[ci skip] Draft going forward

content/post/2022-11-20-an-art-challenged-individual-s-perspective-on-ai-anime-generated-art.md

@@ -61,14 +61,39 @@ The rest of this post, in fact deals to what I actually did with all this stuff.
 
 Those who are familiar with me or my background know it already: art was *never* my forte. In high school, my lowest grades were in art and related subjects. I was never, ever able to draw more than stick figures. It wasn't a big deal: whatever I lacked in art I made up for it in other disciplines (like science).
 
-So what has that to do with AI art? Let me tell you two anecdotes
+{{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/abilities.png" size="600x" caption="Seriously. This is the extent of my skill." >}}
+
+So what has that to do with AI art? Well, there are a couple of reasons that might be worth telling.
 
 ## Ideas, and lack of implementation
 
-As I discussed with the other anonymous creator of Yumiko and Satsuki several times, it would've been nice to actually see characters "spring to life".
+As I discussed with the creator of Yumiko and Satsuki several times, it would've been nice to actually see characters "spring to life". Ever since the characters were conceived, thanks to a totally random comment I made that opened the lid to a train of thought which brought them in this form.
 
-But neither of us could do it. As a matter of fact, we did ask (and pay) artists in the past. Despite sometimes troublesome relationships (involving, in one case, a dispute on a payment site), it helped shape the characters and even prompted new ideas for them. One of the issues was that often for cost or time we would actually cut some of the planned ideas for the images.
+{{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/yumiko-writing.png" size="600x" caption="I've noted down your total inability to draw. Go on." >}}
+
+Neither of us could do it. Even Yumiko's creator is an artistically-challenged person, although less than myself. However, we asked (and paid, of course) artists. Despite sometimes troublesome relationships (involving, in one case, a dispute on a payment site), it helped shape the characters and even prompted new ideas for them. One of the issues was that often for cost or time we would actually cut some of the planned ideas for the images.
+
+Example: one image arrived late, there were some more adjustments to do, but we glossed over to avoid waiting more time. Plus some of the artists weren't trusting their skill enough drawing certain types of characters (either women or men, for example) Nevertheless, there was quite an amount of art produced in the past years (our wallets weren't happy).
+
+For these reason, using AI-generated imagery is a potentially useful way to *prototype* scenes, fine tune them, and see whether they "fly" in the context of what they're depicting (sometimes a good idea might have a bad implementation, for example). At this point, one can ask an artist to draw the final composition after gathering enough information.
 
 ## Building upon a memory
 
+The second reason involves memories, or rather, **fading** memories. Around twenty years ago, or perhaps a little more (in the 1999-2002 period), back when high speed Internet had just arrived in my country but I was stuck with a 28.8K modem (or an even more unreliable 56K one). At the time, I somehow found myself on Japanese sites, although at the time, I didn't understand even a single word of what was written. One of these sites was an aggregator called *Surfer's Paradise* (or "surpara").
+
+Clicking at random through the list of the "newly added" sites made me end up on an artist's page: I do not know who it was. Even more clicking around, and I found myself in the rough sketch (らくがき) section, and in particular my attention was attracted by the drawing (rough) of a girl with light blue, long hair, wearing a futuristic armor (a mixture of black, white and green), with a shield and a blade that sprung out of a vambrace on the right wrist. A scribbled text next to it read "i-Girl" (note, this is **not** a more famous image of an "i-Girl" related to the iMac). I liked the concept, and fantasized a bit on it. That's how "Maya" (at the time without a family name) was born.
+
+{{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/maya-shocked.png" size="600x" caption="I'm... I'm the copy of someone else's memory?" >}}
+
+However, I was never able to find the drawing again. I don't even remember the web page, and the image was not on any of the many backups I made. I remember saving it, but it was likely lost. So for many years, "Maya" was just an idea that kept going back and forth in my head.
+
+## What AI art gets near-perfectly
+
+## What isn't that great
+
+## Is it really low-effort?
+
+## Will the AI overlords replace humans?
+
+## Conclusions