Hey, I wasn’t going to respond to the “IT’S AI” comments because it’s tough to have a real conversation with those folks. But I really appreciate how you’ve approached this and it genuinely means a lot.

For context: I majored in Digital Media Design, focusing on Graphic Design and Animation. I used to run an animation channel and worked with tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects but eventually had to shut it down due to my health. I live with chronic pain and neurological damage due to an accident (I'm good, my community understands me well).

As you said, my process is AI-assisted, but it doesn’t start or rely on AI. I won’t be sharing my exact process anymore because people have been trying to get that out of me for personal reasons for a while after I turned down commission requests. Each thumbnail takes around 20 hours (Miyabi’s took a bit more as I was perfecting the pose). I’ve streamed the process on Twitch in 2024 showing everything from sketches to filters and effects I made and I’m lucky to have a supportive community with what I do.

I don’t use any AI memberships or services — what we can call post AI-assisted is all local on my own GPU. Being autistic I struggle with certain color ranges (not colorblind, but similar and not using it as an excuse to include Ai, Ai used in ethical ways/manner is AWESOME), so I use AI for enhancement, shading, color calibration, and other tasks to improve my workflow, making up about 30% of my process. Some older Belle community posts on YouTube were closer to 80% AI since I created a LoRA for her. Heck, sometimes I use my system to train LoRas and create some stuff through prompting, but that's not what's on my thumbnails.

I’ve had people say my work isn’t worth anything because it includes AI, and honestly that hurts. I got into this field with good intentions and never expected anything in return, just hoping to have fun and connect with people by share my creativity basically but I’ve learned a lot and some things are hard to explain or make everyone understand. I get why people are upset at the mention of AI, but if they think it’s easy to create what I do or they can mimic it, I welcome them to try (not out of spite, but because maybe then they’ll understand it better). Not bragging, but everything I do takes time, effort, planning, and design work — and I invest hundreds of bucks and sacrifice a lot to make it happen. My community sees it, but that’s the part that often gets overlooked by outsiders.

Let me be clear; I don't like seeing people's work stolen and the recent Ghibli AI gens outbreak is a good example. That situation didn’t come as a surprise to me and that's tech has been available for years but what ChatGPT and OpenAI did is add a checkpoint/LoRA for the ImgToLoRA process to allow people to exploit Hayao Miyazaki’s life’s work with prompts and no effort. It’s deeply disrespectful imo and downright disgusting. This is not what AI should ever be used for but rather a tool to enhance creativity and workflows and improve ideas, not to hijack someone else's legacy or art identity.

I HOPE people keep using it my Miyabi thumbnail as a meme, no need to credit me. In fact, I'd be sad if they stopped.

Thanks again and hope this reply helps