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.