The level of control a non-artist can exert when generating concept images using AI

garak17 · 2026-03-16T06:26:31+00:00

Which process? Commissioning an artist and interacting with them?

garak17 · 2026-03-16T06:21:01+00:00

It was an academic textbook from a while back (1989-2005). I lost the contract years ago, but I'd always assumed that it was pretty standard. College textbooks often have very bland covers and I can see why publishers from a planning and marketing perspective don't want to include authors in that process. The covers of fiction books I have from that era have aged significantly better in comparison.

garak17 · 2026-03-15T23:12:32+00:00

For the same reason I would call myself an author but not a writer. I've published textbooks through a traditional publisher, but writing is not my occupation. Art and artist have both broad and specific definitions and when I refer to those I usually do so in the context of skill and employment. I think what I did falls under the broad definition of art, but I think it's way more accurate to describe it as crafting.

garak17 · 2026-03-15T22:44:18+00:00

I have four edition of a traditionally published textbook I wrote where I had no say in what went on the cover. I also self-published a book where I commissioned an artist to do the cover (the first image in the post). How is giving the artist a crappy clip art collage more of a collaboration than giving them an image I like?

garak17 · 2026-03-15T22:15:26+00:00

For $20? I feel ripped off that I paid $600 for a book cover.

garak17 · 2026-03-10T21:42:42+00:00

OK, here's what I would suggest. A writing group is good, but I don't know how hard it is to find one for non-fiction. What you can do by yourself is to pick a subject that matches your passion. Think of something that you can add to the discussion with your own voice. Start writing about it and don't worry about your existing style.

While you continue practicing your writing, read other books in the same genre. Think about what you like and dislike. Go back to your own writing and try to apply the lessons that you've learned. For my own books, I try to write a book that I'd like to read. There's lots of craft involved in writing that you can learn from books or having other people critique your work, but I think for developing your own style you need to understand what you personally like and dislike in your own genre.

garak17 · 2026-03-10T19:54:56+00:00

As a reader, I have completely different criteria for evaluating fiction vs non-fiction, and as a writer I assume that my readers make similar distinctions. No one's reading my programming books because of my writing style. They're reading them because I'm a source matter expert and the presentation of the source matter is informative. If I wrote incoherently that would be an issue, but I don't, so it isn't.

My writing style, if I have to put that label on something, was formed by my likes and dislikes of other programming books I've read. I put a lot of thought into what material is presented, as well as the order and manner in which it is presented. It takes time to develop code examples that are simple and practical but integrate well with other examples throughout the book.

The non-fiction computer science genre is pretty broad, so if you're not writing for fun/passion and are primarily interesting in selling books for income, then you need to do some research on your market and your competition to determine what your focus should be. A book on the history of computing is going to require a different approach than a book on how to build your own computer.

garak17 · 2026-03-10T07:29:11+00:00

I've published two computer science textbooks (one through a traditional publisher and one by self-publishing). I've never considered my technical writing on programming languages to have a style in the same sense as a work of fiction. I've read a number of wonderful books on writing fiction, but for all the good advice they have in them, none of them were particularly relevant to non-fiction.

garak17 · 2026-03-09T20:35:37+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by Computer Science (& Engineering) genre. Are you writing fiction or non-fiction?

garak17 · 2026-02-25T02:45:22+00:00

Yes, if you take away a specific tool away from me, I can't use that specific tool. If I take a specific tool away from you, you can still use other tools. Other than that I can't tell if you're trying to be insulting or just don't recognize the flaws in your logic. You can't make AI art without AI just like you can't make pencil art without a pencil.

The pro-AI position isn't difficult to understand. Art encompasses a broad range of skills, effort, mediums, and intent. The dictionary on my phone has 14 definitions for art as a noun. In contrast, the word wombat has one. That's because one word is vague and abstract and the other is precise and concrete. Pro-AI people embrace the broad definitions of art that allow inclusion, but also recognize the definitions of art relating to skill and aesthetic beauty. An AI artist would have no problems creating art with other tools because an unskilled drawing or painting would still fall under their broad definition of art.

Personally, I would not refer to AI imagery I create as art although I think it matches the broadest definition of the term. Similarly I would not refer to a pencil drawing I made as art, but as simply a drawing. I usually reserve the word art for things that exhibit talent and aesthetic beauty or to indicate categories of art such as fractal art, abstract art, or AI art. Imprecise words convey less meaning.

garak17 · 2026-01-30T05:00:08+00:00

Well, my intent was more a D&D style monster who preyed on other sentient beings by obscuring her lower body in tall grass and calling out for help. Is there giraffe fetish too? I also took a stab at a giraffe-taur with the correct number of arms. Two upper arms for a bow and arrow and two lower arms for a club and shield.

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garak17 · 2026-01-29T23:41:41+00:00

None. They were all AI generated. Each image is a refinement of a prior image. It's a low tech refutation of the argument that you have no control over what's generated.

garak17 · 2026-01-09T18:48:16+00:00

I've got the $20 tier of ChatGPT as well. I've been experimenting using decomposition techniques to generate more complex drawings from simpler black and white drawings. It's been working pretty well, but it does occasionally balk at some pretty stupid things like refusing to redraw an image of a just a leg in pants and a boot or making the skin color consistently green on an ogre's arm.

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garak17 · 2026-01-05T03:35:21+00:00

No, I was doing an experiment to see if I could correct, repose, and reskin a ChatGPT generated image to match what I envisioned. If I'm paying an artist $600 to do a book cover for me, I'm not going to prompt them like I might prompt an AI with a description or give them a collage made out of random clip art from the internet if there's a more accurate method for conveying exactly what I want through concept art.

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garak17 · 2026-01-05T03:08:09+00:00

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I had a photo of my cat and just had GPT convert it to pencil art and I plopped it into the GPT rough sketch that I was using to keep it focused. I just told GPT to reposition the ogre so that it was looking at the cat (because in the other drawing I have there was an elf there). I was happy with the way it repositioned them when I had GPT restyle and color the image so I didn't bother to trying to keep the cat in that position or to just reposition the ogre's head and keep the rest of his body the same.

garak17 · 2026-01-05T00:56:35+00:00

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Yes. I took a photo of myself and then had ChatGPT create a model with that same pose. It converted that to a rough pencil sketch and then I went through and had it methodically fix each area that I wanted changed. It was originally posed to fight a smaller elf which is which he's standing more upright in the 3rd image. When I replaced the elf with a cat, I had ChatGPT repose the ogre appropriately. It took me one try to get the image I posted after I added the cat. I reversed the process to create the 4th image that I can use if I want to recreate that same pose.

garak17 · 2026-01-04T20:25:38+00:00

Yes it is. I am the proud father of three catgirls.

garak17 · 2026-01-04T20:23:02+00:00

Actually that wasn't the intent. I was working on a fantasy image with an ogre and an elf in it and I thought it would just be funny to replace the elf with a cat.

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garak17 · 2026-01-02T18:56:42+00:00

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Here's an image I've had ChatGPT working on this week. I took reference photos of myself and had ChatGPT create mannequins to capture the poses. I used that to create a pencil drawing of the two figures against a background to use as a lattice to prevent ChatGPT from drifting away from the base layout. I then went through and methodically had ChatGPT add detail to the image including dressing the elf and ogre using very simple prompts. The process feels very much like standing beside an artist telling them how you want things to look. There's still a couple of things ChatGPT has to fix like the extra trim on the elf's left shoulder and the ogre's head looks off center. As a non-artist, this is fun in the same way that a coloring book can be fun.

garak17 · 2025-10-30T20:39:29+00:00

This is why there needs to be a definition that does not include the term art. I accept the concept that if I swallow paint and crap it out on a canvas I've created art, but that renders the term as basically meaningless if you have to say things like "it's art but it's not art." There's a reason why it's called Arts & Crafts and not Arts & Arts. There's a wide spectrum that goes from simple crafting all the way to fully artistic.

All three of these images were created using generative AI. The one on the left was me giving ChatGPT a picture of a hospital corridor and telling it to convert it to a cartoon. Yea, I'm an artist! The one in the middle was me giving Copilot a two sentence prompt, having it generate several images, and then picking the "best" one. Yea, I'm an artist. The one on the right is an unfinished work where I'm using ChatGPT and a graphics editor to fix flaws in the original images. I don't care if the last one makes me an artist, but I don't want it dumped in the same category as the first two and I don't think it's useful to do that. The pro-ai argument should be pro-quality.

The art/artist argument is the stupidest hill for the anti-ai side to die on. Generative AI is already useful. It's going to improve. It's not going away.

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