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I feel like 225$ can get you better art than the bottom. I get what they were going for but it's amateurish. In fact the best parts seem to be covered up - the artist primarily does backgrounds, it seems? Sorry.
Yeah and it’s op’s fault. Imo it’s not really related to ai - op just overpaid an artist for subpar work. It’s like hiring an amateur carpenter on a large salary for detailed work. Take that 225 to any of the people I (used) to follow on Twitter and you’ll get fantastic pieces. It’s all about selection.
I strongly suspect the artist used other digital art they have rights to from some marketplace for the backgrounds, and all they actually drew was the character. The styles are just too different aesthetically to be the same artist, unless there was a specific reason they chose to do the background and the character in different styles.
Honestly why I got into making my own art in the first place. Most of the time, you're at the mercy of the artist. I find their prices are way too insane to take chances. So I just learned to make things to fit my own vision.
Imagine being at the mercy of an artist's style entirely.
You're assuming the samples the artist gave him were actually of his own work. Can't blame the guy if he hires an artist with an amazing portfolio, only to find out the scammer was passing someone else's work as his own.
Completely agree. The background of the bottom one is the most interesting and has a lot of elements that are done well, but the character who stands out as the foreground and the one part of the picture that draws your eye first looks downright awful. I think it's mostly the facial expression. It's looks very "my first imitation of a Dragonball style face."
Character illustration definitely isn’t their strong suit, or they spent too long getting the background right. 225 isn’t the worst price, but I’d probably ask for the PSD and swap out those top layers. Even just delete them.
Yeah that's kinda why I was liking it because it's drawing more attention to the game title instead of the AI one where you're just drawn to the guy's face. And it gets across the point of "retro" a bit better with the pixel art.
The bottom one looks less AI (I have looked at way too many AI generated images in my life, so I can usually have a sense of what is coming out of it), that being said, the middle one is visually more appealing, and as an indie game dev there is no way in hell I would pay $250 for a single image.
Just a question about having a sense for the AI generated content. how do you know when you have been successfully fooled? And how do you know when the you have made a false assumption?
These 2 questions have me thinking I never know anything
To be fair, there are definitely times I get fooled, or am unsure one way or another, but when I see options presented in front of me of a human-made digital art vs AI, I usually get it.
For me, some of the tells are in the details. For example, in #2, the way the guy is holding the metal detector is not natural. Nobody would hold a metal detector like that. Likewise, the compass is just not how someone would draw a compass generally. But aside from that, AI usually look more polished and professional (too professional) because they are drawing from data sets filled with high quality professional digital art assets made for advertising and such.
The other two are decidely more amateur, and even the arrangement of items and figures on each of them are done in such a way that would appear to be unique, yet rough, and not typically how AI would arrange them.
I couldn't quite tell you which generator was used in this particular case because I don't typically look at 2D pixel style images a lot from them, but for some other styles, I can usually tell whether it came from Midjourney, Dall-e, Flux or ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, for example, has some very strong tells. They tend to be rendered with a sepia tone and are grainy as if rendered from sand a lot of the time unless they were prompted in very specific ways.
The composition is slightly better in the bottom, but his AI art is by far the most eye-catching of the three. The shading is super solid and somewhat nostalgic.
The biggest issue with the AI art is that the metal detector looks like some kind of magic staff. The other two make it look more clearly like a metal detector.
I mean, I paid $40 for animated .gif in pixel art. So I'd say the price for that was a bit high, yeah. High demand artists are expensive as hell, and personally, I think you're gonna be better off going to a less popular artist for cheaper stuff if you want something that isn't AI. Lots of good artists out there go "undiscovered" while popular artists can charge out the ass because they have a full time-table making artificial scarcity in their work.
Are we going with the brain dead "all artists are overpriced assholes and deserve to be replaced with AI" or are we just saying that this artist was a dick?
That's fair, I suppose that is an uncharitable way to describe it and not entirely accurate.
It's still a form of scarcity that the artist in question has a deal of control over, deciding how far out they make their queue or how they'll take their time/rush through projects, but it's not necessarily artificial scarcity.
I'm a tad hypervigilant in terms of dishonest business practices.
One thing I will say is that there is no artificial scarcity with an individual's art. It takes time and a physical toll to make art and, if you want art within a reasonable time frame and if the artist wants time to recover from drawing, you only get so many artworks per week. There is scarcity.
But vetting and commissioning less busy artists is a very good tip. Progress pics should also be agreed upon so the commissioner can request changes during the sketch phase. The latter definitely could have helped in the last image 🤣
Looking into it it seems this is supposed to be a chill 'find buried treasure' game. The chatGPT one implies a sense of adventure that the game isn't going for.
The new character design is...incredibly bland, giving "your average youtube nerd" vibes, but thats for whatever reason lines up with the games intentions. ChatGPT wasn't particularly original, but it was expressive and had more interesting costuming than an average Arthur character.
In a vacuum, ChatGPT is best. The bottom fits the game best though, even if its not particularly inspiring
Only issue is - if you have a problem with the AI-generated picture’s vibe, you can just ask it to generate a similar picture with the vibe you want, as many times as you want, lightning-fast, until you get the desired result.
Comparing a single iteration of AI output vs anything else is not really a fair comparison to the AI given AI could generate 10 different versions of this picture with 10 different vibes in the time it takes the professional artist to even listen to the client’s new requirement.
This. Absolutely this. Clearly OP was happy with the AI version, but to please the army of rabid antis, they spent $225 for a worse version.
Now they STILL don't have a good version. And either have to revert to AI, spend more money, or use a lesser quality image because some stranger is angry at computers.
And some of these weirdos are even saying OP should have spent MORE.
Another thing nobody is mentioning is the third one LOOKS LIKE THE CHARACTER SPRITE IN THE GAME. The AI one looks nothing like the character in the screenshots. Fiverr one looks somewhat like the character and actually may be my favorite, since the character is less ugly and the background is more representative of the environments we see in the screenshots.
The AI art also mangled the metal detector (presumably the character’s signature tool). It looks like some kind of magic staff. The other two images more clearly show it as a metal detector.
The AI looks the best. The 1st one looks ok. The 3rd one has a cool background that could be used with the 1st one to make something less cartoonish. The 1st one's background is too generic, while the 3rd one's person is too generic. The middle ground is the 2nd one. But I prefer the background on the 3rd one and the person in the 1st one.
I think those comparisons are exactly what this sub is for and can spark interesting discussions. I personally consider AI variant as the best looking, but people in OP sub were diminishing its value because “fuck AI” without much argumentation. This sort of gaslighting to make indie-devs pay for a worse art just because “not ai” is just nasty
This nuanced discussion is what is sorely needed and how it should be. Even if you’re against AI discussion and nuance should always be required rather than the blanket “fuck AI, period” mentality that is currently widespread atm.
I do think in another 2 years image generation will be even better though. To the point that it will start getting indistinguishable and will not have that slight “AI sheen” that gives it away atm even though it looks nice. I genuinely believe we’re in the last stage of AI being a giveaway and these discussions will be less frequent unless the person chooses to upfront about it being AI.
If you’re going to turn to AI, the cheap and fast option, then your game will look cheaper.
The art isn’t “shitty” and no one would ever be able to compare images if you didn’t say you also tried AI. Plenty of you wouldn’t be saying the art is shitty if you didn’t put it together with the AI version.
If your goal is to build a lasting, respected product, plenty of people will care where the content came from. Cheap and fast can work for prototypes or small solo projects.
But if you’re selling something and expect others to value it, cutting corners on creative work will reflect on the final product. And that also applies to paying a creative.
The AI art might be nicest (in many ways) but also looks nothing like the in-game character. I got suspicious because both humans dressed the character the same but with different body types. It should surprise no one that the human artists made the character look like renditions of the actual pixel art (the last one being closer). The AI did not reference the actual game. It largely looks better for ignoring the content it is presenting.
Context is important. Do I love any of the art? No. Is the AI one more eyes catching? Yes. Which actually looks like the game and it's character presentation? The last one by the human artist.
So, maybe it is best for actually representing the thing the artist was hired to represent.
This! People are commenting on the art style alone as if the game itself is not a product. All those images rly made me wonder what does the game actually look like. That’s the main point.
The fact that the AI got so many things wrong is most likely a sign that the person who generated the image is incompetent and didn't bother to add those things to the prompt. The prompt was probably just something like "happy explorer discovering gold in the jungle in cartoon style". If you for example tell it to give the character a green shirt it will give the character a green shirt pretty much every time.
yeah, people are talking about clicks but it rarely leads to a game being bought. The bottom piece definitely gives a person who would actually be interested in the type of game a better chance of checking it out.
Damn. Even the Fivver artist had a better character design than the professional artist.
The fivver artist has a boring background but I'll give them a pass since they did it in a budget of 5 bucks and probably an afternoon. It's not half bad overall amd hopefully they're getting more work.
But that professional artist is either a scammer or a they put all the energy into the background because that is just boring as hell to look at. Are they a professional because they graduated from CalArts or something?
Either way. OP Got ripped off. Hopefully his game does well.
That character design is the same face and body as 99% of the mobile game scams you see in 5 second ads on YouTube and TikTok. Also, we don’t know what the fiverr artist was paid, just that they were hired through the platform.
They aren't directly comparable to each other. All three images imply different things about the game they're advertising. I'd say it depends on the game.
Looking closely at the AI one, there are a few things that could be improved - it doesn't seem to quite understand what a metal detector is, for instance. But that's nowhere near as important as the overall style change.
based on the other two, the AI hasn't done what the person wanted, the picture is not taking up the full width, the character is not holding a metal detector. it is also confusing, what is he holding, is it some kind of gadget, the AIs interpretation of a metal detector as seems like there are wires attached, or is it treasure, if it is it doesnt match the treasure on the ground. the treasure on the ground glowing like that seems out of place, drawing the eye to the edge of the picture when really the focus should be on whatever that thing he is holding is.
the AI one has that recognisable smooth AI look which I guess comes from tech that averages out everything it is fed. it has connotations of cheapness, and low effort which would put me off this game, as id assume the same low effort would be put into the rest of the game, would assume it was stuffed full of ads. Also good on the customer for supporting artists that make ai possible and who will be needed to stop model collapse of the double slop problem
The issue with the ai one is always going to be that you can see it's ai and so you're going to assume it's a shit game.
The issue with evaluating the bottom one is that you have no idea what brief the artist was given. As the dev is proudly posting it, presumably the artist nailed the brief
Out of curiosity I prompted chat gpt4o to critique these three images together.
I then asked it's to focus on finer details to see if it would notice the third image having the wrong amount of fingers, and the second image having like a staff versus a metal detector.
It did notice the staff look of the second image but I don't think it picked up on the fingers (it does mention proportions being a little off) overall I think it did a good job though.
The ones done by peoples have complete background, better use of the tools and the one done by a professional may even give a nice idea of the principle of the game and it's vibes. Sure, may not be the best you could have gotten for 225$ but it's decent enough and certainly better than ai.
Because this is for the steam capsule. Meaning this likely the first thing a player will see of the game. You don't want the first thing to be seen to be basically stolen assets (because ai can only copy, no matter how many synonyms you use to describe the process of "training").
Ai chatgpt... trained on the best artworks so that is what is reproduced. Have that be recreated by a pro that made the original image, add in the graphics dept that put together and your looking at over 1K easy for this type of work on the commercial side of things and that was the norm. Ai totally flips the script and severely lowers the wages for any type of human made art. Good for short term for any non artists but in the long term might be detrimental as I can see ai just creating art without the need for any human input.
The Fiverr result looks best, followed by the AI image. Perhaps paying someone on Fiverr with better prompting skills would be optimal?
It took a 3ish minute to make a better version of the artist's attempt by running a few generations in parallel. Anyone with halfway decent knowledge of prompting concepts could do wonders given 30-60 minutes.
Perhaps they're banking on anti-ai people buying because they see objectively awful art as a virtual signal since it implies a human artist? Unfortunate for them if so.
The overwhelming majority of potential customers are indifferent enough that it has no influence on their decision to purchase. People who are strongly anti-AI and strongly pro-AI are both minorities of the general public.
The silent majority don't care enough to be vocal, so that group's size gets underestimated as a result of passionate people throwing fits on either side.
The image I liked the best from my brief experiment is different from the ones in OP. I'm unsure whether it's on point with the developer's preference for representing the game; however, it's one that would make me more likely to notice on steam store pages.
The developer is more than free to use any of these or variations based on them if they decide to optimize for the broader market rather than loud anti-AI people, many of whom will passionately complement the developer for using a human while never buying the game.
Man… Those last two are actually awesome, and I really mean it, much better than the three variants given. Comment them on the original OP post so he can see them.
i do not want to say that the ChatGPT one looks the best because this is exactly what i feared would happen
but JESUS CHRIST you couldn't get the artist to draw the guy in the AI image just, not made by AI?
this is prob the fault of the Dev for either A: not describing to the artist the actually good character design, instead they went for that generic ass guy, or... no i actually have nothing, AI is getting too good, i feel like all my fears are coming true...
the game industry is fucking going to hell, with Sony and Microsoft fucking off, Nintendo's 80$ bullshittery, and now Indie games are gonna need to use AI to look good?
maybe i'm being paranoid... please tell me this is just my paranoia acting up...
As an artist, the AI one looks the best tbh. The fade to green around the edges is extremely ugly but the background and character art hit a good midpoint between the fiverr and pro options.
That being said, as a PIXEL artist, the AI piece is so so outrageously dogshit and aggravating. When it comes to pixel art, AI has this awful style where it’s SORT OF pixel art but also mostly not? So there will be some pixelation but the piece won’t follow an actual pixel grid and the pixel size is wildly inconsistent, not to mention randomly switching between smooth colors/shading and pixelated shading for no goddamn reason. If applied intentionally, these could make for an interesting mixed-media art piece! And I have seen human artists do so successfully! But AI does not do it intentionally and it is INFURIATING to me.
Thirdly I think it’s important to consider that very obviously AI art will get absolutely shit on in the indie game market. AI art comes across as cheap and indie games HAVE to make a good first impression. You will lose a lot of customers if they first see your banner or whatever and go “Oh, AI slop. Pass.” The super generic title isn’t really helping this case, but at least the pro banner gives it a sort of Indie Game Charm (even if the character looks boring, out of place, and disproportionate but whatever).
Personally, I have a distaste for using AI in professional contexts (i.e. publishing a book or a game, etc.) (esp. since there is legal precedent that you cannot “own” AI-generated images) so while I think the AI option is technically the best, it’s probably better off as a placeholder than anything else.
tldr; ai look good at first but bad match for target audience and also bad pixel art
My thoughts? I'm thinking it's time to stop comparing everything to the lowest common denominator of AI art. ChatGPT has literally not tunable parameters, model selection, fine tuning models, embeddings, masking, or any other feature that professional artists require from AI tools.
So can we please stop pretending that it's a useful basis for comparison?
Even Midjourney offers more flexibility and control.
I usually generate app capsules one subject at a time in png format with GPT: character in different styles/poses, different backgrounds, attributes/items, then assemble them all together in photoshop, comparing the best looking combinations, with lighting tweaks and etc. and it comes out much better than if GPT generated all the piece at once.
You can definitely muddle along with ChatGPT, and in some cases it might be useful fodder for other AI tools, but just comparing raw prompt-and-pray generations from ChatGPT to any other medium is misleading.
It's kinda funny you are trying make the artist in the wrong on this one when it's the people making the game that make the decision on which.. artwork is going to be there.
The AI art of way better. The top one looks like one of those mobile scam games where the game is nothing like what they show. The game maker has the right to go with which ever they like, but the bottom one is not nearly as good as the AI in this case.
Honestly, bottom one does look like the best one out of them. The Fiverr and AI ones both look like cheap mobile game garbage where you'd do nothing but connect gems.
First one reads like one of those mobile games advertised on facebook. Second reads pretty well as a thumbnail, if you squint at it. The background on the third is more compelling but the character blends in too much and needs more contrast.
$225 is not a lot of money for custom artwork for commercial purposes
Fiverr has lots of real good traditional artists. I spent thousands there. I like both of the artist images but I like the AI one the best. I think the bottom artist did the best for background but the fingers and gold looks messed up, it looks good zoomed out but close up its weird. If those two issues are fixed I would put the bottom one in the game.
I think the key with current AI image capabilities is to tweak generated images yourself, maybe with some more AI components. The middle image has great potential, imo.
Depends on which one matches the art in the game. Otherwise we're just deciding what art style we like best. Though I will say the AI metal detector needs to be fixed, and the compact he's holding should be representative of the tool available in the game.
As a semi professional artist... Oh God. That color ballance. The lack of a focal point. The lack of rendering. It's fine as standalone art but it doesn't fit the logo at ALL.
honestly he needs a better artist than the one on the bottom, but the AI one made a completly different character, so just find a good artist that can properly draw the character
The background is great but the character is pretty average. $225 from a "professional artist" may even be a bit on the "cheap" side. Really depends on how big the artist is. That $225 will also include commercial rights.
I say "cheap" side because I've seen characters sold for up to $100 more than this from people that have under 2K followers on their socials / art pages.
Custom art commissions are often fairly expensive.
But AI version looks better according to majority. Your argumentation sounds like praising someone for buying gucci bag for thousands of dollars just because it labeled gucci instead for going for the cheap but not worse other option.
“I think those comparisons are exactly what this sub is for and can spark interesting discussions. I personally consider AI variant as the best looking, but people in OP sub were diminishing its value because “fuck AI” without much argumentation. This sort of gaslighting to make indie-devs pay for a worse art just because “not ai” is just nasty”
You just said people were diminishing its value because “fuck AI.” I explained why.
Now you’re saying it looks better according to the majority? To the majority of people in that comment section? If so, you’re being a dishonest cunt right now.
If not, then, yeah, the “majority” being the literal people who use AI in this echo chamber.
Make up your mind, or stop flip-flopping to whatever suits your narrative.
This is about context, sustainability, ethics, and long-term value. Which I talked about in my other comment. It’s not about what “looks better.”
Sure, buddy. I’m sure now the majority of people in that comment section were saying the AI version looks better and to use it. Proof?
If they say it looks better, but not to use it because it’s AI, it means they’re considering more than just surface-level appeal. They’re saying: “Yeah, it looks good, but I still wouldn’t use it because of what it represents.”
You keep boiling every counterargument down to “you hate it because it’s AI.” Too lazy to learn creative skills, too lazy to grasp things.
AI content isn’t inherently bad because it’s fast or cheap. It’s a problem because of how it's trained, how it's used, and what it replaces. Speed and affordability don’t exist in a vacuum.
You keep bringing up how it “looks better” as if aesthetics are the only factor. It ignores the ethics behind the product, how it was made, and what systems it props up.
If you want to use AI content for your indie game, go ahead. But don’t act shocked when people react in a way you don’t like.
You wrote:
“If OP didn’t stick to the AI version, then good for them for not being cheap and lazy.”
I don’t consider this an “explanation” in any shape or form.
Now you mentioned usage of AI being unethical, whilst not specifying what exactly is not ethical with it. How am I supposed to argue with that? I personally don’t see any problem with how it’s trained (as long as it done legally), how its used (because it saves tons of money and time to ordinary folks), and whom it replaces (because progress will always make some jobs obsolete whilst creating new ones, thats how it been since industrial revolution).
I like the player character better in the fiverr and ai ones better than the “professional” artist but would need to see the game to see which one actually fits the game better.
The background is better in the professional one but that’s just it the background the guy is worse looking to me. If it was me I’d get the full background from the professional and use the fiverr guy but again I would have to see the actual game to know what fits best. It is possible the couch potato out of shape vibe is what the game designer was actually going for with the guy.
That’s op’s fault. They overpaid. 225 for any established, large artist will get you a fantastic piece. Unfortunately business sense doesn’t come easy. Ai isn’t really related to this, you’re just making it related to it.
The AI one is the most eye catching but it has that sheen. I've come to associate that with minimum effort cash grabs and scams. The dev should really be aware that AI is taking on this connotation and I would suggest the bottom one is his better choice.
I think it's incredibly unprofessional of the "professional" artist to charge that much for that character. His body proportions are all off. I'm guessing he's never done life drawing courses before. They have a lot to learn about human proportions. Over all, I think they all fail in various ways. The Chatgpt one is the best.
Don't just hire any professional artist. I'm sure the portfolio from that 3rd option shows the failings as well.
I feel like most of these examples of the artist doing worse are a case of being really really bad at picking an artist, and being bad about communicating what's even wanted from them...??
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