R.S. Riekkinen: If you commission art, please refrain from using genAI to generate ref images. Because at the end of the day, any usage of exploitative AI directly supports the plagiaristic AI companies and their exploitation/theft of creative labor. There are so many ethical options you can use to create refs.

If you commission art, please refrain from using genAI to generate ref images. Because at the end of the day, any usage of exploitative AI directly supports the plagiaristic AI companies and their exploitation/theft of creative labor. There are so many ethical options you can use to create refs.

Some alternative resources for creating character refs: Hero Forge (free) Picrew character creators (free) Dress-up & doll maker games (free) Photos, photo collages & mood boards (free) Self-drawn doodles (free) RPG character creators (Dragon's Dogma 2, BG3 etc) Character image packs by creatives

The references don't need to be "fancy" to be highly functional and informative. A self-drawn doodle with descriptive text is often far more informative than an inaccurate A/I image.

Posemy.art lets you use dome of their 3d models directly on their website for free Openverse.org is a search that shows you license-free images (unfortunately recently slughtly infested with some genAI but has a report feature)

PoseMy.Artposemy.art Create figure drawing reference with this free character posing tool. Pose 3D models with premade animations to create dynamic pose reference for your art.

My absolute favourite references clients give me are stickfigures and random doodles It really doesn't have to be drawn 100% flawless, just some "here's an eye and the scar is a bit like this" is perfect for example

Yup this! Simple stick figures and doodles are often very informative. And it is so much better than receiving an A/I image with a wonky/inaccurate design or an A/I-generated character that is very close to being a rip-off of a character from an existing IP for example

yes!!! i love a stick figure ref from clients SO much, it’s really fun to work from them and expand on the vision

the Sims 4 is really good for this, and the base game is free iirc

I'm a huge fan of 'face claims' - the last commission I got from a friend, they had a few video game screenshots (also a good character ref too!) and then went 'x actress is her face claim'. Perfect!! I have a whole wealth of images of how you want them to look now!

Can not stress Hero Forge enough. Hell, really miss Gaia's knockoff avatar planner, Tektek.

I’ll throw in VR Chat/Unity avatars/resources and a texture editor like the open source art program Krita. Since it’s Unity you can model them pretty easily with a customized background. This was taken inside VRChat in a world that supports it but it’s easy enough to just use Unity

I've linked it to where I start looking at different character creators. youtu.be/Id3fKlxLMzE?...

Digital Character Creators and Commissioning Artistsyoutu.be Just me quickly showcasing some character creating software I use for making references with artists. This video is posted under fair use laws as a commentary on the video game and a showcasing on methods of clearing each section.

A client was like "my friend put the stickers you made me into AI generator and this is what came out" and I wanted to fucking scream. I just said that sucks and ai sucks.

Man, what the hell. It's alarming how some folks seem to think that they own the full copyright of the artwork they commissioned as a private commission :/

Yeah, it wasn't him but his friend so Im less pissed but so shook at like "WHY WOULD YOU PROUDLY SHOW ME?!"

True, but your client still thought there was zero problem in allowing his friend to feed your art to generative A/I. Not cool. I really wish folks would educate themselves more on the tech they use.

Yeah :( it's awful

Ms paint carnage works with every artist I buy from.

Yup this, and tbh I would love the receive a reference like this along with descriptive text and possible other refs. References do not need to look fancy to be functional and helpful

people I think get insecure about unprofessionalism or embarrassment and it's really funny since Knives Out has that promotional poster with all the blades pointing at Craig and it was pitched with MS Paint. hollywood uses it! Don't be embarrassed!

Collages work best. I think photo bashing and Frankensteining images together for a ref is much better than using A¡

Yup, any option is better than using exploitative AI. Even your own doodles work just fine, especially when you also include descriptive text. And there are so many free/cheap and etchical resources you can use to create custom references for characters for example

Oh yeah! Quick stick figure doodles and a description have helped me

Wow people are doing this? I guess their hearts in the right place just misled?

Luckily I haven't received too many, but since this tech is pushed down our throats everywhere we go, I can understand that using it might seem like an effortless/easy way to create references. Plus some non-artist folks have a hard time recognizing genAI images from real images and art

I’ve had a couple that tricked me semi recently with the MET GALA And probably even easier to miss when people are just scrolling fast

Yeah, this. If even creatives sometimes struggle to recognize genAI images, I can very well understand that it is so much harder for someone who doesn't work in a creative field.

Yep, some of them do and i agree with that, they probably don't know anything, so we gotta explain it to them in the most non-offensive way and politely

That’s a good point. I feel like I encounter a lot of people that just still don’t understand why AI is bad but genuinely don’t want to support artist theft either so you’re right education is important.

i put handmade stick figure references into a folder with love. AI generates shit just goes straight to the trash

*generated (ᵕ=ᴗ=)

Stick figures and doodles are so good tbh, anytime I receive references like this it always makes me happy.

Hell, i'll take my client squibly stick man drawing that explain nothing instead of Gen AI image as reference

Totally agree with this!

this is honestly one of the best use cases for stable diffusion and you're saying people shouldn't use it because plagiarism? it's a tool that makes everyone's job easier, and there is even img2img so a stick figure can have all the details. it offloads work onto a robot and the one commissioning

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