Mob Sorcery Pixel Art 2 (And Extras)

A while ago I posted up some AI-generated pixel art of Mob Sorcery characters (plus Fei from Heretic Spellblade). They're some of the only AI stuff I've done that's stuck with me as interesting, although I haven't done anything with them since. After getting sick recently, I wasted some time generating the new Mob Sorcery characters introduced since then. I also did the Stellarforged girls, and there's an old version of the Twins from Spellblade. Also, there are a couple of meme/reaction-type images.

All of them have been added to the same public Google Drive folder as the last batch, in case you don't want to view them on Patreon:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ESIWnyEPwg-Ag9CPBM-x5tYl5o5AMO-C?usp=sharing

List of the characters in order displayed on Patreon:

• Hamelin

• Ally hugging a huge pillow

• Ashley in her Book 5 appearance

• Ceresviel

• Cora

• Daji in her cover appearance

• Hamelin as she imagines herself or uses illusions to appear as

• The Twins from Heretic Spellblade (Maura and Laura)

• Kiho

• Kreesa

• Hamelin doing the tipping fedora meme

• Norah

• Pola hugging a huge pillow

• Sakura Fujiwara

• Aklati from Stellarforged

• Heafi from Stellarforged

• Kiels from Stellarforged

• Sai from Stellarforged

• Via (Livia's sister)

• Zaira

Like last time, these are artistic interpretations of each character. Almost none of these characters has cover art to go off, and almost none of them ever will get proper art (Kiho could, on the outside chance I ever commissioned something of her and Ally together; Ceresviel and Sakura are outside chances depending on if the series goes on twenty books lmao). The use of AI also remains pretty obvious in the way the style changes drastically for some characters - some tags and character designs just do not gel with the lora I'm using to create reasonably consistent pixel art (Zaira, Via, and Heafi in particular), or I did something it's not meant for (like the twins and the non-standing pose stuff).

You can stop here if you're only interested in the art.

I've considered whether to try to commission more art, but it is still an annoying process to go through. Ironically, when it's not cover art, I find myself being more picky (and probably more annoying to artists), because it's harder to write it off as a good commercial decision. A cover is a marketing tool, so bigger tits, color balance, pose etc have priority, rather than trying to make the cover match the character 100%. I also trust my cover artist, and in most cases let her draw what often ends up the definitive version of the character. But with stuff done for fun, or to show off the characters, it feels different.

Also, I just don't like the process of commissioning art. It's a pain. This is the reason why you never see anything other than the cover art (and also why I'm happy to do cover art so far in advance, as even if I end up nixing it, I still like it lmao).

The pixel art is something I still don't think I'd pay for, especially as I suspect it would cost a fair bit to get it done well, and at that point I may as well commission actual art. Especially as it's not like I'm making a game or using this for animations or anything.

I've definitely had a few requests for art to let people see more of the characters, but I'm still uninterested in putting up a lot of highly detailed AI art. Especially in case I get a cover or detailed art piece done of them that replaces that version. The Spellblade twins are a good example, as I actually want to commission art of them, but finding an artist that I can actually commission (and who I like) that will draw their exaggerated proportions is difficult and time-consuming.

So you get this, partly due to the highly positive response to the pixel art last time. Dunno if there'll ever be more. I post these on Discord as I generate them, but it's always hard to tell whether the lack of response is disapproval, disinterest, or people just not paying attention to the server.

Anyway, I usually do some sort of AI update here, but I'm not sure there's much to say.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably hear about AI day-in, day-out. Anything I say about it just adds to a cacophony of opinions that is tiring and overwhelming, particularly with the economic and financial sides becoming bigger and bigger. I really don't want to give financial advice.

Last time I posted, I mentioned the scene felt like it had slowed down a lot, with a lot of progress outside producing photorealistic stuff stalling. LLM text-generation is absolutely in that state, to the point major media outlets are talking about it. Video generation is hot shit right now, but still suffering from that problem - 2D generations typically have an uncanny valley feeling because the video models are trained on real life.

Video is also where the gap between local (i.e. on your home computer) and cloud generation has finally come to the AI art side of things, just like LLMs. Both the models and the length/complexity of the generations are drastically worse for local video models (like WAN Video) compared to the commercial cloud models like Sora and Google's Youtube AI slop generator. Part of me wanted to compare the video scene to the early days of Stable Diffusion, but given Sora has been in the works for a couple of years and almost certainly still involves backend bullshit to generate stuff as good as it does, I think local generation is never catching up.

So I haven't found too much interesting on a technical level lately about AI. Especially as I don't want to talk about stuff I hear from former colleagues about AI in their workplaces and government. It's boring, and I also have to be sceptical about what they say, as they often know jackshit about AI and its implementation.

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Commentary: Anyway, let me know your thoughts on the pixel art and which characters you like the most. I think I've covered all the girls in Mob now.

This is also probably a good place to request or suggest any characters you want NSFW art of or ideas, or those you just want art of that aren't getting a cover. Maybe I'll push myself to actually look for an artist.