Hey all. It's been a minute.
I haven't done any progress regarding MoGi, so I had nothing much to share. Regarding MoGi, I was demotivated because I can't make the sexy videos to work in a perfect loop. This is a technical issue, but for a year now, I have tried many video formats, an none of them make the videos loop seamlessly during the sex scenes. I'm not sure how to deal with this at the moment.
I also had a personal identity crisis with art made by Artificial Intelligence. At first I tried to avoid it, but the damn thing makes such a good art, in zero time. Then I tried to incorporate AI art in my works. This was very addictive and it consumed me. I even made a few Ucogi videos, trying to figure out where to go from here.
I liked the result a lot. The characters are mine, the story and jokes and direction is also my own creation. I wasn't stealing anything. I can easily convert an original Ucogi image I made, into a fantastic illustration, and then animate it with ease.
A few years back, I asked a friend to color Ucogi in illustration style. It took her weeks to just do the hair, and it wasn't very good as a result. But this was an artstyle I wanted for Ucogi for a long time.
So, perhaps the AI can be seen as a tool that enhances my actual work. It's like using a color filter in Photoshop, or a tween animation, instead of drawing every single frame. It saves time and creates content with better quality, colors, lighting... Somehow it feels a bit dirty, like cheating, or like a guilty pleasure.
But these are just minor complains. The AI creates sound and voices, and great backgrounds and fluid animations. Everything felt like a dream coming true, but something inside me felt off... There was a conflict inside me: If I'm not the artist anymore, then who and what am I now?
So, there I was, trying to justify my purpose in life. Maybe I'm a director, and my characters are just actors to my stories. I tell them what to do and they do it. This way I can have a small movie in a few hours, with perfect art. In reality, if I was to do this manually, it would take me months and I would need voices and new sound effects. With AI I get to explore what Ucogi and Alice look like, as walking, talking characters. This sounded like a decent compromise. AI can even surprise me, at times. It's like getting a fan art or a commission.
I decided to go hard on this. I got Instagram and TikTok accounts, in hopes of appealing to more people. I also posted this new take on Patreon and YouTube. And then the backlash started. Most comments were negative. Long time fans were disappointed. Also so many others use AI on TikTok and have thousands of views. AI not only surpassed my art, but I was losing from every front. Random people could "draw" better than me. And when I used the same tools to compete, not only I never got the views and likes as them, but instead, I got blamed for it. It is a lose-lose situation. My experiment for more content was failing. And I was failing too.
I got in deep conversations about AI slop, and what it means to be an artist. The bright side is that some people (fans of my work), prefer my imperfect and simplistic artstyle, over the oversaturated AI slop. This actually was a positive surprise. I focused too much on AI , reacting to the dread it caused to the art world, to the point where I felt mentally paralyzed. I tried to fight the AI urge at first, and I tried to compromise later on. I can't really compete with AI content that's been created at lightning speeds. AI is ruining the internet and I still struggle to see where I fit in all this.
To be honest, after a week on TikTok, I feel kind of sick watching every single account being nothing but AI nonsense. I really felt the slop that everyone else was talking about. And by using AI, I was creating nothing but slop, just like the rest of them. The whole concept was already done by many others and it felt like I was the last person to arrive at a generic party. But having fans support me and tell me they prefer my art over AI, is restoring my faith in myself and my abilities.
Someone once told me that "I have the superpower to make my own porn". Now everyone has that power for free. So maybe I need to step up my game. I remember a comedian saying that the AI cannot take her job. The punchline was that the AI can never be allowed to be as racist as she is. She made me wonder if this is how you beat the AI. To be more sexist, violent, gross, exaggerated, extreme in what I make. Things that AI will refuse to make. But I'd rather avoid that extreme path if I can. I don't want to make very nasty stories and art unless there is a good reason. On that note, I do want to punish the crude and nasty villain from Wild West Bimbos!
When I was trying to figure Ucogi's boobs size and made them be as big as her head, I was thinking that they are unrealistically big. And now you see AI art with even bigger tits. Maybe there are no rules and limits. Maybe I should stop doubting my self about boob sizes and if people like my art more than AI slop. Maybe I should focus on Ucogi stories and games, and use the AI slop only on TikTok to advertise my games? Or maybe I will just use Irene (since she is always faking things like in SuckerSuck), to justify my AI slop. I don't know. I still try to figure this out. Obviously I won't use AI art when I make games, as I'm still using Flash, which requires vector graphics.
Everyone is unsure of the future, and I still try to find an answer within me, regarding all this.
Please drop your thoughts on the matter. It would be of great help to me.
Regarding my works, I plan to update Ucogi.com (I need a SFW landing page with links to my Instagram and TikTok accounts). The last update was in 2022 and I lost a few files since then. I need to post more on Patreon (alongside my actual art, I also made some AI slop and I dont want it to go to waste), and I must finish Courtroom69 (hopefully in the next couple of months). I also plan to return to MoGi Origins around November, and see what I can do to finish this game for good.
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Some Mogi AI slop - PlantGirl Pumpkin |
