fatalfae

As the status says... should I even bother posting anymore? Should I continue creating fanart or artistic edits because I'm not considered a 'real' artist? I don't have talent for drawing, never have. Apparently it skipped a generation. But I've done plenty of fanart/fan edits over the years. Not all of us can draw, no matter how much practice we put into it. We might get slightly better, but still. That would be like me saying you can learn to code if you just practice. Sometimes it just doesn't 'click' no matter how much you practice. I'm sick of seeing AI too, but please don't count us in with them. For one thing, WE CREDIT OUR RESOURCES! The images we used to use were raw stock photos and promo images of the actor/actress or object. We may have used each other's resources - gradients, textures, etc. and the tools Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro offered... but we definitely were not using AI and DEFINITELY weren't charging anyone to look at our art! All we asked was for a credit and link back to our site, LJ, whatever. Older fantartists also did not use already created works! I'll admit, I once used images scanned from a Luis Royo calendar a very long time ago, but I credited and never claimed them to be mine. Another manip I did god knows how long ago had Juliet Landau's face and Sarah Brightman's body. Fonts were obtained via daFont which is a free font site, stock images were gathered from free stock resources or by affiliates who offered them, and any gradients/coloring was either Photoshop tools or the affiliates mentioned above. We did stuff like this without the assistance of AI; hours, sometimes weeks or months even, of cutting out images or masking, arranging stocks... whatever. It's more complicated and involved than it sounds, believe me! But now because those who use AI are displaying their 'work' on here, those of us who do fan edits/manips now feel like and (in some cases) are being told we're not 'real' artists. Think what you want, but we are not those who use AI to 'create' their art, and I will die on that hill because we are not the same. Lemme let you in on a little secret about OG fanartists... most of us are not fans of AI either!!! But with all that being said... I'm not even sure I wanna bother with fanart or edits anymore. Between that and art theft - which was a problem before AI become popular - I now understand why a lot of my old friends and affiliates called it quits.