I am an artist.
”Eleven evil wizard schoolgirls in an archduke's library, dressed in red and black Asmodean schoolgirl uniforms, perched on armchairs and sofas”[1]
Sigh, at least it’s not more catgirls. I don’t even draw them well.
I stretched briefly before starting this one, my arms reaching as far as they could go behind me as I leaned back in my chair. And then my neck, back and forth, side to side, crick and crick.
20 feet away, 20 seconds, every 20 minutes, I mantra’d, looking about the office, surveying the heads above the computer screens, dutifully doing all sorts of art. My eyes met briefly with Bill and we shared something of a nod. Why was he looking at me? Eh, I was looking at him.
I turned back to my work, and began drawing on the screen. It offered me a sort of imprint of what various image gen models would have done across multiple instances. With this heat map, almost as part of my process, I can nearly always imagine some ghost of a previous key work existent - a sort of platonic form of wizard schoolgirls, or maybe an amalgamation of the forms of both schoolgirls and wizards? Who knows. Whoever pioneered the sorcery and teenagers combo must’ve done well for themself.
I began filling in the inverse and emptier spaces with basic sketches of where I’d place each wizard schoolgirl, making sure there were multiple armchairs and sofas (four and 2, yeah, that feels decent). And I’d do something interesting and move these two behind the others, maybe they’re even twins, or is that a common trope and I’ll lose creativity points?
Huh. Somebody thought this first and then drew it, or maybe the artist even then was contracted? Who knows. I started making more aggressive lines, quickly placing each face. Maybe this one’s face is covered with her hair and this one is blonde but she’s dyed her hair black. And to be bold, this one has a ponytail.
Will I make an ‘unattractive' one? I pondered for a moment...
…nah, they say they don’t, but it definitely gets penalized.
On returning pen to screen my hand was a bit too ambitious and malpracticed across the page (one benefit, I suppose, is I do get exposed to quite a few more words than I used to). But this was fine, since the pen had a built-in ‘undo’ tap.
Of course, AI tools made drawing so much easier, but that was before we realized each little shake of the artists’ lines were that much more information to train with, and no this can’t be gamed with arthritis, it’s more nuanced than just arthritic artists.
It’s hard not to be somewhat conscious of this sort of nuance to my pen-stroke, especially as I start thinking about it. So I thought about it as I traced the sofas, and awkwardly tried-not-to-consciously-do-normally-subconscious-things-but-also-is-this art that I’m doing now? Hmm… I thought about it, a weird new style of consciously doing everything you normally leave to the subconscious, by intention… and maybe this even has value in the lines produced, ah whatever, just draw the Asmodean schoolgirl uniforms. Time is passing and I pull up some reference material.
Soon I’m adding details, lamenting the inability to just paste on faces for these girls, but whatever they probably all look rather same-y and simple across the genre and etc. so I sort of just cheat and rush through this part. I make a couple lines more scraggly for good measure, and one of the girls turns out looking a bit… queasy? Sorry, I thought to the poor queasy girl. Ah well, the prompt didn’t really specify more and I get paid by byte of info. More importantly, I need to meet my daily quota.
They had to put a quota, of course, since the artists would just keep waffling about all day! As opposed to being smart like doctors and optimizing for the number of patients seen. And, of course, I think it’s much too fast, but I would think that, wouldn't I.
Now I’m adding some background detail and rather fearfully trying to make that at least a little interesting with what time I might have left, as priorities clash, but I’m more or less finishing up and soon sending it to some poor sop to color. Speaks a lot for my work, I guess, that I feel bad for whoever receives it. Sigh. Adds further diversity, apparently, to mix up contributors, and training data is paramount so I shouldn’t feel that poorly really, that’s not the point. In any case, I’m glad I don’t have to do more experimental work, mixing artists on a piece, yuck. But maybe that’s the way we’re headed.
I take a step back from the piece and sanity check it for a moment, cleaning up my wizard schoolgirls as best I can to be prim and proper, and counting them like a school mistress might on a trip. Maybe it’s like I just took a group picture. I look back to the prompt and - shit! Forgot library. And I hurriedly start drawing book spines of gibberish on a shelf that emerges from the back wall.
Luckily, we haven’t run out of content yet, twelve schoolgirls is quite different from eleven and I could have even been so bold (dumb) as to do an armchair and sofa per schoolgirl! Though I have been known to be an afficionado of mixing mediums, so I’ve got some room for pleasure with new styles. Maybe someday they’ll value more quality data over quantity and filling out this odd possibility space. But I fear that maybe that’s not something that I can even do.
Unfortunately, I never quite keep to my 20 minute cycle, whatever that means for my eyes (bad). I look at the prompt again, I look at my drawing… sanity check number two passed, good enough for me. Now, why anyone would want,
”Eleven evil wizard schoolgirls in an archduke's library, dressed in red and black Asmodean schoolgirl uniforms, perched on armchairs and sofas”
I don’t know. But I guess I get the bigger picture. I actually rather enjoy some part of the process, the human injection is like an iterative challenge. What are all the norms you are trying to subvert without getting meaningless? Even as I struggle with time constraints - to innovate is to be a little guinea pig chompin at the water bottle thingie between wheel runs.
And certainly thank goodness I don’t deal with text! I’ve heard those guys go crazy and just start to babble after some time, although a few people seem to really enjoy that. No, I just get my next prompt,
“dune movie screencap, 2021, dune movie trailer, in the color blue, and there’s a female futar --ar 16:9 --v 6.0.”[2]
Well that’s a spoiler for the fifth book in the Dune series for anyone who searches that up for reference. And after thinking for a moment, meh, I spent one of my few rerolls.
“Robin Hood and the 7 dwarves at a disco parlor, one is happy, one is sad and those two are staring at each other, one feels sonder, one feels angry and is hopping mad with a baseball cap while one more celebrates a homerun, and one is a catgirl.”
I count in my head... Isn’t this missing a dwarf? … and what the heck is sonder?
And so, I stretched again and looked out across the office of artists. Bill was looking at me again - man we are on the same schedule today, huh. I tried to work a bit faster or slower this cycle.
