mastodon - Link to source
The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The Aesthetic Rebellion

Bonus speedpaint: peppercarrot.com/en/miniFantas…

#webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

66. The Aesthetic Rebellion - Pepper&Carrot

Official homepage of Pepper&Carrot, a free(libre) and open-source webcomic about Pepper, a young witch and her cat, Carrot. They live in a fantasy universe of potions, magic, and creatures.
Pepper&Carrot
#krita #webcomic #minifantasytheater
in reply to Tomáš

mastodon - Link to source

screwlisp

wonk, theorizing.

Sensitive content

@David Revoy @Tomáš @Mark Dominus
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Soso

I think I've figured something that might be the reason why some people feel like your art feel generated, it's the text bubbles.

I know the text comes from SVGs since that's what you use for translations. I think this makes the text look a bit out of place, a bit too sharp. Siince GenAI uses separates layer like this to generate sensible text it can have this similar "out of place" look.

in reply to Soso

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@sgued Thank you, yes, the too digital rendering of the text and the vector perfect shapes. I should probably try to play on filters. Unfortunately, for fonts, it's hard to have "irregular" edges and maintain a font. I'll have a look about it, but it is probably a lot lot work (for the translation system, and the special characters of many languages).
@Soso
in reply to lesser scribe Anna of True Novembers, resident of the principality of ▓▓▓▓▓ in its XIV era‮

mastodon - Link to source

Soso

@lystopad It is, I'm not saying it's not, or even that David should change this.

It's just that for some reason I also have had this incorrect feeling with some of the mini fantasy theaters, and I wanted to understand why because it bothers me to have a feeling I know is wrong.
I'm just kinda thinking out loud trying to figure out where it comes from.

@lesser scribe Anna of True Novembers, resident of the principality of ▓▓▓▓▓ in its XIV era‮
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 20, 2026, 6:10 AM)
in reply to luna the doggie

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@lunareclipse @catsalad @realFedix Yes, big +1 with Luna.
I followed Glaze/Nightshade project and papers, and it's unfortunately proprietary and not effective. Last time, I visited a school of computer science, and there was a poster showing how Nightshade was ineffective and woraround-able. Also, it's AI itself, so it needs a lot of resources to overlay the art.
Well, in overall, good intents, but poorly executed and purely marketing... Impressive Press coverage, this was effective.
@luna the doggie @Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) @Fedix
in reply to luna the doggie

mastodon - Link to source

screwlisp

@lunareclipse
I suppose they are more different than I thought off hand. I recall nightshade's demonstration was modifying a picture of a cow with subtle visual cues that would have a bot scraper erroneously machine-label it as a leather wallet. In contrast I suppose @algernon 's iocaine is a tool for ensnaring and triangulating bot scrapers (or poisoning them, if you will).

Bemusing avian intelligence is a broad topic.

@davidrevoy @catsalad @realFedix

@David Revoy @luna the doggie @Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) @never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run llms and betray you @Fedix
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

aeva

I've been a long time fan of your work, and I've always found your style and skill to be aspirational. I was shocked and disappointed to find out all too many people were confusing it for AI.

I love what is going on in panel 3 especially with the intense prismatic color and complex textural contrasts. If this is a statement about what is to come, I'm excited to see where you go with this. If not, fuck the tin can, I still love your work as much as always.

in reply to aeva

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@aeva Thank you so much for the feedback. I don't think I'll go full panel 4 for the style of my next comics; I'm still too attached to a certain type of technique in my pose, backgrounds and shading. But learning to go a little bit more rough as on panel 2, and let some surge of saturation and aliasing glitches here and there, why not. Too bad I'm not on the cyberpunk genre; this looks like easier to adapt for that than for fantasy 😁
@aeva
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Tyrone Slothrop

he started becoming known as a painter around 1905, and moved from realism to more abstract expression. Died in WWI.

He was a member of the Blaue Reiter group, together with Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, among others. They were inspired by various influences, including the French Fauvists.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Blau… (German, as a starting point)

Der Blaue Reiter – Wikipedia

Autoren der Wikimedia-Projekte (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
in reply to spook

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@spook Thank you! Yes, I share the same curiosity for the 2030's art, comic style and pop-art. I'm sure someone, somewhere, already found something that are the premise of what's to come. Something obvious, powerful that in 5 years everyone will wonder how they missed it right now. I'm jealous only thinking about it but I know this is how the world is working.
@spook
in reply to Artsalgod

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@artsalgod I agree that crawling and training "takes it all", but I think some data are really labeled "ugly", and therefore, even if possibly generate-able back, they are often excluded because the AI company think the user wants only high quality graphics and label, something that looks pro, detailed, etc...
So, maybe there is a niche for human in the non-commercial ugly labels 😀
@Artsalgod
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

GhostOnTheHalfShell

I think you should experiment with Dadaism or maybe play around with Picasso’s styles.

It’s all the rage I hear

netzpolitik.org

2026-08-17 14:59:24

mastodon - Link to source

Ein Künstler zeigt mit einem besonderen Hemd, wie automatische Videoüberwachung ausgetrickst werden kann. Es geht ihm dabei weniger um den Trick an sich, als um grundsätzliche Kritik an der invasiven und intransparenten Technologie.

netzpolitik.org/2026/protest-k…


Künstler verwirrt KI-Überwachung mit Hypnose-Shirt

Markus Reuter (netzpolitik.org)

in reply to Sassinake! ᑐ ∪ ∩ ⊂

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@Sassinake Yes, I had the luck to visit at Orsay this year the Sargent grand exhibition, and the exhibition did a wonderful work to remind the context of that time; and how Sargent (one of my fav painter) found a way to keep doing portrait of the nobles of that time (something that was the number one source of income for painters) but with a style that was different from photo. It's interesting to then visit The Impressionism, and other you mentioned. Maybe AI will reboot something like this.
@Sassinake! ᑐ ∪ ∩ ⊂
in reply to Sassinake! ᑐ ∪ ∩ ⊂

mastodon - Link to source

Sassinake! ᑐ ∪ ∩ ⊂

but yet, photographers and 'collage' artists did have to pay their dues to the paintings they were using...

Which is something that LLMs are not doing.

And we're just considering painting, here, not MUSIC, and writing, and coding.

Which is degrading the quality of everything - like using cardboard and calling it meat.

in reply to Gabriel Pettier

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@tshirtman My favorite. I spent probably 30 minute in the MET in the Pollock room; a large (oversized) room with a massive pollock , in black and white over a cardboard colored background. That's epic abstraction; the movement, the dance, the happening. Yes, really ahead of our time. I wish I could visit this room weekly as a reminder of how powerful is art.
@Gabriel Pettier
in reply to fluffy 💜

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@fluffy Thank you! Yes, I had no idea how to degrade it properly, even if it was on my scenario. For the line-art, no problem; thicker and angular shapes, that was easy; but for the shading, I had no idea how to reach what I had in mind, so I simply shaded it the usual way, and thanks to the Gmic "degrade" filters and more layer of brush strokes on the top, I could get this result.
@fluffy 💜
in reply to David Revoy

gotosocial - Link to source

mirabilos🐈‍⬛

I like panel 2 Cepper (less glare, more natural) but panel 1 background (leaves recognisable instead of just mushy flecked background)

love what’s going on in panel 3 but only as a special effect

panel 4… is like… "you said you like my yellows? take this!" and, please no

btw, will eventually a cat take down the stochastic parrot? Malik🐈‍⬛ was bird-hunting earlier…

in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Toon Link

PFFFF the bird is so shocked. He's literally clutching his pearls.

I like how he doesn't love the painting because it's beautiful or well made, but because he can personally benefit from it.

Also, the hilarious irony of all the yellows in the last panel, but they're the wrong yellow for the training data. :blobcatcoffee:

in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Martin Owens

This reminds me so much of the transition that painting went through after the invention of photography. It went... wild. Mostly moving away from representation. Pre-Raphaelite notwithstanding.

I already see street art and creativity from teens becoming less refined in response to AI art.

Interesting times.

in reply to David Revoy

hometown - Link to source

Space Catitude 🚀

I think my work is already rough enough. 😅

Makes me sad, in a way.

Also reminds of something I heard about handmade weavers and other artisans: which is that they would intentionally make occasional "errors" to differentiate their work from the machine-made stuff.

I don't know how one would actually verify or refute that, but it seemed plausible enough.

Also a bit like the popularity of coarse-ground breads in the 20th century after centuries of bakers struggling to make their product purer and smoother.

@doctormo @slothrop

@Tyrone Slothrop @Martin Owens
in reply to Space Catitude 🚀

mastodon - Link to source

AlexanderMars

@TerryHancock @doctormo @slothrop just to address handweavers introduced flaws as differentia from industrial weaving.

I work in garment manufacturing and sadly those hand woven "flaws" have been easily faked by textile designers for over a hundred years.

Hand weavers and knitters often add "signatures" to their work, these are more likely little details that are invisible unless you know what to look for. True Cowichan sweaters and kimono fabric come to mind.

@Tyrone Slothrop @Space Catitude 🚀 @Martin Owens
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

JaK

for what it worth, your panels with Cepper and the Avian Intelligence are the best representation of my feelings, although on a different field. The fact these systems, with their capabilities of generating enormous amounts of slop, basically rob us of what took years to refine.

And this is how I often feel.

Robbed.

in reply to potentially hazardous object

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@ophis Not sure, my own style is like the texture and color of my hair after decade of work on it; it will come back even if I put layer of dye on the top. 😆 But maybe I'll try to not care to be as polished and clean for the rendering (I'll keep all effort on scenario); something like panel 2 type of degradation maybe.
@potentially hazardous object
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

𝖘𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖔

I think human art can be imitated, reproduced but what makes it authentic and special is the momentum, the feeling we live when we make art, leading to an authentic creation. An AI will never do it in that way, even if one day it could have a conscience... always different from our way of being.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 7:42 PM)
in reply to Cyber Yuki

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@yuki2501 I really hesitated to put her a 6th finger on the last panel. 😅
Yes, I'm still processing the words of the Nepenthes dev “I’m just fed up, and you know what? Let’s fight back, even if it’s not successful. Be indigestible. Grow spikes.” Still one of my big inspiration (src: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… )

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.
Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)
@Cyber Yuki
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Olm-e

somehow this adversarial pressure is becoming inspiration, in the story and in the aesthetics ... it's becoming meta² 👍 (no pun, this guy stole an ancient word)

hope the bubble pop soon,
so we can go back at saving the world from the rest of this madness
(those avians are really the cherry on the top of the bad cake duh! )

in reply to Takiro 🎨

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@Takiro I understand, sometime I'm like

"f*** this is my style, and I like technical poses, advanced shading, and accurate volumes so I'll continue do that."

and other time I'm like

"the pressure of this AI industry at a large scale is so big it already tainted the visual culture of the audience to think my style looks like AI, so better adapt and change, and find in that an opportunity to create more and think less of the technique."

I'll keep testing,and probably bouncing between the two.

@Takiro 🎨
in reply to Lidsel

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

Here I think Glaze/Nightshade is meh, I'm talking about it on framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy/1171… ; but I get the "slightly bit shittier"; and I'm sure it's effective for at least that.
I find also the list of glitch and all the filters of GMIC (already bundled in Krita) really cool; especially in "degrade" category, I used them a lot for this comic, and I'll explore for more.
Edit: good luck for the quest of a new PC in this economy! I had to change a 2TB harddrive this week, and ... 🙃 the prices.

David Revoy

2026-08-19 20:15:07

mastodon - Link to source

@lunareclipse @catsalad @realFedix Yes, big +1 with Luna.
I followed Glaze/Nightshade project and papers, and it's unfortunately proprietary and not effective. Last time, I visited a school of computer science, and there was a poster showing how Nightshade was ineffective and woraround-able. Also, it's AI itself, so it needs a lot of resources to overlay the art.
Well, in overall, good intents, but poorly executed and purely marketing... Impressive Press coverage, this was effective.

This entry was edited (Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 11:13 PM)
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Lidsel

Yeah, I never cared that much about protecting against style replication (who's targeting me anyway), it's just out of spite.

I got the computer, finished assembling it last week. Got the RAM, SSD and GPU at the end of last year, so I avoided the worst of the price hike. But yeah, the HDD situation is worrying - WD sold 100% of their capacity through 2030. I'm considering stocking up while it's still possible to get them. It's going to be a tough few years.

in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Alex

True skill at work, to render a result heinous to a machine trying to scrape it and train on it to replicate it, and yet is entirely beautiful to the human eye that beholds it. The green on Cepper in the final panel produces a color and design that I find entirely fashionable, if not her preferred black. The roughness, angularity, and coloration of the later panels still works entirely well for being visually appealing and telling the story. Well done, technically and artistically.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@me Thank you; but don't compare your own art: I'm 45, and draw daily since I'm around 11 (that's around when I decided I should do that daily and dream about a career in art). And it might sounds a lot, but technically, I can still find young persons on the web between 17 and 20 y/o way ahead.
So skill in general is really variable 😀 the most important is what you express with it, and the good news: in the AI era, I believe having intermediate skill is a plus. 😊
@Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to David Revoy

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Jonathan Lamothe

@David Revoy Oh, no worries. I used to draw as a kid and I've only gotten back into it recently. You were definitely an influence there.

I'm reasonable about my expectations. I know that the only way to get good at something is to suck at it first. Still, I'm happy with the progress I've made so far. 🙂

@David Revoy
in reply to David Revoy

sharkey - Link to source

Paul von Drayventhal

Since AI is a thing I see how aesthetics shift to a more natural and less "clean digital" look. especially in photography there is this huge retro trend where people buying old lenses. some brands like PolarPro even produce new lenses that try to reproduce the visual style of disposal cameras. Fuji successfully revived instant cameras (like Polaroid) and their digital cameras come with film simulations.
artists start use more traditional media again. Also I, who basically exclusively used the PC for drawing since I was a teenager, started to buy pens and brushes again.
This entry was edited (Thursday, August 20, 2026, 6:27 AM)
in reply to Paul von Drayventhal

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@Drayventhal True, I saw that too, I also saw an appeal for "offline" devices; like old digital camera, where one know all photos on it will not be accidentally leaked or uploaded to a company. (a small Kodak keychain camera my 20y/o niece has, micro SDcard only, making photos like a webcam from the 2000s). Very interesting how the pressure of AI (and GAFAM + surveillance capitalism + AI corpos) are shaping a counterculture on the other side. I'm prolly late at this game.
@Paul von Drayventhal
in reply to David Revoy

gotosocial - Link to source

brib ​

Hah, Cepper poisioning the training data reminds me of youtube.com/watch?v=ZBvLadXo7X… !

hey ai come train on this song

YouTubessa voit nauttia parhaista videoista ja musiikista, ladata alkuperäistä sisältöä ja jakaa kaiken ystäviesi, perheesi ja koko maailman kanssa.
Luke Nickle (YouTube)
in reply to David Revoy

mastodon - Link to source

Albert Westra

hey, it's a good illustration on Goodhart's Law. Remember that being a thing during COVID. Especially when it came to employers tracking productivity using mouse movements. Then those same employees figured out how to fool that software by installing mouse signaling software or vibrators to their mice.

But then again, how long is it going to take until new LLMs begin to copy those kind of techniques we apply to our artwork? It could be a never-ending cat and mouse chase when it comes to genAI and us.

This entry was edited (Friday, August 21, 2026, 1:16 AM)
in reply to Albert Westra

mastodon - Link to source

David Revoy

@odysseywestra Hey, oh, I think AI can already copy these techniques, no problem, they are good parrots.
But what protect this type of style is what their userbase want when they prompt, and how the company design the invisible "master prompt" to provide only "high quality rendering, mastery, featured artworks" and all the label like that , that are pre-feeded to exclude low quality works.
So, it require a lot of prompt engineering to get a rendering like that, and that's a path, imo 😀
@Albert Westra

This website uses cookies. If you continue browsing this website, you agree to the usage of cookies.

⇧