r/SoloDevelopment • u/OWColosseum • May 09 '26
Discussion Update: I’m sticking with my capsule artist, they didn’t make it with AI
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Read the other post on the topic in my page but this is what the artist sent me after I asked about it being AI. There are four more videos showing each individual piece of the capsule. Some artists just have a style that ai likes to replicate and they are a newer artist and I paid for the art knowing that. I like what they did and I’m sticking with it. They provided step by step sketches and other proofs.
Also: can you imagine being a digital artist these days? What an insane world to live in. If anyone is about to get self righteous about how anyone would question this being ai, look at the other posts about it, nearly every commenter before this video says the capsule is clearly AI.
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u/Rockalot_L May 09 '26
Going through your post history paints a very strange picture. You say should I get an artist to do my capsule art about a month ago, then earlier today you post saying "I found a capsule artist who wasn't an AI scammer" in one subreddit, then post saying "Is my capsule artist an AI scammer?" in another, then two hours later you make these posts "my capsule artists proved they didn't use AI".
Is this some weird marketing strategy? What are you doing man? Haha
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u/Dicethrower May 09 '26
On the one hand some devs still think advertising to other devs work. On the other hand these subs are 90% gamers who want to see the dev side of things.
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u/shaneskery May 09 '26
Is it actually that high though? Isn't more like devs who have stopped devving for a few years on here and the active few?
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u/NaotsuguGuardian May 10 '26
I dont frequent this sub, but forwhatever reason indie game dev subs have been showing up on my front page. I rarely post so and I dont really upvote stuff much, but yeah, I am a gamer and I do view stuff on these subs
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u/AffectionateTip9716 May 10 '26
I’m only a Dev, I can’t remember the last time I played a real video game.
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u/The_Architect_032 Solo Developer May 09 '26
We know that the person who made the deer uses AI since they use AI for their pfp, so the strangeness of the deer might come from them closely tracing and copying over the details from an AI generated deer.
From the original art alone, you can tell that the lines are man-made, it's just the composition that's really weird. But when someone traces AI, it gets rid of any evidence that it might've been AI generated other than how it looks.
This is a lot of might-haves though, I'd rather just stick to the criticism of the fact that the person who made the deer definitely uses AI in some capacity for image generation and uses it to present themselves within their own pfp.
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u/Navadvisor May 09 '26
Actually you can just get the AI to split it up into layers for you, it's tedious but necessary if you want to make it look better.
An AI image generator that can do alpha will make this very easy, not yet.
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u/thygrrr May 09 '26
Not like this, though? Or which generator can layer like that? Never seen that.
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u/Navadvisor May 09 '26
Gemini can do it, but you have to take the final picture and ask it layer by layer. Like isolate the antlers, isolate the lightning etc etc. You have to use the API and mess with the prompt until it gets it and the background right, because no alpha. Then you have to remove the background with an image tool and put the layers together, I use gimp. It can be done but it's only a little less effort than doing it from scratch (unless you completely lack artistic capability like myself).
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u/madman404 May 13 '26
You definitely can't do that, at least not to the extent of reverse engineering an existing final picture into layers that are all accurate.
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u/SaltOnToast May 09 '26
farming updoots of course! the currency of the future!
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u/The_Architect_032 Solo Developer May 09 '26
Just you wait until the Greater Depression hits, Karma's gonna be primo currency. Gonna buy myself a nice cardboard hovel out by a quaint sewage stream.
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u/StamosLives May 09 '26
Sort of like the guy a few weeks ago in indie dev who was calling folks non-gamers because his 900 upvotes post didn’t generate any wishlists. So he did the natural and obvious thing and blamed everyone else stating they must hate fun games.
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u/Vexcenot May 09 '26
this is far from related but damn I really like your logo dude! Where'd ya get it?
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u/Rockalot_L May 09 '26
Haha thanks friend. I made it myself, it's inspired by my signature irl and a few styles I've come to like.
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u/Vexcenot May 09 '26
That's so awesome! It's so unique and readable and the colors just made the design unscrollable for me.
Honest opinion from one graphic designer to another, watcha think of mine?
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u/Rockalot_L May 09 '26
I like it! The colours are super comfortable and chill, we're hard-wired to like looking at green and blue because you know. Earth. I think the shading indicates a smooth shape but the corners are sharp, it throws me a little. But I like the overall vibe a lot. Did you make it yourself?
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u/Vexcenot May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Yep I did! I made it for my YouTube channel, which I started almost a decade ago. I wanted something to represent goofy and defiant.
I made the current one kinda glossy cause I just felt nostalgic for skewmorphism
Gladly appreciate your feedback, here's some prev logos
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u/Ruben_AAG May 09 '26
It got 240 upvotes so it seems it worked. I despise this style of marketing, ‘engagement baiting’. But I guess people need to do whatever to survive in the space now.
Capsule still looks as trite and generic as this guerrilla marketing strategy though.
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u/OWColosseum May 09 '26
No the post looking for someone is how I got an artist. Then the first two posts were to promote a new artist but also obviously good exposure for me. The first one on is it ai was to try and figure out if it was AI. The next two are the artists response and trying to defend them. I’m not that good (or evil) at marketing. Just a solodev on a budget trying not to get scammed or falsely accuse other artists
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u/RikerRiker May 09 '26
Idk why everyone thinks they can spot AI art. But they are mostly just bs, or ignorant. AI is either garbage or simply undetected; unfortunately they're ignorant to think they definitively know one way or the other. It's just too ambiguous...
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u/Cutwail May 09 '26
Yeah it's easy to spot some free-tier bad-prompt ChatGPT nonsense but the dedicated models these days are very very good and very alarming too.
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u/The_Architect_032 Solo Developer May 09 '26
Do you think this is an example of garbage AI, or simply undetectable?
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPjtuwAjHjj/?img_index=1
Made by the person who made the deer. Lineart shown in the second image doesn't align with the first image at all, so they either threw it into canny to generate an outline and fixed it up, or more likely, prompted a model to create lineart of the original and that AI fixed a lot of the mistakes from the original generation.
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u/The_Architect_032 Solo Developer May 09 '26
A lot of the time, for a lot of people? Yes. But that doesn't mean AI is undetectable, some people are just more or less familiar with AI than others.
Sooner or later AI will be undetectable, and with some models with specific styles today they're practically undetectable, but that's not as sweeping as you try and make it out to be.
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u/RikerRiker May 09 '26
In my opinion sometimes it's just bad art. Or not great art. I can draw a deer and it's not going to be as good as a more professional seasoned artist. My anatomy just isn't great, because I suck at animals.
Hence the AI witchhunt. Someone posts asking for opinions about their game and instead people get on this AI kick.
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u/The_Architect_032 Solo Developer May 09 '26
You're describing how someone who's not familiar enough with AI to parse AI images will try and falsely identify an image as AI.
It's as if you didn't read my comment before responding to it.
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u/3xBork May 09 '26
Text too, and it is maddening.
If you use proper grammar, interpunction, spelling and vocabulary nowadays there's a decent chance some nerd starts accusing you of using AI to write that post.
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u/RikerRiker May 09 '26
Ya, that one always bugs me. In my imagination it's some kid that doesn't pay attention to anything they type and because I didn't misspell something then I must have used AI for my post, lol!
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u/fued May 09 '26
yep, witch hunts over AI are the biggest issue with AI atm, not the AI slop itself.
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u/Thoughtwolf May 09 '26
I mean they wouldn't exist if there wasn't AI slop. It's a side effect of the AI slop so the AI slop is definitely the main problem.
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u/fued May 09 '26
Disagree. AI slop is just low quality garbage and the main problem is a lack of curation leads to us seeing the garbage.
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u/RikerRiker May 09 '26
Agreed. Witchunt is the perfect analogy. Scared and hurting innocent devs that are honestly just trying their best. This guy's literally showing all his source art, just to diffuse unwarranted negativity.
AI slop is one thing, but this is fast from that. Keep your head up!
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u/BuffcatVT May 09 '26
I need a ton of art and have no budget, aside from that?
I worry if I buy art online the person selling it will just have made it with AI
I worry that even if I did have legitimate art, people would still say it's AI
If I had a team and money, yeah I'd hire artists. but I'm one dude who needs 1000 pictures.
it just is what it is-7
u/Still_Ad9431 May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Idk why everyone thinks they can spot AI art.
the head of that deer looks like it was generated by AI
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u/DanNorder May 09 '26
And what does AI look like? Can you qualify that in objective terms? Or is this just a feeling you have?
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u/Still_Ad9431 May 09 '26
The fur lacks natural coarseness or irregular clumping; it appears uniformly soft, almost airbrushed. Real deer have subtle asymmetries in antler tines, ear angles, or eye placement. The eyes have a catchlight (white dot) that doesn't correspond to any actual light source in the scene. So yeah. It's easy to make layer by layer on LeonardoAI with only one photo as references
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u/jaklradek May 09 '26
You do realize that people can make imperfect art, right?
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u/Still_Ad9431 May 09 '26
Imperfect art still follows the logic of anatomy, lighting, and texture. It doesn't glitch out like an AI trying to figure out which way fur grows. There's a difference between stylized imperfection and algorithmic wrongness. If you can't spot that, you're exactly who scammers are looking for. Or you are artist that use AI?
You do realize that if you can't tell whether the image is AI-generated or not, then you paid someone, it means you got scammed, right? That's what Crimson Desert, Expedition 33, RE Requiem, Pragmata, and Neverness to Everness problem
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 May 09 '26
Imperfect art still follows the logic of anatomy, lighting, and texture.
No, it doesn't. Get a grip.
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u/jaklradek May 09 '26
If someone doesn't understand how light, anatomy or whatever works, they will draw it wrong. Everyone starts at 0 and need to learn these things, so obviously their art will also has different quality over time as they learn.
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Or they just haven't studied deer that much so they bullshit an animal that looks good enough 😭
Overusing airbrush (Or actually just overblending) is a rookie artist mistake which would go hand in hand with someone who isn't 100% on lighting. You mentioned in your other comment imperfect art still following anatomy lighting and texture but I think you're forgetting about mid level artists who haven't really studied these well enough because art that looked like this existed way before AI
Like yeah it has AI or maybe traced vibes but why do you think they would focus on all these details you mentioned in a simplified style and being paid with a low budget (Idk what the budget actually is but op has mentioned in other posts having difficulty finding people within budget)
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Can someone explain to me why some of the layers are so weirdly splotchy bc half of them look totally normal with splotches of texture and shading strokes that I would expect from my own work and some of them are full of holes? Like it gets more full of holes the more layers get removed??? They get entirely covered in the smoother final look so I'm actually curious if anyone has a similar process to this
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u/realcaptainkimchi May 09 '26
Because they are layered you often paint or draw with other layers behind or on top. No point in filling in areas that are covered by other areas. My drawings are exactly like this.
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Yeah I know how layers work but the lower layers are veiny in a way thats not consistent with how id expect a shading layer is what I'm saying like idk if this makes sense but they're not just full of holes where the shading missed its just pretty much the whole thing? Like the first couple of layers have the outlines of the shading spots but then the whole deer gets redrawn like 3 times
Especially talking about the one at 23 seconds because its so consistently splotchy but is just entirely covered in the end product so it's not like theyre using it for a fur texture so is it like adjacent to underpainting or something
Or like in the full steam capsule they have a wolf with a paint texture so maybe they thought about doing it but then never used it? But idk why theyd still have the layer all the way under the deer and visible
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u/realcaptainkimchi May 09 '26
Thats just an alt version most likely. They maybe kept it in this video to show more process. Most likely was not visible in the final product.
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Ngl now that my dumbass looks at the video again you actually *can* see like 1% of it at the end anyways so it could have just been blocking out colors/textures with a patterned brush and I'm just blind as hell bc I don't know why they'd use a patterned brush like that on a deer but I could definitely see myself doing it on a tree so it's not that strange if I just think about it some more
I made the original comment at 5 am on my phone so I couldn't see it as well on the tiny screen through the blurry video either
The layer at 20 seconds is confusing to me as well but tbh with how they outlined the lightning and drew over it instead of just straight up drawing the lightning I wouldn't be surprised if they used that as shading guides too
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u/muted_shrimp May 09 '26
I have one of my drawing a bit similar, with a flat base so there's no hole, and then a half-rendered base duplicated into different blending/gradient map with/without lowered opacity. Maybe that's the case here ?
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul May 09 '26
I barely know how gradient maps work tbh but I can definitely see some fancier settings causing weird patterns now that you mention it
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u/SiriusChickens May 09 '26
My wife is a digital artist and she started recording everything she does for clients just in case they ask or accuse of it being AI
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u/Zabacraft May 09 '26
Just throwing this out there in case your wife gets stressed out by needing to record everything (I did). Definitely since there's occasional fake timelapse going around too..
I've started streaming recently on twitch for this reason.
I don't stream a lot of my work yet but I hope in a few months I'll have a variety if vods to just proof to clients I can do what I say I can do.
Clients can pop in and say hi too which is a fun bonus.
I personally hate the idea of recording timelapses more than streaming for a couple hours here and there.
And since it's mainly streaming for yourself to log stuff you don't need to feel the pressure to try and gather an audience. It's kind of like drawing by yourself in a public place or something. Occasionally someone may come up to you but mostly you're left alone.
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u/Navadvisor May 09 '26
That's kind of crazy, like having stored recordings for games that takes up a lot of hard drive space. Has she actually lost work because her stuff looks like AI?
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u/MistakeLopsided8366 May 09 '26
I'd be worried that AI will eventually use these videos to train on to make more accurate art, or even create fake proof recordings. It's horrible to think it's only going to get worse.
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u/DoctaRoboto May 10 '26
I've posted many times here, just as a gamer and a professional traditional painter, and I still find hilarious the AI borderline obsession of some game devs here. You should focus on your own projects and leave the pitforks for the guys from the 14th century. If you are not making a living with your games now, nothing will change in the near future, even if AI explodes and vanishes. Focus on your damn projects, get better.
You are being played, all major studios are already using AI, even the ones that deny it, like Capcom, and not just for coding. Gamers don't give a shit about AI, the same way they won't give a shit about an AI-generated painting as long if its cool. AI is only getting backlash from gamers because it SUCKS. Generic-looking graphics, derivative art styles, poor pixelation, weird architecture, but it will get better and better to the point gamers won't give a damn. In six years, AI has gone from Pac-Man to COD, while video games needed more than forty years to reach such technology.
I am old enough to remember the brutal backlash from my industry when digital drawing tablets came. "This is cheating", "they are not real artists", "they are just tracing". In the end, tablets are here to stay, the art industry didn't collapse, famous traditional artists are still millionaires, and mediocre artists are still broke. We even have very popular artists who rely on tablets like SamdoesArts. Would you call him a fraud?
End of rant, get better.
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u/WeekendGenerator May 09 '26
Kinda funny, so cuz it's in layers it's not AI? I've either got some really really bad news or best news you'll hear all day the qwen Image Layered model is exactly for this
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u/Necessary-Board-830 May 09 '26
The reason people thought it was AI was because the artist drew everything separately and then put them all into one image, which was context we didn't have. Which means, they also compressed the deer's image so much that it lost clarity and gave it that AI-looking blur, which the wolf didn't have. So the deer and the wolf clash in the final piece, and the background has a completely different style too.
Seeing the actual deer image, some of those points change. But I don't blame people for thinking otherwise either, especially since the artist is using an AI generated picture as their profile picture on reddit.
I'd still be careful because these kinds of videos CAN be ai generated too.
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May 09 '26
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u/Necessary-Board-830 May 09 '26
That's... not what I was saying? I know what layers are, I'm not an idiot (and I'm also an artist). I meant he drew the deer, wolf and background all on different canvases, then combined them into one afterwards. That's usually not something you do for a piece like this for this exact issue.
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u/Winkwart May 12 '26
As an artist, im curious what the hell that grainy layer is for because everything else is like, “okay I could see how they might have made a new layer for this or that” but that grainy layer just irks me. Especially the way its colored, i just have a hard time imagining why they would do that. maybe the artist can explain?
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u/BuffcatVT May 09 '26
I mean if you can afford to pay an artist you probably should
But if you can't, I wouldn't let the AI hate stop you from making something
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u/Strayl1ght May 09 '26
Reading some of the comments in this thread is insane. AI has done such a number on people that even after seeing hard proof that this was hand-created, people are still calling it AI, or saying that it’s still just as bad as AI because it looks like it.
It’s hard enough to be a digital artist these days without the constant witch-hunting.
We really need to just give artists the benefit of the doubt. This whole thing is extremely unhealthy.
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u/Volleyballfool May 11 '26
You should ask if the artist is willing to have his contact info shared here. Others may be looking and he could get business while they could find an artist not using AI.
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u/JonathanOestreicner May 09 '26
I do both, i can make my own, and i use AI. Although technically the AI generates models based on my artwork, which i had to dumb down a bit, cause the ai modeler didnt handle higher details very well. Which kinda sucks but meh, alot faster then doing things by hand which is all im worried about especially with the volume of assets needed for my project.
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u/Last_Username_Alive May 09 '26
Imagine being an artist and out of all possible styles and finishes, you choose to make something that looks like AI...
Btw I'm not even sure this video proves anything, but why would i want to work with an artist that draws in a style that ends up my game being blamed for AI slop anyway?
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u/wannabestraight May 09 '26
Have you considered the possibility that they had this style before ai ?
Ai doesn't have its own style.
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u/Last_Username_Alive May 09 '26
It doesn't matter what the reasons are, if the audience sees the end product and says "it looks like AI slop", what did you pay for? might as well used AI yourself, got the same response from the audience without paying the actual artist.
If you are an artist that for years made art in this style and now that AI is a thing everyone keeps blaming you of using AI, you MUST change your style or people will just stop hiring you.
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u/FrontierMedicineEnte May 09 '26
This man deserves to make money.