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Link to video – MW:MEU (뮤) ‘Gummy Clock’ Official MV

3D art is mostly obsolete now, isn’t it?  This simply doesn’t compare to Skyebrow’s videos.  I’m sure it’s done with motion capture and professional dancers, by a studio with a decent level of funding – but the 3D tech isn’t as good as A.I.  The movements are still stiff, the hair is a solid chunk that doesn’t move right.  I’ve been doing 3D since the mid-90’s.  You could say I’m a little invested in it, but it’s time to move on.  2D and A.I. are a better way to make video.  Once A.I. can work with a series of keyframe illustrations, it will be over for 3D; and live action too.  The performances I got for Bar Fight are as good as any real actor can do.

Music Blogging – MW:MEU – Gummy Clock
  Video link – No Fox Given – Skyebrows O.K., this one I can get behind, in terms of the music and video quality.  Even with A.I. this must have taken forever to do, and cost plenty.  I used up 8000 credits on OpenArt.ai just to make my pirate girl post.  Nine videos generated and not a single one was usable.  I’ve been working on editing a bunch of unused clips into a new video, and most of them have distortions in them.  It’s impressive that Skyebrows got the character designs to hold so well, got them to turn around without weird distortions being generated, and got them to dance around.  It’s been over half a years since I made the  Bar Fight  video.  I’d like to think A.I. has gotten better since then, but the pirate girl animations I made say it hasn’t. Anyway, it’s good to see people aren’t rejecting No Fox Given because it was made with A.I., and aren’t rejecting Skyebrows for using A.I.
Music Blogging – Skyebrows – No Fox Given
Link to video – SNAKE EYES || HAKOS BAELZ 6.7 million views for the cartoon rat demon. Has anyone heard of this? How did it start? Who is the person behind Hakos Baelz? The song isn’t grabbing me, but the production values are high.
Music Blogging – Hakos Baelz
M.3R and M.4R Page 36
I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of virtual Kpop groups.  I have no idea who the market for this is, but there are plenty of English speakers (or English speaking bots) in the YouTube comments, so it’s not a uniquely asian phenomenon.  I can understand K/DA, because Pop Stars was a decent piece of music with a great video.  I can understand Gorillaz, because the music is excellent.  I don’t understand IRISÉ and similar acts.  What is the appeal of this, over a real Kpop girl group?  The music and dancing are the same.  It got 1.4 million views in 6 months, which is staggering in my world.  But then it got cancelled, and apparently K/DA did too. Another thing I don’t understand is how K/DA got dropped.  That should have been developed into Kpop Demon Hunters.  I’ve tried to listen to Huntr/X.  They’re not an eighth of what K/DA was.  Surely there must be a K/DA movie in development, after the success of Kpop Demon Hunters, but I’ve searched around and didn’t find anything.  Hollywood excels at dropping the ball on anything people would actually want to see. Here’s a link to an IRISÉ video – IRISÉ – Lovegame performance video  
State of the Comic #17

It’s clear that I’ve got site issues to work out.  If you’re on Firefox, you might not be able to play the music.  If you can’t play the music here, it’s on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@wayofthewaifu1701/videos

That’s wayofthewaifu1701, like the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701, so I can remember it.

You might have noticed some of my posts have bad formatting issues.  They’re fine when they’re posted.  I don’t know what the source of that problem is.  The only thing I know to do is to make multiple simple posts instead of one complicated post, so I’ll try that next.

     
State of the Comic #16
M.3R and M.4R Page 35
Pigeons with a Time Machine 6.6 million views, generated with runwayml. I’m not on Twitter, so I can’t read the comments, but 6.6 million views doesn’t sound like people are rejecting it. Han Solo visits the Enterprise-D Star Wars vs. Star Trek: The ULTIMATE Crossover Battle! Mostly positive comments. Some negativity about the quirks of A.I., but go back and look at any other form of animation in its early days. Or film making in general. Most of the effects produced up into the 90’s don’t hold up anymore. Even if it’s big budget stuff, you can see black borders around the miniatures, and the movement is limited. You can tell there’s a man in the monster suit. It’s a shame to see comments knocking the limitations of a technology in its early days, instead of appreciating what a leap forward it is. Anyway, there’s been a significant uptick in traffic lately. It may be kids getting out of school, or more bot farms coming online, or it may be that the blogging content helps. Expect more blogging content, because that might not be it but it could be it. The comic will continue to update on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the feed here is probably going to fill up with blog posts as I try new things.
State of the Comic #15
I did my test to see if A.I. could ink pencil sketches. The answer is, “Depends on the model.” Flux Kontact failed, so I tried Google Nano Banana, and that worked brilliantly. I moved on to coloring, and found out it helps to generate flats and take the flats and line art into GIMP for correction. Then the finished result can be fed back into the A.I. and it will have a much easier time producing the final colored image. Although A.I. companies push the idea of doing everything by prompting with text, it really isn’t the best way to work with A.I. Text has its place, and so do other things. A.I. only shifts the amount each tool gets used. 3D is much less important, 2D shifts to the forefront as the most important skill. The great thing is that I’ve now got a workflow where pencil drawings are my star player, which gives me original art to sell again. This is one of the better developments in my career as an artist, since computerization eliminated most of the originals I might have made throughout my career. There’s almost nothing for either Way of the Waifu or XTIN, or anything else. Just very loose sketches few could even decipher. I get to retain the status of being a “real artist,” while offloading the parts I never liked, but had to do, to A.I. I never wanted to be an inker, either traditionally or digitally. And the idea of my original pencil drawing being destroyed by a traditional inker, which nearly every professional comic book page ever drawn was, is apalling. Good riddance to inking, in all its forms. Except A.I. inking, which is the best thing ever. Except for possibly A.I. coloring. A double pox on coloring and painting. I did so much less of what I wanted to do because of it. For those who can spend endless hours making paintings of fruits because the colors are interesting, may that always be there for you. I could never. I made a few short video clips, those didn’t turn out as well. But the attempts burned up nearly half of the credits I had saved up. So here’s the art I made tonight (except for the pencil sketch, from 2005). Videos were made with Grok Imagine, Happy Horse, and Seedance. I tried a bunch of other models, the results aren’t worth showing.
State of the Comic #14
Bandwidth usage has quadrupled since posting the music tracks. That’s not saying a lot, and it may not be saying anything if it is bots scraping content. No one’s signed up to comment yet, but even that could be bots, couldn’t it? It’s a shame thinking positively and thinking realistically are so often enemies. I’ve been meaning to test whether I could use AI to ink my pencil drawings and color them. I’m sure it can. I need to go ahead and get that test done. That could be a decent compromise. I never liked digital drawing. It would be nice if I could go back to doing real pencil drawings again. I don’t want to give up comic making (although I have for years now), but I’ve got to bring the work load down, since its not likely to ever be more than a hobby. With that in mind, here’s a non-AI generated graphic that represents my musical act – Hopefully that image won’t overlap my text like the thumbnail for “R Kelly in P Major” did. That was working fine, and then I come back the next day and it’s not working fine. I’ve got no idea why. Well anyway, “OM-MINUS” is the male energy that balances “Way of the Waifu,” because “Way of the Waifu” is a bit suspect and weird on its own. I’m having second thoughts about using the comic name as a band name, but then there’s no shortage of real bands with stupid names and stupid acts that made it big. If you haven’t seen Angine de Poitrine yet, there’s the current example. Some say they are technically excellent, but I can’t say I enjoy their music. They obviously gained attention for the uniquely weird visual.
State of the Comic #13