GoFundMe is Live - any support & sharing appreciated

Hello!!!  
Dang, two posts within the same month?! Who am I?

One might say this post will be a less fun topic, yet it is more of a step forward.

Some may or may not know this, but I am rather introverted, possibly to an extreme. I also tend to be rather stubborn & the cocktail of the two traits makes it difficult for me to openly ask for help from others.

That said. I have created a GoFundMe campaign which I have been quietly peddling for the last week. Again asking for help is already difficult & feels like I'm bothering people, let alone doing so to the world of the internet chock full of people I don't know.

https://gofund.me/41aec073

So, a little about the campaign and my goals.

The GoFundMe is meant as a way for me to try and explore all options I have to get my head above water financially. A long stint of poor decisions, life events, workplace tomfoolery, and the like has placed a financial future in question. Turning 42 last week obviously adds to the stress and realization I am not getting younger and currently have zero retirement funding or a proper career that could offer real security.

Driving a forklift or doing shipping & receiving tasks for $21-$25/hour won't allow me to find financial peace, move back to Arkansas, or offer a secure retirement. My own mismanaging of my life, up to now, has not helped the situation.

As noted on the campaign page, I am not expecting much from this. I understand the counter-intuitive thinking this brings to the table. I hope to be proven wrong and maybe even make a go of this. Yet I also know there are more viable uses of people's money, better charities, and campaigns to fund on the platform. I again must stress I am weighing all my options to try and rectify the wrongs I've made in the last 30+ years.

I am on the list to attend a Union building & construction trades orientation for Milwaukee's "Big Step" on August 10th. I hope to find myself a place in heavy equipment operation, or "Operating Engineer " as they call it, to find better wages, benefits, and a career that could help me find security. If that does not pan out - I will have to regroup and consider what I can do for either higher pay (which has not been easy to come by) or re-explore the idea of truck driving (which has a high risk of defaulting on my bills during the low-paying training period).

Overall, this campaign could help with getting a firm standing if successful. I'll try not to flood socials about it as best I can.

To keep it Artsy minded, here we have a Darket from my adventures of Live3D's AI Art generation. She is ready for bed, a place I should have been by now, giving you the moe eyes. You can check out the last blog post on my recent Artificial Intelligence artwork journey with the help of Live3D's website. 

©2023 Character, Dave McCoy
©2023 Imagery, Live3D AI Art Generator

Until next time! 

A.I., Tool -or- Digital Pyramid Scheme?

So - popping in after an uneventful birthday passing, as is the case annually & has become a norm.

That stated, I spend a week or two in a corner of the internet that has been criminalized and touted as evil by many on social media. Artificial Intelligence art generation/image generation has the face value of being comparable to Wal-Mart entering a wholely local store community.

My brief dipping of a toe into this puddle of A.I. came from my growing interest in Virtual Youtubers (VTubers). I have a pointed view on VTubing that I will save for a future post.

Needless to say. One of VTubing's tools, Live 3D, had an online Artificial Intelligence generator for both Anime Characters & "Waifu" creation that I felt I had to at least tinker with. After a week or two (on & off between work, sleep, & life) and an indeterminant amount of attempts to change prompts & settings of which I did not know the intended use, I reached my goal of what I wanted to create.

© 2023 Celix Productions, Dave McCoy - Characters & Imagery

Pictured above are my attempts to visualize with A.I. 3 sister characters known as "The Kawaiichi Sisters' " who all live together and are all humanized abilities Kawaiichis. The details of Kawaiichi's should also be a blog post. Admittedly, I should be using past tense wording, but I just haven't gotten that much of an opportunity to try and dance my fingers across the keyboard and flesh out information.

I'm bringing myself back to focus here. Where does A.I. sit with me as an artist (granted a less active one) who knows the claims of illegal and blatant use of uncredited data for creations? The morality of people profiting off imagery that they made prompts them to create? The track record of minimal effort art that may lack warmth and emotion from an actual person bleeding a part of themselves in every line and stroke?

In the end - I look at A.I. as a use for reference. There is, still, no better way to express yourself visually & emotionally while imprinting a part of yourself onto paper than with physical art.

Physical art, as defined by me, is use of your hand and arm to create an image, be it traditionally or digitally. I feel A.I. can find itself cooperative within this scope through reference. Myself & others are more internally minded. For me, I find it easier to understand things mentally & characters tend to surface from RPG chats in the past, random days at work around machinery, or the day-to-day I observe.

I may not be giving the best wording for it, but I cannot visually see in my mind the character, only feel what kind of "vibes" they give off or a placeholder, much like an NPC, but in my head. Others can visualize and see characters and stories in detail internally & those same people may not have as easy of time finding the "vibe" or attitude embodied by that entity.

There is nothing wrong with either way.

Again, art is a way to express yourself and release emotion. A.I. also brings to the table a way to use keywords you may already know for a character, some real-life traits, and general background info to generate a starter pack entity. It could also be a tool for those, again like myself, who struggle with pose setup or suffer the same "insert body space here" syndrome.

I'd suggest using A.I. just as I used it in the prior noted image - as a reference for the characters involved. Offering a template to visualize characters you may still be developing or haven't the foggiest idea what they look like other than an entity apart of your other character's lives/story.

I would say to avoid using this new medium to create full-finished artwork for the reasons I stated earlier. If you're using art as a fast-track scheme to riches or to be the latest talked-about creator, making your income on A.I., you're simply short-changing yourself from a form of peace. There are also moral and legal issues that, while hearsay, could discredit a creator using the medium.

Art, as a medium, bears such priceless advantages and journeys for anyone who steps into it. Be it traditional or digital drawing, photography, or writing. The arts, as a whole, should still be done by hand and facilitate inner peace and the release of negative emotions.

Let me know your thoughts on A.I.

Do you agree its use solely as a reference source may bring legitimacy to the otherwise hated media? Or have the bridges been burned on the topic for you?

I'll try to post more entries as best I can between those earlier-mentioned roadblocks. Should I try to get a Kawaiichi dossier post created next, or should I fawn over VTubers' in-text?

You can try Live3D's A.I. generator at: https://live3d.io/ai_anime_art_generator

Still riding the struggle-bus...

 

© 2011 - 2023 David M., Image & Character

 

Kinda feeling like how Nightspirit looks in this old dusty image from 2011. Still struggling to just get my head above water, all my own fault for thinking I could find a better workplace with less mental & emotional abuse. 

While I am employed ( At the same exact place I was prior), it's for much less than my prior wage & thus I am barely keeping up on bills and have pretty much had to just currently toil over pennies and settle into the mindset I am not allowed to really do things I want to or would enjoy. I just can't afford it right now as the ship sinks around me. 

But, I will just keep trying to find better work as I slowly grind away. Thus - things like Art have taken a serious hit. Let's be honest, I've been pretty crap as a physical artist for a long while now, but I still try to at least keep my characters alive by letting them muck around if they wish. Of course it would seem aside from 1 first generation character, most of the action comes from 2nd Gen characters who have twitter accounts to test the limits of Elon Musk's social dumpster fire & test my ability to at least create realistic world and vibe around them. 

Sad to say there are some pretty major figures of Celix Productions who have been dormant for a very long time. Long enough to consider calling the police to do a wellness check on em. 

I still justify my claim as a "creator" or "artist" or whatever you wanna call it, based on the fact i still allow things to roll through my head, ideas to pop up, and to still try to dual-wield my own life as I walk this made up illusion world my characters live. I still watch Artsy YouTube videos and fully endorse the use of social medias as character building tools. 

I also still pester JJ to try it for one of her characters, though - I feel she is a mix of busy and unsure of the concept to try it as of yet. But as a good life-long friend and spirit sibling, I will continue to pester until random objects learn to fly. :3

I'm mostly posting to say "HI!!" and let ya'll know I didn't croak. 3 of my characters are fairly active on their choices of social medias. 2 on the Blue Birb App... and 1 whom blogs her journey to rediscover herself after a serious point in her life.  The blog is the challenging one as I somehow managed to set the bar far too high for myself writing from a viewpoint of a female suicide survivor with mental challenges and proper writing training ( of which I have none). 

It is all things I have zero experience in nor life notes to go off of. More perplexing is I am told the writing is actually relatively good; at least it started that way and I'm not sure if it's maintained that status. I think Rio needs some more wholesome material to write about personally.We'll see how things go. Obviously my scuff a.f. work setup if hindering a lot of my life and anything creative per say. 

I will say, however, I have been keeping tabs of the analytics for Rio's blog with some interesting results. :0,  That's all I'll say about that - it's nothing worth digging things up for. Yet it is interesting little thing of notice as I watch Rio's traffic bounce between 2 real people and my numerous visits just to make sure the layout seems okay and such.

Til the next update! [ waves ]

Uh Oh... Zombie.. Zombie.... 🧟

 So... It's rather late at night & thus I am going to risk not sending this post thru Grammarly. If you also know the song the title is referencing... YAY!! Good Bean!

So just quick updates in speedrun form: 

• RedBubble is CLOSED.  They changed how they plan to operate by leaning to a 3 teir system that seem to mostly hurt starter artists like me by billing them on transactions (sales), but waving it for those who have larger following.  So for me it won't work out.  I'll sometime figure out if there's other options I would go with.  Anyone who has suggestions for print-on-demand style storefronts, let me know in a comment! :3 

• I've been riding the roller coaster from hell career wise. Thus noted - i pretty much have neglected this blog way too much. Between being employed in a daily grind of doom, quitting said grind to only have to return due to not other good options and money running fully out.  I've basically depleted any retirement funds for my future (cuz im not very bright) and so stress level is now very high as I work for $2 less an hour than my prior wage and keep my eyes out for other options. At some point, when i can try and dig out of the hole some, I want to try and figure out a path to maybe Apprentice Heavy Equipment Operator. I second guess everything I do, so - it's risky and scary feeling.  We'll see how things go.
  

• With the previous point - it goes to assume I've not been able or calm enough to post on the blog and really focus on artsy vibes. Yet I also believe in keeping the art brain active. So having 3 character Twitters, a character blog, & Celix Productions Twitter seem to help at least dip toes into Art vibes as I can. But this blog will still be fairly dead air for a bit I feel. Well aside from layout tweaks. I am do OCD on web design ideas - have been since 2000... 2001(?). Why I've never had a fully finished website. XD

• On the subject of suggestions from the first point - I am still not convinced having a Ko-Fi or "TipJar" really makes sense for my existence (?), Brand (?), whatever this is (motioning a circle 'round screen). Yet would be nice for this (more flailing in circle) to be able to bring in some funding as well. ^^;

 

Yeah...  I'm starting to crash from my busy work day and still being awake. @.@  But wanted to do some updating. Hope everyone who does happen along this blog is having a good start of 2023 and week. :>