Discover Your Illustration Voice in The Style Class - https://skl.sh/3S6PCF1 — Use this link to get 30 days free on Skillshare Is the AI Illustration Apocalypse Here, and is it going to take all our jobs away? In this episode, I'm going to share my thoughts on how AI is affecting the illustration industry today and how it might affect us in the future. I go a bit dark in this one but stick with me, in end I share 3 reasons I’m holding on to hope as an illustrator. In the very end, I offer one main thing that you can ALWAYS rely on to be your true value, both to yourself and to whoever you work with.
Discover Your Illustration Voice in The Style Class - https://skl.sh/3S6PCF1 — Use this link to get 30 days free on Skillshare
Is the AI Illustration Apocalypse Here, and is it going to take all our jobs away? In this episode, I'm going to share my thoughts on how AI is affecting the illustration industry today and how it might affect us in the future. I go a bit dark in this one but stick with me, in end I share 3 reasons I’m holding on to hope as an illustrator. In the very end, I offer one main thing that you can ALWAYS rely on to be your true value, both to yourself and to whoever you work with.
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Hello. My name is Mr. Tom Froese, and these are my thoughts on illustration. This is a biweekly podcast about showing up and growing up as an illustrator. Welcome to episode 30. So today I'm going to talk about A.I.. I know a lot of people are talking about this, and I don't consider myself an expert on the topic, but as an illustrator, seeing changes in the industry and seeing people, fellow illustrators say things about it online, express a little bit of anxiety about it.
I do think I have something to say about it, just at least from my own perspective. So that's what I'm going to do today. It's kind of an essay style monologue, and in it I'm going to go to dark places, but please stick with me because in the end I'm going to share three reasons why I'm holding on to Hope as an illustrator.
And then at the end I'll offer you what I think is the one main thing that you can always rely on to be your true value, both to yourself and to whomever you end up working with. Whatever happens to the overall illustration industry. So just a few quick thoughts Here I am back to podcasting solo. This is my first monologue episode in over eight weeks.
The last eight weeks or four episodes, I shared with you some conversations I had with some friends in the illustration world, including A.J. Pizza, Kyle T Webster, and before them, Adam Ming. So it's good to be back sharing just my own thoughts here. But I have to admit I'm a little bit rusty. The process of getting even to this recording has been quite, I don't know, quite an effort.
I have. Well, let's just say I'm looking at version seven of my episode script today. So even just getting to a point where I was comfortable with what I was saying took me a little bit all of this to say I, I feel rusty and hurt because I actually haven't been in the flow of of writing and recording these more monologue style episodes.
Now, I have to say, I've really enjoyed having my conversation style episodes. I really love having those conversations with fellow illustrators and I got a lot of good feedback from those episodes. So I do plan on doing more of such conversations. It's just that I also don't want to forget that the heart and soul of this podcast, at least right now, is yours truly sharing his thoughts on illustration.
And this really keeps me active in looking around and making sure that I'm paying attention. When you have a podcast or a blog or maybe a substack, you suddenly have a reason to look around for things to actually report to your audience or to write about. So just having a practice of writing of some kind makes you look closer and pay attention more.
So that's why I like doing the monologue format, even though, my goodness, sometimes it takes a lot of work even to do a simple episode like what we're going to do today. So before we get into it, I just want to thank you so much for being here. If you're a patron, you are the reason this podcast has any financially viable thing going for it.
So I really appreciate your financial support if you're a patron, but if you're not a patron, whether you're listening for the first time or you've been listening for a long time, you are very welcome here. And I really appreciate you spending some time with me here. Now, if you'd like to support this podcast in any way, there are three ways that you can do that.
And the first is, of course, sharing with a friend the best way to help a podcast grow is through word of mouth. And that means listeners like you share it with your audiences, with your friends. You know, if this particular episode mean something to you and you got something from it and you think that someone you know might really appreciate it, please share it with them.
Don't hog me all to yourself. And you know, it only takes a few moments and it means a lot. The second where you can support me is by liking, subscribing, following, etc. wherever you happen to happen to be listening from. And again, that only takes a moment and it really does go a long way in encouraging me and encouraging the algorithm to spread my message far and wide.
The third way you can support me, of course, is by becoming a paid supporter on Patreon. You can become a drawing buddy for $8 a month and that gives you access to my live monthly draw drawing meet ups called Draw With me. Every month we meet and draw something together Today. Just this morning I had my mar drawing meet up and we drew what I call busy towns.
That was a lot of fun. And last month we drew horses. If you're interested in joining as a drawing buddy, you can go to patreon.com/tomfroese to learn more.
All right. I think that's it. Let's get into the content right now is a tumultuous time for illustrators and it's a tumultuous time for the illustration industry as a whole. I think to many of us it feels like we're entering into an illustration apocalypse. The thing we're all probably keeping our eyes on right now is the threat of A.I..
I'm very sad to say that A.I. is getting very good head making, passable illustration and art and even live action style video content with the right prompting and A.I. generated image or an air generated video can turn out absolutely Stunningly, we may all have different philosophies about whether or not it's art or whether it's beautiful or impressive, But whether we like it or not, it's showing up all over the place.
Just yesterday, I saw someone post a photo of an in-flight magazine that had an AI generated illustration in it. What was the clue that it was AI? It was the illustration credit that tiny little font in the like crease of the magazine. It said open eye. It wasn't a human name. It was just open eye. So the scariest thing here is that the illustration didn't look air generated.
So what does it mean for us illustrators if computers can do our job decently? If you were the editor of a magazine with a mandate to keep costs low or you had a very limited budget, if you're honest, what would you do? If we're honest, very few readers of such a magazine or any magazine, for that matter, would be worried about how the illustration was made or who or what created it.
I'm sure the average reader of a magazine wouldn't even care if the articles were wrote by a person or something like that. ChatGPT. So what I think this means or points to is the fact that people will always go for the cheapest, fastest option as long as it does the job and most people on the receiving end of that thing.
And here we're talking about illustration and in this particular example we're talking about the text that the illustration goes with most people won't even perceive there's a difference. Now, if that boils your blood, just step back for a second and look at look at a different industry. So you and I already do that with booking flights. So some of us are old enough to remember a time when we had human people called travel agents.
These workers, the people who went to school to become travel agents, would have access to all the flights, like all the departures and arrivals, and they knew which hotels they were at the destination and how to hook you up with a car rental and all that kind of stuff. That person existed to hook you up with all that.
And today we're just used to doing this ourselves. And we don't we don't even think about there being any other way. And this is all thanks to the technological advances of, you know, 20 or so years ago of the Internet and e-commerce. So what I means or what this particular example that I'm talking about means is that as much as we might protest A.I. and feel like it's stealing our jobs, that's kind of what technology has always done.
I don't know how far back we could go, but we could at least go as far back as the Industrial Revolution. This is when a lot of things became automated and replaced human workers. It's funny because as recently as last week, we thought it was a pretty good insult to call someone a Luddite. And what's a let's say it's someone who resists technological progress.
So I would just like to point out the fact that today anyone who's averse to a AI generated art is kind of reacting in the same way that the Luddites did way back in the 19th century, like the 1820s or something like that. So just a quick little piece of history here. The term Luddite comes from actual people who called themselves Luddites, and they were members of a movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of cost saving machinery.
They protested against manufacturers who used machines in a and what they called a fraudulent and deceitful manner to replace the skilled labor of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods. Does this sound familiar? Now, I'm both surprised and not surprised at all. But after all, we've learned about their woes and the harms of technology, we're still so quick to adopt new technologies thinking this time it's going to be different.
They just take smartphones and social media and their impact on our culture. For all the good that they've done. They've also created an epidemic of loneliness and depression and even things like bad posture. It's like we're we have amnesia. It's like we're compelled to just race to the next technological thing, the next innovation, as though we're possessed in spite of our better judgment.
And when I say we, I mean anyone who's leading us to this fearfully unknown future where A.I. disrupts pretty much everything we believe makes us human. So as I say this, I'm not totally certain we're headed for doom, specifically because of A.I.. That's just because I'm not an expert on the topic, and I can't tell the future. I do think we are being dumb as a culture, to put it bluntly, because we have seen what technology does to the fabric of human culture and society.
It tears us apart the less we need humans to do things, including the boring, menial things that nobody wants to do. The less we have a reason to come together at all. Our societies are structured around us needing each other, and there are levels of ability that people can contribute at. And if we remove those things on the bottom, we're almost depriving people of a possible way of contributing and feeling like they're they're sharing in with the rest of the community.
Anyway, I realize this is not the thoughts of A.I. podcast, it's thoughts on illustration. So I'm going to turn it back on to the question What does it mean if I can illustrate as good as us? We'll be right back. So I'd like to ask a favor from you. Skillshare is doing a referral drive right now, which means they're asking their top teachers to get as many referrals to their free memberships as possible.
The more people I can get to sign up for the 30 days of free membership on Skillshare, the more bonuses I earn and that translates directly to income that I can invest back into this podcast and keep it going. So if you've been thinking about taking one of my classes or perhaps someone else's on Skillshare or if you'd like to just check out all the great classes on Skillshare that it has to offer, then this is a great opportunity to finally go and do that while also supporting the thoughts on Illustration podcast.
All you have to do is use one of the referral links that I drop in the show notes, and I do this in pretty much every episode. So for this particular drive, Skillshare is asking us to get at least 50 new referrals, which earns us a little bonus. And again, this will go to support what I'm doing here.
Do you think you could help me with that? It's really a win win. You got 30 days to learn whatever you want from some of the best teachers online with no obligation to stick around. So why am I telling you all this so plainly? Well, I am so confident that you will love learning on Skillshare that I'm willing to just be totally forthcoming with you.
And also, that's just how I roll. I just want to call out one class that I think would be very inspiring, especially in the age of A.I.. I'd like you to go and try Lucy Lambros class. It's called Peculiar Props for all around creatives in this class. Lucy guides us away from the mad rush to create a fool's gold towards the true gold mine of inspiration that exists inside each of us.
Don't be fooled by her meditative, chill teaching style. This is a truly subversive class calling us to rebel against the cult of perfection and productivity and even our own self doubts. My favorite lesson in her class is shabby tools, where she prompts us to actually downgrade our familiar, high quality tools, which actually may be holding us back from more surprising ideas.
Of course, you can also try my own classes if you're looking to find your voice and style as an illustrator. You can take my class, the style class. I'll leave links to my class and to Lucy's class in the episode notes. As always, you can also go to my website Tom Prose dot com slash teaching. Where you'll find all of my classes and their respective referral links.
Why not give Skillshare a try? It's free and honestly, it will really help this podcast out a lot. What does it mean if I can illustrate as good as us? So I think that for now, many of our jobs are safe since there's more to what we do than just making pretty pictures. Illustration at its best is a personal, specific thing.
It has a very personal and specific voice to it, and with that, an individual's perspective that gets imbued into the work. We who appreciate illustration love that a Mayra Common illustration is just so. Myra Kalman We love that a Quentin Blake illustration is so quintessentially Quentin Blake. You can pick your favorite artists. You're a fan of their work because they made it and only they can make the work you love.
But what happens when you can write a prompt and get an original Quentin Blake illustration that wasn't even drawn by him? Or what happens when Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake can collaborate on a book published in 2024? Even though the author, Roald Dahl, died almost 35 years ago, it's going to be possible if it isn't already. And even if aficionados can tell the difference, the truth is that most other people won't.
You know, just to go a little bit darker here, what happens when your family can digitally resurrect you by taking everything you ever wrote or posted to the Internet posthumously or posthumously? I don't know how to say that word, but, you know, after you after you die and they can carry on chatting with you as always, and even ask you about your past to learn things they never knew before, like why shouldn't this be a possibility?
And if it is, people are going to take it up.
I may not have its own experiences as we understand them, like it doesn't have consciousness as far as we know. And so it can't actually have an experience to express, but it can very believably reproduce art that looks like someone expressed it. So if I can do what we have worked so hard to develop as a means of artistic expression as illustrators, and if it can do it way quicker and even maybe better, what does this mean?
Honestly, I don't know. I think there will always be a contingent of people who, like the Luddites, will resist it altogether, and they'll make communities around the fact that they only work with their hands. You know, maybe it's some kind of modern steampunk let a thing, but I just want to give you a little history lesson again. The Luddite movement didn't turn out so well.
According to one of my sources, the group of Weavers and textile artisans in the early 1800s were crushed by the British government after resisting the destruction of their livelihoods by industrial industrialization. Now, in spite of history not being on the side of Luddites, I am I very much do not like the idea that I will continually look and sound more and more human.
So I'm not a soothsayer, I'm not a futurist, and I don't have a clear sense of what things will look like even a year from now. All I can say is that the entire planet seems to be adopting A.I. with light speed, even though nobody asked our opinion. Somehow, even if we live in a democracy, we can vote for our leaders.
But we can't vote on the big, consequential issues like the introduction of an insanely disruptive technology like A.I.. By the time our leaders start addressing these technologically progressive fallouts. It's too late. We're seeing this right now. With the society corroding effects of smartphones and social media. Just as an example. So what hope can I share with you right now?
What hope do I have as an illustrator who depends on people choosing human for my livelihood? Well, first, I'm kind of just going to have to wait and see what happens. We're all being taken for this ride anyway, so I just have to do my best to be conscious and maybe conscientious of opportunities that I can take to choose a human over Amish scene.
Like, I could be the change that I want to see in the world so I can choose humans whenever I have that choice. But now that I think of it, just today, I used the self-checkout at the grocery store because it was faster than waiting for a human cashier. So maybe right now it can't really be about trying to be ethical or expecting others to follow certain ethics.
We may judge the editor who replaces human made illustrations with AI generated art, but travel agents could have just as well judged early adopters of online flight booking websites for the very same reason. It's just that they didn't have social media at the time to voice their complaints, and they didn't have our sweet illustration skills to make their message louder and more visible.
So what I'm saying here is that rather than expecting people to choose human on ethical grounds so that we can still get to illustrate, I think we need to look at the past and learn from it. If a product or service can be replicated by a machine and it does the job faster and for less money, most people are going to choose that.
But all that being said, here's what I'm doing and this is why I still have hope that I can't or at least won't be out of a job in the near future. So first, I think that at least there's going to be a period of time when people will just prefer working with humans because that's what they're used to.
Many illustrator client relationships are not just about the work. People come to trust one another and rely on their judgment and oversight of a particular part of a process. And I, I think that even while art directors might experiment with the AI, they'll always find ways in which it falls short. They'll miss their human illustrator buddies and they'll actually want to work with that may well end up being worth it to work with a human, even though it costs more and takes a little more time.
Second, I think there will be safe havens of human illustration. These are sectors of the creative industry where A.I. generated art just isn't appropriate or welcome. So just take picture books, for example. Anyone who loves picture books has a connection to the writer and the illustrator. They connect with the human behind the art as much as they connect with the art itself.
So I think of my own favorite picture book illustrators like Kristen Robinson or Eric Carle or Miroslav Sajak or Hervé to Lei or Blacks Ballocks. And it's the utter humanness of their illustrations that I love. So much. If I found out any of their works were air generated, as much as I loved the illustrations, it would spoil my enjoyment of the art.
When we consider something beautiful, it might not be beautiful in the most classical or mathematical or proportional way. We might be moved by what we perceive as the human energy behind it or the attitude. That's what makes idiosyncratic works by artists like Myra, Carmen or Hervé to lay beautiful. It's the fact that someone actually went ahead and made it in the future, if everything can be anything because someone pressed the button or wrote a fancy prompt, I just can't see myself connecting with it if I knew it wasn't made by a human.
So perhaps human made illustration will become more precious and even a key selling feature of certain illustrated works. So the upshot here is that there's always going to be room for the human artist here. Now, the dark side of this is that illustration on the bottom that doesn't have much personality, just those more ding batty, abstract fine decorative type things that you might see as spot illustrations or on licensed products.
These things might actually get made by a AI, and if it's good enough, we won't, we won't care. I mean, when you go to a store and you see products on the shelves and it has some kind of illustrative motif on it, or if you if you go to like here we have a store called Winners, I think it's a lot like Marshalls or Nordstrom Rack.
They have big framed canvases with like nicely designed illustrative painting, print, canvas things, and they look good, But we have no idea who the artist is, the person buying that for their home. And I'm not saying this to disparage anyone who would buy such a thing. They look really good. They're not really worried about who the artist is.
They just like how it looks and they want it in their house. And just like the example we had here at the beginning with the in-flight magazine, the average passenger on a flight won't even think to look at the illustrator credit. So that's kind of the dark side of this point. But the upshot or the bright side here is that there will still be portions of the creative industry in the market where that human touch and that human name and their experience is very important to the work itself.
So the third reason I still have hope is that I really believe that creativity, whether in the form of visual art, illustration, architecture, design or music, isn't just about what is made and what's for sale. The creative process is an intrinsic part of how we humans experience the world. Creativity will always be in demand because we need creativity to actually make sense of our lives while what we make and how it looks is part of the joy of being an illustrator.
I can say that there's a lot more going on in the process than you might think. Just for example, my drive to find my own style. This is me trying to figure out how to match what I'm creating on the outside to what I'm feeling on the inside. That is not part of my job description that I put on my bio or on my website.
But that is exactly what happens all the time with every piece I make. It's an existential pursuit. It's a pursuit of meaning and of understanding not only of the world around me, but the universe inside of me. So even if it takes business away from my income as an illustrator, I'm hopeful that the act of illustration and art making will remain in demand in some way or another.
So in this sense, I'm expecting to lean more into my role as teacher in the coming years, and I'm excited to see what kind of classes I can develop to help people reconnect with the joy of creativity, whether for personal or professional ends, you know, not just in terms of making commercial art, but using creativity as a way to be curious about life and about the world and to make sense of it.
So these are just three things that give me some hope as an illustrator in the age of AI. And I think how things play out is really just a matter of let's wait and see. But just to summarize what we went through here first, I said there's at least going to be a few more years of art directors and clients simply preferring to work with humans because it's not just about the art, but about the relationship.
And second, I said that there are illustration markets that are as much about the artists as it is about the art. And I used a picture books as one example of that. And then third, creativity has always been relevant for people who want to explore and understand the world around them. And within that, even though we have cameras today and digital cameras for that matter, people still draw and paint.
Even though we have electronic dance music today, people still go to the symphony. Even though we have Netflix. People still go to the theater. Technologies change and how most people consume art changes as well, for better or for worse. But art always exists and has a purpose, and illustration is a long standing tradition and art form that won't just go extinct because it can be made by a machine.
But in the same way that the purpose of painting has changed from documenting reality or stories. The purpose of illustration will probably have to change and adapt as well. So just to be clear, I am not a fan of where A.I. seems to be going. We see the writing on the wall for a lot of jobs, including illustration jobs.
Not all of them, but some of them. And in many other industries, like acting, where entire movies will probably be able to be made without an actor or any cameras, for that matter. So that's there's a weird future to think about. Like if everything can just be made almost magically, just just through words, like, what does it mean for people who have to work for those same kinds of things?
We've already explored my thoughts and what those are, and I truly believe that human creativity in terms of like actually using our hands to make things rather than purely verbalizing them and telling a computer to do them, I think there's always going to be a need for that. I also have to say that I, I just don't know what that will look like in the future.
And I do want to acknowledge the fact that that big question mark, that big unknown, is scary. So I'm not I'm not offering any like Pollyanna type answers here, but I'm just saying these are the things that are giving me hope. Myself, personally as an illustrator, and I'm offering them to you as well, to at least work with as material.
If you don't have anything else to work with right now, What I do know, though, is that we can't just protest out of existence. It's here and it's here to stay. So I guess like many things in life, we just have to kind of take this more moderate, critical approach. Well, that's the approach that I'm going to take.
I actually think that there's a role for people to take more of an activist role and to be more extreme about their concerns here. And so I don't want to tell everybody how to respond in terms of their temperament. I'm just saying my temperament is to be moderate and critical because that's how I am. And so personally, I'm not super interested in adopting AI as part of my illustration process.
You know, the like the part where I'm actually drawing or cutting and pasting, adding color or making a finished illustration. But I have found some AI tools like ChatGPT to be quite helpful in helping me organize my ideas or summarizing my notes, or even as a preliminary research tool in things like writing scripts for podcasts and stuff like that.
When it comes to AI tools, I draw the line at having my own original thoughts as my starting point. So I need to know what do I think of a certain issue or a subject? How does it make me feel? What words do I have without the support of AI or someone else to describe these things? I have to put these things in my own words.
And that takes work not just in terms of the act of coming up with the words or whatever talents you have around that. But actually knowing yourself and knowing what you truly think and feel. So for me, this is the origin of my own personal creativity. It's the origin of my voice in my style. And I believe it's the reason many of my clients have hired me over the years to illustrate for them.
Illustration is often more than just a picture or a pattern or some kind of pretty abstraction. It's a viewpoint and an expression of one's specific person's experience. It doesn't even matter what tools I use to do this. My creativity is more than just how I make something. It's even more than why I make something. It's who made it.
Well, art is very often not even about the artist. It is at the same time everything about the artist. There's a who ness to the art that I love. And I hope very much that there is a who ness to the art that I make. And if it's not coming through in the audio there, W.H.O. and as s like, there's this sense of who made it in the work.
If there's any value we have as illustrators, especially in the face of AI, it's our who ness. It's that you are you and your art comes from you. So if there's anything I want you to take away from this, it's that even as we experience what looks like the illustration apocalypse, take this as an opportunity to dig deeper than the surface of illustration.
Dig deeper than what you can see on the canvas or screen. Ask yourself, what is it that you're really doing here? What is going on inside you in your own personal, individual experience, and how is that driving you to do whatever it is that you're doing on the outside? What is the new ness of your work and how does that you ness translate to value to your clients and ultimately to your viewers?
This question has always mattered. It's what all successful illustrators have always needed to ask. And in the age of AI, it's going to be more important than ever.
My name is Mr. Tom Froese and those are my thoughts on illustration. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend. You can find links to all my things at tomfroese.com, including my Patreon, my work, my Skillshare classes and more. Brand new to the website is a link to follow me on substack. Just go to my website.
Go to the top right corner. There's a link there to find me on substack. Remember to rate review like follow. Tell your friends and all those lovely things. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. I'll see you in the next one. The music for this podcast was written and performed by Mark Colvin Falcon.
You can find links to his music in the show notes or go directly to his link tree link tree slash semiathletic