blog
- Started 22 years ago
- Last post 5 hours ago
- 76,227 Responses
- canoe9
Greetings from Rome
- Ciao! How're you liking it?Continuity
- https://i.pinimg.com…pablo28
- Last time I was there I stayed at a convent that has a guest house, Trinità dei MontiGnash
- I went to spend some time with the anamorphic frescoes there. The history of perspective is fascinatingGnash
- Salute the pope!OBBTKN
- Bro say hi to Russel Crowe at the Colosseumgrafician
- @Continutity - More amazing than I expected. In Florence now, rented transportation, excited to wind around Tuscany tomorrow.canoe
- Amalfi tour was yesterday, incredible.canoe
- Welcome to Europe bro lolgrafician
- We got wines and mountains and clear waters and shitgrafician
- oh yeah, all of Europe is just fucking perfect ... * eye rollmonospaced
- Settle down, JD.Continuity
- Yurimon vibes, have you ever even left the shire?
How many European countries have you lived in?palimpsest
- NBQ00-5
Saw my co-worker's wife on a dating app the other day. And they're married just recently and have a few months old baby together. I knew she was cheating on him before because somebody told me about her going to sex parties but I didn't think she would still cheat on him when they got married and have a kid.
So I told him about it and showed him screenshots of her dating app profile. She even had pics on it that he took of her.
His reaction was of somebody who just dismissed it in ignorance and wouldn't want to know the truth as to not shake up his little world. Can't blame him but it's fucked up of her.
- or maybe he's into it? or maybe this is the next chapter in Catpower's erotica series on QBN._niko
- Plot twist you found her on a brown dating app - Binder or was it plenty of shish_niko
- You're one of the weirdest people around here. Want to buy you a beer sometimes if we meet this year!grafician
- lol thanks. But highly unlikely we'll ever meet :)NBQ00
- grafician-7
What was your SAT score?
- 1599utopian
- 1489OBBTKN
- nobody caresmonospaced
- B+********
- Over 9000i_monk
- Why?canoe
- Discussing the SAT system with friends, basically we are like 1400-1600 equiv from our European Baccalaureate with 1-2 weeks of learning before examsgrafician
- We had Local language, English, Math, IT, Economics or Biology and Sports to passgrafician
- Apparently even drunk af we could've had high scores on SATsgrafician
- I believe you can take the SAT there. Have any of your friends you were talking to taken the SAT?monospaced
- https://miro.medium.…pango
- sausages5
We bought a house and found a shrine in the forest. 6 foot cross, seats, and something buried there. Likely a dog or cat (but possibly/hopefully a midget).
- renderedred1
So, my parents got worried and contacted me after they saw:
Of course there is/was no earthquake. What kind of a bullshit reality we live in?
- Since neither Blain nor Sfar have published anything lately... this is the closest thing in style ¯\_(ツ)_/¯OBBTKN
- WRONG thread, sorry :)OBBTKN
- And related to your post... Tell your parents to stay away from social media for a while. So sorry RR.OBBTKN
- I know, I know... Thanks.renderedred
- This probably really plays to peoples fear of a wrath of godmonospaced
- thumb_screws6
Dating in your 40s is weird as fuck. Especially when you’ve not been in it for a couple decades.
- Good luck, brother (and have fun!!) <3PonyBoy
- Cheers pony.thumb_screws
- Catpower perfected it********
- What age range are the women in and are they mostly divorced? Is it weird because of baggage or because they’re all into some kinky ass shit!_niko
- Might as well give up.NBQ00
- Anywhere from 30 to 45 yo. Been about a 50/50 split divorce. It’s been heaps of so far. So many into ethical non monogamy too.thumb_screws
- HookersBusterBoy
- Gardener8
I'm following the news of the earthquake in Asia and feel so sorry for the lovely people of Burma. I had a very memorable visit in the late 80's and never forgot their kindness and hospitality, it was my favourite of all the East Asian countries I travelled in.
- The ancient temple city of Pagan in particular was so beautiful, I still dream about it nearly 40 years later.Gardener
- Looks dope! Nice Brazil teePhanLo
- great tshirthans_glib
- ty, when I set off travelling I took several promo tee's from my old job working in a cinema - still have several nice posters including a rare Brazil oneGardener
- I kid you not, the old fella with my skinny ass was a tour guide for the Shwedagon in Rangoon and introduced himself as Bond, James Bond, lolGardener
- I kept a diary at the time too, lots were in code in case I ever had in confiscated at a border, with tales of debauch enough to put Midnight Express to shame!Gardener
- it confiscatedGardener
- I've been in Burma for less than 24 hours, but had one of the most fucked up experiences of my life.
Feel bad for people therezaq
- bainbridge0
Most male rapper's lyrics are really bad.
Ever listened to a Drake song? It's not even coherent and there are few complete sentences.
Remember when Eminem and others actually told stories?
- SYGO thread, but yeahjagara
- Still, there is something really cool and futuristic sounding about tracks like this. Rap is more vibe & delivery and less lyric oriented now.jagara
- If you think about it, mainstream rap is a dumb as it was in the bling days, for instance. It's just different dumb. Go listen to some Ma$e and report back.jagara
- Lyrical rap still has a mainstream presence - Kendrick for instance.jagara
- https://youtu.be/rIv…jagara
- This song is from seven years ago, you old geezer********
- It would be like complaining about “Walk like an Egyptian” but in 1994 lol********
- To be fair, trap rap moves pretty slow. Very little sonic progress since Astroworld. IMHO, not a connaisseur.jagara
- jagara2
Not making a novel point here, but...
I think in the very near future, I think for the vast majority of mainstream uses, most non-discerning people without knowledge and respect for art (most people) will just use AI instead of hiring an illustrator. Good AI stuff - at least in the eyes of most people - looks ranging from "fine" and "adequate" to "great".
And it's cheap or free.
"Hire and illustrator? Yeah, and let's hire a scribe to write out our emails, too. Jeez."
Saddening...
- It was amazing how quickly illustrators I know who did covers and for indie bands said their work just disappeared once AI got just about good enoughPhanLo
- I worked as a commercial illustrator from about 2003-2008, and in my experience it all started to die then, long before AI. The dominance of digital...Horp
- pocketable media dictated style rules that meant almost anyone could do a passable illustration. The arc of descent already existed in 2010.Horp
- It was a total failure on Apple devices, there is no commercial use for generative AI.grafician
- Trends change. Can't expect handrawn style that was trendy in the 90's to still be hot. Just as the flat minimalist characters with huge limbs are dying out.NBQ00
- AI can emulate and recycle what's been done but good illustrators who can innovate or have a very distinct style will still be successfulNBQ00
- @NBQ00 just talking about human illustrators, both analog and digital.jagara
- NBQ00-3
I think it's cool that Kendrick Lamar is only 5'6 tall. Goes to show you don't have to be super tall to make it.
- Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, Napoleon Bonaparte********
- Adolf, Mussolini...OBBTKN
- Peter Dinklagepango
- George Washington was 6’2”, and America became greatest country in the world. Coincidence? I thinketh not, my countrymen.********
- great in what way?pango
- https://www.youtube.…pango
- Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, Napoleon Bonaparte
- noneck0
Last night we took some shrooms and watched this Alan Watts dome experience. Probably one of the most enjoyable things I will do this year.
- Horp6
Bouncing off Jagara's thoughts about ai and commercial illustration in a previous post below...
I think it's already over. It's already killed that industry. It's tangential but feels relevant to say that I've fairly recently got to know somebody with *absolutely zero* experiemce in art, illustration, creative industries (literally not from any relatable world to image making) but she now uses ai to prompt up artwork that she sells as drop shipped items via Etsy and many ither places.
She's gone from knowing nothing at all but being curious, to creating ranges of prints, clothing brands, homeware brands, soft furnishing brands, and setting up online retail, retaining a team of helpers around the world to do her marketing, her social media, and to create websites with all the shopper stuff to order and pay.
She's been doing it for just two years as a side hustle but is now looking to quit her job to focus on it full time.
Everything is copyright free, and she doesn't need to know how to create any of the images. She just picks a theme, describes the vibe, and then chooses what she wants to add to her retail points.
I can look at it all and be sniffy, saying she isn't the actual artist, but that's pointless at this point now. After her day of work, with almost zero effort, she can generate 30 artworks and have them shown on product and available to order in a matter of a few hours.
To create just 1 artwork would take me 1 day, and it might not be any good, and people might not like it, and they might say "can that part be red and could that say something else?" and I'd have to it all again to comply.
This new situation re-separates art from commerce once more; a distinction blurred when Pear's Soap first commissioned an artist to paint them a portrait for use as an advertisement.
Now there is commercial image, made with appropriate economy for the task in hand, and there is art... valuable for being human made and one of a kind and purchased because it appeals to the buyer.
I can't help thinking that's okay, and is what has always happened.
Sure, I feel sad for all the commercial illustrators no longer able to rely on that as a career; but I saw the writing on the wall back in 2008 and got out. Sometimes it's necessary to accept that a career line has closed down and to seek out a new one.
My friend who I mentioned at the start of this post received a production sample of a range of kitchen glassware she's decided to do when I was at her house. It arrived Saturday lunchtime.
She had prompted up the designs a week earlier, sourced a factory to produce them, and then they sent her a vintage looking glass sippy cup with etched and coloured graphics on it. For free. Less than two weeks after she submitted her range design. It's exactly as per her visual. The product design, and the graphical branding/illustration.
It's immaculate. She's not spent a single penny getting to that point, and as of now 24 hours later that range is on Etsy and other places, and she's taking orders. The factory produce what she needs and send it out directly with her branding and packaging.
She does nothing.
How is anybody going to compete with that? With your quality? With your uniqueness? With your skill? With your training?
- It's all about ideation now. That's it. We can still own that domain, should we choose to. But we don't, because it's Wrong.Nairn
- Inspiring story********
- I agree it's not inspiring for the creative community, but it's happening. It's am economic and commercial reality. Very little has true value in this paradigm.Horp
- My friend literally conjures up entire ranges, and factories around the world can produce them on demand. It's not just the creative community...Horp
- facing oblivion, it's mass production, marketing, retail, trade, distribution, mamagement... the labour market, the working class, the middle class...Horp
- all of it facing redundancy and oblivion. But if you want to start selling kites or light fittings or watches or pet accessories or vases, you can, instantly.Horp
- So AI slop goes irl mainstreamgrafician
- < this story is most probably an exception, no proof this will be the norm going forward, so can we chill?grafician
- This girl's real talent seems to be hustle and drive. Hope success comes to anyone putting in effort.BonSeff
- I think there are actually a lot of people like this if you look on sites like Etsy. The quality of the stuff is not that great but they are just reallyyuekit
- dedicated to marketing like BonSeff said. But there are so many different things people need design and illustration for and I'm not convinced everyone is goingyuekit
- to be using the same AI image generators.yuekit
- Thing is, even this is not safe. Soon you'll be able to ask an AI agent to all this for you. At that point why would anyone pay for a sippy cup on Etsy, ...skinny_puppy
- When they can get something even more personalized generated and produced by a team of agents. The only one winning in that world is the factory.skinny_puppy
- There will be likely be a backlash at some point and some people will come to value hand made things that cannot be produced in a factory.skinny_puppy
- its about about stylisation.. how can u bring the a.i to a point that it doesnt look like all the other a.i stuffneverscared
- i agree the factory will be even more superior... and that will create and anti-market for most...neverscared
- It seems to me that so is a step change in efficiency for an illustrator. The same illustrator that did one piece will now be expected to do 10 or 20 or 100.monNom
- He’ll be able to do it with the so tool. Guiding the style and the content and thinking. The end user will get a richer experience, and in more places.monNom
- Case in point, I stumbled into a documentary about a canal in Canada. - very niche. It featured what looked like ai map art. Animation. Historical illustrationsmonNom
- The production quality was far in excess of what would make sense for that content a few years ago. AI makes it possible for a small crew to make big things.monNom
- Curious to see her shop. But I disagree with you in that she does put in tons of work in managing marketing and production plus don’t forget the biggest_niko
- Thing which is her taste, she’s obviously able to create things in a style that is appealing and sells which is the biggest hurtle and her real talent._niko
- Exactly.
"with almost zero effort"
"She does nothing"
Her effort and work are elsewhere as are her rewards.palimpsest - She merits her success by the parameters you are judging success on.palimpsest
- One way to look at this is if you just dove in and used AI to the maximal extent possible, what could you achieve?yuekit
- In the words of Ivan Drago: "If we die, we die".palimpsest
- canoe7
"Welcome to Europe bro lol... We got wines and mountains and clear waters and shit"
- graficianNot my first time. I lived in Barcelona, visited family in France and went to my sister's engagement party in Ireland. (And lived in Argentina and Peru where of course they don't have any wine, clean water and mountains, especially not in the Andes)
But what I find hilarious about your comment is that I live less than a quarter mile from a Great Lake on a peninsula where we have 20+ vineyards, with rolling hill backdrops covered in apple and cherry orchards with rivers and streams cutting through everything, not to mention a national park 25 minutes away on miles and miles of beaches that run into ski resorts.
But go ahead and keep telling us about your SAT tests that you'd ace while doing shots of whatever Romanians like to drink to get over their inferiority complex.
- nobody nothing
canoe wait I remembered something graf said that time
¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯grafician - Good for you bro, live that beautiful life!grafician
- Are you bragging about a Great Lake? Aren’t they a bit toxic********
- Only if you’re a misinformed neckbeardmonospaced
- First, I'm not bragging, I'm defending myself against "grafician bullshit" assuming there's no wine, clean water and mountains in the United States.canoe
- 2nd, Lake Eerie can get some bad algal blooms, and I'm sure there's toxicity around certain industrial areas, but in general no, we eat whitefish, walleye, etc.canoe
- A lot of people don’t grasp how vast and beautiful and pristine a lot of the USA is, because they only hear about the big cities and suburbs.monospaced
- https://www.google.c…canoe
- nobody nothing
- NBQ000
I hate bright and white clothes. Just bought a cool white sweater on Saturday and put it on today for the first time and it has a stain on it already from a little chocolate piece that touched it for a fraction of a second when it bounced off.
- https://www.youtube.…********
- Same, bought some white jeans last summer, only had a chance to wear them once...canoe
- "Chocolate"OBBTKN
- https://www.youtube.…
- palimpsest9
If a monkey can do better work than you, it’s not on the monkey, it’s on you.
Bouncing off Horp’s thoughts about Jagara’s thoughts on AI and commercial illustration. This isn’t just about the rise of the AI-powered Etsy entrepreneur, it’s about the quiet admission that the monkey wins. Her success is measured by commercial results, but her work by artistic standards, as if she’s breaking some unwritten rule. But there are no rules in nature. She’s doing exactly what the system rewards: speed, adaptability, orchestration. That’s not nothing, that’s fluency.
The real tension isn’t about AI, or even art. It’s about conceding that the terrain has shifted, and that effort, skill, and uniqueness no longer anchor value the way they used to. If the monkey wins under new conditions, blaming the monkey misses the point. The question isn’t whether she should be allowed to play, it’s whether you’re still playing the right game. And whether you should be playing that game in the first place.
- Or as Iverson might say: we’re talking about practice. Not the game. Practice.palimpsest
- The complete disregard for IP is appalling though.monospaced
- @pali yes, unfortunately, but yes.skinny_puppy
- IP is about ownership as a proxy for authorship. People will give more credit to a paint-by-numbers kit than to a well-constructed AI prompt.palimpsest
- One follows the rules. The other builds them.The disregard for IP is only appalling if you believe execution is more meaningful than conception.palimpsest
- Hmmmmmonospaced
- It's not on the monkey or you, it's on a broken system that incentivizes cutting every corner to separate labour from wealth.i_monk
- there are no rules in nature ? ever heard of law of thermodynamics...or gravity... + there are rules in culture ... its called regulation.. and copyright...neverscared
- thats what sets civilisation about from nature... otherwise monkey with kinves...neverscared
- I remember when I got a speeding ticket for falling too fast. Gaia wasn't happy.palimpsest
- Everything that can happen will happen, eventually.palimpsest
- gaia was happy.. because your fast driving caused higher co2 emissions and u got punished...neverscared
- when the lion is hungry he eats... thats the lawneverscared
- Can't argue with that!palimpsest
- Lions fail to catch their prey more often than not, to say nothing of all the adaptations that have evolved to evade/defend against them.i_monk
- Banding together to resist predation is a universal constant...i_monk
- If nature proposed a law of Universal Basic Prey I would totally be for it.
Another thing to ponder, do the laws of nature go against lions eating a Whopper?palimpsest - the cyborg lion needs only electricity...neverscared
- @paly AI, actually had a point. That interview was hours after a heated argument about running it back for the Finals, and Larry Brown finally relented..garbage
- ..set up a conference about him coming back, and all he was getting was questions about practice. Add to that, AI's best friend was just murdered.garbage
- Imagine a shouting match with your AD, you're almost fired, then not fired, everyone heard it in the hallway, an all-hands is called to clear the air..garbage
- ..and all anybody wants to talk about is your creative process. Oh my god we're mixing Philly metaphors, I'm out.garbage
- nicely stated.utopian
- Pretty sure this was all covered in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"yuekit
- https://asinomasimpl…palimpsest
- DaveO7
Adding on to the AI discourse above, i saw this article this morning:
https://www.nytimes.com/interact…
Quite an interesting read with the examples of very Gen X careers (Rock & Roll music journalist was the clearest). Weirdly it reminded me of everyones obsession with learning flash and code in the late 90s. It definitely struck me to read things like 'graphic design / photography' in the lead, but its the same story where successive generations have a different landscape to the previous, and the winners adapt.
My wife used to work on music videos as a stylist in the mid 2000s and they had seemingly infinite money. 10 years later that industry as a fraction of what it was, and then another 10 later and its barely an industry. She is in a corpirate creative director role now, as the styling fell off very sharply after 2012
I am constantly hearing older colleagues talk about how different it was back then when they had real money to do shoots, how they shot for a week and came back with amazing 10 stills but that's pretty anachronistic now, and the skill is how you adapt to working with what you have (tools and budget).
I use AI to generate storyboards and style frames, but then i still also get an artist to draw up frames for me when its specific, so its a combination of bot. I feel glad to be able to support a traditional creative skill in some way.
Someone once told me that 'AI won't replace you, but someone using it might'
FWIW – that girl mentioned about sounds like a great business person, but ultimately selling something pretty disposable – and thats been around since the dawn of capitalism.
- Thank you.monospaced
- My wife sent that to me too! New tools that will only get better each day. We either can adapt and fall under or ride the waves. My 2¢misterhow
- The only ones whining about AI are the creatives it exposed as painfully average on their best day.utopian
- true... tarantino is painfully average...neverscared
- i see a great career in visual arts for trump.. he cant wrap his head around of an UI or brush and colors like bush... but he has the best words.. which makesneverscared
- the nr.1 prompts..neverscared
- “Everyone is an artist”
j.beuysneverscared
- PonyBoy11
I just landed my first prostate-related product website... yeah, you know you're jealous <3
- hahahaha hahahahah
Brilliant.
Signs your getting old?
:)Nairn - LOL! great! keep us posted, i am sure many of us could be interested. i suffer from it.renderedred
- @Nairn "signs" nah man, we ARE old :)renderedred
- Go on.Continuity
- Can't spell "Prostate" without "PRO", bro!ideaist
- Are you working with the geezer agency?canoe
- Are you working on the ‘backend’?prophetone
- Well, your work ethic is a little anal, but you went up against the competition and 'wrecked em'.Akagiyama
- FLOL @ prophetone and AkaContinuity
- hahahaha hahahahah
- OBBTKN16
This year marks my 30th year working, 10 of them full-time solo.
Well, we'll have to celebrate ;)
- robthelad-2
There's a lot of name-calling on the boards these days. I think you fuck face twat flavoured lemon noodle fart sniffing shit sharing blood gurgling spunk pussy nonce pots should show some motherfuckingarsebanditting respect around here.
- Horp3
I have no desire to be trying to one-up on OBBTKN's post below (congrats OBBTKN) because we can't help our age and age related stats...
But reading his post reminded that this is my 40th year working in the industry.
My career started at 15, back in 1985, when I droppped out of school and went on a government training scheme.
I was taught draughting and got placed in the drawing room of a patent office called Forrester Ketley in Birmingham. I was taught to create the technical drawings for patent applications to VERY specific standards, using Rotring pens on Gateway trace.
I was terrible at it. Too messy, my lines were wobbly and shakey, and it would take me days to do one when the other two people in there could do four or five patents a day.
I'd make mistakes, scratch them out with a round ended scalpel blade and scratch a hle through the trace. The patent customers would complain about the appalling patent drawings, which were part of why they paid thousands to apply forn a patent. Like buying a Porsche and being handed a dog-chewed Toyota key.
I was eventually reassigned to a marketing company called Howle Chapman Raymer where I was treated badly but used all of their materials to create a portfolio that got me into art college about four years later.
At art college I started freelancing as a graphic designer for fashion designer Paul Smith.
Cue circa 12 years as a graphic designer, and then a wildly deviating career path through a bunch of roles.
Now, I feel like I've reached the end of my career. The job I have now is highly likely to be my last in the industry. At 55 I doubt I'd be hired anywhere else and I wouldn't want to be. I'm just doing this until for one reason or another it stops, and I wont be sad about that when it does.
Kind of done with it all really. It's not been a bad run though. I did some fun things along the way.
- The regular job market will no doubt snob us after a certain age, but I've always looked up to the 70+ for skills and wisdom vs the hot new thing.spl33nidoru
- I believe those of us who still want to be active past retirement time can be, among the right crowd and with the right skills.spl33nidoru
- People view our activity with romanticism, but the truth is that many times, too many times, it can be brutal!OBBTKN