Nah, the monster shouldn't be anything like NSFW. Just the game has some themes that are certainly not for kids. It's just that AI treats keyword "tickle" as "big open mouth" caricature-style and refuses to elaborate anything more. Like monster with feathers for hands or something like that. And that medic monster needs limbs made of alive-looking medical equipment (syringies, scalpels, refibrillators, etc), and the last thing it needs is a nurse hat :)
> Maybe try giving more context. Why do you want a "tickling mosnter" in the first place? What role does it serve in your story?
Exactly. That's why I say that AI won't replace a real (concept) artists anywhere soon. I bet if I'd explain properly to a good painter, I'd have gotten what I need. But I'm not here to burden others with my stupid (and mildly NSFW) game :D
I've got exactly the same problem with UI design right now too. I was always bad at it, but I don't remember ever being THAT lost - having absolutely no idea what to put there and how to organize it so that it would make sense. Starting not even from artistic, but from logic point of view. There's no way AI could help me with that.
It's not that easy to be specific when you talk not about how the monster looks, but about how it acts. E.g. a tickling monster. The most specific request. But neither feathery blob with eyes, nor tickling machine, nor anything else of dozens of requests gave me anything better than just a fluffy bird or minion with large mouth. Attached the best result, it doesn't go for tickling monster, but doesn't look completely irrelevant.
Same went for medical monster or alarm monster. It can't come up with anything more interesting than putting a red cross-hat (which is illegal to my knowledge) on it or a watch in/instead of its mouth.
It looks cool by itself, but it doesn't have anything to do with the role the monster plays in the game :) With same idea I can just paint a circle and say "this is it!"
> Where are all these "free" programmers that you're talking about?
Join a game jam, most of them have a lot of collaboration offers. Of course when "free" person comes - it's not a "make a game for me" :) That's collaboration, not pay-free employment. But you make a game together - offer what you have, they'll offer what they have; you also need to bring something to the plate :)
E.g. if you are an artist who is willing to make a (slightly lewd) game - I'd have gladly joined with you if I wasn't already involved in my own long-term hobby project. In around a year or two, I'll have a 2-3 months down-time before starting a new project, I'll be more open at that moment. Or if you would like to jump on a train of the game I'm currently making and fix that abomination I call "art" (don't have illusions, it's a hell lot of work - hundreds of manhours), then I'll be more than open to changing the game concept/story according to your suggestions.
EDIT: But how can I entice you to join a game development project, even taking 80% of your game idea? If you just doodle some stuff on Twitter/Instagram, you'll get 10x involvement with your posts - I can't offer you fame. If you make a portfolio at Artstation/DevianArt - it's by far more valuable than "art by ThisGreatArtists" in some obscure game at itch.io with 20 downloads. You can simply make commissions at Fiverr and earn your $35/pic and don't care, better than making a free game nobody will ever play. All I can offer you is hard and tedious work.
EDIT2: AI can help here though. Twitter is already sinking in AI generated art, which is often faked as own art. This will undercut the value static unrelated images value at Artstation, as it's already getting flooded with those. And at Fiverr you'll need to sign your images by Microsoft's certificate that will prove that you have paid a lot of money for the certificate that is supposed to prove that you have created that art and not generated it. So, a line in the credits "art by ThisGreatArtists" in an obscure jam game will suddenly become valuable as it'll prove that you can produce a consistent artstyle, not just generate cute but unusable images. But yeah...
But the bottom line is: most likely we won't fit each other, you can't just get 2 random persons from 8 billions and poof they have common interests and make a cool game together. However, if you make a post: "Hey guys, I do art (here's examples), I have a cool game idea (here's a summary) - I'm looking for a programmer", you're very likely to get responses (just have a look at r/INAT at Reddit) and a chance to get someone to collaborate (if they'll stick around for long is a different question), and if inverse "I'm a programmer (here're my recent projects) looking for an artist to make a game with" - you're completely out of luck (except that artist can't make a game without a programmer, but a programmer can make a game without art which evens out the inequality a bit). Also if you check on many "revshare" projects (or free and open source) you'll see that they almost never have a shortage of programmers and musicians (even if "organized" by an idea guy who doesn't bring much to the development), but with very few exceptions - always lack of artists (even if there are any at start, they'll be the first to quit, as soon as they understand that making game-ready art is a boring tedious routine in comparison to doodling around for fun).
Of course there are exceptions too. But they only stress the rule.
The only consistent exception is fangames. As a programmer you will have a good chance of finding an artist for Sonic clone or Pokemon inspired game. But those are a very different beast.
That's my personal experience , and that's what I've seen in every project I've come across with a few exceptions like top-popular ones like STK or 0AD. Of course I can be wrong, I often am ;).
P.S. just a few days ago I tried to ask AI to sketch me ideas for monsters in my game (as a programmer I know what they do, but I have no idea how they should look). Yes, you've guessed correctly, after a few hours I didn't get a single image that can be used even as a remote inspiration. So, don't worry, artists are perfectly safe. For now. And for years to come. And no, I won't hire a concept artist for this task either.
Note that "Permission required for commercial use" is not compatible with the chosen license "CC-BY", the latter requires only attribution and allows commercial use without any additional permissions (permission is already granted by your choice of the license). If you need to impose commercial use limitation, then you should use CC-BY-NC license instead or a custom license (note that neither of those are among licenses accepted at OpenGameArt). See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html and https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary for more details
Or alternatively you can modify those not to look like the trademarked/copyrighted stuff. Change color, change position of the buttons and other elements, maybe shape a bit and it should be good.
Thinking more about it... I wonder if the inverse is true:
Affordable artists are the end of AI?
As funny as it sounds, you can easily find a "free" programmer and "free" musician. But almost never a "free" artist for an open source project. One of the reasons most open source projects can be extremely elaborate logic-wise (just take some roguelikes), often have amazing soundtrack but look like total trash art-wise.
Just look at Twitter for another example. An artist posts a doodle made in an hour or two and it gets half a hundred retweets and 2-3 thousands of likes in a day. A gamedev team of 10 people post a footage from a game they've been working on for 2 years by now, the quality of the art in game is by far higher than of that doodle... 2-3 retweets by bots + 5-10 likes when published can be counted as a lucky strike.
Just recently I've been sketching "how much would it cost to hire an artist for my game"? The game uses ultra primitive art (lineart). For as long as I've seen artists usually never take less than $15 per picture of the quality I need. I need minimum of (8+8)x3 = 48 such pictures, which totals $720, even if by some miracles those will be enough and adding here UI design and some other minor stuff... unlikely it'll pass under $1k, and that's the cheapest of the cheapest price tags, which may still result in low quality art (the one who buys cheap - pays twice, as they say).
And all of that for a game I'll never be selling but will publish for free. So, to trash bin the 200-300 hours of (free) programming go! For my poor artistic skills it takes at least 7 hours per picture = 350-400 hours, not something that I can afford, especially for art that looks like my art, i.e. garbage. And just donating $1k to humanity who will only complain that there are no animations...
So, maybe some day AI will help me (for only cost of an expensive videocard which will still be cheaper than $1k) to finish this game and release it for free for everyone. Or maybe some day AI will create a decent competition for mid-to-low skill leveled artists so that they will consider setting affordable prices for their work or even voluntarily join opensource projects to advance their skills and get a line in their portfolio.
Right now again I'm working on a free and open source game. Trash art went into the root of its game design. I know I'll never ever afford good art for my game. I'm willing to work for free - just so that a few players may enjoy the game, artists aren't :) Maybe some day AI will help make someone's evening a tiny bit brighter? Will I live to see this day?
I can see the revision info for my submissions and I can see the license change in the revision history (CC-BY-SA -> CC0 for that specific one), however, I cannot access that page as an unregistered user and I cannot access "older revision" link as an unregistered user. I wonder this feature may be beneficial.
Oh, thanks a lot! I didn't even know what that value does. It was always grayed out for me :) so I just stuck with "some style that seemed to have worked".
Yes, that's very similar to results that I get. Octopus with an eye and mouth :)
And this is what I need:
> AIs are biased towards SFW
Nah, the monster shouldn't be anything like NSFW. Just the game has some themes that are certainly not for kids. It's just that AI treats keyword "tickle" as "big open mouth" caricature-style and refuses to elaborate anything more. Like monster with feathers for hands or something like that. And that medic monster needs limbs made of alive-looking medical equipment (syringies, scalpels, refibrillators, etc), and the last thing it needs is a nurse hat :)
> Maybe try giving more context. Why do you want a "tickling mosnter" in the first place? What role does it serve in your story?
Exactly. That's why I say that AI won't replace a real (concept) artists anywhere soon. I bet if I'd explain properly to a good painter, I'd have gotten what I need. But I'm not here to burden others with my stupid (and mildly NSFW) game :D
I've got exactly the same problem with UI design right now too. I was always bad at it, but I don't remember ever being THAT lost - having absolutely no idea what to put there and how to organize it so that it would make sense. Starting not even from artistic, but from logic point of view. There's no way AI could help me with that.
> What did you prompt?
It's not that easy to be specific when you talk not about how the monster looks, but about how it acts. E.g. a tickling monster. The most specific request. But neither feathery blob with eyes, nor tickling machine, nor anything else of dozens of requests gave me anything better than just a fluffy bird or minion with large mouth. Attached the best result, it doesn't go for tickling monster, but doesn't look completely irrelevant.
Same went for medical monster or alarm monster. It can't come up with anything more interesting than putting a red cross-hat (which is illegal to my knowledge) on it or a watch in/instead of its mouth.
It looks cool by itself, but it doesn't have anything to do with the role the monster plays in the game :) With same idea I can just paint a circle and say "this is it!"
> Where are all these "free" programmers that you're talking about?
Join a game jam, most of them have a lot of collaboration offers. Of course when "free" person comes - it's not a "make a game for me" :) That's collaboration, not pay-free employment. But you make a game together - offer what you have, they'll offer what they have; you also need to bring something to the plate :)
E.g. if you are an artist who is willing to make a (slightly lewd) game - I'd have gladly joined with you if I wasn't already involved in my own long-term hobby project. In around a year or two, I'll have a 2-3 months down-time before starting a new project, I'll be more open at that moment. Or if you would like to jump on a train of the game I'm currently making and fix that abomination I call "art" (don't have illusions, it's a hell lot of work - hundreds of manhours), then I'll be more than open to changing the game concept/story according to your suggestions.
EDIT: But how can I entice you to join a game development project, even taking 80% of your game idea? If you just doodle some stuff on Twitter/Instagram, you'll get 10x involvement with your posts - I can't offer you fame. If you make a portfolio at Artstation/DevianArt - it's by far more valuable than "art by ThisGreatArtists" in some obscure game at itch.io with 20 downloads. You can simply make commissions at Fiverr and earn your $35/pic and don't care, better than making a free game nobody will ever play. All I can offer you is hard and tedious work.
EDIT2: AI can help here though. Twitter is already sinking in AI generated art, which is often faked as own art. This will undercut the value static unrelated images value at Artstation, as it's already getting flooded with those. And at Fiverr you'll need to sign your images by Microsoft's certificate that will prove that you have paid a lot of money for the certificate that is supposed to prove that you have created that art and not generated it. So, a line in the credits "art by ThisGreatArtists" in an obscure jam game will suddenly become valuable as it'll prove that you can produce a consistent artstyle, not just generate cute but unusable images. But yeah...
But the bottom line is: most likely we won't fit each other, you can't just get 2 random persons from 8 billions and poof they have common interests and make a cool game together. However, if you make a post: "Hey guys, I do art (here's examples), I have a cool game idea (here's a summary) - I'm looking for a programmer", you're very likely to get responses (just have a look at r/INAT at Reddit) and a chance to get someone to collaborate (if they'll stick around for long is a different question), and if inverse "I'm a programmer (here're my recent projects) looking for an artist to make a game with" - you're completely out of luck (except that artist can't make a game without a programmer, but a programmer can make a game without art which evens out the inequality a bit). Also if you check on many "revshare" projects (or free and open source) you'll see that they almost never have a shortage of programmers and musicians (even if "organized" by an idea guy who doesn't bring much to the development), but with very few exceptions - always lack of artists (even if there are any at start, they'll be the first to quit, as soon as they understand that making game-ready art is a boring tedious routine in comparison to doodling around for fun).
Of course there are exceptions too. But they only stress the rule.
The only consistent exception is fangames. As a programmer you will have a good chance of finding an artist for Sonic clone or Pokemon inspired game. But those are a very different beast.
That's my personal experience , and that's what I've seen in every project I've come across with a few exceptions like top-popular ones like STK or 0AD. Of course I can be wrong, I often am ;).
P.S. just a few days ago I tried to ask AI to sketch me ideas for monsters in my game (as a programmer I know what they do, but I have no idea how they should look). Yes, you've guessed correctly, after a few hours I didn't get a single image that can be used even as a remote inspiration. So, don't worry, artists are perfectly safe. For now. And for years to come. And no, I won't hire a concept artist for this task either.
Note that "Permission required for commercial use" is not compatible with the chosen license "CC-BY", the latter requires only attribution and allows commercial use without any additional permissions (permission is already granted by your choice of the license). If you need to impose commercial use limitation, then you should use CC-BY-NC license instead or a custom license (note that neither of those are among licenses accepted at OpenGameArt). See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html and https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary for more details
Thank you!
Or alternatively you can modify those not to look like the trademarked/copyrighted stuff. Change color, change position of the buttons and other elements, maybe shape a bit and it should be good.
Thinking more about it... I wonder if the inverse is true:
Affordable artists are the end of AI?
As funny as it sounds, you can easily find a "free" programmer and "free" musician. But almost never a "free" artist for an open source project. One of the reasons most open source projects can be extremely elaborate logic-wise (just take some roguelikes), often have amazing soundtrack but look like total trash art-wise.
Just look at Twitter for another example. An artist posts a doodle made in an hour or two and it gets half a hundred retweets and 2-3 thousands of likes in a day. A gamedev team of 10 people post a footage from a game they've been working on for 2 years by now, the quality of the art in game is by far higher than of that doodle... 2-3 retweets by bots + 5-10 likes when published can be counted as a lucky strike.
Just recently I've been sketching "how much would it cost to hire an artist for my game"? The game uses ultra primitive art (lineart). For as long as I've seen artists usually never take less than $15 per picture of the quality I need. I need minimum of (8+8)x3 = 48 such pictures, which totals $720, even if by some miracles those will be enough and adding here UI design and some other minor stuff... unlikely it'll pass under $1k, and that's the cheapest of the cheapest price tags, which may still result in low quality art (the one who buys cheap - pays twice, as they say).
And all of that for a game I'll never be selling but will publish for free. So, to trash bin the 200-300 hours of (free) programming go! For my poor artistic skills it takes at least 7 hours per picture = 350-400 hours, not something that I can afford, especially for art that looks like my art, i.e. garbage. And just donating $1k to humanity who will only complain that there are no animations...
So, maybe some day AI will help me (for only cost of an expensive videocard which will still be cheaper than $1k) to finish this game and release it for free for everyone. Or maybe some day AI will create a decent competition for mid-to-low skill leveled artists so that they will consider setting affordable prices for their work or even voluntarily join opensource projects to advance their skills and get a line in their portfolio.
Right now again I'm working on a free and open source game. Trash art went into the root of its game design. I know I'll never ever afford good art for my game. I'm willing to work for free - just so that a few players may enjoy the game, artists aren't :) Maybe some day AI will help make someone's evening a tiny bit brighter? Will I live to see this day?
I can see the revision info for my submissions and I can see the license change in the revision history (CC-BY-SA -> CC0 for that specific one), however, I cannot access that page as an unregistered user and I cannot access "older revision" link as an unregistered user. I wonder this feature may be beneficial.
Oh, thanks a lot! I didn't even know what that value does. It was always grayed out for me :) so I just stuck with "some style that seemed to have worked".
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