Foxofwonders

This is, of course, in response to dA's recent advertising of 'deviantart sellers' that, like it did to so many others, repulses me and gives me second hand embarrassment. If it weren't for all the years of great memories, the people who are still here who I can't follow elsewhere, especially those who take the time to share thoughtful comments, and all my dear watchers whose names I have come to recognise even when they simply favourite my work (yes, quiet followers, I see and appreciate you too), I would've considered leaving like so many great artists have already done. I understand if you want to leave as well (including those who would have read this, but have already left), but for those of us who are still here, let's stick together and keep alive the slumbering flame of community while it's still here.

And for those who do wish to leave soon, you can find me in other places too: https://linktr.ee/foxofwonders

None of them quite feel like home the way dA felt, though.

This journal, I want to dive a bit more into selling art, since that's something I feel needs more attention in the artist community. This has been on my mind for a while, and in the face of all this chaos I want to have at least some constructive sharing of ideas. And maybe to vent a little as well, because the ability of artists to create and share their work is so important to me, and I hate seeing 'sales' get in the way of that. Okay, maybe to vent a lot.

Of course you can sell your art.

I am not against selling art. It can be great to earn a little extra money with your passion, hosting a stand at a convention can be great fun, and for some people selling their art is their best chance at an income needed to survive. That is not my point when I say not everyone needs to sell their art, and I genuinely wish those people the best of luck.

The thing is, I've seen so much pushing for selling art, and I've seen it increase further in recent times (especially here), and I've seen it affect people negatively, especially younger/new artists. Too many people think they 'should' be selling their art, unknowingly let themselves be taken advantage of, or go in with the wrong expectations and end up severely demoralised about their art. This journal is for those people.

Selling art is NOT easy...

Sure, some platforms may allow to sell prints of your art for you or otherwise greatly facilitate selling your art, so it may be easy in that sense, but actually getting people to buy it? Getting commissions? That's a lot harder.

I think this myth of selling art being easy is what leads to people recommending artists to give it a try, which leads these artists to wonder 'why not?'. Well, unless you're okay with setting up the bare minimum needed to sell art and ignore it after, accepting that you may not get sales for months on an end (or at all), you're going to have to do a lot of advertising, find your audience, and also need a bit of luck. Not to mention, your skill needs to be at a level where people are willing to pay for it, at a time where the cost of living has increased drastically for many people. It is perfectly fine if you don't have that kind of skill yet, and it is perfectly fine to have a hobby you don't make money from. Without advanced skill, substantial effort in advertising in the right places, and luck on your side, you won't sell much.

And that's more than okay, you don't need to monetize everything even if you do have that skill people are willing to pay for. That's just realising that it may not be for you, or at least not right now. If you don't need to sell art, and you kinda don't want to, don't.

Just because it isn't easy, you shouldn't let that stop you if you do genuinely want to sell your work, or are curious to dip in your toes and experiment with selling- by all means do! Just know that the effort and possibly mentally draining aspect of promoting your art everywhere shouldn't be underestimated. Even when it doesn't cost you money, the potential cost to your mental state can be huge, and may not be worth it.

...and there's SO much more to art than its sale value!

You didn't start doing art because you wanted to make money with it, most likely. You did it because you wanted to express yourself. Because you wanted to have fun. To let your appreciation of the world inside your head and the world around you (and other media when it comes to fan art) take shape. There was an empty page, and you transformed it into something of your own making. Something personal. Even if it's 'just' a study or fan art, it's you who made it, who chose what you wanted to spend your time drawing, who chose in what way you wanted to depict and create it. And other times, art is so deeply personal that the meaning it holds to you defies explanation in words.

It's because of that that art isn't just some product. It's a labor of love, unique to the artist. Each artwork is the result of a lifetime of experience, not just in building the skill needed, but also in terms of all their life before that time, that influence what details stand out to them, and what times in their life, consciously or not, have inspired them.

As soon as 'artwork' is mass-produced, it loses all which is so valuable about it. That is part of why the 'top seller' does not feel like an artist to me. When you upload nearly ten thousand images in a single year, you can't convince me there's much effort put into each one. That's less than an hour for each upload, assuming someone doesn't sleep and posts every day of the year without fail. When all you upload is just something to sell, probably just one of the countless possible seed numbers for a certain prompt that is thoughtlessly reused in an AI model, where the only condition for uploading appears to be that it's good enough to sell- something important is lost. The 'art' becomes just a product, devoid of any but the bare minimum of personal input (...if that).

Yes, it looks like it sells. But is this really what a self-proclaimed artist community ought to promote? Is that what we want young people to see when they first get in touch with the world's largest art community (if it still is)? No, going by the number of artists that has already left. Artists aren't machines pumping out products. They are people dedicated to creating something special. Art isn't something to, and I quote from the ad that is currently promoted by dA themselves, 'BUY BUY BUY'. Sure, it's something that can be bought and sold, but that isn't its sole reason for existence. It's something personal, something unique, experiences and ideas and skills that are shared. And that's what an art community should promote, if you ask me. Otherwise, it's just a marketplace, and there already are enough of those.

So, dear artists

Try making some money with your art if you want to, or need to, but don't feel like you have to if that's not what you want. That's not what makes your art worth making in the first place.

Keep doing what makes art worth making to you. No matter if that's refining your ability to create what's in your head, sharing your thoughts and ideas, showcasing the skill you mastered (or are in the process of mastering, anyway), connecting with others, drawing things that bring you joy, or your personal interpretation of what has piqued your interest in life.

That is worth sharing. That's what's worth appreciating and talking about. That's what makes you not only have fun, but grow as a person. That's what a community is for.

These past months, I've been learning how to sew, and how to use polymer clay (some of that is in my scraps here on dA) and epoxy clay. It took some time to get a bit comfortable with the materials and get down the basics of the techniques, but eventually I felt ready to tackle the project I've had in mind for a long time.

I was completely enchanted by Rah-Bop's raven Kenku costume when I first saw it, but never considered myself the crafty type of artist. Until, at some point, I found out that Rah-Bop has a tutorial page on how they made most of their costume, and found out that, probably, doing claw gloves I had increasingly been daydreaming about was within reach. So, my birthday gifts consisted of materials to start off the learning process. Found out that claying is actually quite fun! Difficult, but immensely satisfying. Learning a new skill (or two, in this case) is so rewarding. If you've been putting off learning to craft (or draw, for that matter), I'd say, start now! Or this weekend, or whenever you have an hour or two to spare. But try it, it's so worth learning how to make something.

Anyway...

Then, the bird claw glove, which went through several prototype versions as I stubbornly wanted my first proper sewing project to be something that is apparently not suitable for beginners. But hey, don't underestimate what a determined mind can do. After several prototype versions in which I learned what I was doing and what I could probably do better (leave room for the seams!!!), I now finally have my first claw glove, and I'm immensely happy with the result.

Thanks to Rah-Bop for the tutorial, making the learning process way less intimidating. Here's the link to their masterpost, scroll down for the tutorials: https://rah-bop.tumblr.com/RueCostume

I really love how they look, and how I can move around in them. Heck, I can even type on my phone with them, because the material is thin enough to still be conductive. Maybe I will eventually make a full bird costume, if I can work up the courage, expand my skill sets, and invest in new materials and tools. You probably know who the candidate is.

(And yes, I'll have to deviate from his reference sheet, because there are no nice materials in grey. But black is close enough. Also because I'm not sure I'll ever be able to make full wings that work well in practice. But hey, you never know.)

It's hard to believe that this is the third DD I've gotten. I'm incredibly grateful for the recognition! What makes this time so incredibly special is that it's the first time I got awarded a DD on a personal piece, rather than something made for others. It's one full of meaning to me (read the description if you hadn't already), and if there's anything I'd like more people to see, it's this one. Thank you for the love!

(And for fun: have you spotted the beetle?)

UPDATE:

The opt-out has since been turned into an opt-in, so your deviations are now automatically 'opted out'. So, there's no need to 'opt out' your deviations from being used in 3rd party datasets. That is now the default. The setting can be found under 'account settings -> general' or can be changed for individual deviations using the checkbox on their edit page.

Leaving this journal up because it's still interesting to read what exactly this opt-out (now opt-in) actually means.

As a clarification on the 'opt out' of your deviations being used for 3rd party AI datasets: it might not be what you think it is.

WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO

The 'opt out' does nothing directly to prevent 3rd parties from using your art. All it does is add a tag to your art, really simply in words, that states 'noai' or 'noimageai'. It is a request that has no formal basis. Dataset creators would have to deliberately look out for that tag AND decide to respect it. Basically, it does absolutely 0 to prevent lazy (or worse, malevolent) datatset creators from using your art. Moreover, depending on how images are scraped, the tag may not even show up at all. If your image is retrieved from a google image search, for example, there's a chance that metadata may be lost, not to mention that it does absolutely nothing to prevent your art from being used when scraped anywhere else on the internet.

It's important to understand that it doesn't change any AI that has already been trained (thank you lapislazuri for reminding me!), as AI, once trained, doesn't need the dataset anymore. All the learned information about the dataset is encoded in billions of numbers called weights that represent visual patterns, which are fixed when the training is over. Those numbers contain all the information a network needs to generate images.

To clarify: an AI does not 'stitch together' images as is sometimes said. Rather, it uses learned visual patterns (typically generalized beyond any specific entry in its training data) to generate completely new images from random noise.

It will sometimes resemble some of its training data, if certain images were frequent in its training data (such as Bloodborne covers), or sometimes by something known as 'overfitting' on training data (a common but unintentional flaw of these models), or raw chance.

WHAT IT MIGHT DO

It is something you would do out of principle because you hope future dataset creators will be benevolent and aware of the tag, or because you believe there will be a punishment for dataset creators for violating the tag, and you want to be prepared for that. The latter might happen if the tag ends up getting a legal basis that can start lawsuits that the dataset creators would really become wary of. It currently doesn't come with any legal obligations as far as I'm aware and I doubt it will, but it's probably the nicest and most convenient way to say you don't want your data to be used for training.

tl;dr: opting out your deviations manually does little more than adding 'do not use for AI' in your deviation description.

Hi all!

I'm doing well, just a little heads up that I'm going to be very busy with uni for a while, so both creating art and appreciating others' art will be done at a slower pace (I spent the entire weekend working, ouch).

I will still be checking here in the meantime too. Just a heads up that I'll be much slower replying to your comments and leaving my own on your art and journals than usual. My watch is growing faster than I can catch up with. Don't be surprised if I eventually end up commenting on something that you uploaded over a month ago. :p