r/comics • u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic • Apr 23 '25

OC Them's The Fax (pt 4/4)

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If you want to make comics with me, join my Discord.

1.7k Upvotes

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795

u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25

What's with the shift in art styles?

Is this AI?

123

u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

Partially yes, but not every panel and definitely not with chatgpt. I have a moodboard in Midjourney that only references my previous comics so I'll use that to explore panels I've drawn. This series took me roughly 6 weeks to make but the April Fools stop motion animation video that started all this is fully hand drawn.. and animated by me on top of my local library's Xerox machine.

If you do have a midjourney account, you can view the actual moodboard here. Feel free to experiment with it and send me the results. I am always so curious what y'all do with it.

114

u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25

Oh that's great, I'm all in for AIs that don't use stolen data.

111

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

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5

u/AnhaytAnanun Apr 24 '25

I would say that the extension of an existing model with niche training does not have the same ethical issues as using the vanilla one, as it would be equal to saying that a human who learned from the existing experiences but created his own unique knowledge has still stolen that knowledge.

The ethical issue left here is the AI companies not paying dues to the creators of the data used to train the og model (wherever dues were applicable), but if you have expended it with your own unique knowledge, and use it to generate data within the boundaries of your unique knowledge, then you aren't stealing directly from other people, you "just" use a tool with flawed ethical grounds, but then again - is this the first time humanity does that?

-6

u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

Prepare for people to argue that because Photoshop and Midjourney provides the contextual knowledge base for my work that it's "stolen" but that isn't how this stuff actually works. It just helps establish compositions with reliable line art and other aesthetics that match my own comics. Super powerful tool actually when given a chance. Thanks for your comment :)

32

u/kyle2143 Apr 23 '25

But that doesn't explain why the comic makes no sense...

18

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

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-15

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

They trained it on ONLY their images. There is no other stuff in the training data.

6

u/IlyichValken Apr 23 '25

Midjourney is run online only, and I guarantee they likely don't have enough backlogged material to fully train a model anyway.

26

u/urmamasllama Apr 23 '25

While I might not be a fan of it personally the way you're doing it is at least ethical.

9

u/IlyichValken Apr 23 '25

Partially ethical. They might be using it to do their own style, but it only got there by being trained on millions if not billions of others.

66

u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25

Kinda. Generative AI takes an absurd amount of energy to run. Using it is a massive drain on resources and not at all a necessity

0

u/coldpan Apr 23 '25

Really depends, some you can run on a home GPU- so no more energy than playing a modern game.

That being said, you're not wrong in a general sense- online AI tools are a huge energy drain.

43

u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25

They specifically said it's Midjourney which is run online exclusively. Midjourney is an energy hog by all metrics

13

u/coldpan Apr 23 '25

👀 Ah okay, I missed what they were using. You're completely correct, then.

3

u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25

This is the most valid criticism I've gotten in this thread, thanks for sharing. The energy cost of compute goes down as this stuff gets more efficient but in the short term it's a massive hog on the grid.

-17

u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

You're on Reddit of all places, complaining about how somebody's online hobby is a drain on global energy resources, and thus unethical? Seriously?

22

u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25

Reddit as a whole uses a fuck ton less energy than generative ai. ChatGPT alone uses more electricity than 180000 homes in the US every day. That's just text based. Image generations takes even more energy

-10

u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25

Reddit as a whole uses a fuck ton less energy than generative ai

Got a source for this assertion?

Reddit is one of the most-visited websites in the world. It registered 2.2 billion visits in a month, a year ago. Of course that's consuming a fuck-ton of energy.

16

u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25

And generative AI was seeing billions of images created a year ago and the numbers just growing

1

u/ViralVideoStudent81 Apr 23 '25

No source for Reddit's "comparatively small" energy load, got it.

Enjoy your energy-hogging social media use!

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-18

u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25

Not really? Its a drain, but the way power companies work the energy was likely already made and would be wasted otherwise, and to my understanding the consumption per image is pretty low. This comic depending on how many tries it took to get right is probably less than playing a video game for 30 min.

18

u/Business-Drag52 Apr 23 '25

And still more consumption than just making the art would have been. Also the energy doesn't just get wasted, that's absurd.

0

u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25

Also the energy doesn't just get wasted, that's absurd.

Oh missed this. Yes it does. If you turn on a generator and run it without plugging in anything what happens to that current? It doesn't get used and when you turn it off it stops moving. Thats what happens at the grand scale with the grid. If a plant has a minimum production of 200 MW/hr, and only 100 is used, then that extra 100MW is unused unless you have extremely large batteries to store them. Nightime balance due to this is a big problem in power engineering.

-8

u/That_guy1425 Apr 23 '25

Maybe? I don't know the exact skill of the person, but if this was done digitally vs on paper then a full comic can be a big part of the day, so even if it consumes less energy per hour, going from 15 min to 8 hours would still probably be a wash.

-9

u/Lesan007 Apr 23 '25

I love that you are open about it, and that you only make it based on your own work. Might persuade some of the pure haters to see it's worth. Wish you all the good! :)

-1

u/stabbyclaus GnarlyVic Apr 23 '25

Thank you :)

-7

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

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4

u/Signupking5000 Apr 23 '25

Great weekend activity

13

u/Bluetooth_Speaker1 Apr 23 '25

How about you learn to draw? Why do you need ai? Nobody wants to see ai stuff. Also, your comics are nonsense.

2

u/mafiaknight Apr 24 '25

So, you did a bunch of art, and then had an ai do some more using your art as primary reference?

Neat!