Ugh, it continues to kill me that I never got to use the journal skin I made right before Eclipse went live. T_T Linking to it at least makes me feel better lol.
Like the title says, I wanted to do an interest check about making stuff for people using Artbreeder. Also included a TL;DR at the bottom cuz I'm a windbag and figured I should detail everything so people can accurately gauge their interest level. orz
First off!
Artbreeder is a collaborative image generation website. It's basically a character/landscape/object/etc creation screen on steroids and is such a fantastic tool for creating beautiful references. All content is fully within the public domain as stated on their support page and detailed in their TOS, so offering to create stuff for others in exchange for money/etc is allowed. I also asked the AB Discord community as a courtesy and was told the same thing haha. Even got a response from the site creator themself, so I've covered all bases as best I can and should be good to go! \o/
So!
Would anyone be interested in having refs of their OCs made in AB for them? And/or if you are already familiar with AB, are you interested in potentially having genes made too? I already spend so much time on AB + past feedback had me wondering about taking commissions for it. The idea behind what I'd be offering is to try providing others with a nice character reference that they can then do whatever they want with. Send it to artists for commission refs, generate their own stuff on AB using mine as a starting point, maybe someone would like to see what their OC looks like in a more realistic style without breaking the bank, and so on.
I'm also considering offering custom paintovers / edits. AB can be a very finicky tool and does have its limitations, so there are some things you just can't pull off currently (and/or not without a lot of extra work). An example is how it can be very difficult to make bright glowing eyes without wildly distorting the image. And things like horns and tusks just don't really work without a custom image upload as a starting point, but even then, kinda not really if at all depending on the thing. xD
To get an idea of the kind of stuff I can do from scratch, you can explore my DA gallery!
And edits I have done to art as style matching examples here: https://www.deviantart.com/hvallaadmin/gallery?q=xaishi
(I'll probably do before/after examples of actual AB images if this passes the interest check.)
I miiiight also offer paintovers and fancy typography (think book cover titles) for any art / refsheets in general and not strictly images created through AB, but for those cases, you'll need permission from the original artist to allow alterations and all that. No idea if anyone would even be interested in edits like that either lol. Except for maybe the ARPG crowd?
And this is just a cool tidbit, but you can use these (or really anything with a face on it) to make animated stuff too! I've played around with it before and it's pretty crazy and a lot of fun. I haven't given any thought to this yet, and I assume no one would be interested in the first place lol, but it occurred to me that I could look into getting a subscription and offer that as a service too. Idk!
And some examples.
I'd have arranged them the way I did in my TH thread, but I don't feel like downloading and uploading all of them into my sta.sh to be able to do that, so links it is. And the one image I did actually upload to use as the journal banner. xD
Example 1 | Example 2 | Example 3 | Example 4 | Example 5 | Example 6
(The first link is actually for one of my characters, the rest are various things I've made for fun and/or as a result of trying to breed more accurate refs of my OCs.) All of these go to their respective AB pages where you can also find examples of how other users have generated their own images from mine. As you can see, you can make all kinds of things from photorealistic people and fantasy races to really wild stylized stuff. I highly recommend poking around to get a better sense of what this site can do, cuz these examples barely touch the tip of the iceberg haha.
Since the site is completely free to use, anyone can of course just create their own images. (And is part of why I'm taking an interest check in the first place haha.) But something I've commonly heard from others is that they find AB too unwieldy and/or can't get their images to come out looking the way they want, so I've taken stabs at generating refs for them. The feedback/encouragement I've received from it is what got me wondering if people as a whole would be interested in actually paying me to do this kind of thing. o:
For pricing,
I'm thinking I might start at like $5-$10, subject to change depending on how long the average comm takes me and on how many people might even want it to begin with. xD Complicated stuff, assuming AB is capable of rendering it out, would be priced higher because it'll naturally be more time-consuming. A big part of AB is around generating iterations on the way to making the final image, so I'll link you all the variations of your character I made along the way. Because of those iterations, I don't plan on charging per image cuz that varies hugely from one char to the next.
I have no current plans to, but selling premade designs (either straight from AB or with edits) is another thing I could eventually do, I s'pose? But that really depends. There are ways you can generate images from scratch so that feels less like a morally grey area to me, even if all of it is legally clear to begin with haha. But would be moot if no one's interested in that either. xD
Prices to alter images/art I'm thinking may also start at $5-$10 and increase by how extensive and/or detailed the edits are. In general, this will probably be comparatively pricier because I don't do much of any drawing anymore thanks to about a decade's worth of burnout, so I'll be setting price tiers in a way that'll hopefully offset or at least not add to that.
Some things to note about Artbreeder:
Again, all images created on this site are in the public domain (CC0) and free for commercial use, as directly stated on their support page and detailed in their TOS. Everyone would be free to use anyone's image for whatever they want. However, I can also modify it in PS or Procreate to create a derivative work, and that image with alterations would be uniquely yours to use.
I have a paid account, so I have the option to hide images as soon as I generate them on request. AB's UI doesn't let you auto-hide upon creation though, so someone could technically find/fave/breed the image before I can hide it if they were really speedy or if my laggy internet craps the bed as it so loves to do. Also note that AB doesn't have a "viewable only with link" option, so back and forth progress updates could be a bit of a hassle.
Because AB is a machine learning website and big on a collaborative/iterative process, very similar images often float around. However, one of the things I like to do on AB is specifically try to make things that look unique. You can view the trending page (click the small face thumbnail at the top to filter by portraits) and my profile to compare and see what I mean.
TL;DR:
Would you pay $5-$10 to have me make a pile of public domain portrait variations of your OC to use however you want? Would you pay more for difficult characters? Would you be interested in paintovers/edits, whether over AB portraits or any other art (assuming you have permission to alter it)?
Since I'm curious now, would you be interested in purchasing premades like the above examples?
All images created on this site are in the public domain (CC0) and free for commercial use, as stated on their support page and detailed in their TOS. You can do whatever you want with the images.
While public domain means anyone can do anything with them, I have a paid account so I can at least hide images on request. AB's UI doesn't let you auto-hide upon creation though, so someone could technically find/fave/breed the image before I can hide it.
This is just a cool tidbit, but you can use these (or really anything with a face on it) to make animated stuff too! I assume not, but would anyone be remotely interested in something like this too?
H'okay, I think that covered all the important stuff. @_@ If I end up taking commissions for these, I will include the same disclaimers (if not more in-depth) in the actual comm post to make sure potential buyers are fully aware of all this info too.
