Welcome Back to Art and Monad

Hello. I’m including a bunch of my recent art in this post. This art is in no particular order but all of it was done with open source web software with AI capabilities. I’ve said this before here but AI is a product feature or tool and not a category of product itself. The closed garden model, whatever that is, probably doesn’t work or there would be best practices for it. Art generation using borrowed stock images or samples of images is allowed but really doesn’t produce anything good looking.

I’ve looked into the backend code and the original asset libraries the website I’m using relies on and it’s open source all the way down to the textures for brick walls and the fur. This kind of software is here to stay, at least I’m hoping it is. It can do anything. I mean that literally. I’ve never had a goal that I wasn’t able to get it to complete for me and it often improves on my original ideas in ways that make my job so much easier.

I’m working on a PDF best practices guide for the software. I’m not mentioning its name here yet until I have that guide done. Then everyone can make infinite art. I’m willing to share some of my tips here though as a free sample. All of the images in my oil-render style are one website and all of them rely on only text prompts. Rule number one of well-built AI is that is wants English and not code or software language.

If I want two characters then I start the prompt with the phrase ‘two friends.’ The software has a hard time understanding what colour or species a character is if there are more than one of them but it does clearly and absolutely understand what a friend is. Then I enter in their individual prompts sequentially.

I always start the prompt for a character with their gender to get their overall body type and face.

If I want two colours on a character I list them after their gender as ‘colour one x colour two.’ Colour one will be the dominant one.

My character Markus ‘Blue’ Fargather then is best summed up as a ‘male white x blue wolf.’ That typically gets me the right blend of colours and a cute enough nose. Also I often add in the words talking, smiling, or happy because it renders faster. No, really, the code likes showing happy people.

This all brings up a more serious point. I have a ton of art no one here has seen yet. This blog software isn’t really designed for art. And I also have an exactly equal amount by number of images of NSFW art and respectful pinups of my characters. These are at present pretty much impossible to share, especially if I want a wide audience for them.

I had an idea a while ago for a pixel art game called Monad. The goal was to get a game to print on the Android store faster than the glacial pace that Dragon Engine is made at. I’m better at pixel art than I am at the brutally hard GLB format assets Dragon Engine is made out of so Monad would take much less time to make. I also wanted it to include player housing, combat and resource gathering.

I still have a GDevelop Silver account and I like the software and its layout. GDevelop specializes in pixel games and it’s in-built multiplayer features can handle unlimited call volume with a Silver account and also allow for local game hosting. If I just give players the ability to upload image files and .txt files to an item in their player housing, open it to multiplayer and then show off their art that would solve the issues I’m having getting art to people.

Also the game will 100% be fine with NSFW content just not of actual humans. I do draw the line somewhere. So, furry art and furry art themes. This is worth considering in my off time from game design. There’s a free top-down pixel game template that I’ve used and it’ll handle 90% of the code part for me. Monad will cost $5.99 and I might have an in-app currency for buying skins and cool decor for a the player housing. I will let players earn it but I might let them buy it off me as well to help fund the project. I’m debating what setting of mine I want Monad to be in. Here’s that art.