AI as a Creative Tool
The Creative Rebellion • Dispatch #001 • 3.5 min read
I would argue that AI is not a replacement for creative skill. It's merely a tool creatives and artists have at their disposal to enhance or speed up the creative process.
I’ve seen this in my own personal experience with the generative art platform, Midjourney.
I’ve been able to draw since my childhood. Whether with the trusty ol' pencil, pen, ink brush, or sketching and painting digitally in Photoshop or on the iPad, I would consider myself an artist. An illustrator.
It’s not my full-time job, but I have made a few commissioned pieces in addition to drawing for my own enjoyment. And I would draw more if I had more time. And that’s what Midjourney gives me: time.
I can describe an illustration I envision in my mind and it comes to life in a moment. Something that would take me hours to create, if not days in some cases.
It allows me to ideate, to see what different styles or compositions look like. To figure out the tone that makes the most sense.
Sometimes, you just want to get an idea out of your head to where you can see it with your eyes.
In some cases, the final result from Midjourney is useable as-is. Sometimes, to get exactly what you want, it requires some manual editing in Photoshop. But having the visual example and a good base with which to begin my own work is a huge advantage.
Which means that, as an artist, AI art can give me an advantage over artists who refuse to use it, and instead spend real-time creating each version of a thumbnail to get to their first solid idea, to begin the work of building it up layer by layer, only to realize half-way through—or when they’re done—that it didn’t turn out how they had hoped.
What if it only took 15 minutes of experimenting in Midjourney to figure that out, lock in on the approach you wanted to take, and then begin the work of creating the final piece?
As an artist, that means finishing each piece faster, which means more pieces created in the same amount of time. If it’s a commissioned project, you get paid sooner and move to the next one. You’ve just increased your income level.
If you’re working on a personal project, you can finish sooner, add it to your portfolio, and start on your next idea.
Think of it like storyboarding a movie.
No professional filmmaker would grab the camera and the script and just start shooting. There are months of preproduction that go into every hollywood film. And part of that process is storyboarding. Figuring out the camera angels, the action, the pacing, the order of each scene, and the order of all the scenes in the movie, to make the finished film.
Storyboards are a quick way to see the finished film before you shoot a single frame, at a fraction of the time and cost.
Have you used AI to help with your creative process? How so?
Until next Saturday...
Stay rebellious,
Travis
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