New Video Tutorial: The Final Push

As many of you know, I've been playing a lot recently with AI generated artwork, especially creating robot designs. However, one thing I've been unable to achieve in midjourney (the AI I've been currently using) is a 3/4 view of the robot designs. All of them end up being frontal view only. This is likely because the images the AI trained on either haven't been 3/4 view, or maybe they have but that particular attribute hasn't been labeled, and so the AI hasn't learned what a 3/4 perspective is. While I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, I've been playing with giving the robots depth by projecting the artwork onto simple 3d geometry. So this tutorial discusses this technique which I used to make my painting "The Final Push". 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMU9TAF3dg

The Final Push

The mechanized war front! This image uses a little ai, some 3d, photobashing, hand paint, pretty much every technique under the sun. Will post a lesson tomorrow on how I made it, in the meantime, hope you enjoy the painting!

New Written Tutorial: 10 Things To Check Before Calling A Painting Done

Just posted a written tutorial on the last steps I take before calling a painting done. Art isn't finished, it's abandoned, but before you abandon it, give these a try...

http://neilblevins.com/art_lessons/tweaks_top_10/tweaks_top_10.htm

Battle Droid 4

Another batteldroid, same technique as before, midjourney based variations on my original painting, then photobashed the variations to make the final robot.

Same Settings, Different Base Painting

Example of identical AI settings but applied to different base paintings. The 1st robot's color and camera lens details appear in the AI version.

The 2nd is redder, and has the inset holes from the prompt painting.

And the 3rd's swords appear as spiky limbs in the ai results.

Fun to find all the details from the original paintings that get captured in the ai results, and all the ways they heavily deviate. Hope to see more fine level control be added in future iterations.

Robot Head Sketch

This was NOT made with the help of AI, wanted to prove to myself I could still make art the old fashioned way :D

Megastructure Book PDF is available

Now that the hardcover copies of the Megastructures book are well on their way to the US distribution center, the Digital Edition of the book has been released for those who'd prefer to read it on their computer / laptop / ipad, etc. Check it out here: 

https://artofsoulburn.gumroad.com/l/qnntu

New Video: How To Use AI In Your Photobashing Process

AI (Artificial Intelligence) artwork has been a huge subject of experimentation and debate these last few months. Whether this is a fad or the future, who knows. But if we are going to use AI, my goal is have the AI assist me rather than replace me, I want to find that balance between my own artistic ideas / style and that of the algorithm. And while AI continues to evolve, and so workflows will as well, I wanted to share with you my current attempts at finding that balance. So this tutorial will discuss the methods I've been using to incorporate AI artwork into some of my paintings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z8y9470R44