Finally had a chance to look at this.

Personally, I don't like the push/pull very much. Should be noted, the pull animation is just identical to push in this case.

When pushing/pulling, the legs should be bent in a different directions to make it look more realistic. I get that it doesn't have to be that realistic or anything, but thsi is a pretty simplistic one. Perhaps it'd be better to redraw it.

A "push" I would think would have the character leaning toward the object, while a pull actually "pulls" back.

Using the emotes third frame as a base is what I'm looking at for pull here--have the model lean back, arms stretched out front, as the legs are moving as well.

Push could be derived from Eliza's combat animation as its leaning forward.

I can't think of anything useful for carry other than "we need an actual lift animation, too". Carry would be fine on its own.

EDIT: Here's the card I opened on the ULPC for this:

https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen...

I probably won't work on this any time soon, but I have my eye on it.

"Is this fair and lawful?"

There is no clear information on this at this time. Like I said above, I still subscribe to the belief that this is pattern-recognition algorithm, not derivative assets. Once the courts settle this matter, that is presumably what OGA will follow, whether its pro-AI art or against.

In terms of simple things like rotations, though, that's pretty clear. If its your work and your alterring it, well, there's no real problem there. Using AI to "enhance" an image by making it larger is probably pretty safe. Same with rotations. Rotations I have noticed can be really tricky with programs like aseprite. For me this is one of my biggest issues; rotating an asset to get a different angle of a sword, for example, and keep the same aesthetic, is quite annoying. Same thing goes for trying to get animations out, like having hair flowing behind a character. This is really tricky to deal with properly so I have been hesitant to push into this.

I have dabbled in AI a bit, but I am hesitant to use it for spriting yet at this time. Mostly I use it for references and concept art.

"And, even if it is, does it offend your sensibilities as an artist."

For most artists this is always going to be "no". It is artists who are primarily concerned about this, after all.

However, the line must be drawn somewhere. If you are concerned with offending artists, then you should never, ever, ever use AI art. There's literally nothing you can do that won't offend artists by using AI art at this point in time. If AI art becomes more acceptable in the future, such tensions will likely lessen, but many will still find offense that AI art is used in any way. Frankly, though, this is not the best question to be asking.

The biggest problem with this debate in general is honestly pretty simple--a lot of artists want to make money off of their art. The problem, however, is that art just isn't very profitable. It never has been, and its only gotten worse over time. And its not because of AI generation--its because there's too many artists out there flooding the market. The best artists will still be able to make good money, but lower-end artists are going to constantly find themselves competing with one another. AI art is not good enough to replace good artists, but it can replace "bad" art, which is the main thing it does. Otherwise, AI is primarily a tool than can enhance art-related projects.

Keep in mind, there's puritan artists out there who hate anything to do with digital art. I believe that used to be a big debate as well in the past--digital art isn't "authentic" art. Those comments aren't common anymore, but they used to be.

I haven't been commenting on these threads, but my take is basically this:

IDK if it would be considered "fair use" or not, but I still don't think it qualifies as copyright infringement. Its basically like an artist looking up a reference and using that to create something inspired by it. It would only infringe on the copyright if the asset is too similar to the original asset. I know the argument is "they're taking existing art, editing it, and mixing it with other things", but I don't think that's actually what's happening, nor did the existing court cases that came out make that argument.

The courts basically said AI art "prompts" are like making a commission from an artist. Its the artist's interpretation of what information you give them, and by default, the artist in question owns the copyright. However, only humans can own copyrights. For AI generated art, the "artist" in this case is the algorithm, not a person. As such, AI generated art without much human input cannot be copyrighted.

By starting with the assumption that this is like a commissioned work, they're already somewhat setting the narrative of where their thinking lies here.

Even though that is my stance on AI art, we will see how the courts decide this, and I do have one more comment...

I have no sympathy for any companies claiming "yeah we're not using copyrighted assets" and they actually are. That is blatantly lying and is a potential criminal offense. In such a case they'd be better off not saying anything than outright lying about it.

Oh, one other thing:

"evolving" an image I think _would_ qualify as being derivative. Because you're using that image as the starting point. The algorithms are created by scanning existing art and putting that into the algorithm, but its starting from scratch normally. It starts with a blank canvas and simply follows the algorithm. Evolving art, however, starts from an existing artwork and applies the algorithm over it. That is a much different situation.

I'll bookmark this for later. I thought I saw Push/Carry/Pull a while back, but I couldn't find it earlier.