So the discussion at https://tildes.net/~movies/1ar2/martin_scorsese_says_fight_back_against_comic_book_movie_culture_by_supporting_directors_like made me think about mainstream Hollywood way of movies versus - well everyone else? I am not even sure I like the term "arthouse" movies, because movies are movies regardless of the boxes we put them in, but for the sake of the argument movies that don't fall in the category of traditional mainstream storytelling. Is it just French artsy fartsy pretentious weirdness or is (quote) real cinema (unquote)?

I think my movie habits have been pretty average. I am not American, but most of what I have watched during my lifetime have been Hollywood productions. By a huge margin. In recent years I found myself going more and more bored with both movies and tv series from whatever the algorithms at the streaming services were pushing to me. Not that it was bad, just felt more and more like a product designed after a specific set of criteria aimed at my taste demographic. So I forced myself to break out of the bubble and watched movies totally outside my comfort zone with something I am sure the algorithms would never have recommended me. Started with movies by Kieslowski and Wong Kar-wai. And since then I feel like a whole new world of movies has opened up for me. Not that everything is magically great. There are still pretentious French movies that make me roll my eyes, but most of all it is something different. Story telling rules I thought couldn't be broken are thrown in the air and something completely unexpected appears on screen instead.

It takes some getting used to. I really struggled with a good deal of self-doubt whether I could actually understand these movies, because I have studied film theory or went to art school. At the end of the day it is really just about watching things intuitively and trying not to analyze everything or thinking about what things are supposed to mean, and be curious to why the movie does things that maybe the complete opposite of the film techniques I was used to from more mainstream movies.

This is not to bash at the Hollywood blockbuster way of filmmaking, because when that formula works - it really damn well works. But so can something completely different like Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Haneke's Funny Games or Bujalski's Computer Chess - just to name a few of my recent very compelling movie experiences.

I've never really been much of an artist myself, but one of my kids (11m) really likes drawing, painting and making small animations on his ipad. I'd like to give him some gentle encouragement, if that's likely to help him enjoy creating artwork more, but I'm not sure what would be a good approach. Does anyone have some suggestions? He told me that he likes drawing objects and landscapes, but I think that's only because he's not confident in drawing live subjects.

Some ideas I had, but I'm not certain of:

• Sketchpad?
• Guide or drawing techniques book?
• Finding and recommending a good youtube channel?

If there's something that helped you at this time of life please let me know, thank you!

Almost 6 months ago Corridor Crew released an AI-drawn anime short (ANIME ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS) with an accomppanying making-of video ( Did We Just Change Animation Forever?). It got... mixed reception. Some loved the new era of "democratizing animation" (meaning you don't anymore need a team of hundreds of animators which in turn means it's possible for smaller creative teams to make their visions come to life), others really hated it for blatantly just ripping off an existing anime (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, 2000) and general disrespect over animation as a job and art form -- or at least that's how (some) animators felt. Having heard them talking about drawing each frame with such a passion (on Corridor's show!), I can understand the ire.

Now, almost half a year later, comes the sequel (ANIME ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS 2) also with an accomppanying making-of (Did We Just Change Animation Forever... Again?). Things... have changed. Basically Corridor realized that stealing art is bad, so they hired a real artist to draw a model sheet as a base for the AI to draw from (instead of stealing others' work). They also hired a person to write a theme song and a team of online artists to touch up every frame of the anime (watch the making-of if you're interested in the details, they go through them very well).

Next, some personal opinions of mine, starting with the first anime. I liked it. It was a nice and funny short with an interesting, smooth style that comes with the territory when there are more frames crammed into a second. Overall, it was the goofy concept of rock paper scissors combined with the over-the-top life and death drama that was fun. Visual style on the other hand, nowhere near ready. The warping and "worming" between each frame were really distracting and it wasn't ready for more than a tech demo (or for some relatively out-there story where that stuff ties into the film, not as a distraction). But I was able to look past those problems because it was a pretty good video.

Most of all, I didn't like them using artists' work without permission (and not saying anything about it).

Now to the sequel. It's... basically same? Same problems, less warping but for example king's crown was changing its color like it was having some sort of multistage chemical burn, and the visual style wasn't as strong and at times more clunky than on the first one. Maybe that's due the fact that the AI style guidebook was a lot smaller or that they were only willing to spent X amount of hours and money working on this while aiming for the anime episode lenght -- I don't know. But the story and the writing were still the best parts. Interestingly also I think direction was a bit weaker and they used too many "cool moment" tricks which made it visually messy. It basically got in the way of the story.

(Also I really dislike that Niko still wasn't taking responsibility for stealing art from others, bit of a bummer since most of us knew better six months ago already.)

What they proved with the second anime is that AI is still not close to replacing actual artists and it's a lot of work to make them even this way -- even if the AI part worked smoothly! But most of all what matters is the content, the creativity and how it's translated to the screen. Not the AI. It's a tool, not a revolution.

Edit. For clarity and some additional thoughts.

If i have a lot of acrylic on canvas paintings and I want to produce prints to sell, where do you make the prints? Local Kinko's/staples?
Clear plastic bag or no? Brief artist blurb at the back? Post card?

Have you ever bought a print? What made you want to buy it or what stopped you, and what would have made it go from no to yes?

AI is the best and worst thing that's happened, apparently. It's also pretty hilarious. With the right sentence fed to it, there can be some really unique images created.

This post is to challenge people to get AI Artsy with the whackiest thing they can think of to ask AI to generate. I'm simply using Bing Chat which uses DALL-E to create. All you need to do is post the sentence you used to generate and a link to the image, like this:

A goldfish riding a jet ski under a bridge doing an epic jump from a wave

If you need a different free AI Art generator, have a look at https://www.craiyon.com/. If you want to add why you came up with the image, go for it. My mind just works in mysterious ways so I have no idea why I asked this. Probably the same reason I asked it to generate a hotdog paragliding over the Alps...

Enjoy the silliness and fun, with a hint of AI art at the same time.

I haven't really seen this question asked often (not just here, in general), but what are your favorite themes to see explored in art and media, and why?

Personally, I really like art that explores concepts of "decay as a positive". I find it very intertesting when decay is portrayed as a positive force that prevents stagnation, as a sign of incoming change, rather than the common "decay is a sign of neglect".