Design iterations

Steal Like an Artist is a book that’s positively shaped my creative journey.

In college my art professor started every student out copying from the best artists. Using vellum paper I'd meticulously trace across drawings from Leonardo Da Vinci and the like.

With time I got a feel for the lines, the direction, the shadows, the thought behind the final output.

By investing in the details, thinking about how the pieces become the whole, I slowly started to understand how I’d make the thing in front of me.

Put another way, I put in the time to try and learn.

But I also didn’t take it very far, because it’s freaking hard. I got to a basic level of drawing and moved on.

But, back to the process. Copy and iterate long enough and you start to inevitably branch out into slight iterations on what you’re copying. Copy enough great artists and you’ll create a meld of everything, and with time create a small branch in art where your thing builds on what came before with a remix.

That’s art, and that’s how great artists create.

AI has thrown a massive monkey wrench into this whole field.

Where before I’d invest days, weeks, and months into learning something, now I can theoretically shortcut the whole process and chuck something into ChatGPT for a Studio Ghibli esque iteration on an idea.

The results are impressive.

I get it though.

It’s lifeless, lacks the heart and blood and sweat and tears put into it by the talented artists working years on projects.

I’ve never been at the level of any of those artists, but as an illustrator and designer in my own right I feel for their pain.

It’s not the same, and it’s not fair, but the output over the last week across the internet has been intriguing to say the least.

Friends of mine, some without much artistic background, are finding delight in creating portraits of themselves as anime characters.

A thing they’d likely never pay an artist for they can now do at some level on their own.

I’m struck by the wholesale undercutting of an entire field. But I also see the delight from folks playing with a new medium.

This has got me thinking about iterations. When I’m designing a thing I am constantly looking at other things, pulling pieces from each, and melding all those ideas into something new.

That’s how art works.

It’s how I learned over the years, and it’s a process I enjoy.

With ChatGPT the process is sped up. And I’m sitting here wondering if it’s a good thing. Adding ChatGPT to the process doesn’t really make things better, but it throws out more ideas I can add back into the whole.

Though I question the intrinisic health of such a method, I feel drawn in to try it.

The thing I wish for now is faster response times. I don’t want to wait two minutes for a bad idea (and the off chance of a good one) from ChatGPT. I want a response in a split second so I can keep iterating.