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erika-xero · 1 year

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A small guide to commissioning artists: how to avoid getting scammed by people who use image generators

Because “Ai-art” is not art and everyone can use image generators for free.

Disclaimer! This post will include generated images which were originally uploaded on DeviantArt and Twitter by people who generated them. Some of these images are of erotic genre but censored out. I beg you, do not bully these people. This post wasn’t written to call anyone out, it was written to help human artists and their potential commissioners. While some of the “Ai-artists” out there may be real scammers, others are not, and I strongly believe that no one should be bullied, doxxed, stalked and no one deserve any threaths over some silly ai-generated pics. And - as always! - scroll down for the short summary.

Commissioning an artist in 2023 may be scary, especially if you are not experienced in working with artists and have a hard time to distinguish artworks from images generated by neural networks. But even now, with the tech evolving and with neural networks generating pics with multiple characters and fan art, there are still quite a few ways to avoid scammers.

The creator you are going to commission must have an established gallery

This doesn’t mean that you should not commission someone who is new to platform, someone who started drawing in 2022 or later or someone who didn’t upload their work online prior. Image generators actually forced some of the artists to remove their work from social networks. In addition, image generators can generate thousands of images within hours, which means that the scammers may have quite a lot of works uploaded. What I mean is that real artists grow. Their skills gets better over time – even if they are already established artists with huge experience. Their artistic approach constantly changes and evolve. It means that if there are hundreds of images in the artist’s gallery but their skill is always the same level and their artistic approach doesn’t change over time – this definitely might be a red flag. As an artist with a tendency to nuke my galleries on certain platforms (such as DeviantArt, VK and ArtStation), if I get asked to provide my commissioners with examples of my early artworks I will do it with no hesitation.

You need to look through the artist’s gallery and analize their work

Searching for some decent examples on DeviantArt I stumbled upon a gallery which is four weeks old but already has 660+ deviations all of which look the same way in the matter of skill and artistic approach. While stylization may vary from image to image (some of the artworks look like typical anime-styled CG artworks from visual novels and others have semirealistic proportions), the coloring, the “brush” imitation, the textures on the backgrounds are absolutely the same on every image I analized.

There are a lot of images depictinioning conventionally attractive white or sometimes asian girls in this gallery, some of which seem familiar or resemble the characters from various media. Yes, image generators can now generate fan art. But what they can not generate is diversity. There are of course living artists who tend to draw only conventionally attractive white or asian people too, but now when the image generators gain popularity this lack of diversity automatically raise my suspicions. Drawing a crooked nose or dark skin is not hard and living artists who use references rarely fail at it. It’s image generators who fails this task constantly.

Here is an image titled as a commission. The person who uploaded it also have some content under the paywall and I do not see their images being tagged as Ai-generated too.

Remember the golder rule: spotting an Ai-generated image is the same as spotting the evil faerie in a dark folklore tale. Look them in the eyes. Count their teeth. Look at their hands and count their fingers. Check if they have a shadow and if that shadow is of human form.The devil is in the details.

While this image may appear like a hand-painted artwork of the conventionally attractive girl at the first sight, however it has quite a few clues that may help you to realize that this artist is a scammer and his entire gallery is just a selection of most-decent looking images they managed to generate with neural network. This elven girl is insanely tall, and the shore behind her back, the stones, the grass and the trees are insanely small compared to her. The piece of jewellry is attached to her nips and it’s design makes no sense. What is the gold chain under her breast, which doesn’t seem to be attached to anything? Where does this piece of cloth hang from? Why does her head cast a triangular shadow on her arm?

Many details are easy to be spotted when an image is in high resolution. I do not recommend artists to post their works in high resolution online to avoid feeding the Ai-monster and also to avoid people using your works to produce pirated merch if they draw fan art. Yet in my opinion posting close-ups might become essential - because people who call themselves ai-artists are usually hiding the artifacts under filters and upload their image resized. So yes: avoid commissioning artists, who never post high resolution faces or overuse filters and blur. Because analizing the characters’ faces is now essential.

You may look at this picture and think: how is this possible for a neural network to create such a detailed image and not fail at it (if you also ignore the fact that the girl on the horse doesn’t have legs). Luckily, the person who uploaded it uploaded it in high resolution, so we can zoom in and... yeah.

The artifacts on these evil faeiries’ faces (especially eyes) and their hands speak for themselves.

Image generators have a tendency to either give characters extra fingers, phalanx or nails or hide the hands completely, if the person writing a prompt decide to to so. I do not know whether and how fast will the algorythm learn to generate normal human hands, but for now you should pay attention to these details to spot a generated image.

Like this randomly nakey fellow with two palms on a single wrist and with some extra fingers on their elbow...

...Or this Asuka Langley fan “art” I had to censor out, with her fingers twisted and crooked.

If you are up to commission an artwork and are in search of an artist who will actually do the job you absolutely must pay attention to small details on their works: the clothing, the jewellry, the tattoos, the anatomy.

While Ai-generated images may appear photorealistic at first sight, the neural network usually misses small details, creates artifacts and makes mistakes if there are too many similar objects or repetative patterns. For example, the infamous MidJourney Party Selfies depicting girls with roughly fifly teeth, extra collarbones and green watercolor spots instead of tattooes (and don’t forget to check the ginger lady’s hand). The hair dissolwing in fabric folds? Image generator. The clothing designs which makes no sence? Image generator. Jewellry dissolwing into character’s hair? Image generator. Moreover the image generators also make mistakes while generating interiors and architecture, since the algorythm is not aware of perspective and space and once again fails either at perspective and object size or with repetative objects and patterns.

Like this image here: the bed, the window, the picture on the wall. The perspective on this image makes absolutely no sense: two walls and the bed all exist in different dimentions, while the character is once again of enormous height.

If you try to analize the background on this one, I swear, you can go insane. Look at the window and then look on the corner above it.

There is also another red flag which makes it easy to spot a scammer: dozens of iterations of the same image, which usually happens with people who can’t choose the best image out of the bunch generated with the single prompt.

There are, of course, artists who do series of works, and sometimes these works may have similar ideas and themes, but they hardly ever look this similar to each other: they may differ in angles, poses, character designs and even the artistic approach (lineart, brushes, rendering and etc). The posting time is also important: drawing an actual artwork requires time and effort - for example, I need at least two weeks to finish an artwork with two or three characters and detailed background. So a bunch of ten similar images that are uploaded at the same time it is definitely a red flag. The ai-generated images have a lot of problems with anatomy, details, perspective and other basics human artists have to learn long before they become professionals. All while having glossy semi-realistic render which can only be achieved with years of practice. I’m not saying that there are no living human artists, who may make mistakes (everyone makes mistakes now and then, even the professionals who works in this industry for DECADES) or who choose not to give much thoughts to backgrounds while focusing on characters and rendering (it is okay too), but the combinations of various red flags listed above is something you definitely have to take in account while deciding whether or not you are going to commission an artwork from this creator.

Another example (this person openly admits that they use the images generators for funsies and I did not find him mentioning paywall anywhere). The image generator even imitated the watermark.

Red flags you may spot while working with the chosen artist

Image generators are tricky: they can generate multiple iterations of the same image, imitate WIPs and many more.

First of all, the artist should provide you with WIPs on every stage of work, not when the work is already done. We artists, do it for a reason. We need your feedback constantly, even if you grant us artistic freedom to chose the idea, the character pose, the medium and technique. There are always changes to be made, and we need to make them at proper stage: for example, change the pose or angle of your character while working on a sketch is thousand times easier than to do so while rendering the image. However, the minor changes are usually possible on the later stages (some of artists may require you to pay a small fee of a few bucks, others may not). While the living artists can easily change small details such as the character’s eye color (or other small design changes) not touching the rest of the artwork, image generators simply can not do so not rerendering the whole image. If an artist does not provide you with WIPs or only provide you with them when the work is done, if an artist refuses to make any changes - these may be interpreted as red flags. If an artist agrees to make any change, even the drastic ones, at a late stage, when the piece is almost finished - it is a red flag too. Ask for a small change every single time you need one. I know that there are artists out there who prefer to only provide their client with the finished image once it is done, but now when image generators gain populatiry his may be misinterpreted as if you are a scammer.

Here is a good example of image generators generating WIPs for an existing image: it might actually look scary both for many artists and many commissioners.

I know that some of the artists are panicking that the only way to prove that you really did the artwork is a timelapse recording but this method is not for everyone. Not everyone has a setup which allow them to record a timelapse for an every single commission (my laptop will simply explode if I try). Ask your artists which software/setup do they use, ask them whether or not they can provide you with a timelapse video, ask them which brushes do they use. I know that not everyone like sharing info on their pipeline but at this point it is essential to provide your clients with information on the information about your pipeline, tools and software. For example, if your artist works in Procreate (which is available in Ipad) they have all the timelapses recorded automatically. But please, mind that not everyone have such a privilege.

As a commissioner you can ask an artist for screenshots of their workspace with all the interface visible. If they refuse providing you with that or have a hard time answering the questions about the software they use it might be a red flag. I would also suggest you not to force your artist to draw everything on stream, especially if these streams are public, because there are already cases when people took screenshots of the work in progress, used the image to image generator to apply the shiny rendering to it and accused the original artists of plagiarism. It is a risk for artists and it is okay to refuse such a request. You can also ask an artist for .PSD file of the commission, but the artist have a right to refuse sharing it online for copyright-related reasons. The original .PSD file is a best proof of authorship in court for residents of many countries. Artists can still provide you with the resized .psd file with some of the layers merged or with the background/character png with transparent background without putting themselves at risk. Of course there are artists who draw on the single layer - but without a timelapse recorded this may indeed seem suspicious that the artist does not have a .psd file with layers at all. Always ask your artist to provide you with high resolution image when the commission is finished and fully paid for. There are artists who works on smaller canvases, but working on the canvas smaller than 1000px wide might be interpreted as a red flag, since it is easy to hide artifacts on a resized image. I myself prefer working on larger canvases, from 6000 pixels wide to 10000 pixels wide (300 DPI) because I had an experience with printing my images out to sell them at conventions. While I do not sell commissioned works as prints I still give my commissioners a right to print the finished images out for non-commercial purposes. Thus, I always make sure that it is possible to make a wall print of a decent size out of the finished product. Avoid working with platforms which do not support refunds. It must either be a payment system which support sending invoices or an established platform known and used among the art community (patreon, buymeacofee, boosty, Paypal and etc.). Most artists do not do refunds for finished works — which is absolutely a right thing to do - but sometimes an error might occure. I know people who accidentally paid for their commissions twice and the artists still had to do a refund. Yes, you must respect the artists Terms of Service, but ithas nothing to do with unrelyable platforms used to scam people.

To sum it up

Search for an artists with established galleries,which has a believable amount of works and the visible artistic progress/evolution;

Analyze the artist's gallery, carefully inspecting their work for anything that might be interpreted as a red flag. Excessive fingers, crooked hands, broken perspective, clothing designs and jewellry that makes no sense, extra collarbones, lack of diversity, excessive teeth, artifacts in the eye area, interior and architecture elements which makes no sense — all while the images being glossy, fully rendered as if the artist have decades of experience;

Avoid people with too many iterations of the same image in their profile;

Avoid people with too many images being uploaded at the same time (it is okay to upload a bunch of prevoulosly done artworks when you start running your account, but uploading hundrends of images every week for a long period of time is really suspicious);

Ask for constant WIPs. Give feedback at a proper time. See the reaction;

Ask for a small change when the image is almost finished: it is impossible for the image generator to do so without fully rerendering the image, at least for now;

Ask your artist which software and assets do they use;

Ask (if it is possible) for a timelapse recording — either if the commissioned work or at least of one of their previous works (if they had an opportunity to record it before);

Ask your artist for in program screenshots with visible interface and history (if possible);

Ask your artist to show you the layers of the artwork — at least character/background only layers (mind that the background might be less detailed/wonky at the places which usually are hide but the character's figure). Ask for a resized .psd with some of the layers merged or a gif animation of each layer being added on top — this is what I usually do;

Ask for high resolution file of the commissioned image once you paid for it and it is finished. If the artist doesn’t have it and claim to work on the canvas smaller than 1000 px wide and/or claim that they intentionally delete the original file somehow - this may raise suspicions. Of course a person can delete the file accidentally or have their hard drive crushed, but if you have already spotted some red flags while working with this artist it might be a sign of a person trying to scam you too;

Many of the stuff listed above might be interpreted as a red flag , but I strongly advice you not to judge anyone by one or two points from this post. For example, a person can draw on one layer and mess up the perspective on a drawing entirely! However, if you've played a bingo and suddenly won — you have most likely encountered a person who try to fool and scam you;

Avoid working with suspicious payment methods. If you never heard about a platform before — google it and see whether or not other established artists use it. If not - it might be a scam;

And remember! People may use the images generators for various reasons: for fun, to create references of their characters to later commission reall artists artworks with said character (for example, the art breeder is a useful tool to create arealistic image of the character, even though I find it slightly limiting). Yes, image generators are unethical and trained on copyrighted data, but a person using it may not be aware of this problem. Not every single person who call themselves an “Ai-artist” has malicious plans to scam people or to gain wealth using their funny little tool. Sometimes they do it for fun and do not pretend that it is anything more that a game. Thank you for reading this far and good luck with your commissions!