How do you guys feel when writers provide character portraits in their posts? I’ve seen many authors post some art of their characters in their main post, and I was wondering what players think about the “official” art. Do you like it or hate it? Does it help you visualize them or do you prefer to have everything left to your imagination? Additionally, almost all are AI “art” and does your opinion change when the art provided is AI or real art? Does it depend on the genre (you prefer pictures for romance but don’t want any for action?). I personally like it when there’s art but maybe I just have a weak imagination. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts
I prefer “official” art and loathe AI
I prefer “official” art and don’t mind/care if it’s AI
I like seeing this because I don’t really know how people feel about AI here or how it’d be accepted in IF community. I dabbled a bit with my mythological creatures and got some decent results. But I’m designing my characters (especially the RO’s and more important characters) now and was wondering… I’m kind of just going to base them off of written descriptions and if people feel so inspired to draw them for like fanart, I’d absolutely love that
My brain sometimes skips some or all of the descriptions to make its own thing. So art in the game itself can take me out of it.
Like, all the Wayhaven characters have generic American accents instead of their actual accents. And I have no idea what they’re supposed to look like. I know N is tall and F has a hat…
As for AI, I have no problem with it. But if you end up including art in the official Hosted release, it can’t be AI
I didnt mean it as in the game, but the forum post. I’ve seen many other WIPs have art of characters in the forum post. I agree that pictures in the game takes me out of it.
I despise it all, to be honest. I feel that it’s an unnecessary distraction, and encourages thread takeovers of the same three or four commenters trying to outdo each other with their own ideas (or sometimes demands) about what the characters “should” look like.
This is my opinion exactly, especially as someone who can afford to support artists financially I don’t think I morally could use AI for character portraits
I am mainly just really tired of that specific type of AI portrait, that almost everyone uses, that makes every person have childish facial proportions, and look kinda the same.
I know it’s because they come from a free model, or something, but seriously, I find them lifeless and boring, and also a little creepy.
In my experience as a reader, I don’t really internalize the official art, if it exists, as much as whatever my imagination conjures upon reading. At least from that perspective, I don’t plan to include any in my WIP, but even if I were, I would commission them rather than use AI.
It happens the same to me the more info they give me about a character, the more my mind pictures whatever it wants, so when there is official art, I usually skip it altogether. If it’s IA it’s even worse, it feels so… soulless.
I’m sort of in the middle here. I really like seeing offical/fan art of characters but I also take them with a grain of salt and mostly interpret them however my brain decides they look when I read the story. I don’t mind when there is no art, it’s just icing on an already delicious cake.
As for the type of art, I probably have a more critical view of AI than most. The way most image-generating AI is trained is pretty unethical and exploitative. Most artists already face a tough market and get underpaid for their work. I feel like if I get into how much it sucks to have your work stolen, I’m just going to devolve into a rant, so I’ll leave it at that.
Adding to what others have said, I also find most of the generated portraits end up looking like soulless 18-year-old same-face dolls.
That said, I totally understand why writers choose to use them; paying an artist can be out of budget for many people, and AI can be a great intermediary tool for inspiration and reference. I just wish it wasn’t trained on the stolen work of thousands of artists who will likely never receive any compensation.
I don’t mind art - if it’s great I enjoy it and if I don’t like it I’ll ignore it, but I don’t miss it if it isn’t there. I don’t like AI art at all, for the reasons others have mentioned.
These polls always make me anxious, because I want to draw portraits for my characters but if people loathe having them, then why bother? It’s extra work, after all.
I have friends in moding and fan games making people who live from comisions and I have seen some cry desperate because some Ai has clearly copy part of their work and seen posted butchered in Deviant art etc… Loosing small comisions to AI even people bargaining ten euros because AI is free i dont care if it is worse.
I personally will never build an If with AI content. It is immoral and it is feeding the tool that wants to destroy artists including writers. Because Writers Ai are here as well.
Last year I had a person asked can I post an Ai game for the jam?
The answer was of course No. But my mind still wonder Why could someone want to use an AI to a small no prize jam?
And about art of characters if is forced in the game that is a game I 90% wont buy.
It takes me totally out of my imagination and almost never I found that art attractive. The author can have their mental image and art for it but shouldnt be forced upon reader.
I say go for it. Letting people discourage you from creating something you want is rarely a good idea, and in this case, people who hate character art can ignore it easily enough.
Besides, I think most people don’t dislike the portraits themselves, but rather the lack of descriptions that often comes with them. There were several CoG titles that heavily relied on portraits and didn’t provide accurate descriptions, even if the reader turned the portaits off. It is perfectly normal for books to have illustrations, but the attitude of “I will put a drawing there so I don’t have to describe that character” goes against the very idea behind this genre.
Worse yet, I feel this attitude may be infecting games that don’t provide portraits at all. It’s just a hunch, but I don’t know how else to explain the glaring lack of descriptions in Tale of Two Cranes. Suffice to say, I’m unlikely to ever draw or comission portraits for my characters, I’m afraid of the slippery slope on top of not really having any money or talent on me.
Generally speaking, lack of descriptions could also be caused by the author not having any idea how the characters look like. It can happen. (Speaking from experience here. I very rarely imagine things visually. The characters are a bunch of traits, but very rarely do those traits include any kind of appearance, until I make a conscious effort to do so.)
Damn. This is one split poll. Never seen a 33 split like that before.
My answer is personally neither for those options. I am not entirely against it. And particularly for forum posts I am not against A.I even if it can sort of make everything look samey if it manages to bring a bite of what the author intends them to look in their head for free. But I’m mostly in the camp of. “Art in the box cover is all the art I want in my IF of cahracters.”
I like imagining characters and I do get a little uncanny vallied when I see official author approved art of the characters when it doesnt match the look I had in my head. (Which is often rather wrong since I usually have long warped what the description said by the time I’m finished.) And there is a part of me that likes to pinpoint who each character is based on what I remember their look is when theyre on the cover. So having portraits in the game. Or easily viewed in the post (no spoilering) can take that away.
I dont really feel or want to speak on the specifics of A.I art as I myself am in a rather privileged position where I do not have to worry about the financial side regarding commissions due to private reasons. So I can understand when an author who cannot afford enough commissions to get their cast all out, decides to use A.I to guve their readers an idea in the post.
