Ask HN: Generative AI Courses for Artists

I'm an engineer and a filmmaker. I've lived with 5 AM call times and shoots that ended at sunrise. I've rented ridiculous $300,000 glassware, lifted heavy items from the top shelf of the prop house, dealt with talent issues, struggled to memorize lines, had post production drop projects on the floor, and dealt with so much bullshit - that world sucks.

The film portion of this market is bending a little bit differently than illustration, and these changes are presenting a huge opportunity for filmmakers and animators.

Film needed studios historically because (1) distribution was hard (YouTube and Netflix have addressed this) and (2) films are logistically complicated, capital intensive, and require lots of people. Gen AI is changing this last bit in a big way.

Film is basically getting its "Steam" moment. Just like indie devs can make games, indie authors can write novels, or indie musicians can work on a DAW and publish to Bandcamp, filmmakers will soon have the ability to build their own universes and audiences - something that wasn't possible before. (While there are writers, comedians, and animators like Vivienne Medrano, Joel Haver, and Zach Hadel, GenAI makes this happen in a big, repeatable, and sustainable way.)

20,000+ film students attend film and animation school every year. There aren't enough projects currently to have all of them be autonomous or pursue their own vision. That's changing.

And why would you want to build in Disney's ball pit and play by their rules when our own minds are so much more expansive? So many ideas wither on the vine and never see the light of day due to the intense capital requirements and the bland general audience algorithm of the existing regime.

Ask yourself why there are 20,000+ fantasy books but only 50 fairly generic fantasy films and TV shows.

This is all a good thing. Art is going to explode and fill into every niche and interest you can imagine.

The market will grow, not contract, and the artists will have their own brands and audiences.

you're saying "you must have a giant budget and tons of time to compete with the studios and AI can level the playing field" but i don't know why an artist would want to compete with a major film studio which is pushing out generic content in the first place?

you don't need a multimillion dollar production budget and $300k props to make art, in the same way a sculptor doesn't need to make statues out of gold or diamonds.

But to address your claim, I disagree that the entire purpose of art is individualistic honing of craft. That's a very romantic view of art which I imagine many artists would also disagree with. There are many reasons why people create art. One is for the individual honing of craft. One is as a means to communicate. One is as a means of making a living. One is catharsis. Another is to bring about change. And there are many more. Most artists likely have a cocktail of these reasons as to why they are artists. My guess is professional artists _do_ want their art to pay the bills, and might not be able to practice their art if they had to spend 40h a week doing something else to pay their bills. So I understand their concerns that being a _professional_ artist _who can support themselves from their art_ might be becoming obsolete.

I do agree with you that I don't fully understand the purpose of OP's proposal to teach them the internals of how AI models work. I would understand teaching them AI artist tools like Adobe's AI integrations -- since these tools could potentially give them a competitive edge over other artists, which would help them be able to continue working in the field they love. And like you said, artists might not have a great love for the more corporate gigs that pay the bills -- where that individualistic expression is greatly diminished anyways -- so that might be a prime opportunity where an artist could use AI to help support themselves so that they can then spend time creating art they care about.