Comment by ToucanLoucan

Comment by ToucanLoucan a day ago

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> I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so

Disgusting take.

If indeed Ghibli goes with Miyazaki, then let it go. Sometimes art is just done and that's a concept as a culture we have so much friction with. If a game isn't updating, it's dead. If a movie isn't getting a sequel, it's dead. If a studio stops creating it's treated like some kind of loss, as if the beautiful things it's already made aren't good enough because there can't be any more.

Not every movie needs sequels, not every "universe" needs to have every corner of it documented and turned into subsequent works. For fucks sake just let stuff be finished, and that attitude comes with a bonus feature where maybe creatives won't be constantly burning themselves out under the demands of every audience.

I genuinely can't fathom the sort of person who is like "this artists' work moved me and elevated me as a person, but I guess if they die I can use shitty image gen programs to see more of what they might've made." Gross. Just gross.

helloplanets 12 hours ago

That's rough. And somehow reeks like it's inspired by that old clip of Miyazaki trashing the procedurally generated 'monster' animation. You're intentionally misinterpreting what the OP wrote. "I guess if they die I can use shitty image gen programs" versus "I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so" are very different takes.

I do agree with you that we should be able to not try to create a sequel of a sequel of a remake, and let things pass. But isn't a lot of what Disney et al are doing specifically because their movies take a lot of resources to pull together, so end up playing it safe in the worst possible way?

What's your opinion on sampling, when it comes to music?

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  • ToucanLoucan 7 hours ago

    > "I guess if they die I can use shitty image gen programs" versus "I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so" are very different takes.

    Miyazaki's art is Miyazaki's. If another artist were to come along and imitate his style, especially after he is gone, that is still not Miyazaki. That is whomever's that is's style and it's disrespectful of both to call it Miyazaki.

    And, more to the point, all the AI generated garbage Ghibli crap makes the point better than I ever could. Look at it. It's dead. It looks like the right thing, and it mostly gets it all right, but you just know in your heart that it's not correct. It lacks intentionality which is a pretty universal critique of AI art (since an AI model, by definition, can't have intentionality) but it's one that triples down in potency when associated with something so widely beloved.

    > But isn't a lot of what Disney et al are doing specifically because their movies take a lot of resources to pull together, so end up playing it safe in the worst possible way?

    ... yes? Was this meant as a counterpoint to what I said or a corroboration? I genuinely can't tell, the lead-in is phrased like you're going to disagree and then you cite the exact same (awful) example of how BAD this is.

    > What's your opinion on sampling, when it comes to music?

    As with most things, it depends. I think the Ghibli AI slop has a lot more in common with Vanilla Ice than, say, Hung Up by Madonna.

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    • tpmoney 7 hours ago

      > Miyazaki's art is Miyazaki's. If another artist were to come along and imitate his style, especially after he is gone, that is still not Miyazaki. That is whomever's that is's style and it's disrespectful of both to call it Miyazaki.

      Yes, but also no. Miyazaki’s art style is distinctive and certainly stands out, but it’s also very clearly a “mass produced” thing. In that I mean a team of animators are all creating frames of art in the Miyazaki style that are obviously not drawn by Miyazaki, but we call them Miyazaki art because they’re conglomerated into a single work under his direction. The question is how many frames of a movie have to be personally drawn by Miyazaki in order for something to be a Miyazaki film? If he directs the art and movie, but doesn’t actually draw anything himself, is that still a Miyazaki film? Is that “disrespectful” to him? More specifically, is the art style what makes a film a Miyazaki film or is it the world, the ideas and the individual human moments that are chosen to be drawn that make the film?

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      • ToucanLoucan 6 hours ago

        > If he directs the art and movie, but doesn’t actually draw anything himself, is that still a Miyazaki film?

        Yes. You seem to be oscillating between thinking I'm talking about the frames he actually draws versus the movies he creates with the assistance of his various teams. It's both. That's part of why I am saying that once Miyazaki is gone, by definition, there will be no more Miyazaki movies, because there is no Miyazaki anymore.

        Now, that's not to say that AI enthusiasts won't try and make them, they almost certainly will. I can't fathom why else you'd be working on this tech. However if you have so little creatively to say that you must reanimate the hand of a master so far your better that you'd need a rocket just to pick his pocket, then IMO you have already demonstrated your, and by extension, your works, lack so spectacularly that even you already know it sucks.

        I can't separate this ongoing issue from the fact that so many of these super pro AI people are explicitly STEM guys (and it is mostly guys too) who have no background in the humanities, and this is going to sound mean but: it fucking shows. There is no appreciation for the artist. There is no value to creativity. Making things is seen by these people not as a thing they have to do lest the ideas burn holes in their skulls until they die; it's simply the first thing that needs to be done so you can sell shit.

        I know so many artists who work jobs they loathe to come home and create for audiences they have made, and they make a pittance off of because the money is not and was never the point. They create because they can't not create. The AI bro is the polar opposite: they do not create, because they can't. They have nothing to say. All their ideas are Nostalgia Critic-grade "what if batman met mario" stuff.

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    • helloplanets 6 hours ago

      It would be completely disrespectful to call it Miyazaki's. It's absolutely not. If you sample a Stevie Wonder song, you can't call yourself Stevie Wonder. Everyone knows who Stevie Wonder is, and the same goes for Miyazaki.

      The AI generated Ghibli crap definitely makes a point, but not your point imo. The AI generated Ghibli stuff that was trending some time ago was a meme rather than anything anyone would expect to take as actual art. Like people ordering portraits from Fiverr in a specific style.

      > Was this meant as a counterpoint to what I said or a corroboration?

      The point I was making is that an actually talented artist with an actual story to tell, could make a movie that they would've not been capable of getting out without the help of AI or other modern tools. Which is the opposite of the Disney process. Meaning, modern tools empower solo and indie artists, be it Blender or generative AI.

      If a person is not able to tell when something is not visually good they're probably not a talented artist, when we're talking about an inherently visual medium. I don't think tooling changes this. People who are talented in using samples when in comes to music can wade through hundreds of possible options to find the perfect thing to sample, and combine several very short snippets of audio into a whole. Why wouldn't the same apply here?

      The disagreement here is: I think you're making a straw man argument, where the example usage of generative AI for art is one where people were making a meme. If someone actually thought they should be taken for a serious artist after generating a Ghibli meme image, I agree that would be mad. Let alone comparable to Miyazaki. That would be comical. Creating meaningful art was not the point of the Ghibli AI slop memes, which makes it a bad example in this context.

      I think Vanilla Ice is a good example in that people definitely did not think he was a great artist or made emotionally meaningful music, even at the time. I'm pretty sure his value was in being entertaining and maybe catchy. But we do agree on the fact that it is still possible to make good music using samples, without having to actually play each of the instruments and record them.

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sifar a day ago

In Passing - Lisel Mueller

How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious

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  • ToucanLoucan 16 hours ago

    Beautiful piece.

    And yeah, I just don't get this. If you want this sort of never ending, never permitted to end media system you can have it, Disney is right there, with Star Wars, with it's live action remakes, with it's Marvel. Like it's comical how many juggernaut IP's they own that just churn out the very definition of content.

    And that's not to say all of it's bad, Andor is quite incredible, Wandivision combined it's tropey comic book story with genuinely heart-wrenching writing from House of M, and I could cite many other examples. But the vast majority, especially after Endgame, has just been completely forgettable, disposable shows and movies that are famously mediocre and disliked specifically because they have nothing to say, no point to make, and simply exist to occupy space on the Marvel treadmill.

    And to have that desired from Studio Ghibli is just... full body shudders man.

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