eponymous-v

[eponymous-v]

im sorry but i had to draw this baby

#thanks for helping me with my burnout lil baby #you were too cute not to draw #i wanna draw the rest too but not right now

[eponymous-v]

so my artificer got their homunculus finally

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd 5e oc #artificer #homunculus #its name is baby yaga in case you were wondering

[eponymous-v]

if anyone sees this, please share the most incomprehensible memes your dnd group has come up with

i'll start

#dnd #dungeons and dungeons #d&d #dungeons & dragons #cause wotc sucks and i need to laugh

[eponymous-v]

honestly i wanted to stay out of the ai art discourse because i don’t feel like dealing with the inevitable influx of brain dead takes defending it, but at the same time, just. holy shit dude.

even before we get into the ‘what is art really though’ discussions, as much as people claim it’s ‘just a tool’, the truth of the reality is that these tools are being abused. ai art IS taking artists jobs. dmca scams are a thing - and now they’re more insidious since people began using ai generated images to make a claim seem more legitimate. ai generator companies charge fees to use their products, making millions in the process, and never pay a single penny to the people whose work they needed to have a functional generator in the first place. online art platforms and art program companies already seen as grifters are trying to cash in and sell their customers’ work without consent. people are already scraping publicly available music and writing to come up with other creative ai. there are completely ai generated influencers. people are working to create ai generated porn, not only creating more avenues for csem, but also adding another difficult hurdle for public figures whose images are being used without their consent to create porn of them, and individuals trying to take down revenge porn that targeted them. hell, ai are scraping confidential medical records and using the photos to train itself without removing the patient identifying information. if reading that stuff still hasn’t changed your mind on why ai art is the latest techbro scam, yeah, fine, i guess the next part is directed to you personally.

the biggest, and most complicated, defense i’ve seen is ‘ai art isn’t any different from artists using reference!’ obviously, artists of all kinds use reference. this is an over simplification, but in the visual artist’s case references are for two things: accuracy, and deliberate inaccuracy. put another way, it’s learning the rules so you can break them.

using a reference is not cheating, or a short-cut: it is used to teach. while you can sit down and draw a horse off the cuff, reference will help immensely if you wanted to portray what a horse looks like accurately, regardless of your stylization. on the other hand, if you want to base a monstrous creature (or part of it) on a horse, you will make a much more convincing monster if you have a reference of the real thing in front of you (the uncanny valley is a thing and it’s a both a blessing and a curse.)

some artists defend will ai art with this, using the generators as the tool they were originally design to be, saying that the ai is more akin to a ‘pre-production assistant’ than a replacement. however, the difference between an artist using an ai to concept vs an ai artist is that ai artists don’t seem to understand is that the work does not stop after the generator spits out an image. and it cannot replicate what comes next: organic creation.

what you see on a page is not the result of just mashing references together like legos until you get something nice. it’s having a concept and then trying to execute it with intentional consideration. only, it never goes like that. art is not linear. it’s extraordinarily intimate, tedious, and frustrating. it is countless hours of trying and trying and trying again until you finally have something that is ‘good enough.’ it is coming up against a roadblock and trying everything you can to get around it - something that’s extra frustrating when its a roadblock you’ve dealt with (or thought you dealt with) before. because of this, rarely does a piece of visual art stay exactly the same as it was originally conceived. the entire process is, as bob ross would say, a series of ‘happy little accidents’, some of which influence entire art movements. thinking about it another way, art is just failure after failure until something good comes out of your creation.

so where am i going with this? apart from the money angle, i argue the real, bone-deep reason why visual artists are pissed is that ai artists ignore the entire point of learning a skill - and the pitfalls that come along with it. what you see in the final product is literally thousands of hours of failure. failing upwards for sure, but failure is failure and it is fucking humiliating, even if what you make never sees the light of day. this is the biggest hurdle people have when first starting out - faced with such bleak prospects, art is intimidating as hell, sometimes making it seem out of reach. and the art community is angry because ai artists have pulled out the bowling lane bumpers so they won’t have to experience what that kind of failure is like. sure code can be altered and eventually perfected, but the ai artist themself learns nothing about the creation of visual art, just their ai. to an ai artist, once the image is generated, nothing else needs to be done, there’s no reason to improve. which is a shame, really, because failure is where creativity truly lives.

(before you ask, yes i do think coding is an art form. the sciences and the arts are more intertwined than people like to think. but programmers aren’t safe from this either: microsoft is facing a lawsuit because they scraped github and made an ai using the code it read without crediting the original programmers.)

y’all, i don’t know where to go from here. ai generators had the potential to be an amazing tool. but they’re being utilized at large by people who don’t want to put in the work - they’re just in it to make a quick buck off of other people’s backs before moving on to the next overhyped thing they can market.

so i guess this entire rant was just to say, my man, art was never inaccessible to you. you were just afraid of failure.

#yes this was in reaction to artstation refusing to disallow ai art on their website and taking down artists portfolios when they complain #ai art #ai art theft #ai art generator #ai art community

[eponymous-v]

but still, we charge forward.

who knew all i needed to break out of my art funk was a fucking meme

#artists on tumblr #artists of tumblr #knight #paladin #skeleton war

[eponymous-v]

so i treated myself for my birthday and upgraded to drawfee’s super high ‘get a drawing’ tier for a month, and nathan drew a character from a story i havent worked on because of school and im definitely NOT tearing up over it.

#LOOK AT MY GIRL #IM IN SHAMBLES #SHAMBLES I TELL YOU #100/10 recommend if you love this show and yourself #drawfee #nathan yaffe

[eponymous-v]

what can i say? i like a man on his knees.

(ice pick joe based on this excellent modern remake fancast)

#goncharov #martin scorsese goncharov #goncharov (1973) #ice pick joe #unreality

[eponymous-v]

okay but hear me out: young jancy true

#drawfee #jancy true #drawtectives #julia lepetit #drawtectives season 2 #im pretty sure im not the first one to make a mockup nancy drew/jancy true book but how about another one #this is what happens when i have drawtectives playing in the background while i work on other shit #drawtectives season 3 when

[eponymous-v]

Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

Richard Adams, Watership Down

#reblogging again because of the new trailer!!! #i should really do something for the new season but idk what #the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu #baby yoda #yodito

[eponymous-v]

get you a prince who will go absolutely feral when he sees your rats in jackets

#cinderella #comic #comicpage #artists on tumblr #artistsofinstagram #artistsofig #lmao guess who had this sitting in a folder waiting to be put together since fucking mAY #no joke this part of the story is just so viscerally stuck in my head i had to draw it #that and what happens to the stepmother like got dAMN #amazing showstopping spectacular #10/10 would read again

[eponymous-v]

i just want you all to know i see your tags and im living for it.

any my personal favorite:

in the immortal words of a certain brennan lee mulligan:

so. calamity, huh?

bonus shitposting under the cut

Keep reading

#a couple people asked why i left the shitposting under a cut and the honest answer is that i wasn't sure if it would offend aabria #because she is amazing and haters will be blocked on sight #critical role #exu: calamity

[eponymous-v]

so. calamity, huh?

bonus shitposting under the cut

#critical role #exu: calamity #exandria unlimited #exandria unllimited calamity #loquatius seelie #patia por'co #laerryn coramar seelie #me: am i making their outfits too extra #also me: its the age of arcanum there is no such thing as too extra #also aabria in the extremely small chance you see this and want the full size image lmk ✌✌✌

[eponymous-v]

One year for every life.

Four hundred years for four hundred lives.

It was... an acceptable compromise.

They tried to deny it to me, of course. I was burned alive for it. When that didn’t work I was flayed, then stabbed, then starved. Beheaded, drowned, poisoned, stoned, trampled, and, at one point, drawn and quartered. The results were the same every time. Skin grew back unblemished, hair shot from the roots like fast-growing weeds, poison bled from my pores like the rivers they tried to drown me in, limbs crumbled to ash and returned to my body after a few moments, whole. Just like I was.

Even then, the magistrates continued to bray at me from their high benches. All it took was a few whispered words about bones in a late wife’s garden, two sons left behind in a foreign land with a mistress who couldn’t follow, how the sound of a full coin purse couldn’t cover up the noises down that hall they were paid to ignore. One by one they fell silent as I whispered to them, bound as I was to the chair in their chamber. The manacles were as much of a sham as the trail, since chains and iron gags rusted and fell apart the moment they touched my skin. But I allowed the woven restraints they wrapped around my wrists.

Another compromise, since we all knew I did not need physical strength to bring their world to its knees.

The proceedings were not public. The hall was empty but for their closest sycophants; the only other people aware of the realities I spoke, and the only ones who would never tell another.

This was a trial that did not exist, for someone who could not be tried.

One year for every life, the magistrate stuttered. Four hundred years for four hundred lives.

He paled further as I thought it over. Revered as I was by some, I was detained for being a public nuisance, thrown behind lock and key for the riots I left in my wake. I sat there for weeks as they hemmed and hawed. I was no witch they could burn, nor a demon their could exorcise. No crimes could be written on my docket that did not disappear by the next breath. I did not lay a hand on the ones who died, nor did I incite another to do my bidding. All I could do was walk and speak, and I could not control who listened.

Yet, I could not deny the chaos I left behind with every village, every hamlet, every city. Four hundred people were dead. Siblings, cousins, spouses, parents, grandparents. Clergy, nobility, artisans, merchants, farmers. There were few facets of society these people did not hail from. And that, perhaps, was the point.

One year for every life. Four hundred years for four hundred lives.

I accepted those terms three hundred ninety-nine years, ten months, and seventeen days ago. Never was I spoken of again in public except in hushed whispers, discreet and confidential. Eventually I was forgotten by the world at large, my existence itself a state secret except to the few who guarded my door. The world grew, societies rose and fell, steel replaced iron, science replaced speculation, electric locks replaced the bars of my cage.

Three hundred ninety-nine years, ten months, and seventeen days I sat here, still and silent, listening. Rumors of who I was spread with every new wall put up between me and the rest of the prison, the rest of the world. My jailers are rotated frequently, their tenures in my wing short out of fear I will speak to them. Little did they know that metal reverberates stronger than stone, carrying sounds they did not wish to spread, that the earth holds secrets older than their names, their words, their culture. All one has to do is sit and listen, and you will hear it from all corners of the world.

Those four hundred dead are nothing compared to their descendants today. For every year I traded for their lives, those four hundred owed those years to a dozen others. Were I to be sentenced again in this modern age for the same crime, those four hundred would have lived a day for every ten thousand lives they stole from the world.

Much has improved and yet there is still very, very far to go.

I pity my jailers, filled as they are with conjecture and half-deliberate truths about who I am and what I can do, but I will make no effort to correct them. Not yet. They have been deliberately kept in the dark like myself, only they do not see the bars. The same goes for their superiors, and their superiors’ superiors beyond them. The four hundred now control far more than they did when I walked the earth freely, but their fear is still the same.

And that is the crux of it: despite their best efforts, I cannot be controlled. I exist neither to bring comfort or to cause harm, and I cannot choose who finds what when they listen to me. I am curious to see how many lives I will destroy when I leave these walls. How many pillars of society will crumble, cores long since rotted from neglect. What secrets the opportunists who take over from there hide. How many cycles I will see before the world truly heals.

One year for every life. Four hundred years for four hundred lives.

That was the agreement, and they will not keep me one day longer.

To think, all of this could have been avoided had that noble not tried to silence me after throwing his literal skeletons from his proverbial closet down my well.

You’ve been sentenced to 400 years for multiple murders. It’s been 399 years and your jailers are starting to get nervous.

#normally i dont do these but i was like #fucking possessed by this prompt #so here ya go

[eponymous-v]

tfw you can actually see your improvement

#holy shit that first one is almost 20 years old!!!!! #aaah!!!! #artists on tumblr #artistsofinstagram #artistsofig #gunslinger

[eponymous-v]

i wasn’t gonna be able to work on anything else until i drew this little business man

#im glad you like it! :> #thank you for writing such a fantastic story!!!! #can't wait for the next update!!

[eponymous-v]

image only post of this comic

#the mandalorian #the book of boba fett #grogu #baby yoda #yodito #my fave is still that first one #god i just NAILED it

[eponymous-v]

Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

Richard Adams, Watership Down

#the mandalorian #the book of boba fett #baby yoda #yodito #grogu #inspired by that one tbobf episode u know the one #also side note is boba ever actually going to feature in his own show or nah #temura and ming na wen you guys deserve so much better than this #and if this is the first time you're hearing about watership down let me be the first to tell you it is a CRAZY book/movie #def skim the wiki about it before you watch/read it #there's a lot of fucked up shit that happens #but it is also a classic for a reason it is that good