Bloodcrown update 2023-02-01 (Patreon)

Hi everyone, we've got a general update and poll for you this week. First of all, on the production side of Bloodcrown, we're working out several technical hurdles including rig adjustments and changes, the new interior, lighting and rendering. We are also working on the guard who's going to be animated and will participate in the intro as well as all the enhancements to the main characters. A little slow in terms of tangible media, but we're seeing good progress and what I'm hoping to do over the next months is post bits and pieces as they become available.

The other thing I've been experimenting with is AI art.

So let's talk about it. Is it the most contentious topic today? Yes, it is!

Are the opinions divided? Yes, they are!

For artists who are still putting out still images, which includes me, the initial reaction is often two-fold: 

First, will my art be copied and stolen, and second, will I be replaced by a horde of armchair artists churning out top tier 3dx at the press of a button and a couple of half-arsed prompts?

My take differs from the anti-ai norm, from the point of view of a 3dx artist only. The lesser accessibility of NSFW content through mainstream AI sites like mid journey, makes it more difficult to generate and technically more complex. I think it may take a year for the tools to become sophisticated enough for the average person to generate their own porn, but good 3dx artists will therefore have an advantage in the short-term, in terms of maintaining their own style and pushing the boundaries. But eventually, AI will learn these styles and even generate animation. So the 3dx artist needs to evolve. In the short-term by using AI to enhance their own art like generating quick changes to a pose, outfits, lighting, style, etc. Secondly, leveling up their output from stills to animation and games. One area that AI won't touch for a good number of years is games, imo.

So in my first attempt at understanding AI, I've tried to train an AI model on Cerene. Please, therefore, find the first few samples attached covering various styles and levels of realism. As you can tell the results aren't quite there yet. I think 1 and 4 are closest so far at maybe 50% likeness, but we have ways to go. 

Individually the art is great, but it's not until there's stylistic consistency and likeness of the bloodlust characters that we have a working model. Also, dick girls and sex are complicated, so that's something we need to figure out. Personally, the styles I like range from realistic stylized to semi-realistic. 

In the poll below vote on the styles you like. What I'd like to do first is enhance the stills we put out and, second, test creating a comic, exploring the bloodlust back story. Back in the day, I was in talks with Dmytris to create a comic, which never happened, I'd like to try this again using AI. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below :)

To be clear AI is a tool that I want to experiment with and make use of, it's not going to take over production in any way.