Tangentially related: Recently I was thinking of commissioning an artist to do some album art for me. I had a specific concept in mind and it needed to have a certain look to it but I didn't mind if the actual art was physically painted or digital.
What struck me is there's no website for hiring an artist. ArtStation has a Shop section (pre-made art for sale) but no Commissions section. Fiverr has some artists taking commissions but none I could find of really good quality, and there's AI art spam now as well (takes commissions but just sends you an AI prompt result). Reddit has two art commission subreddits but there aren't really many artists there. And both Fiverr and Reddit's main selling point is cheap art commissions, but I was happy to pay more for something good.
Unless you know an artist already that suits the style you're after, and they're currently taking commissions, it seems quite hard to find anyone. I kinda thought I'd be able to go to, like, CommissionArt.com and filter by Traditional -> Oils -> Landscapes or whatever to find someone perfect.
To everyone who says hire a real artist instead of using AI - where do you go to find them?
mediumsmart · 6h ago
You could go to a spec work treadmill like 99designs and look for one. Browse the design categories and from there the portfolios of those artists whose work appeals to you and fit the style you are looking for and then go to their website because real artists have a website.
deviant art, behance, dribble, art station …
Tanoc · 4h ago
Most of us are reticent to find some centralized place because usually those places get invaded by people trying to shill AI stuff, people spamming requests, scams, and a few toxic egos that try to push down anyone they see as competition. Look at what happened to DeviantArt as an example.
To keep workloads manageable and make sure people don't harass us we usually just put up posts on our social media or forums in known artist hangouts, and then once we have enough work we take the posts down. Things like Bluesky make it easier because people share the post for us, giving us a wider reach, but it still relies on the network effect rather than centralized advertising. Those younger than me have transitioned to doing this kind of stuff with Discord servers, though I have no clue how anyone keeps track of what's going on since it's just a chat client.
lastdong · 2h ago
One way to find illustrators is through Bluesky. Many illustrators showcase their work there and often have portfolio websites, which sometimes features additional artists. They also usually indicate their upcoming availability.
A lot of artists on Twitter take commissions, but it's an informal process done via private messages and of course there's no way to search by art style (other than regularly following artists you like and getting similar creators who may or may not take commissions recommended to you). Essentially you find them by being part of an existing community.
A lot of the smaller and more amateur ones seem to struggle and end up begging, but I guess the pros have enough of a regular following that they get sufficient work through this system.
kaikai · 7h ago
I’ve messaged people directly, after seeing their work on social media. I’m always ready to hear “no” but so far they’ve been willing. I’m also an artist, and I go out of my way to make art for acquaintances who ask.
rienbdj · 5h ago
Go to a local art college and put up a flyer: Paid gig. Ask applicants for a sample of past work. Meet the best for coffee.
chneu · 5h ago
Unfortunately, social media is the way to get a hold of most artists. Or at least discover them and then find their website.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
I have a pool of designers on Upwork that I work with regularly.
gilleain · 6h ago
Cara.app?
yablak · 7h ago
Etsy
strogonoff · 8h ago
It’s interesting how in music the same application of ML swamps companies like Suno in trillion dollar lawsuits, yet in graphics and text no one cares, even though graphics and text fall victim to the same sleight of hand.
It feels like a big tech company can just ignore the law, unless another big company stands up against it (and hopefully helps the average Joe as a side-effect).
BLKNSLVR · 8h ago
The irony is in their scraping of all data within their significant radius, and yet the likes of twitter and facebook barely let you access anything of thiers without a login.
If they're scraping data from everywhere to feed their beast, then their data must also be open and scrape-able.
This does not, however, help the current situation where they sit upon the shoulders of millions of creative folks and provide no credit whatsoever, whilst also (actively or passively - by their existence and capability) attempting to make those very same creative folks redundant.
Will there be such a thing as AI stagnation if and when creative works for "it" to digest either are no longer created or no longer accessible to 'the great crawlers'?
Maybe artists can sell their works for ingestion in this scenario? Maybe that should already be the case...
strogonoff · 7h ago
> If they're scraping data from everywhere to feed their beast, then their data must also be open and scrape-able.
I think that was the idea behind the original name for ClosedAI.
conception · 8h ago
It’s not big tech. Money can ignore the law.
viraptor · 7h ago
Also, the low cost illustration business was already not amazing with the copyright law. Try ordering a few icons on Fiverr for example and see how many are repurposed from other sites.
On the lower end it's not as much whether the assets are in part or fully stolen, but who does it.
strogonoff · 3h ago
Intuitively, there’s quite a big difference between a situation where some ‘artist’ may be sneakily repurposing preexisting work (I don’t think you’ll find a reputable artist doing that, and even a not-so-reputable repurposing artist would at least check that the license allows it), and a situation where a household name corporation only repurposes preexisting work without any regard for licensing.
itsanaccount · 8h ago
power can ignore the law, for which money is the most often proxy. we need to get back to talking about who has power and who doesn't as this pretending that we're outside of the nature of such things increasingly has no clothes.
Waterluvian · 8h ago
I think that transformation is difficult to appraise from within. In the future we’ll have a much more clear sense of how we feel about the invention of the automobile.
I think that the calm, more disciplined take of “the sky is always falling, it’s never falling. There’s other, probably better ways to be creative” is the one.
Today my eight year old sat at the PC for hours using Scratch to make what was essentially a Flash animation. He had PS5 access, Switch access, iPad access. Nope. Wanted to bash his head against loops and timers for hours.
The craving to be creative is insatiable. It’ll continue to take on new forms.
With apologies to the farriers of today.
brookst · 8h ago
The tool is not the art. It never was. People who mistake the two always suffer. I empathize, but there is no way to change that reality.
polio · 8h ago
Yes, but how much of a market will there be for this kind of creation?
Waterluvian · 8h ago
How much of a market has there ever been for this kind of creation?
Papazsazsa · 8h ago
Professions die in the face of competition, that's nothing new.
What's more perilous is that the internet will soon cease to be a useful way to access and distribute knowledge, and has been transformed from a resource for learning and sharing into a clear-cut forest which nobody will replant.
But hey, at least sama got a new gruebel forsey.
__loam · 8h ago
This is not a very substantial analysis of the industry and I'd be interested in a more comprehensive diagnosis. I believe there are coincidental factors in industries that typically employ illustrators and other artists that are affecting the market that are not AI, namely the market conditions since late 2022. To give the games industry as an example, the industry grew unnaturally during Covid, everyone thought that trend would continue and there was a lot of money and hiring thrown into it. The industry is returning to the normal trend line and it's still highly profitable, but layoffs are happening because executives are not hitting financial forecasts. Similarly, marketing budgets have been slashed across industries as the economy slowed down, and design work dried up in tech because nobody is raising money except the people who think they can replace creative labor with AI.
One thing that I'm not seeing in this thread is the reputational risk of using AI, especially in artistic works like games. AI imagery is generic, lazy, and is seeing a backlash from the public. It's a negative quality marker even if it's trendy in tech spaces. There's definitely a lot of people in executive leadership and management who think they can replace all kinds of labor with AI right now, but from what I've seen, that has not played out as expected in the real workforce. The actual reason this guy is losing half his business is probably more due to people cutting back on discretionary spending more than AI taking jobs.
ivape · 8h ago
Anyone that has ever done spec work has already faced just how demoralizing this will all be. When you do spec work for design, it's basically everyone just submitting their designs for the buyer to decide which one to pick. All the designers copy the designs that are getting the "this is going in the right direction" feedback. The average person will now be able to just say "make me something just like that" for free. It's basically the end, and only a world war will reset things. Best of luck all.
I'll add one other thing about war:
Humans are not exactly a peaceful bunch. A bunch of people with nothing to do start gang wars, often on a national scale, country versus country, or country-men versus counter-men. It's a hot-take for sure, but, we're trending towards war and that's especially true if AI can easily be used to rile each other up with ease.
mlinhares · 8h ago
Yeah, this is dead now, never do any "show me your work and we'll think about it" ever again. People will just steal with LLMs and there's not much that can be done.
sheepscreek · 7h ago
TL;DR
Love the tech. Hate losing business.
sneak · 8h ago
AI didn’t take his job, the commodification of a low-effort task did. AI might be the proximate cause but it isn’t the source of why his illustration side hustle got undercut.
Tons of boiler room illustrators in low income countries would have happily undercut him, too.
tsunamifury · 8h ago
This is cope. Ai took his job.
brookst · 8h ago
AI did his job, equally or better, and cheaper.
Better to say AI took his market.
sneak · 8h ago
No, a large scale popular website where one can pay to get tasks done quickly took his job.
The fact that it was done by AI is actually immaterial to the economic claim.
What struck me is there's no website for hiring an artist. ArtStation has a Shop section (pre-made art for sale) but no Commissions section. Fiverr has some artists taking commissions but none I could find of really good quality, and there's AI art spam now as well (takes commissions but just sends you an AI prompt result). Reddit has two art commission subreddits but there aren't really many artists there. And both Fiverr and Reddit's main selling point is cheap art commissions, but I was happy to pay more for something good.
Unless you know an artist already that suits the style you're after, and they're currently taking commissions, it seems quite hard to find anyone. I kinda thought I'd be able to go to, like, CommissionArt.com and filter by Traditional -> Oils -> Landscapes or whatever to find someone perfect.
To everyone who says hire a real artist instead of using AI - where do you go to find them?
deviant art, behance, dribble, art station …
To keep workloads manageable and make sure people don't harass us we usually just put up posts on our social media or forums in known artist hangouts, and then once we have enough work we take the posts down. Things like Bluesky make it easier because people share the post for us, giving us a wider reach, but it still relies on the network effect rather than centralized advertising. Those younger than me have transitioned to doing this kind of stuff with Discord servers, though I have no clue how anyone keeps track of what's going on since it's just a chat client.
https://blueskystarterpack.com/illustrators
A lot of the smaller and more amateur ones seem to struggle and end up begging, but I guess the pros have enough of a regular following that they get sufficient work through this system.
It feels like a big tech company can just ignore the law, unless another big company stands up against it (and hopefully helps the average Joe as a side-effect).
If they're scraping data from everywhere to feed their beast, then their data must also be open and scrape-able.
This does not, however, help the current situation where they sit upon the shoulders of millions of creative folks and provide no credit whatsoever, whilst also (actively or passively - by their existence and capability) attempting to make those very same creative folks redundant.
Will there be such a thing as AI stagnation if and when creative works for "it" to digest either are no longer created or no longer accessible to 'the great crawlers'?
Maybe artists can sell their works for ingestion in this scenario? Maybe that should already be the case...
I think that was the idea behind the original name for ClosedAI.
On the lower end it's not as much whether the assets are in part or fully stolen, but who does it.
I think that the calm, more disciplined take of “the sky is always falling, it’s never falling. There’s other, probably better ways to be creative” is the one.
Today my eight year old sat at the PC for hours using Scratch to make what was essentially a Flash animation. He had PS5 access, Switch access, iPad access. Nope. Wanted to bash his head against loops and timers for hours.
The craving to be creative is insatiable. It’ll continue to take on new forms.
With apologies to the farriers of today.
What's more perilous is that the internet will soon cease to be a useful way to access and distribute knowledge, and has been transformed from a resource for learning and sharing into a clear-cut forest which nobody will replant.
But hey, at least sama got a new gruebel forsey.
One thing that I'm not seeing in this thread is the reputational risk of using AI, especially in artistic works like games. AI imagery is generic, lazy, and is seeing a backlash from the public. It's a negative quality marker even if it's trendy in tech spaces. There's definitely a lot of people in executive leadership and management who think they can replace all kinds of labor with AI right now, but from what I've seen, that has not played out as expected in the real workforce. The actual reason this guy is losing half his business is probably more due to people cutting back on discretionary spending more than AI taking jobs.
I'll add one other thing about war:
Humans are not exactly a peaceful bunch. A bunch of people with nothing to do start gang wars, often on a national scale, country versus country, or country-men versus counter-men. It's a hot-take for sure, but, we're trending towards war and that's especially true if AI can easily be used to rile each other up with ease.
Love the tech. Hate losing business.
Tons of boiler room illustrators in low income countries would have happily undercut him, too.
Better to say AI took his market.
The fact that it was done by AI is actually immaterial to the economic claim.