A few years ago I became seriously ill. I was in a coma on heavy duty meds, and had a kidney transplant. I’m much better than I was, but I can’t do a lot of things like I could before.
We’ve now got quite a few kids in the extended family, so a while ago I wrote a short story to try to make it easier for them to understand. My wife and family like the story and have suggested making it into a picture story book. Problem is, I can’t draw and my imagination isn’t very good.
How can I get pictures for the story if I can’t do it myself and don’t have the money to hire someone? I want to avoid using AI tools because of the potential copyright issues.
I haven’t tried the services like Fiverr because I’ve heard that they force a race to the bottom on prices, but does anyone have any experience, or have any ideas of what I can do please?
Thanks in advance :)
making it into a picture story book
As in formally publishing it? Or just sending it to your family?
The only way copyright, especially around AI, could conceivably be a factor is if you intend to publish and sell it.
For now I just want to publish it for the family, so vanity publishing. Some of the family have suggested selling it though, so while I don’t personally think it would sell, I want to make sure that I’m doing everything properly.
Use AI but lie to people about it.
Put a sepia filter on it if you want to get creative.…orhideadickbutt
I like your style :D
When my dad made a book for me, he had me illustrate it. When I want cards for people I get the kids to illustrate it.
I think getting them together, telling the story, letting them draw them getting THAT bound and sending it to them would be better than ripping off an artist, the kids won’t mind artless illustration if they created it and the story will have somewhere to land since they will have heard it.
That’s a lovely idea. I’ll have to see if any of them can draw at all :D
Well, here in Vietnam a lot of art students and graduates would probably be quite happy to take this on.
I recall RMIT has a local job forum, for small jobs for current students and alumni. The instruction is all in English, so communication should not be a problem. Maybe other universities have the same.
Or maybe an art school in the Philippines where English language instruction is also common? I bet they have job forums too.
In my workplace we’ve got a 3D designer or two, probably not ideal for your task though :(
BTW using AI to generate an image as an artistic brief is a great application that supports both human and machine artists. This is my biggest use of the tech in production so far – really great especially when language barriers are present.
@Tippon if you are going the traditional publishing route, publishers don’t actually expect children’s book authors to provide the illustrations necessarily.
If you are self-publishing, I suggest you reach out to the kidney transplant community (support groups etc) to see if anyone can volunteer.
There might be someone else in your shoes who can draw and not write, who would love to be part of this project.
That’s a great idea, thanks :)
I’ve just mentioned in another reply that the book is currently a bit too personalised, so probably wouldn’t appeal to other people. If I can rewrite it a bit to remove any personal details, that could work though :)
I think that might be a good thing to do if you can; there are probably others in your situation who would love to have a book like this.
You could even do something like donate proceeds to a kidney charity or hospital.
That’s a good point. I’m lucky enough to have received my kidney from a live donor, and the story is about how they saved the day, and because of that I was able to have a family with my wife, so it could go down quite well. I’d have to remove the personalised information, but that shouldn’t be too hard :)
Talk with people about the book until you find someone who’s excited, and who has some artistic skill. Then go halfsies with them in terms of the credit for the book.
That would be ideal. I think the book is probably a bit too personalised as it is though, and wouldn’t be too interesting to people outside the family. It could make a nice challenge to rewrite it a bit and change some of the personal details though :)
There aren’t that many options. Either you commision it, or you learn to draw, or you use AI.
If you don’t like Fiverr, maybe look for another platform. Or find someone by some other means. You could also use AI to draft it and then use that as a basis to start with the proper art.
I don’t really understand the issue with copyright. Are you afraid of infringing on other people’s copyright, or that you won’t be able to protect your work if it’s made by AI?
I don’t really understand the issue with copyright. Are you afraid of infringing on other people’s copyright, or that you won’t be able to protect your work if it’s made by AI?
A bit of both to be honest. With the current fuss around AI artwork, I don’t want to either steal someone else’s work, or in the very unlikely event that mine becomes popular, have mine taken. The second one is much less of a concern though.
Fair enough. I’m pretty sure most of the fuss around AI is way over exaggerated. But we’d need a few more legal disputes and a few new laws to ultimately settle this.
I’m alright with using AI tools. I think it’s wrong that these companies just take everything they can get hold of, without licensing it. (I mean, I would get in trouble if I downloaded illegal torrents of every novel out there without paying the authors. But it seems companies that develop ChatGPT get away with similar things.) But in the end it’s like if a teacher copies textbooks or shows a pirated version of a movie. This doesn’t make the things the students learned from it ‘illegal’ or forbidden knowledge. I think the same applies to AI. (Given the fact they don’t copy this 1:1 which they usually don’t do anyways… It is possible AI regurgitates its training data in some special cases. So there is some substance to this worry. But I’ve mainly seen this issue come up for example when generating computer code. Less so with images.) But that’s just my oppinion.
It could bite into your side of copyright, however. But then you’re also embedding that into a context, adding your own text and story around it. Even if the single images turn out not to be copyright-able, the combined work definitely is.
I don’t want to talk you into using AI. Just: before you end up not doing it at all, maybe re-consider using it. Or do it as a preliminary step to draft something you like. You can still send this version to an artist afterwards.
And I bet all those issues will be solved in a few years time. Everyone and their grandma are already using AI and AI is not going away. There is no way around that.
This being said, I think AI also has downsides. Sometimes I generate images or text. But I don’t think it’s proper art. It copies styles well and does what it’s told to do. Sometimes it is super creative and does hilarious things, sometimes the output is a bit bland. But it can’t choose a style for a reason, or embed things into a context or hide little things or a second level of meaning into it’s output. It doesn’t choose colors or other details to underline a certain thing as a proper human artist would do.
And using AI for real-world purposes is hard. Like you have to learn how to force it to draw the same character in the next image and not a completely different woman. Add the details that fit. Do a consistent stlye. And as I understand people work on their prompts for quite some time before they get the exact results they want. And still, they then generate hundreds of images and go through them to end up with a single good one. It’s way harder to put it to good use, than drawing some astronaut on a horse for some quick fun.
Contact your local art college and see if there are any students looking for work experience and a bit of cash.
That’s a good idea and could work. I’m a bit concerned about taking advantage of someone though, especially if they’re young. I’d have to be careful.
Then prepare for more paying in exposure memes on the Internet. There is nothing wrong with AI art, and honestly it’s better from an ethical standpoint to use AI art versus not paying someone for their time and energy.
My idea isn’t about exposure, but experience, and I said they would be paid. They won’t get paid as much as a 10 year designer but some beer money seems reasonable and they have some work for their portfolio.
Take pictures of yourself; it will help illustrate the point much better. You could also make them a short video or pay for stock photos. Most stock photography is in one of a few very specific styles because they best show objects and actions, so they should be relatively visually consistent but you could also use gimp to help keep the colors consistent. Gimp does also have some cartoon filters, but they take a lot of editing to look good. Might still be easier than trying to draw it yourself or commission something.
Start a GoFundMe for an art commission. It comes with a good story and your needs are modest, so a free lunch might actually be achievable.
Otherwise, just use AI. The court cases seem unlikely to succeed, if you know how AI works, and you know that a judge is unlikely to throw out an entire industry over a tiny, difficult to measure contamination with questionable training data. Some of the shit we in the West import is produced by crime more often than not, after all. Even if they do stick somehow, they’re probably not coming after you specifically.
make shitty artwork on purpose, its cool
Then I might be the coolest person you’ve ever met :D
Search for creative commons or public domain artwork - Wikimedia Commons is a good start, or a google image search (under the image search bar select tools -> usage rights -> creative commons rights)
Or don’t worry about the copyright issues of AI and learn to use that to create things you want - I suggest SDXL is the best option
a google image search (under the image search bar select tools -> usage rights -> creative commons rights)
Huh, I didn’t know that existed. Thanks for the heads up :)
You can try Wikimedia Commons
That’s a good idea, thanks :)
Another option is to shop it around agents and publishers and make the illustrations someone else’s problem!
Good thinking! :D
Oh no. THAT was the bad thing…
This made me laugh, thank you :)
While I’m not averse to sailing the seas on occasion, this is one of those times where I should do everything by the book.
I mean, unless you just have the absolute worst narcs for a family, it’s not like it matters what you send them
