"Esto es el fin, Grande Padre".Hey people, Novanim here. This episode marks the end of Book 1, the end of the season, and a well deserved rest to dedicate myself to new projects, art studies, and of course family. I've been secretly working on a six page epilogue of the book, which will be available only on Patreon. Next step is to find ways to publish this thing. Wish me luck! (or send curses, whatever you like)

Thank you for reading all this way through. I'm curious to know your thoughts about Arcagen, so go ahead and speak your mind :).

READ IT FROM THE START

You can also join my Newsletter where you can download a Free Art Pack with brushes, videos and PSD's.

Have an excellent weekend!

Arcagen is back with a new episode on Webtoon and Tapas. Remember that you can support the project joining my Patreon. You can also join my Newsletter where you can download a Free Art Pack with brushes, videos and PSD's.

Thanks for reading!

Midjourney is a research lab and the name of the lab's artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E. The tool is currently in open beta thorugh their discord server, and I was given 25 prompts to test the software. Some results below: 

These mask where the result of the following prompt: Sci-fi white skull mask based on bird of prey industrial design. I wanted to reproduce the masks of the giants from my webcomic Arcagen, and the results were pretty interesting.

After goofing around with the software (mixing stuff like the Simpsons, Beavis and Buttehead, Hugo Chavez and many other stupid prompts) I started testing the software to produce environments and characters similar to my comic. I started trying to produce some kind of movie poster/comic cover. Here’s some results of the prompt: girl in black bunny hoodie, walking through post-apocalyptic city, overgrowth tall buildings in background, epic movie poster, sunset, birds flying in background, artstation trending, 4k

One of the things my colleagues and I can agree on, is that the colors produced by the software are beautiful. I took the third image in there and made some variations:

Creating Paloma in Midjourney

After seeing the previous results, and inspired by Jake Parker’s experiments on Midjourney, I wanted to see how close could I reproduce Paloma using the software. Here’s the prompt: latina 11 year old girl, dark hair, with dark purple hoodie, bunny ears, big incisive teeth, big eyes, manga style, techwear fashion style, post apocalytic nature setting.

Pretty close uh? Not bad for a first attempt! I kept experimenting, and through some utterly horrible results, I started to get closer and closer. Next prompt: latina 11 year old girl, dark hair, tanned skin, dark purple hoodie with rabbit ears, big cute incisive teeth, big eyes, manga style, techwear fashion style, post apocalytic green nature setting. 

Get ready for scary stuff! I tried to make variation on that first image, which was my favorite of the bunch, and these are the results:

Ok ok! That looks bad! Let’s go back. In the end, I decided to upscale the previous result, without any variations, and this was the result.

Ok I like this one. Of course, there are many results in between I skipped. Overall, it was a pretty fun experience. I tried to also reproduce Lechuza and Zorzal with Midjourney, but the results were so bad it’s not worth sharing haha. 

Is A.I. taking our jobs as artists?

Maybe, maybe not. It much depends on the industry you’re in, your expertise and how these tools evolve in the future. Pay attention on how I emphasize the word tool. For me, these are no different from an electric hammer vs a traditional one, and iPad vs a sketchbook, or Pinterest vs an art gallery.

So far, Midjourney has been great for generating ideas, mixing different art styles, and emulating what’s already out there to create serendipitous results so we artists can use it as groundwork for future pieces. However, it still has a lot of limitations: First, it uses English, which by itself is a language that encompasses a certain view of the world, but cannot express emotonional concepts in the same manner as Spanish, German or Japanese. Second, it sucks creating perspective, as most characters or environments in creates are in “front view”. Third, it uses a limited pool of visual data, which will never compare to the personal human experience.

Of course I’m only speaking about Midjourney, and we don’t know how advanced A.I. can become in the future. Perhaps corporations, in order to cut their costs, will invest in these art generating tools more and more, at the point where popular art trends could be easily reproduced, in half the time, at half the cost. Imagine an A.I. that could reproduce what we see on Artstation front page everyday:

• Sexy anime big boob girl with epic colorful armor

• Raging orc with barbarian armor and bloodstained axe

• Darksouls dude (lol)

Maybe art jobs in the future will reward bigger research and idea generation than hours painting in Photoshop or sculpting Zbrush. Repeating my previous point, it depends on what kind of art job will you have.

Personally, I’m not afraid of A.I. (limited to art), as I see it as another way to bring beauty to the world. My prediction? It will never totally replace a high skilled artist which knows their fundamentals and is focused to create, just because it’s enjoyable. After all, guns didn’t make martial artists disappear, fast food didn’t replace gourmet chefs, and 3D printers didn’t destroy wood carving craftsmen. Will it change the current art economy and the rules of the game? Possibly. For better or worse? I believe that’s up to us to decide.

After one month of hiatus, Arcagen is back on Webtoon and Tapas. Remember that you can support the project joining my Patreon. You can also join my Newsletter where you can download a Free Art Pack with brushes, videos and PSD's.

Thank you for reading!

After one month of hiatus, Arcagen is back on Webtoon and Tapas. Remember that you can support the project joining my Patreon. You can also join my Newsletter where you can download a Free Art Pack with brushes, videos and PSD's.

Hello! I hope you're having an excellent day. It's been a while since I talked about my life. Here's some updates:

Parenthood

I became a father by the end of April. In the blink of an eye, the baby is already 3 months old! At home, our days fluctuate between "kinda stressful" to "brutally hard", but my partner and I have been giving our best so our girl would grow healthy, safe, and surrounded by love. We've decided not to share any pictures/videos of her online, so her information is not gathered nor sold by big tech corporations. When she becomes an adult, she can decide for herself what information is she going to share. For now, we use a regular camera and her pictures are only shared to family members.  

I'm currently working remotely as a Lead/Production artist, trying to balance house chores, art direction and being a father at the same time. At first it was quite hard because every little fuzz from my baby would take me out of the zone, and my partner and I were pretty, pretty grouchy trying to adapt to this new life. Not to mention, as a new father, you can barely sleep, either because the baby will cry a lot, or you are always checking if she's breathing. Not easy, not easy at all. But with each passing day, things slowly get more manageable. You get stronger, more disciplined, and the baby starts to be more "civilized". Of course these are just the first three months. Let's wait and see what new challenges will come in the future. 

I'm planning to share more of my experiences as an artist-father  in a future blog.

The Future of Arcagen

With the third chapter ready, I've started to work on a six-page epilogue. This epilogue will be Patreon exclusive at first, and then, added to the "first book" which will include the first three chapters. I'm currently looking for a publisher in Chile, to hopefully have something ready for Q4 of 2022. Of course, I don't want to stop there, because there's always the possibility of a digital release, paid platforms, and a subsequent crowdfunding. Am I going to work on chapter 4 after that? Well, that depends on how succesful the book is. I love what I've achieved with Arcagen, but given my new responsabilities as a father and art lead, finding time to work at the same pace as before, without having reasonable funding, seems unlikely. It saddens me that since I started publishing chapter 3, I've started to lose patrons instead of gaining them. I wonder if the story got boring, or simply I made you wait too long before any updates. Maybe it's the platform, maybe it's the global recession. I hope that, by the end of chapter 3, I can gain at least some extra support for the epilogue. I'm happy to have finished over 80 pages so far, while having a full time job. But now, taking care of the baby is a whole new level of responsability and chaos, that I need to face with utmost responsability for some time, before going back to my old schedule. I also know I've been kind of absent from social media (which is a net gain in mental health), so I don't promote my comic with the same energy as before. I'm thinking about many ways to make my comic more known, but I need to dedicate a whole morning planning, and planning well. I want you to know that I've loved the experience of creating this world and characters, and I'm super grateful of all the support you've given me during this journey. 

Remembe that you can read my comic for free in Tapas and Webtoon. You can also support the project on Patreon.

I want to know what you think. Please share your comments below.

In the upcoming months, I will be de-classifying some videos that were exclusive for my supporters on Patreon. Here's one of them, showing my inking process for my comic Arcagen. In my Youtube channel you will find many of these videos, and if you want to go deep into my process, you can join my Newsletter to get some free art resources and perks. I hope you can find this useful.

Cheers!

You can read it for free in Tapas and Webtoon

Let me know here, or in those platforms, what do you think about my story :). 

Thanks for reading

You can read it for free in Tapas and Webtoon

Let me know here, or in those platforms, what do you think about my story :). 

Thanks for reading

You can read it for free in Tapas and Webtoon

Let me know here, or in those platforms, what do you think about my story :). Thanks for reading

You can read it for free in Tapas and Webtoon

Let me know here, or in those platforms, what do you think about my story :). Thanks for reading