How can I get free or cheap artwork for a project if I can't draw and don't want to use AI?
How can I get free or cheap artwork for a project if I can't draw and don't want to use AI?
A few years ago I became seriously ill. I was in a coma on heavy duty meds, and had a kidney transplant. I'm much better than I was, but I can't do a lot of things like I could before.
We've now got quite a few kids in the extended family, so a while ago I wrote a short story to try to make it easier for them to understand. My wife and family like the story and have suggested making it into a picture story book. Problem is, I can't draw and my imagination isn't very good.
How can I get pictures for the story if I can't do it myself and don't have the money to hire someone? I want to avoid using AI tools because of the potential copyright issues.
I haven't tried the services like Fiverr because I've heard that they force a race to the bottom on prices, but does anyone have any experience, or have any ideas of what I can do please?
Thanks in advance :)
I want to acknowledge that this question is generally well-intended, but also want to point out that artists are working just like anyone else. If you want good artwork, you should expect to compensate the artist for their time and expertise. I’m not an artist, but IMO paying someone on Fiverr values art more than looking for a free option. I think that’s probably your best bet for the criteria you have. Alternatively you might try to commission someone you find online. Hope you find what you’re looking for!
Thanks for the advice, you've hit the nail on the head.
I'm in an awkward position where I think I've got something that will make the kids happy, but I can only do part of it, and I don't want to take advantage of someone for the other part. I'm looking for something that can hopefully do both.
Artists are people just like everyone else. Which means they are capable of consenting to giving away free work.
True.
This made me laugh, thank you :)
While I'm not averse to sailing the seas on occasion, this is one of those times where I should do everything by the book.
I mean, unless you just have the absolute worst narcs for a family, it's not like it matters what you send them
Oh no. THAT was the bad thing...
Use a whiteboard notebook so the kids can do the drawings themselves?
That's a good idea, thanks :)
Now to see if any of the little buggers can draw :D
I'll double this, I've got a kid's game called CoraQuest where they got kids to make drawings/sketches of their ideas, and had an artist touch them up for production. The art in the game is great because of this.
Why would you do that to me! :o
CoraQuest looks amazing, but it's out of stock everywhere here :(
Use AI but lie to people about it.
Put a sepia filter on it if you want to get creative....orhideadickbutt
I like your style :D
@Tippon if you are going the traditional publishing route, publishers don't actually expect children's book authors to provide the illustrations necessarily.
If you are self-publishing, I suggest you reach out to the kidney transplant community (support groups etc) to see if anyone can volunteer.
There might be someone else in your shoes who can draw and not write, who would love to be part of this project.
That's a great idea, thanks :)
I've just mentioned in another reply that the book is currently a bit too personalised, so probably wouldn't appeal to other people. If I can rewrite it a bit to remove any personal details, that could work though :)
Well, here in Vietnam a lot of art students and graduates would probably be quite happy to take this on.
I recall RMIT has a local job forum, for small jobs for current students and alumni. The instruction is all in English, so communication should not be a problem. Maybe other universities have the same.
Or maybe an art school in the Philippines where English language instruction is also common? I bet they have job forums too.
In my workplace we've got a 3D designer or two, probably not ideal for your task though :(
BTW using AI to generate an image as an artistic brief is a great application that supports both human and machine artists. This is my biggest use of the tech in production so far -- really great especially when language barriers are present.
Whoa I didn't expect to see a fellow Vietnamese on lemmy.
Could you link to the RMIT art forum?
I'm an even more unlikely thing! I wasn't born with any Vietnamese heritage -- I immigrated to Vietnam and integrated. I've met as many as five others like me in the last decade or so!
The RMIT forum isn't specific to art, it's just a job forum where you can post jobs available to students:
https://rmitvn.careercentre.me/employer/default/RMIT-Careers-Portal
I've used it once to hire a software developer. It was much better than VietnamWorks, the big online HR thing in those days. I don't like VW much.
BTW you should have a budget, scope, and timeline when you post a job. It will make it much easier to hire someone, e.g. how many illustrations, what format (Width x Height), what style, when do you need it done by, and a pay range. I would estimate at less than 80$ or so, it would not be worth the trouble for most illustrators who are any good. Notably, most RMIT students are from wealthy families.
If you can read/write Vietnamese, let me know and I can maybe point you toward better resources. English-language-only leaves few options here.
Talk with people about the book until you find someone who’s excited, and who has some artistic skill. Then go halfsies with them in terms of the credit for the book.
That would be ideal. I think the book is probably a bit too personalised as it is though, and wouldn't be too interesting to people outside the family. It could make a nice challenge to rewrite it a bit and change some of the personal details though :)
Search for creative commons or public domain artwork - Wikimedia Commons is a good start, or a google image search (under the image search bar select tools -> usage rights -> creative commons rights)
Or don't worry about the copyright issues of AI and learn to use that to create things you want - I suggest SDXL is the best option
a google image search (under the image search bar select tools -> usage rights -> creative commons rights)
Huh, I didn't know that existed. Thanks for the heads up :)
You can use royalty free stock photos, like from https://unsplash.com
making it into a picture story book
As in formally publishing it? Or just sending it to your family?
The only way copyright, especially around AI, could conceivably be a factor is if you intend to publish and sell it.
For now I just want to publish it for the family, so vanity publishing. Some of the family have suggested selling it though, so while I don't personally think it would sell, I want to make sure that I'm doing everything properly.
Contact your local art college and see if there are any students looking for work experience and a bit of cash.
Then prepare for more paying in exposure memes on the Internet. There is nothing wrong with AI art, and honestly it's better from an ethical standpoint to use AI art versus not paying someone for their time and energy.
My idea isn't about exposure, but experience, and I said they would be paid. They won't get paid as much as a 10 year designer but some beer money seems reasonable and they have some work for their portfolio.
That's a good idea and could work. I'm a bit concerned about taking advantage of someone though, especially if they're young. I'd have to be careful.
Another option would be to hire an illustrator and draw up a contract where they may have a small upfront cost, and give them a cut of the sales.
Or you can contact a school and see if anyone would like to do it for
freethe experienceThanks for the suggestions :)
It's not something that I'm planning on selling, hence the low budget and why I haven't gone down that route. If it did sell I'd be over the moon, as well as really shocked :D
There aren't that many options. Either you commision it, or you learn to draw, or you use AI.
If you don't like Fiverr, maybe look for another platform. Or find someone by some other means. You could also use AI to draft it and then use that as a basis to start with the proper art.
I don't really understand the issue with copyright. Are you afraid of infringing on other people's copyright, or that you won't be able to protect your work if it's made by AI?
I don’t really understand the issue with copyright. Are you afraid of infringing on other people’s copyright, or that you won’t be able to protect your work if it’s made by AI?
A bit of both to be honest. With the current fuss around AI artwork, I don't want to either steal someone else's work, or in the very unlikely event that mine becomes popular, have mine taken. The second one is much less of a concern though.
Fair enough. I'm pretty sure most of the fuss around AI is way over exaggerated. But we'd need a few more legal disputes and a few new laws to ultimately settle this.
I'm alright with using AI tools. I think it's wrong that these companies just take everything they can get hold of, without licensing it. (I mean, I would get in trouble if I downloaded illegal torrents of every novel out there without paying the authors. But it seems companies that develop ChatGPT get away with similar things.) But in the end it's like if a teacher copies textbooks or shows a pirated version of a movie. This doesn't make the things the students learned from it 'illegal' or forbidden knowledge. I think the same applies to AI. (Given the fact they don't copy this 1:1 which they usually don't do anyways... It is possible AI regurgitates its training data in some special cases. So there is some substance to this worry. But I've mainly seen this issue come up for example when generating computer code. Less so with images.) But that's just my oppinion.
It could bite into your side of copyright, however. But then you're also embedding that into a context, adding your own text and story around it. Even if the single images turn out not to be copyright-able, the combined work definitely is.
I don't want to talk you into using AI. Just: before you end up not doing it at all, maybe re-consider using it. Or do it as a preliminary step to draft something you like. You can still send this version to an artist afterwards.
And I bet all those issues will be solved in a few years time. Everyone and their grandma are already using AI and AI is not going away. There is no way around that.
This being said, I think AI also has downsides. Sometimes I generate images or text. But I don't think it's proper art. It copies styles well and does what it's told to do. Sometimes it is super creative and does hilarious things, sometimes the output is a bit bland. But it can't choose a style for a reason, or embed things into a context or hide little things or a second level of meaning into it's output. It doesn't choose colors or other details to underline a certain thing as a proper human artist would do.
And using AI for real-world purposes is hard. Like you have to learn how to force it to draw the same character in the next image and not a completely different woman. Add the details that fit. Do a consistent stlye. And as I understand people work on their prompts for quite some time before they get the exact results they want. And still, they then generate hundreds of images and go through them to end up with a single good one. It's way harder to put it to good use, than drawing some astronaut on a horse for some quick fun.
When my dad made a book for me, he had me illustrate it. When I want cards for people I get the kids to illustrate it.
I think getting them together, telling the story, letting them draw them getting THAT bound and sending it to them would be better than ripping off an artist, the kids won't mind artless illustration if they created it and the story will have somewhere to land since they will have heard it.
That's a lovely idea. I'll have to see if any of them can draw at all :D
make shitty artwork on purpose, its cool
Then I might be the coolest person you've ever met :D
Have you considered www.OpenClipArt.org ?
XOR, you can simply learn actual-drawing, which isn't difficult, it does require a kind of honesty/patience & the actually right instruction...
The book you'd need is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the 4th Definitive Edition", by Betty Edwards.
These drawing-pairs are from her 5-DAYS killer-class.
https://www.drawright.com/before-after
Unless you're autistic, like me, 5 days is possible.
_ /\ _
Can you help me understand what you mean by “ Unless you're autistic, like me, 5 days is possible”? Are you saying you think you can’t learn to draw in that time frame because of your autism?
One possible interpretation is that autistic individuals can sometimes tend to go a bit overboard when finding a new hobby. We will sometimes find a new topic so engaging that we develop a "special interest" in it and spend days/weeks delving into every possible piece of information and niche knowledge available about that topic, considering all the implications and what-ifs and following all the informational leads.
Spending merely the minimum time required (which in this example is apparently 5 days) to get proficient is harder to estimate because an autist may instead need to spend weeks learning everything. Or, they might not.
not the OP you replied to, but someone else who loves the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book.
I think 5 days is ambitious. but a lot of what the exercises are doing is training you to see a different way. so it's not impossible.
someone neurodivergent may struggle to get what the exercises are trying to teach or to reach the point they're aiming for, so it might take them longer. those more inclined to pick it up faster probably aren't going to need the exercises in the book; it's already natural to them.
as we grow up, we learn "this is what a tree looks like, this is a dog looks like, this is what a car looks like", etc etc. the way we see a new car then goes through that filter of "this is what a car looks like". those filters are great for quickly identifying things and generally being a human in the world, so you don't get hit by a car while you're still figuring out if it is a car.
but those filters get in the way of drawing accurately. your eyes aren't literally filtering anything; that's all in your brain. so you need to learn to stop that part of your brain when you draw. that's the biggest part of being able to draw decently. the rest is technical skill you get with practice.
I'd still recommend the original OP look for an artist collaborator, since children's books need the illustrations to be as strong as the writing. there's no way to get there in just 5 days.
Have you considered www.OpenClipArt.org ?
I hadn't, mainly because I hadn't heard of it before :D
It looks like a great resource though, so thank you :)
Unfortunately, the chances of me learning to draw are slim. I can draw a passable doodle if I can get my head in the right place, but as I said in the post, my imagination is awful. I can't picture things properly, so can't get a mental image of what I want the thing on the paper to look like. I'm waiting on a diagnosis of autism and ADHD and possibly aphantasia. Trying to get things down on paper is very difficult for me.
Before cheap, ubiquitous photographic reproduction, drawing was taught to people as a skill.
You might not be the next Gary Larsen (I'm no dillitente) but I bet if you tried you could become a good illustrator.
Having said that, you still have to learn inking, coloring, etc.
Just wanted to say I think most people can learn the skill in the same way most people can learn to write a rhetorical essay or do arithmetic.
Edit: not trivializing your issues, friend, just offering encouragment!
Another option is to shop it around agents and publishers and make the illustrations someone else's problem!
Good thinking! :D
You can try Wikimedia Commons
That's a good idea, thanks :)
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Start a GoFundMe for an art commission. It comes with a good story and your needs are modest, so a free lunch might actually be achievable.
Otherwise, just use AI. The court cases seem unlikely to succeed, if you know how AI works, and you know that a judge is unlikely to throw out an entire industry over a tiny, difficult to measure contamination with questionable training data. Some of the shit we in the West import is produced by crime more often than not, after all. Even if they do stick somehow, they're probably not coming after you specifically.
Search: Open Source Illustrations
Undraw is great, there are lots of others too.