enough detail but overall this looks pretty good, right? …or does it? I don’t know, you tell me.
If I had taken the time to draw on top of that initial screenshot I would surely have connected to the image a lot more. It would have become meaningful to me in a different way, but the truth is that it would’ve gotten lost amidst the noise. And this AI-remake too, will also get lost in the noise. Their fate is the same.
Nobody knows about this old videogame, honestly. There’s very little info about it online and it’s mostly obscure and forgotten. But I really like it for only one reason: the Arthurian character designs. People spent hours of their lives making those models and now… who sees them? Perhaps by ‘enhancing’ them through AI they can be resurrected and made more appealing to a bigger audience.
Or maybe this whole AI-remake is a mockery, an insult to the artists who first created those models because it only uses their appearance to create something that looks similar but is not the same.
What do you think?
What matters?
Maybe none of those questions matter. Maybe what matters is that I can just sit here alone, drawing my Sonic. Maybe I can explore the world of King Arthur old, dusty videogames through AI enhancements for my own simple pleasure. And you know what? You can do the same. You can take your favourite novel and generate images of your favourite scenes. Is there a movie adaptation you hate? Remake it.
You can do it all (at least for now). Should you? Should you not?
See, the thing is there’s nothing inherently wrong or right about how we use our own time, how we spend it in relation to our favourite stories or media. It can be seen as play, especially if you focus on this and ignore the noise. It’s very tempting for me to ignore the noise right now, because there’s no meaning in it. But in that exploration above? Despite its shortcomings, problems and questions… there is meaning in seeing a different version of that knight on the horse. At least for me.
What I fear however is that one day soon (or already today) we’ll all be spending our time stuck in these perfectly comfortable bubbles of entertainment. I mean… it’s already happening right? Maybe you’ve made a nice character design of Sir Lancelot on his horse because you really love the story of Lancelot. Who cares? I don’t. I have a hundred different versions of Lancelot to look at. Even if I did care I wouldn’t have the time to look at or admire your artwork.
Unless this entire thing is going to force a change in the way we ‘consume’ content, what I fear is a collective drifting away into parallel, personal yet beautiful worlds. And yet this too… will it a tragedy or a paradise? I simply don’t know.
Conclusion
I’m not here to give you answers or to tell you what’s right. I find purity and meaning in drawing my own Sonics and a much needed breath of fresh air in NOT needing anyone to look at or admire my Sonic. If someone does… great. But should I get depressed and see it as a failure if nobody does? Should that invalidate its existence?
Is ‘King Arthur: a Roleplaying Wargame’ from 2009 a failure because nobody knows about it? Does it not have meaning because I found some in it? Not only have I found some, but it has spurred an entire fictional series which I’ve completed recently. You can find all five episodes HERE if you’re interested. This has been an exercise in both fiction writing for me, as well as mythweaving (understanding and working with the actual Arthurian mythology). To say that this old, obscure videogame prompted intense creativity for me is an understatement.
Likewise, Sonic lived through my friend’s inspiration even if (and I know for certain) he was the only one in our classroom who actually cared about the character or his story.
More soon.
Blessings,
