well i originally did the images for the !mars@discuss.tchncs.de community to have some nice visuals to go with. just like pepper makes the food tastier, even though it serves no role in diet, so do visuals make discussion more lively, even though they’re not technically necessary.

anyways, after a significant backlash against AI (that btw i still don’t get but whatever) i stopped posting these images, now they’re sleeping on my disk.

yeah it’s visible that it’s AI but the stuff is still recognizable

meanwhile my own sketches look like this:

also recognizable but less graphic --> less catchy.

also in case anyone is wondering: the greenhouses are well-rendered by AI. it’s not a mistake, i specifically asked it to draw it like this. here are some more:

the reason why it looks like this is because it’s essentially a flat sheet of plastic filled with water, to grow algae in. algae can be surprisingly nutritious actually. (comparable calories to bread)

so, my opinion is, when i want to showcase something, i do the following:

• first, think about what i actually want to show
• second, do some sketches on paper to get a feeling for the thing (often helps with thinking about the thing)
• third, to a cheap crappy drawing digitally, mostly libreoffice impress or krita
• then, ask the AI to basically make it more alive by adding details etc.

huge shoutout to mindustry! it’s foss and technically free but you can buy it through steam to donate to the developers.

and drugs sometimes (HRT)

memes. lots of memes

donations to lemmy devs and 2 fediverse servers are $10/month each, so $30/month total.