Root

Last weekend I started a new campaign by a local DM and sadomasochist (I’ll return to this in a bit) at Secret Lair of Chelan, and is only appropriate I started a new character, Root.

Background to Backstory

I have a confession to make. I was half tempted to just roll a Level 1 and re-hash one of my old favorites such as Unnis, the dragonborn sorcerer who loves cinnamon rolls and yellow wine, or Stone, my innocent warforged, my equally innocent fallen Aasimar paladin, Erel, or even my more recent Kazumichi, a kensai from Pathfinder but set to 5E rules. My rational at the time was that I was not sure how much time I would be committing to the drop-ins, and partly I had forgotten to come prepared and only had 60 minutes before the session started to conjure something out of the ether, my head, or in this case D&D Beyond.

But never one to back done from a self-induced challenge, I opened up D&D Beyond and threw proverbial pen to paper and out came Root. Root was largely just born out of the decision to do something different than what I normally play, which is focused on damage output at the expense of all other considerations. Some might call it a play-style, I think of it more as a player defect.

One thing I love about RPG is just the randomness of it all. It’s a place where the rules are more like bumpers in bumper cars, keeping you from going entirely off the track, but not meant to stop you from trying. The roll of the dice force you, pardon the pun, to roll with the punches and improvise on the spot. And creating a character without a clear picture in mind at the start, it’s fun to see where you’ll end and who’ll find at the end of it all. It’s also lazy, but I’m not going to admit to you, dear reader.

Backstory, The Making of

As I was filling out Root’s character sheet and desperately trying to not min/max him to death (did I mention that player defect of mine?), I came to the section where you are asked for backstory. Again, I did not have any specifics in mind with Root other than to play a class I had not played before. And while I did not think backstory was going to be entirely relevant to these gaming sessions, I thought some amount about loose threads that would help me flesh Root out once we got rolling.

I tend to just play characters that act like I would in real-life; in equal parts due to I’m not creative in that way, partly due to I’m autistic and theory of mind is rough for me, and partly just because I hate having to pretend to be something I am not, even when given permission. I learned decades ago from my on the local high school stage, and I might add in my own estimation phenomenal success, to just act from parts already in me. Aside, I wonder what it says about me that I played Dr. Bester from Up the Down Staircase and Horace Gilmer, the prosecuting attorney in To Kill a Mockingbird? Truth be told, I was/am a horrible actor but I did have both 300 pounds of mass and a lot of bottled up teenage anger that was a good basis for parts that required a thunderous voice on stage. But I digress. Root started to form from my own persona living as a stranger in a strange land, sans the messianic undertones that reference implies.

The Seed of a Backstory

While we’ve been 10 years in the Chelan valley, I’ve worked remotely from a home office the entirety of that time. And given we have not been able to have children, outside the raising of our two Great Dane dog’ters, Sora and Kumo, we don’t have a natural circle of friends which might occur organically in the daily grind of raising children. Compounding all this, I’m reserved and introverted, and it’s not hard to imagine Root as an interloper of sorts. And of course, this is not a new sensation but one I’ve felt the entirety of my five decades. Add to fact that I live clear across the country from where I was born and raised, and you can start to see the similarities to myself and Root as a far traveler. Even the random selection of a “bird flute” as one of his instruments he plays as a Druid, has turned into a part of a deeper backstory. Gawd, I love this game.

The Backstory

I imagine Root as an odd child elf growing up. His real name is unimportant, since the name he earned is the one he bears today. He was curious as a child, insatiable to get to, well, the root of things. He never stopped asking why, or digging, quite literally and proverbially, at things till he understood the deeper meaning. And while others named him Root for these reasons, as he grew older the meaning took on new meaning. He became the friend to the forgotten ones, the unseen ones, the ignored ones of the forest. And for these, the roots are where their homes start and extend. For the mice, for the birds, for the toads and frogs. Even to those that burrow underneath, the worms and the spiders and the insects. He is friends to them all, even as his heart is dearest to the simple wood mice and sparrows who keep him constantly apprised of the goings-on, both under foot and over head. And while he’s very adept at squeaking his way through a conversation with mice, he indeed quite literally needs his bird-flute to communicate effectively with the fowl folks he meets. And if you think there was a play on words in that last sentence, you’d right. Some fowl are really foul; just look up the reproductive behaviors of ducks to learn what I mean. But I digress.

Root has now traveled so far from where he was born, under bough and over root, to find himself in a new land with new people. He never quite settles, even if he lingers in a place for along while. He cannot help himself in this way. Curiosity always get him, making him wonder what is past yesterday’s sunset or this morn’s sunrise. But now, he content to discover what the folks of this wayward tavern and its’ slime mold infestation have in store for him.

Making of a Portrait

Given that I share so much with Root, it seemed fitting I would sit for my own reference photos. Also, I’m inexpensive (free) and available. Also, I’m sure I’m a bit vain.

I started with a quick portrait generated by AI. It’s actually amazing what you can produce with a few words in under 30 seconds from your computer. I cannot say it’s a horrible portrait for Root, but it lacked the more rugged nature I envisioned for him. Nevertheless, it was a good start with a starting session only 10 minutes away.

Aside, I absolutely have zero issues using AI using it. (Okay, I have concerns but I’m also very pragmatic and fairly nuanced given I operate in this space leveraging AI for mental health therapy as a co-founder/CTO). And I appreciate the sensitivity people have around it, especially established artists and creators whose specific style or tone can now be duplicated with a few strokes who were hoovered by Big Tech with nary a thank you let along contract for royalties based on IP. But toothpaste and trying to put it back in and all that jazz hands apply. Aside, if you love an artist or author buy their work and patronize them; don’t use AI to plagiarize their style, no matter how tempting it is. PSA done.

But in all seriousness, what I love more than playing a character is illustrating them. So, the real secret why I scrambled to roll a new character was that I wanted a seed of an idea for my next piece of artwork.

As noted above, I play characters that represent aspects of me. There are universal themes such as free will that come up in all of my characters. And sometimes you can see me more directly in a portrait such as with Kazumichi (or 和道) which is the name I adopted for myself while living and working in Japan. But I think Root may be the closest I’ve come, at least externally, to largely being my alter ego, is really just me as I see myself in my fifth decade of life. I am not nature person per se, but I’m most open under open skies and open roads. I grew up being bullied, and I see in myself a pattern of having both a soft spot and protective tendencies to all of us who are unseen or ignored, or are underestimated and not part of the mainstream. In this way, Root’s connection to the small mice of forest and field is this connection to myself.

So I stood in for Root. It did not hurt that I had mountain-man beard already grown in. Throw in a walking stick made by father, and a Carhart outdoor shirt and I look the part of a modern-day Root. A quick selfie with my phone and I had all I needed to get started. Receding hairlines be damned, I gave Root the one I wish I had, along with a fuller beard.

Most of the evolution of the illustration is in the lighting. I ended with two light sources in the end, largely to just help Root to stand out from the darker forest behind him, but also to help boost the idea that this character lives in a world unlike ours.

For myself as an artist, there is no point doing fantasy artwork if it just looks like a picture of a woodsman somewhere in Washington, so the purple lights allude to something magical or mystical, something just out of sight by the viewer.

What is the source? I honestly don’t know, but I suspect Root will out. It’s his nature, after all.

P.S. While I cannot give specifics as it would be spoilers for future adventurers who join us at the tavern, I will say any DM that #tpk’s everyone in session 0 of an introduction to 5e D&D is one sadistic insert-non-PG-words-here. Thanks, DM-who-will-not-be-named.

P.P.S. Yeah, Root died already. But then the DM healed us. Because he’s an upright DM that did not want to get clobbered over the head with a long stick thing.

Attack of the Artistic AI Bots!

Earlier this month it was reported that an AI bot by the name of Midjourney took first place in art competition held in Colorado, quickly creating a storm of comments spanning the spectrum from welcoming our new benevolent overlord artists to the downfall of society (or at least art) as we know it.

No matter your take, the world of Art just heard clearly the clarion call of a revolution as great, and likely as disruptive, as the advent of photography. It was only two centuries ago that the photography was introduced to the world, and it would not be till the 1940s before it was seen as an artform. A similar journey awaited movies, and now video games.

The groundwork for this revolution has been quietly happening underfoot in some of the least likely, read: geekiest, of places such as at Google’s AI labs amongst others. While OpenAI’s DALL-E has been out and available for awhile, we now have any number of publicly available AI bots that have been created with toolsets that make them significantly more accessible to the average person.

More so, they are being commercialized as we speak. Midjourney, which made public its beta on July 12, 2022 – a scant two months ago – is in talks to raise capital at a $1billion valuation. While Midjourney has made the headlines, competitors are not very far behind with Stable Diffusion from CompVis along with a handful or more of AI generating image tools gaining traction.

Rise of the machines

But I’m not really focused on talking about the latest AI bot tools as this is changing, if not by the hour, then by the day presently as new training models, updated and improve toolchains, et cetera are developed and released. Regardless of whether you are a “glass half full” or “half empty” person, the last few weeks have been quite a white-knuckle ride.

In a lot of ways, these recent advances mirror the same ones I saw back when Adobe Photoshop and other digital photo tools become available for the Mac and then PC. Albeit the pace of innovation in 2022 is orders of magnitude faster than it was in the mid and late 1990s. Nevertheless, it’s the same conversation. It was said then that “real artists don’t use Photoshop”. Nowadays you cannot find amongst popular artists who do not include some amount of digitization into their toolchain. And I suspect will live through a period of “real artists don’t use Midjourney” nonsense.

Goofy faces in style of Pixar

If music videos killed the radio star, then there are people who say digital art killed the fine artist. But the reality is that none of this true. Yes, there are people who will always prefer the value of a physical object, as evidenced by art galleries the world over. My point is not that more traditional artforms are being replaced by digital, but that digital is maturing to be on par and peer to these other forms of art. The sale of Beeple’s work for $69 million at Christie’s is proof that there any people in the world putting “their money where their mouth is” when it comes to this thesis.

For myself, as an artist, worse than the doomsayers are those who have the opinion – both within and without the art world – that digital art, and now by extension art created with AI, are not real artists or real art; that somehow the use of more advanced tools diminishes the essence of the art produced. But if that is the case, then the whole of history since our ancestors put art on cave walls is so reduced.

The simple reality is artists throughout the ages have leveraged whatever tools were available to them to improve their craft. Just look no further than the camera obscura and camera lucida. There is mounting evidence shows that many masters of the time extensively used these tools. I would further argue that the use of these tools improved their work, minimally at least for those who did representational, perspective pieces.

Camera Lucida used by the great masters of the 18th and 19th century

I wrote on this before about art as artifact versus art as process, but too often we do not separate art as a consumptive experience from the creative experience. Which is to say, when we talk about “what is art?” there is rarely an explicitly shared common understanding of what qualifies as art. Worse, we often conflate the qualities of art, or aesthetics, with the art itself. We are all our own Justice Potter Stewarts when it comes to the definition of art: “I know it when I see it“. Which is really just an admission that art is subjective. Has been. Is now. And forever will be.

Just yesterday, I was chatting with Mark Ferrari, my good friend and artist/author extraordinaire, about this post’s topic. And while I may butcher what he said more elegantly to me then, I subscribe to his notion that:

“the essence of art is to take the internal and make it external so that others may experience it as the artist experiences it in their mind.”

Mark Ferrari (paraphrased)

That’s it. Everything is mere window-dressing, or more specifically technical aspects of the craft to make art.

Whether you use traditional processes and mediums such as oils, gouaches, watercolors or use, as I do, digital matters very little to whether something is art or not. These tools do not add to or detract from the value of the thing created. What really matters, and who is ultimately an arbitrator of the goodness of the art, is primarily the artist and secondarily the viewers of the art. Primarily the artist as only they know if what they created is true to the imagined internal concept they had. Secondarily the viewers as they can only affirm or deny whether the art they experience conforms to the expressed ideas of the artist. Note, you can invert the priority of primary and secondary, but then this is difference by degrees but not of type.

The faces of our new overlords?

Based on this definition of art – which I believe is the only honest definition of art one can make – then the advent of AI bots to generate (or assist) with the creation of art in no way influences whether something is art or not. Or whether someone is an artist or not. To be clear: art itself is devoid of relationship to the means of its creation. The only question then is if the tools enhance or impede the artists ability to meet their own intent.

I do not foresee a world where art loses its meaning with the advent of these tools; quite the contrary, we will see art continue to evolve as these tools, and yet to be imaged one, evolve. Just as it did with the advent of oils. And camera obscura and lucida. And photography. And Photoshop. And now AI-generated art.

The question is not even when this revolution will occur, it’s already happening. We see professional artists learning how to incorporate Midjourney and other AI generative tools into their workflows from game asset creation to creating a graphic novel in a day to proof of concept web design.

The bigger question is to where will these tool take us? For myself, I think these tools will continue to help bridge that gap between what we as artists imagine and what we dare to create. And that is an exciting thing indeed.

I, for one, welcome our new benevolent artlords.

Note: all images in this post are all generated by the author using Midjourney.

Erel

I’m back at playing D&D with a new group of folks, and as such it’s time to create a new portrait for my character. While I considered playing either Stone or Unnis – given this is a more role-play heavy group (versus the min-max tactical approach in my other groups) – I also thought it would be fun to flex into something entirely new(ish). I say new’ish as my sense of role-playing is to play out aspects of myself, so while Erel is new as a character, his traits borrow heavily from aspects of myself. Why? Maybe because I’m autistic, but I find it just easier when I’m not pretending to be someone I am not – both in real-life and in-game, as it were. If you’re interested in learning more about Erel, then I’ve included his backstory at the bottom of this post.

I actually did two pieces for Erel, both a close-up portrait and full-frame view. As you might have noticed, I copied the portrait into the full-figure. I originally started out wanting to draw Erel’s face a second time, but the re-use (aka copy & paste) boils down only partly to expediency, but more to the fact that I’m not convinced I’m good enough (yet) to reproduce an image of Erel a second time and that it would feel convincingly like it was a picture of the same person. So yeah, I cheated.

With Unnis, I play a character who is in many ways closer to who I am today as I near 50. With Stone, I pull from my tendencies toward toddler’ness with his childlike simplicity thus Stone is 3 years old. With Erel, I wanted to return to when I was in that idealistic stage of my life when things were very binary and clear cut, but were ideas lacked nuance that only time and hard-won life experiences can provide. In this way, I arrived at a younger person in what I envision is their early to mid-twenties.

I debated adding wings to Erel. As you can see in an early stage of values Erel has no wings. But as I progressed, I kept struggling to find ways to convey the fact that he is Aasimar. In the portrait, I just added swirling colors and tattoo to minimally convey something ethereal about him. In full figure you’d think that I’d just add wings and call it a day. And while most Aasimar do have wings, how and when they present themselves in context to D&D matters. In particular, Erel is still very much a green level 1 paladin. The use wings, in the strictest sense of the game, does not occur till level 3. And if he is level 3 (he is not) there is debate as to how Aasimarian wings manifest themselves. Actual wings. Skeletal wings. Wings of radiant light. Putting aside all that nuance, or pedantism, I felt wings of some sort were warranted. I happened to be watching Ross Draws while trying to figure out an anatomically correct version of Erel’s wings when Ross said something to the effect, when asked why he had done so and so to a particular picture, “because I liked it even if its not realistic.” So guess what? I listened to wise Ross and just drew what I liked regardless of anatomical correctness. Go ahead and arrest me! In the end, they are just a visual device to convey to the viewer his race. And frankly, I like them so go and bugger off if you wanted to see something from the Auduban.

Like every picture I create, I am both pleased and disappointed in the results. In some ways, I’m happy with the portrait of Erel. It was a relatively quick study, and I think generally has a consistency in execution that makes it feel complete both visually and narratively. On the other hand, I think Erel in full-figure still has places where my choices of where I put hard and soft-edges bother me. For example, I think his left hand holding the glaive needs to be softened some more. And I think some of my values on this left leg’s armor look too flat. That said, I’m happy with how his wings are desaturated and generally only have soft edges, helping frame him as a subject without distracting the viewer’s eye.

That all said, Erel in full-figure is, to a trained eye, a great example of where I struggle as an artist: namely; moving from a place of lines and capturing every detail as if I was a camera (aka photo-realistic artwork – which the technician in me admires, and the artist in me cringes at) to a more painterly style that focuses on interesting shape language to convey the subject, with a love of soft and hard edges to “sculpt the form.” As noted, I think the wings show I can execute on this, but the question next is: can I do it for an entire image? Trust you I, I’m going to continue to push myself as an artist to find my limits. That said, the urge to approach art as if I’m holding a pencil and not a brush is very, very strong in me.

Erel is a bit of firsts for me, as an artist. He is the first character where I’ve done two pictures of which is exciting for me, even if I did take some shortcuts to create continuity between both pieces. So go me for trying my hand at building a portfolio around a single character, which is an important skill if you want to work professionally in games or movies. A part of me secretly holds out at getting a job in “the industry” where such production skills are paramount. And for any of those of you who are already in “the industry”, I’ve been around long enough to know that I’m better off as a hobbyist where I’m my own “art director” than working for “the man” in “the industry.” Enough of “those quotes.”

Another first for me is Erel is also done entirely using Adobe Photoshop between my Wacom and iPad Pro. To put this into context, till very recently I relied heavily on Procreate on my iPad for quick studies, and then I’d move to my desktop with Wacom Cintiq for more control and greater detail as I entered the later stages of development. While this is a fine setup, I’ve struggled with Corel Painter’s flakey UX even when I know it’s brush engine is superior to Adobe. On top of this, there is friction sharing files via import and export via Apple iCloud for syncing between devices. It works, but at times I find myself struggling with the whole workflow. And worse, I like to have options on when and where I can work on my art. This workflow means I lose the freedom of the iPad once I lock myself into Corel Painter. A first world problem for sure, but I really like the ability to be a nomadic artist.

So why Photoshop? Especially when one of my favorite artists (Todd Lockwood) is a staunch defender of the superiority of Corel Painter to Photoshop, which he relegates to hacks. And I don’t want to be a hack! But outside of losing the love and respect of Todd (assuming he knew me, which he doesn’t even though he and I’ve chatted – swoon in my head we are totally BFFs. Hey! It’s only awkward if Todd thinks it’s awkward ) is the simple fact that Photoshop is “the 800-lb gorilla of digital art”, and as such I pin all my hopes that driver support is just better than with Corel Painter and Wacom. Sorry, Todd!

More than just trying out Photoshop, I opted to save my PSD files in Adobe Cloud. At first I resisted this even more than just trying out Photoshop since I did not want yet another cross-device file-sharing app. I already have all my artwork on iCloud and I’m very happy with Apple’s iCloud, please and thank you. However, I’m so glad I did because when I found myself with a twisted knee late last week, there was a few days where I couldn’t sit at my desk and work on Erel. So on a lark I decided to download Adobe’s Photoshop for iPad, having recalled reading it was a pretty good competitor to Procreate. Given I’m a died-in-the-whole Procreate fanboy/fanman/fanperson, I did not entirely believe the hype and was disinclined to then to even try it out. Like, how can you be better than GOAT Procreate?

Imagine my shock and surprise, pleasantly so, when I launched the app on my iPad to discover I could just open Erel and off I went into full artist mode, no compromises. Not only could I do complex changes, not just simple touch-ups, but it was an amazing drawing experience on a tablet that is on par, and in some ways, better than Procreate! Sacrilege! I know, right? But wait, like a great ginsu knife, it does so much more. Imagine my greater shock just a few days later when I went back to my desktop setup and just picked up where I left off. All with nary a hiccup. Color me impressed.

Recall my wanton and unmet needs as a nomadic artist with my old setup? Adobe Photoshop coupled to Adobe Cloud means I truly can work anywhere I want, whenever I want, using whatever device suits me best. I absolutely love the possibilities!

Backstory

Born Erel, First Son of the First House of Temple at Earsa, it was written that he was destined for great things.  Written not just in the stars, but in the very essence and blood of his race of Aasimar, servants to the gods.  But what the gods wrote and what Erel read of it were two different things.

Since childhood he trained arduously as first acolyte then attendant to hem-netjar of the temple at Earsa, overseen by his family for the past seven generations.  While devoted to his studies, his tendency to question scripture led the hemet-netjar-tepi (high priestess), his mother, to believe he would best serve the temple by joining the ranks of the protectors to the temple.  It was hoped he would someday rise to the rank of hem-asim-tepi (high proctector).  In this capacity, he would stand side by side his younger sister, who it was believed would eventually replace their mother as hemet-netjar-tepi.  In this way the gods would be served, siblings securing their family position as the First House of Earsa for an eighth generation.

Following a decade of intense martial training as a protector and joining the temple garrison, Erel showed no signs of stopping his challenge to scripture.  While exemptions were made given his relation to the temple’s hemet-netjar-tepi, Erel struggled to stay silent as decades of dissatisfaction mounted around the scripture’s deepest truths: that all of existence is but to serve the gods, and more so that all of existence — all that was, is, and will be —had already been foretold by the first god, known only as the “the unseen god”.

As Erel’s questioning grew argumentative, less as questions and more as posits, many in the temple feared that his words would come to corrupt others, if not outright bring the wrath of gods upon the temple to destroy it.  He argued heretically that the Aasimar were not servants of the gods, but in fact their slaves.  He argued that the suffering on the lower planes was not preordained, but instead a direct consequence of the indifference of gods.  For Erel, the gods’ place in the greater cosmos and across all planes were not to be served, but instead to serve.

He only relatively recently left his onclave, albeit truth be told, it was either leave voluntarily or quickly find himself facing a tribunal for beliefs and acts unbecoming an Aasamir.  He would be stripped of all rank and privileges, and forced to live a life of an ascetic until he atoned for his sins. His accuser was none other than his very own aunt and hemet-asim-esun (protector, second order) of his protector regiment, where they had witnessed Erel burning sacred scripture while arguing to his trainees that what they had been taught since birth was wrong.

Erel, now marked as a pariah amongst Aasimar, is outcast amongst his people.  He goes only by his given name, having otherwise left behind everything that he has ever known.

He has been wandering darker roads in the Underdark under Waterdeep, believing that his true purpose must exist upon a path only he can divine.  While he has never broken his vows to protect, for it is one of his core values, he has no reticence to harm those who prey upon those weaker than themselves.  In the past week, he has found himself in Waterdeep proper, continuing to seek answers to questions for which he knows to ask but can find no answer. 

Stone

I recently started playing D&D 5e on Camp D&D Online after backing it on Kickstarter. I tend to play magic users pretty much any chance I get, so for a change of pace I thought I’d play a melee character. For point of reference, some 35 years ago was the last melee character I played was a dwarf fighter with big dreams of becoming a paladin. It should be noted that this was in the days of 2e where such things were not, per canon, allowed. And as you might guess it with a bunch of teenagers, the DM refused so I just roll-played as if my dwarf would some day catch the notice of a human paladin who would induct me into the eternal order of protectorates. It never happened. Dwarf prejudice was a real thing, kids.

Before you worry about me, I also created a dragon-born sorcerer by the name of Unnis Kilyax, for whom I will illustrate later this week. But for whatever reason, I started with my first fighter in decades creating a warforged warrior who woke from a scrap pile of their brethren without memory of its past. Stone exudes a child-like innocence that sits uncomfortably with the fact that they are an elite, two weapon wielding mercenary which its named Sword and Axe. Warforged, if you don’t know, are decidedly simple and direct in all things including the naming things.

When I started sketching Stone, I thought I might go with a more straight-forward rendering using line-art and cell-shading. However, I really did not like the line quality, and I started to tweak I ended reworking the entire piece to be a more painterly rendering. Once I got done and let it sit for a few hours, opting to change some subtle shading around the mouth along with details on the face that I think help keep the eyes on the face.

Given that Stone is a walking automaton with a body that is effectively a full-body suit of armor, it did not make sense to have them wear a helmet. Interestingly enough, I hate the hood as an element from the perspective of character design, but I never figured out a better approach. I struggled how to convey that Stone was a fighter in a portrait, thus why I added a sword-like symbol over the forehead as a compromise. Admittedly, there is an error of mystery with the rather organic elements of the hood with what is otherwise an entirely metallic and mechanical humanoid.

Level Up! 2016 to 2018

I’ve wanted to go back to some of my older pieces and re-do, largely born out of both a dissatisfaction with my treatment of the subject and a desire to see if my skills are sufficiently “leveled up.” Ironically, I keep psyching myself out worried that maybe I have not grown enough to warrant the effort. Well, I stumbled on a post from May 2016 and realized I had inadvertently already done just this.

Continue reading “Level Up! 2016 to 2018”