Art Director Perspectives - AI and Industry Jobs

Let's ask art directors about AI and what it means for our jobs and our future. AI is the dark cloud hanging over all artists in recent years and with good reason - but these answers and my own personal experience navigating this (so far) have left me more hopeful than I would have expected back in 2022.

0:00 - Intro
1:33 - AI Art is Soulless
2:49 - Impressive but Unsettling
3:44 - Replace the Mood board, not the Artist
4:58 - F$%! AI
5:49 - Early Project Tool but Still Using Artists
6:41 - Be Valuable in Different Ways
7:51 - First Hand Experiences
9:47 - Jobs are Scarce But Still Exist
11:08 - Conclusion

After a weekend at Lightbox Expo, I am seriously drinking the Koolaid on this organization :)

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Hardy Fowler is a professional Digital Painter with work seen in productions for Disney, Magic the Gathering, and Games Workshop among many others.

Hardy's online academy, Digital Painting Studio, teaches the master-level skills, process and mindset he's learned from decades of experience as a professional digital artist.

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[fowlerillus]

Crazy right? I was surprised by a lot of these answers in a good way. While this is a pretty positive batch of perspectives, let me be clear, I wish AI image generators could be uninvented. Enormous ethical outrage aside, I just hate what a bummer this all is and how it can sap all of the fun and excitement out of our favorite thing if we let it. Personally, (whether it’s logical or not) I’m just kind of over it - it could be false confidence, hopium or just worry exhaustion - but I say let’s get back to work and make things that are cool. I wanted to make this as a quick check in video and I wanted to show up with some actual industry perspectives and not just my opinions and future gazing. I hope you found this helpful and encouraging. All art/painting/tutorial videos from me in the months ahead! Now go paint something awesome :)

[JoeyStrombolli]

I'm really grateful for videos like this. I was on the verge of going to college for a career path that doesn't interest me whatsoever, soley because I thought of art previously as just a hobby. For me its more than that, it is what keeps me going in life. And I'm sure this is true for a lot of other people out there. And so I decided to pursue it more seriously. Videos like this are important because they give hope to aspiring artists like myself who are concerned about AI. Thanks a million for the wonderful videos like this Hardy, they keep me going, truly thank you.

[ashfield]

"Be smarter than the person typing the prompt" is a fantastic tip. It also shouldn't be difficult given that the person typing the prompt lacks the inherent discipline and motivation that is required of a genuine artist. This is where the years of studying color theory, visual storytelling, and the drive to "know how to do the thing" comes into play. AI for the foreseeable future lacks the ability to add deliberate nuance that would be useful to a project, that cohesiveness that's not randomness, but just tasteful permutations on a topic.

[vampireantihero]

This was really encouraging to watch, thank you for taking the time to interview these art directors and give us a taste of what's going on out there in the industry.

[ebenschumacherart]

Thanks for this one Hardy, appreciate you taking the time to craft a thoughtful and well-researched answer to this. These days I pretty much stick my head in the sand and just keep drawing but in doing so I also miss a lot about what isn’t going wrong. I can confirm that I have seen it creep into the mood boarding side of things at my job, but the attitude is still largely dismissive, and certainly none of it is directly used in production. And having learned more about art direction over the past couple of years, I can say with confidence that it requires a clear vision of mood, concept, and world-building that AI cannot, and perhaps never will be able you provide.

[tb]

As a new-ish Freelance illustrator (working since 2021) I haven't noticed a significant dropoff in work. That said, rates have been the same, and money doesn't go nearly as far these days.

[hgsupertramp]

Nice video!
It's good to see how the use of AI in all stages of production is almost seen as a disease by most directors. There's an ethical, moral and philosophical problem which AI will not get rid of anytime soon. I shared this on X(but could't tag you).

[chloep]

I graduated art school at the very beginning of this whole mess and its been very discouraging for me and my classmates. BUT none of us have stopped drawing, and I've been making a lot of awesome friends in the indie scene, too. I think this is all great news to hear, and even if the going gets more rough we still have a pencil. Don't stop drawing

[ywlumaris]

This is definitely encouraging, thank you for taking the time to ask these questions to art directors. It helps a lot 💜

[paulhiggins]

Perhaps the more subtle threat of AI is not the replacement of the Artist as 'technician' in terms of the actual production of the images but the replacement of artistic judgement throughout the entire process. Who, after all, are the real advocates for quality in almost all creative pipelines? That would be the Artists themselves. It's those employed to create assetts that usually push the envelopes of quality and originality, sometimes to the frustration of those more focused on the bottom line.

But what happens when those creatives are replaced with AI? It's not just their technical expertise that is lost, it's also their broader aesthetic influence on the entire project. What makes AI imagery so seductive to the non creative is that it seems to offer a way to more quickly and cheaply achieve the same results as using human creatives- you just type in a prompt and like magic a fully realised image appears in seconds!

Now there may in fact be all sorts of problems with that image, in terms of it's relationship to other assets, or how it may or may not contribute to the story being told by the project as a whole- but who is now left to point these things out? In dispensing with the artist as technician you may have also thrown away something else, something that you may not have even realised you needed- which is that broader overview of what your images were intended to express.

If Art is ultimately about communication and we replace artists with machines, who then, is really in charge of what is communicated?

[storymaxart]

I'm starting watching. Been waiting whole week for this - seriously, can't wait to see what's inside.

Its hard to find an art director take on this - it's great you got round to it and interviewed them. That's rare material in our community (or I just don't know where to look)

And so weird it has only 2k views so far, it's a HOT DAMN TOPIC

[taniatigris]

Those AI coming in from everywhere have been my greatest fear since they started to emerge. And I still have some concerns that AI may replace human being in terms of digital art. I even considered to move into traditional field and learn painting oil on canvas: most certainly AI is unable to produce any real, non-digital thing. But your video, Hardy, and similar videos from other artists about the AI issue is doing great job of encouraging and offering a helping hand in moments when one think that everything is over in one's career. And now I see that AI is not that allmighty as it seemed. Huge thanks!

[runnergunner]

Love to hear about the state of the industry in this series, looking forward to hearing about more topics as well.

I can't stomach the idea of using AI for idea and concept generation for a multitude of reasons but it sounds like the industry agrees and is favouring using it to communicate ideas to the client faster.

The ethics of the entire business model make it a no-go for me but it does sound like the industry is settling into a fairly artist-first relationship with AI which I can definitely support.

Ultimately I think artists positioning themselves as an 'AI artist' are going to enter into the biggest race to the bottom in the industries history whereas people who develop their traditional skillset will always be more valuable.

[ZephrusPrime]

I was hoping that AI would be useful for creating new pipeline tools. All I want is a "Make Animatable Topology and UV's" button and that's it! I love everything else about the process and live to do it myself. Outside of that, AI is a hard NO for me.

[joehynes]

As someone who went to art school in the 90s and watched the classic illustration profession crater in the face of the digital revolution (so many of the big illustrators of the time had to move to gallery work), I think AI will be an even bigger threat to the human touch in art. Once they work out the licensing and mitigate the threat of IP litigation, it will be off to the races for large AAA/creative companies. I think it's tragically unavoidable.

[piorism]

I wouldn't trust any AD using AI "just for moodboards", because the moodboard phase is precisely the time when the team can share and discuss their influences, chat about unexpected or obscure references that others may not know about, and so on. Replacing this important phase with AI just because it gets to a pretty collage faster (without any way to go back to the actual source art) is IMHO missing the point of moodboarding entirely. If an AD finds that making a moodboard with AI is faster than doing it by hand that just means that they don't know enough about their field and the references that would be relevant to the project.

It is also a huge insult to the artists who will then be asked to work from it.

[Ironwill_Games]

There’s two sides to this answer. 1. AI usage isn’t regulated (yet) so a lot of companies still feel they’re in shaky waters when it comes to the usage of others IP’s or Content cause if the law changes they could get sued and lose millions. The other one is, for now, AI is mostly used on the pitch or moodboard phase of a project but the reality is voice AI is now tumbling increasingly on videogames and other media (ence the backlash by VAs).

I feel in the future, just as any technology, it’s going to be (hopefully) ethically and morally incorporated in the workflow of a project but I don’t think it’s going to kill artists just by existing. We have stop motion pictures when 3D is here, we have artisans who make stuff with their hands when we can buy pretty much anything pre-made at IKEA. The human component is and always will be the main ingredient to any creation and we as humans will always feel empathy for any human artist more than a factory, a machine or any software. Great video, thanks for sharing!

[hunteriadkins]

I really appreciate you taking the time to make this video, Hardy. AI is a controversial topic these days, and I am very glad to have you shed light on a realistic, professional outlook of AI in the industry and whether it is even realistic to pursue Art as a career. While this video is extremely reassuring and makes me feel more optimistic about the future of artists still being at the forefront of the industry, it still leads me to question the vague aspect of some of the art directors' responses using AI as a tool for mood-boarding and iteration purposes. Do you see AI in that aspect still replacing artists as that work would have likely been done by a concept artist in the past, or is that something that we will have to worry less about as, as you stated, those companies still use artists for the final production result? Thank you again for the video, it is very motivating to see as a pursuing artist.

[marcofabro]

Thank you for this video Hardy. Last couple of years ive been in a real art slump and one of the major reasons is AI. Maybe the future is not so grim.

[tripplejaz]

Hey Hardy, we've used AI in some of the work I've been a part of. It never makes it to the final product and almost serves as placeholder or to quickly iterate on compositions. Like the other AD mentioned, either mood board generation or helpful composition reference for me to create something. For example, quickly putting together a series of compositions in a fisheye or worm's eye view, it was helpful to have some AI images handy for reference.

I'm sort of at the mercy of my own AD and CD to do their bidding, but I've pushed back at times and said "I'm going to start with basic black and white sketches by hand" to make sure 1. I don't get rusty and 2. Keep the artist hand present in the work I help with.