4 ms·

I assume that this would only work reliably for headshots/avatars? Still, if I were an artist whose income came from furry art, this would terrify me.

some_furry 6y ago
No, because a fursona is something that's deeply personal to the person, and typically the process for creating one looks like this: 1. Decide what you want to look like 2. Create a reference sheet (or commission an artist to create one based on a description from step 1) 3. Commission a headshot for an avatar 4. Commission some art of your fursona, possibly with your friends' fursonas 5. GOTO 4 6. At some point, your friends may ask you for your reference sheet so they can gift you an art piece of your fursona and theirs (see optional stage of 4) Even if you can churn out AI-generated headshots, getting the colors/markings just right for your character is nontrivial for non-generic fursonas (see https://soatok.com/static/soatok-johis-responsive.jpg https://soatok.com/static/soatok-johis-responsive.jpg for example). And besides, most art commissions are conducted after you have a reference sheet and/or headshot of your character. If anything, this will give artists something they can point the "steal other people's character art for their roleplay accounts" types of (especially younger) furries towards. "Can't afford to commission an artist? Just use the AI thing and stop the misbehavior!"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
the8472 6y ago
there has been some progress in the anime category: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1257683697777569792 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1257683697777569792
- Izkata 6y ago
  This one generates a character and a plot: https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/ https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/
  - the8472 6y ago
    That's much older, this discussion is about extending beyond portraits.
gwern 6y ago
> I assume that this would only work reliably for headshots/avatars? StyleGAN works best on single centered objects which are not too diverse in shape. So heads work great if you align them to the middle, and you can get OK results with single centered figures like someone standing, but anything beyond that and it falls apart. We have a theory about that (https://github.com/tensorfork/tensorfork/issues/21 https://github.com/tensorfork/tensorfork/issues/21) but we've long since moved onto BigGAN, which can model much more diverse datasets like ImageNet successfully. As far as fursonas go, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23096442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23096442 I'd say that GANs are better at letting someone explore fursonas than any human artist is or ever will be. You cannot click a button and have a human artist generate 32 variants in a second for you, toggle on or off attributes, nor can they slide a slider from 'human' to 'neko' to 'dangerously cheesy!'. You might pay for a commission of your final fursona for the highest-quality image with no artifacts, but for exploring...? And as NNs get better over time, they'll creep up the value chain, as it were. (I'm still a little shocked how good the human voices in OpenAI's Jukebox https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ are, even if the highest level of abstraction is still very shaky and they need to tack on another layer or two to get choruses etc.)

some_furry 6y ago

No, because a fursona is something that's deeply personal to the person, and typically the process for creating one looks like this: 1. Decide what you want to look like 2. Create a reference sheet (or commission an artist to create one based on a description from step 1) 3. Commission a headshot for an avatar 4. Commission some art of your fursona, possibly with your friends' fursonas 5. GOTO 4 6. At some point, your friends may ask you for your reference sheet so they can gift you an art piece of your fursona and theirs (see optional stage of 4) Even if you can churn out AI-generated headshots, getting the colors/markings just right for your character is nontrivial for non-generic fursonas (see https://soatok.com/static/soatok-johis-responsive.jpg https://soatok.com/static/soatok-johis-responsive.jpg for example). And besides, most art commissions are conducted after you have a reference sheet and/or headshot of your character. If anything, this will give artists something they can point the "steal other people's character art for their roleplay accounts" types of (especially younger) furries towards. "Can't afford to commission an artist? Just use the AI thing and stop the misbehavior!"

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

the8472 6y ago

there has been some progress in the anime category: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1257683697777569792 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1257683697777569792

Izkata 6y ago
This one generates a character and a plot: https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/ https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/
- the8472 6y ago
  That's much older, this discussion is about extending beyond portraits.

gwern 6y ago

> I assume that this would only work reliably for headshots/avatars? StyleGAN works best on single centered objects which are not too diverse in shape. So heads work great if you align them to the middle, and you can get OK results with single centered figures like someone standing, but anything beyond that and it falls apart. We have a theory about that (https://github.com/tensorfork/tensorfork/issues/21 https://github.com/tensorfork/tensorfork/issues/21) but we've long since moved onto BigGAN, which can model much more diverse datasets like ImageNet successfully. As far as fursonas go, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23096442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23096442 I'd say that GANs are better at letting someone explore fursonas than any human artist is or ever will be. You cannot click a button and have a human artist generate 32 variants in a second for you, toggle on or off attributes, nor can they slide a slider from 'human' to 'neko' to 'dangerously cheesy!'. You might pay for a commission of your final fursona for the highest-quality image with no artifacts, but for exploring...? And as NNs get better over time, they'll creep up the value chain, as it were. (I'm still a little shocked how good the human voices in OpenAI's Jukebox https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ are, even if the highest level of abstraction is still very shaky and they need to tack on another layer or two to get choruses etc.)