Per the earlier post, this was step 3. I opted to make it its own post, because of the controversial nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a disclaimer, I have not, nor do I ever plan to use AI art in a commercial product. Other people have opinions on this subject, but that is my line in the sand. For development, I think it is a valuable tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comic scramble, by its very design, needs a lot of art. To date I\u2019ve created over 400 images as I experiment with different styles, concepts, and iterations of tiles to figure out what does and doesn\u2019t mesh. That\u2019s how I got the learnings listed in the last post. But I\u2019m not done. I would guess that I\u2019ll have generated well over a thousand by the time I\u2019m done, to have close to 100 that I would want for the game proper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, let\u2019s say that an image by an artist will cost $40, which I believe is in the ballpark of reasonable<\/a>. That would mean that I would\u2019ve needed to spend $16k for test art to date, and ultimately $40k to get art for the final project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBig deal!\u201d Some may say. \u201cThat\u2019s the cost of development,\u201d others may push. And that\u2019s a fair case for companies that can afford it. My development budget is closer to $2k a year, as this is all bootstrapping to get things off the ground. That would mean 20 years of development on this project to the exclusion of everything else to get final art, for a project that may not even be viable<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Could I raise the funds on Kickstarter? Maybe, but $40k is a big ask, and that\u2019s just for the art (admittedly, one of the biggest development expenses of any game). My last game was 1\/10th<\/sup> that, and few projects successfully raise that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, that\u2019s the economics of it, but I believe there is a very real benefit to a designer using a tool like this. It helps me to figure out what I don\u2019t want! Everything is amorphous and intangible until you see something for the first time, and very rarely is the response, \u201cYes! It\u2019s perfect!\u201d As a designer of games and products in general, it\u2019s best to get a concept in front of people as quickly as possible so that they can say, \u201cNo, not that, because of X, Y, and especially Z!\u201d It\u2019s not a critique on you as a designer (it may feel like it, but criticism is a part of any design process).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I would much rather go to an artist with the lessons I\u2019ve already learned on what works well with the game stylistically, and examples of what to avoid. If I\u2019m paying by commission, that will reduce the number of iterations they need to spend on my project to get what I ultimately need, freeing them up to move on to even more projects!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Per the earlier post, this was step 3. I opted to make it its own post, because of the controversial nature. As a disclaimer, I have not, nor do I ever plan to use AI art in a commercial product. Other people have opinions on this subject, but that is my line in the sand. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"1":{"name":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/category\/blog\/"}},"tags_names":[],"comments_number":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenticketgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}