celticarchie

As you may have noticed there has been a significant change to my DeviantArt Gallery. First of all I'd like to express my humble apologies and deepest thanks to all my watchers, who were enjoying my recent obsessions with fan art on Superman, Doctor Who and Blake's 7, along with my various explorations of Star Trek fan art during my 12 year stay here on DeviantArt.

As 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' says, 'Don't Panic'. I havenotdeleted my entire gallery, that would have taken months. I have put them into storage for the time being. You can do this by using the link:- www.deviantart.com/managedeviations

DeviantArt used to have a control button for this function, but neglected to add it to Eclipse, however the function still exists and it allows you bulk control over your gallery.

Why this sudden stance against 'AI image generation'?

It hasn't been that 'sudden' to be honest. It has been building for a while, a few weeks back I noticed my favourite artist has taken their gallery down, then I noticed another had done the same and I didn't understand why. Then I learned how this 'AI image generation' actually works and I was instantly reminded of late 2021, early 2022, when a friend alerted me to the site OpenSea allowing it's users to make NFTs out of stolen art. My Blake's 7 fan art among them.

That incident put my off posting anything on DeviantArt for months, I added a Core Membership to my account in hopes it would protect my art in the future, but it's only in the past few months that I've started to feel comfortable posting art on a regular basis. Now I discover that not only is anything I post fodder for this soulless 'AI image generation' software, but DeviantArt is actively encouraging it by making it's own version of the software, instead of making it's website efficient, accessible and creating a friendly, welcoming environment for people to share their artistic endeavours.

Over the past few years I have wanted to move towards making more original artwork, learning how to properly 3D model so that I can build my own spaceships, characters and environments, developing my own Sci-Fi & Fantasy universes, that I can have complete creative freedom to play in. However, to post the progress of such project, even in a 'work-in-progress' format is just foolish, you are just begging for someone to come along and rip you off, if it isn't the NFT folks, then it's the 'AI image generation' software, and if they don't some shit-head in Hollywood will rip you off.

In this hostile and toxic online environment, is it any wonder I'm having issues posting even 'fan art'.

So what am I going to do? I'll still be here faving the artwork I like, but posting-wise you're not going to see much from me other than the 'Notoai' protest placard. I am going to use this opportunity to go through my gallery and download back-up files of images that I lost in a hard-drive crash a few years back.