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TIL there's a big difference between AI reference and AI final product
So last week a guy on Fiverr wanted a fantasy landscape for his D&D group, 50 bucks. My hand-drawn stuff takes like 8-10 hours easy, so I thought maybe I'd use Midjourney to generate a base and then touch it up. That felt kinda wrong though, like I was cheating the whole point of making art. I ended up doing it all by hand, took me 9 hours and my wrist hurt for two days. The client loved it, said he could tell it had soul. But now I'm wondering if I'm just being dumb about money - I could have done 3-4 AI-assisted pieces in that same time and made way more. Has anyone else been stuck between the hustle and the ethics of it?
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emery107d ago
Wait, do you think the hand cramps are part of the "soul" tax or just the universe telling me I'm too stubborn to use tools? Honestly, I've been there too. I paid a guy $30 to trace my messy sketches into clean vectors once and felt so guilty I redid half the work myself. Tbh, if the client is happy and you're not lying about how you made it, I think you're fine either way. Ngl though, spending 9 hours on a $50 piece does hit different when you could have made $200 in the same time with AI legs up.
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wader717d ago
Right? The guilt is real. Hand cramps are definitely part of the fee.
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