Damage to the source material by an adaptation

Haerangil said:
Freedom of Art it is then. Like black Jesus.
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I am a fan of Holy Mary Chinese style depictions from my childhood:

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But still I do have problem with randomness of the depiction of Fingon, Maedhros, and Finrod citied above with the very different skin-tones. They are too closely related to show this much variation. Then all of them should be dark-skinned and all other people around them too - a transplant of all of Valinor into ancient mythical Africa or Asia would be an interesing picture to look at. But this seeming randomess and "Amerizanisation" of Tolkien does bother me. And Americanization was actualy a term I have seen and heard brought up against RoP from some of its non-American viewers.
 
MithLuin said:
Fingon, Maedhros, and Finrod (by the same artist)
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I would watch that one
and that one
and for sure that one
and that

but please keep it consitant...
 
Haerangil said:
The wonderful world of Stable diffusion...
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Still it lets us visualize things that were difficult to check out before for those of us who do not happen to have a photo-realistic imagination...
 
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I’ll be honest, I’m a big proponent of ai being used to creative real world of art and I’m a big fan of these kind of interpretations. Just sad these films don’t exist if I’m being honest
 
Rob Harding said:
I’ll be honest, I’m a big proponent of ai being used to creative real world of art and I’m a big fan of these kind of interpretations. Just sad these films don’t exist if I’m being honest
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As I said before, I would watch them all no question asked. That means if they would be written and directed by people who understand and value each of the respective cultures.
 
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I am ok with using AI for non-commercial purpose. For the creative industry it is a major disaster as it is legal plagiatism and takes actual artists revenue.
 
Haerangil said:
For the creative industry it is a major disaster as it is legal plagiatism and takes actual artists revenue.
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How so? When someome takes an existing painting and replaces some elements of it in photoshop it is fair use as it is a modification. If you take a photo and redraw it youself it is also fair use. What AI does is this just multiplied, you cannot even telll what original was because there were often plenty of those. So why should it be more problematic than taking someones work and reworking it with a mouse or pencil - in Paint or on paper? Or is e.g. a Mona Lisa with added (sun-)glasses (and there are plenty of those) nowadays suddenly somehow unethical and legally problematic?

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Copying is not forging in art - you need to falsify an author's signature for a copy to become a forgery. Copying was and is a very integal part of art from its beginning. And AI fits that old tradition.
 
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No, on that front it is an issue. Corridor Crew have both produced a legitimate piece of art with ai functionality while also making a video to explore legal implications of the tech. It’s a tricky space.


but anyway, back to LotR, I would love to hear suggestions of works that play in the tropes and and aesthetic if Tolkien but have their own interesting voice and perspective.
 
You can create nice AI Illustrations in seconds now by mass production.An Artist usually would paint for days and by right wants to be paid for use of his work. Now he won't get any more orders because graphic assistants can do the work of a thousand artists via AI. I am an artist myself and i also use AI, though not commercially.
 
I think there is a lot of discussion however that suggests really great ai works involve the click of a button. In the same way people thought digital art was cheating and invalidated traditional artists. In time, we’ll see the fad for AI being ‘easily’ done by all and I think what we’ll be left with is real artists who specialise in using it as a supportive tool
 
No in the end the market will dictate.Its a rule of capitalism to ruin workers wages by creating ways of replacing them by fewer people who do cheaper work. Digipaintings already completely ruined much of the quality of illustrations on the market. Old style real paintings or ink drawings basically have died out and been replaced by cheaper and faster digipaints that look like crap. AI is a similar mechanism but in warpspeed.
 
I think we’re going to disagree here. I think in the end it’ll be a new tool that will undoubtedly change the market but I don’t see it as a force for evil anymore than vfx is a threat to sfx. Different skill sets and the older ones will always have a place. People thought films would be the death of the theatre.
 
Haerangil said:
You can create nice AI Illustrations in seconds now by mass production. An Artist usually would paint for days and by right wants to be paid for use of his work.
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By that logic photography should have been forbidden the moment that it was invented. Or typewriters. Or sewing machines. Any technology that makes a tedious work go faster makes people who have spent most of their lives learning that craft obsolete to a degree. But it also democratizes said craft by making processes and the processed goods available and affordable to those who were excluded from accessing those before.
 
I do absolutely concede royalties are a real issue!
Buuuuuuut can people please suggest great fantasy that comments on Tolkien :)
 
Odola said:
By that logic photography should have been forbidden the moment that it was invented. Or typewriters. Or sewing machines. Any technology that makes a tedious work go faster makes people who have spent most of their lives learning that craft obsolete to a degree. But it also democratizes said craft by making processes and the processed goods available and affordable to those who were excluded from accessing those before.
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Why? Theres no comparison. Take a look on the covers of old pulp magazines, these were painted hy hand and many people made a living from that.How many artists nowadays can live off their work? Only very few. I am not into outlawing unstable confusion, but when it recognazably plagiarized works of a commercial product,the artist should be able to sue who ever sells his derivative work or be able to demand royalties. Now everybody is an H.R. Giger... congratiolations, he is by using a program that steals from Gigers actual works!
 
Haerangil said:
Why? Theres no comparison. Take a look on the covers of old pulp magazines, these were painted hy hand and many people made a living from that.How many artists nowadays can live off their work? Only very few. I am not into outlawing unstable confusion, but when it recognazably plagiarized works of a commercial product,the artist should be able to sue who ever sells his derivative work or be able to demand royalties. Now everybody is an H.R. Giger... congratiolations, he is by using a program that steals from Gigers actual works!
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And were the manual copists not displaced by typewriters, and seamstresses not by sewing machines? Has not painting been changed into abstraction due to photography taking over the part of realistic representation? How is this different?

And styles of popular painters were always copied by others - sometime en masse - that why we have so much "in the manner of" or "after" pictures historically.

seasideart.com

"After" - What Does This Art Term Mean?

You may be visiting a museum, auction or gallery and see the term "after" behind the artist's name and wonder what that means. Simply put, it means that it is a copy of that artist's work. An example of this is when you see an artist painting a copy of a painting in a museum. This copy is not a...
seasideart.com seasideart.com

An example of this is when you see an artist painting a copy of a painting in a museum. This copy is not a fake because no one is claiming that the original artist did the painting nor are the copyist claiming that they are the original artist of the composition.
This practice has been going on for centuries. In fact, many ancient Roman sculptures are "afters" because they copied the Greek sculptures. We should be happy that they did because many of the Greek sculptures have been destroyed and the Roman copies are they only way that we know what they looked like.

As far I see AI produces "in the manner of" or "after" pictures and most often not even those, as it often mixes information from many different sources to the extent that it is not even recognisable as a certain exact style.

And how many "stag pictures" of the "Wildmalerei" style flooded the art markets for centuries? Were the original painters who intruduced this style in their "first one of" - often initially iconic - paintings (which not seldom did loose value for a time, after the motives that they have introduced became this common as they then did) ever recompensed?

Rob Harding said:
Buuuuuuut can people please suggest great fantasy that comments on Tolkien :)
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Do not think that is the topic of this thread?
Actually discussing AI does touch a little on "Damage to the source material by an adaptation" - as this is what is actually held against the use of AI in art currently.

But I agree with you that AI needs skill and knowledge to be used. I draw a little myself, both in pencil and digitally, but still I could not force AI to do exactly what I wanted it to- I have made only very few attempts - but still it visible that it requires hours and hours of trying to really master it.
 
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Allright. I see a difference between a human copying a human using his own handcraft and a human copying another human by using a computerprogram based on stochastics instead. The first one may call himself a craftsman, the second one a button-clicker. If the second one demands to get paid like the first one i call it fraud, because he claims to be an artist, which he is not.

@Rob Harding
I miss artists who do actual research on their topic like what Xanforth or Macbride did with the numenorean helmets, actually relying in JRRTs own sketches...

Now all people think elven or numenorean armour looks like innthe jackson movies or Trop... that could be seen as damage in a way i guess.
 
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