Artful Meg

figuratively banging my head against a wall by spending hours drawing something in a sketchbook that no one will like

or i could paint a sad man in CSP and think "that's boring" but i g that's what i am good at?

artist angst

Heads up for YouTube folks;

You can block certain websites and categories of ads appearing on your channel by going to Settings > Ad Categories

So apparently, it may turn out that The Wizard of Oz at the Las Vegas Sphere wasn’t entirely made in AI and Google threw the VFX crew under the bus by claiming it was all done by artificial intelligence.

If true, then fucking yikes.

Satyr 🌱

Found this on TikTok and it made me emotional ❤️

Artists create universes from nothing.

Being an animator is an intimate understanding of life, environments, physics, what it MEANS to be alive, and the ability to convey the beauty within our world in seconds.

Federal agencies hiding out in a bunker

It feels like we should be making a bigger deal of “we actually did in fact find a cure for AIDS”

"ChatGPT is great for brainstorming!"

Actually we have a tool for that already! It's called thinking. We use our brain. It's called brainstorming! Clue is in the name.

Those dots connect pretty directly, seeing as Shepard Fairey was a big ol' plagiarist.

I know the rights to Dungeon Crawler Carl were bought by Seth McFarlane's company, but hear me out:

What if they did it with Muppets? 👀

I laughed at this video for like 2 minutes straight last night and now you get to

"There are three kinds of magic," said Wizzler, handing us each a balloon. "You can control tigers, you can shoot tornadoes from your fingers, or you can fly by holding your breath. The color of confetti inside your balloon will reveal which kind of power you have." I felt the panic rising in me. What if my confetti turned yellow, indicating that I was a Tiger-Talker? My family, a long line of proud Tornado-Fingers, would disown me. Could I ever return home, bearing such shame? I tried to calm myself as I readied the ceremonial safety pin. Green, I thought, willing my hopes into reality. Please be green. I popped the balloon, involuntarily shutting my eyes. When I opened them, would I see the green I hoped for? The yellow I feared? What if, gods forbid, the confetti were blue? I opened my eyes, seeing shock on the faces of my classmates. Wizzler himself stared at me, wide-eye. Looking down, I saw myself covered in confetti... purple confetti.

“I don’t understand,” I growled, my body trembling with pain. “I combined eighty percent Earth-elemental mana with twenty percent Fire-elemental mana (Type B), focused through a twenty-four-sided icositetragon made of yellow topaz. This, in conjunction with my blood type, star sign, sense of humor, and nickname, should have produced a blazing column of lightning to vaporize my enemies. Instead, it made a big bubble that smells like fresh laundry. Why?” Skullgrumbler began to laugh. “You fool! You don’t even realize…” he squealed. “You’re facing east!”

“It’s whatever you want,” explained Magemaster Grampledog. “Magic is just whatever you want.” I knew he was speaking in riddles, but I couldn’t grasp his hidden meaning. “So the rules are…” Grampledog lit a sliver of smokereed. “No rules. You say some words and you wave a stick and whatever you want just happens. You don’t even need the stick.” His wisdom still eluded me. I stared into his face, trying to decipher what he was really saying. “No, listen.” Grampledog snapped his fingers and his desk turned into a pile of chicken nuggets. “I didn’t even know that would happen.” His hat then came alive and began to yodel. “It’s pandemonium,” he explained. “It’s complete nonsense.”

In my experience there are three kinds of fantasy magic novels:

Oof. Solidarity. Mine sleeps across my torso/hip every night and will except NOTHING less. And it has been so warm!

If you see this, post a sword ⚔

🫣 this is so old now

Joking about crab rave aside, I do think this public outpouring of disgust at the death of hated villains is a powerful, useful thing. I think it's good that we do it, and I think, broadly, that it serves three functions.

(1/?)

I long for such a thing! I've just never had a place to escape to. (Or a good enough excuse.) Sounds magical. The book group I've joined also has some aspiring writers, and when they manage a "writing retreat" for themselves, they always accomplish so much! 😭

Oh, sure, I draw for work. But for my own purposes? So little motivation these days. Still trying to be a writer, but that's its own challenge!

Same, though I so rarely draw anymore. I wish I could find that drive again. Hang in there!

Generative Al is being marketed as a tool designed to reduce or eliminate the need for developed, cognitive skillsets. It uses the work of others to simulate human output, except that it lacks grasp of nuance, contains grievous errors, and ultimately serves the goal of human beings being neurologically weaker due to the promise of the machine being better equipped than the humans using it would ever exert the effort to be. The people that use generative Al for art have no interest in being an artist; they simply want product to consume and forget about when the next piece of product goes by their eyes. The people that use generative Al to make music have no interest in being a musician; they simply want a machine to make them something to listen to until they get bored and want the machine to make some other disposable slop for them to pass the time with. The people that use generative Al to write things for them have no interest in writing. The people that use generative Al to find factoids have no interest in actual facts. The people that use generative Al to socialize have no interest in actual socialization. In every case, they've handed over the cognitive load of developing a necessary, creative human skillset to a machine that promises to ease the sweat equity cost of struggle. Using generative Al is like asking a machine to lift weights on your behalf and then calling yourself a bodybuilder when it's done with the reps. You build nothing in terms of muscle, you are not stronger, you are not faster, you are not in better shape. You're just deluding yourself while experiencing a slow decline due to self-inflicted atrophy.

re: generative AI

I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used.

And now, you can use it, too.

The bar feels so low, and yet it is vital.

K-Pop Demon Hunters my guysss ✨💙
Have you seen it yet?

I couldn’t resist drawing these 2!

I'm sure they're using "genie" and "bottle" to imply that gen AI is some sort of magic solution, instead of, say, cats and bags, but like... genies famously go back into their bottles.

That if we're good at one type of art, we're good at all types. (Usually accompanied by a request to execute someone else's idea. "I see you do illustrations. Can you design my logo?"

panel 1: a person is pointing on a bed where cats are lying in a way that leaves a vaguely human outline in the middle, saying "this is my hole!! it was made for me!! panel 2: a twisted shape of a person lies on the bed, screaling silently as the cats sleep peacefully in random positions

hey, i made a terrible comic instead of working #makeaterriblecomicday2025

They have made the world living hell for no reason whatsoever. People will ask why this happened in a decade and there will be tremendous effort to make it more complicated than “they were evil, stupid, and bored”

America shouldn't need a British guy to remind them of this.
#nokings

Especially if you're on the fence about it, protest today. Fascism is isolating and lonely. Its very goal is to make you feel like you're the only person unwilling to accept a cult of personality. On days like today you fully realize there are more of us than there are them. You will feel better.

i really can't impress enough on young people that if you commit to not using AI you will be blessed by the promethean fire of knowledge and everyone around you will think you are a god for being able to do shit on your own and use your brain to have critical thoughts like a functional human being

I'm afraid I don't know the context, but having just read The Raven Scholar, this hits a sweet spot. 😊

This whole thing kind of feels like all the small artists live in a ye olde fantasy village that gets beset by marauders, who happpily plunder and such for months on end, until we all one day look at movement from the nearby mountain like "oh thank fuck, here comes the awful dragon to murder them"