The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Penny Arcade - Comic - Ultratheft
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Ultratheft
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
+2
Posts
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/04/18/in-the-lair-of-the-semicolon
(How come Mike's name is crossed out in this one but Jerry's isn't crossed out in the comic after it?)
Mike doesn't understand sideways text.
So, to claim there are no barriers to comics, just because they have had the fortune to have most of them bulldozed out of their path, is really condescending.
To be fair, they didn't know some "really savvy business people" in the beginning which resulted in them almost completely losing PA back in the day--because they had no idea what they were doing (by their own admission). The savvy business people was a thing that happened later, and sure it's a good reason why PA continues to be an established company...but they didn't start out there.
Even in the wildest dreams of AI, the intention with an AI tool to "break down barriers to make your own comics", the AI wouldn't help you be a financial successful webcomic celebrity. It would just help you make comics.
So it's fair to say when they say there are no barriers, they mean there's no barriers to making comics. Not to making money off comics.
The point is "if you had to have some innate talent to make comics, we wouldn't be here." The joke being them saying they don't have talent, they just make comics anyway.
I don't think you understand what a "barrier" is. A barrier isn't whether or not you will hit it big. A barrier is someone/something actively standing in your way and blocking you. Like how in the 50s, the color line (aka the color barrier) excluded black players from playing in the MLB.
The color line was broken and decades later any black person can compete in the MLB. There is no color barrier there.
Now, do they have to have talent? Yep! Do they have to get the eye of a scout? Yep! And even before that, do they need to have enough money to be able to practice baseball to become good at it, have enough money to eat, live in a neighborhood where they will survive to adulthood? Not get screwed over by a ridiculous contract? Yep on all those things.
But those barriers are barriers to success in just about any field, and aren't somehow unique baseball. Nor are they unique to comics. So they're already baked into success in life in general.
Hence, comics have no special barriers that aren't just part of life. That doesn't mean you're guaranteed to superstardom, just like being a really good actor doesn't guarantee you to become an A-list celebrity with a string of hit movies.
I'm getting flashbacks to when there were so many webcomics out there. I used to have around a dozen I followed regularly. Then people discovered actually being able to do it for a living was really, really tough and the glut didn't help.
Even being an artist wasn't an impediment. Once the creator of Bob and George showed the world that you could take video game sprites and add writing to them, we were deluged with Megaman sprite comics to the point where said creator once begged people not to make more during a panel. (Bob and George was a Megaman sprite comic the creator even hosted fan made series that did similar so he didn't mind competition. Just drowning the internet in them). Hell, XKCD still going strong shows that you can make a great comic just with stick figures. So ironically, the idea of creating comics without drawing them yourself is hardly new, we're just talking about scraping all of existing art instead of 16 bit sprite sheets.
Admittedly, this does depend on target audience. XKCD specifically targeting math and science nerds means stick figure art probably works better than if Randall was targeting the erotic furry community.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
And for your OCs? Fucking forget about it. Doesn't matter what model or LORA you use.
There are no barriers to making comics.
And besides, if your aim is to steal other people's work, you don't even need AI; just steal people's pictures or drawings, add some text, and call it a meme.
is THis loss is this Loss
The comic isn’t using the phrase “making comics” as shorthand for “making comics for a living.” The strip is about making comics as a creative endeavor. The “barriers” Kaepernick is talking about taking out of the loop (and therefore the barriers Gabe refers to) are creative ones, not financial ones. I promise you that money isn’t what Lumi wants to take out of the loop. They want you to pay for their service, which is designed to take creativity and craft out of the loop.
I expected them to at least get 2 or three panels right. That's only one correct panel, and even that is a stretch.
There's actually a comic artist who posts over on Reddit who uses AI for the comics.
But the trick is they aren't entirely AI generated. He basically does a wireframe sketch, describes what he wants the scene to look like, and then has the AI do the detail work like a junior artist before doing the final touches himself. That actually works surprisingly well. But it's not a case of putting "brilliant webcomic!" in the input bar, he's using AI as a tool. Which is what I've always expected AI to boil down to - it doesn't replace artists or writers, but it massively increases their work output to the point where one creator can pump out way more content. Ultimately still bad for creatives, but not as catastrophic as people were predicting.
Back when neural networks were still the big innovation, Google let loose one they were working on upon Youtube to see what it would learn left to its own devices. It ended up watching a lot of cat videos. The experimental network got really good at recognizing when it was viewing people and cats. I'm not surprised there's still a predilection for cats if you ask an AI to create a meme without further parameters. More so given that "Loss" is kind of old by now and has pretty generic name.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I definitely think it's got some reference to the meme going, if only because it landed on the four panel format. The fact that it's got a prominent vertical figure offcenter in each panel could be deriving from loss memes, or it could just be a coincidence.
Loss is just the sort of thing that I'd expect even AI to be able to stumble into getting correctly, since the main thing it does is discern "should these pixels be arranged in this way" which is essentially what the meme is. I'm a bit surprised it got as far as the four-panel format but didn't get the line orientations right.
I probably should've made the prompt "loss meme"
Almost like I burst frantically into a room only to be met with tragedy.
Actually isn't too far off.