Hello, friends! I really hope that most of you here are like that, with your own heads, able to think things through and draw the right conclusions from my recent "situation", which got out of control more than expected. Some people think that if I "dare" to make an animation using ai tools, thereby crossing the line of a deadly sin. Now I'm instantly bad person. And even "super-old" fans were instantly disappointed, as if to emphasize that all my past achievements have been burned down.
I will not make excuses here as if I made a mistake - because I did not make some sudden revelation about my opinion and beliefs. I believe AI doesn't replace "human creativity," but can be a supporting tool for help/learning, or just for fun without serious intentions. I'm interested in progress and don't see it as shameful to explore for the sake of curiosity/experimentation for personal purposes. I can also publish these results on my own public pages as things I created (or, if you prefer, as things a machine created under my "supervision"). They started appearing occasionally since 2022 as static drawings, then gifs, and now I've tried to make extended animation - which have become a stumbling block for some. Boom!
If this suddenly sounds completely unexpected to you, it's because such works have never appeared (and never will) on Patreon — they're considered by me unworthy of this place. Are they bad? Not at all, otherwise I wouldn't publish them "outside". And they get good enough feedback for me to make more once in a while. But their quality is far inferior to my main production, and they were created for my own amusement/distraction from my usual work, which I've been doing for nine years.
If you were saw the "reaction" on Twitter/X, I admit that I may have been too cold-blooded in blacklisting people who expressed much negative opinion about this, which is completely opposite to mine, and I don't want to have any connection with them. No one can "forbid" me from doing anything. But am I going to take this seriously and become an ai-artist? No. I'm mostly talking about people with an extremely aggressive opinion about AI, any interaction with which makes you an enemy of traditional artists. I don't post these things daily in hundreds, but I've "touched" - and someone can't stand it. I have a neutral-positive attitude towards AI, I have never hidden this and have no intention of pandering to the crowd. But I never abused it either. Although, there is an opinion that "animation" is already too high a level of progress, when AI can create thousands of frames in seconds, which would take a regular artist months. I can understand that some people are very upset that robots will replace them, but... this is the upcoming future, and I am calm about it. The demand for "human" products will never disappear, just as artisans did not disappear after the invention of the conveyor belt.
I will not include links to the video in question here, as it was not intended to appear here. This conversation would not have happened either, but I am forced to respond, as many people may be confused and not know the whole picture.
Having published just one video of not the best quality, which was simply a replacement for a common static drawing, only now "moving drawing with sounds" - someone thought that I exchanged my 3D videos on THIS. But THIS is just fun experiment with a new tool that I found interesting to try. It does not affect 3D videos in any way and does not take up time to create them.
Some people think that by doing so, I'm "stealing" someone else's work. If you want to know the details, all I did was use public open sites (Civitai and Grok) like a regular user, and everything I could do there appeared several times a year, like 1% of the total my production. I didn't create my own AI on my computer and feed it someone else's images. I have plenty of other things to do than waste time on such nonsense. Yes, you can also go there and make any content on inflation topic with your favorite characters. It's far from ideal by quality, but it is already common thing in our current times. And I'm certainly not saying that it's better than the work of real artists. It just "exists."
I hope I've answered in enough detail for you to judge my actions. If you disapprove of Ai and can't accept the fact that I can use it for personal purposes - nothing will convince you otherwise. If you're worried about what's "next," it's all as usual: 3D videos according to the usual schedule. This is the work that I put effort and quality into and that I am proud to present to you here in gratitude for your support. Everything else is extremely secondary material, which I sometimes want to do in my free time, but I never treated it as important to post here, where I have very high standards about paid content.
So it's up to you to decide whether I'm guilty of my limited sympathies for the AI, or whether every person can use the achievements of progress by their own free will on the public sites, that provide such an opportunity. And they are free to share it with anyone else, rather than timidly lurking in the shadows.
I just ask you not to start a war in the comments, regardless of whether you want to agree with me or write nasty things. I am sure that there will be no evil swarm here, since the people gathered here already have a sufficient opinion about me. Of course, I'm not writing this to convince you to stay with me at any cost "for the money". I know very well that many are envious of my success and will gloat if some people leave me. Money is no longer an issue for me, and you may already have noticed over last years that payment happening only during polls months, that is, four times a year. I think this is a fair amount for the amount of work that I do (and I work "at a minimum" since I'm kind of old creator and can't fully devote myself to this like in the beginning). But I will certainly be glad if most of you understand perfectly well what kind of person I am. I didn't instantly turn into a "villain" as some of the audience thought after I tried something new that I could never do on my own, and used new machine tools for it. And yes, I'll continue to do this, as I have for the past few years, exploring new things in this field for my own curiosity: I like robots and everything related to them, I don't see anything bad or forbidden in this. You'll could meet some of this results very rarely on my external pages, but you'll never see them here on Patreon. This place is only for exclusively MY own creativity - 3d videos which everyone is accustomed to, and which I have learned to do acceptably. As long as there are people without prejudice who like what I do, I will just keep doing it.
P.S.: This isn't my last post for the year, so I'll be back. I really hope these explanations were at least somewhat helpful.