I noticed a problem on my site and wanted to fix it so here is the uploaded link!

https://dtc-wsuv.org/mcruz21/world-site/

Blog Prompt: This week, start thinking/researching/chatting about your final project and research essay. By class, post a description of both your project idea and essay topic.

For my final project, I am planning to restore old photos that have been damaged or distorted due to aging. I want to use generative AI to restore these photos to their original condition as if they were first printed. To accomplish this, I will be requesting my friends and family to provide me with a few photos that they want me to fix. I am not yet sure which AI software I will be using, but I will try various options, with photoshop being the first one.

**HTML generated & put into Cyber duck**

Blog Prompt: Go to the website of Happyfinish.com –  a design firm with offices in Portland, London, Milan and Verona. Explore the variety of work in the Gallery. In a blog post, prepare 2-3 questions to ask Toby Roberts about the uses of AI in the company.  He is the President / COO of Happyfinish.com and visiting our class.

How would you get your foot in the door with a job like yours?
How often do you currently use AI in the field you are in?
Do you enjoy using AI in your field?
How do your clients act when they find out about the AI being used?

Graphic design continuously evolves, blending creativity with technology to craft engaging visual stories. My exploration into AI’s role in enhancing this creative journey sparked my main question: “How can AI improve the creative process in graphic design, and is its use justified?” In this project, I aim going to answer this question and demonstrate AI’s potential to boost the creative process.

In my final project, I aim to explore the theme of “life,” focusing on exploring how loss and gain shape our lives. Life’s true nature lies in the beautiful mix of wins and losses, teaching us to value all our experiences. This is what makes life beautiful, offering us the chance to love and be loved, to grow through our challenges, and to value the times of success and kindness. The graphic design will serve as a visual metaphor for this journey, depicting the fluid and ever-changing nature of life. Using AI tools and techniques, I will transform my thoughts and ideas into tangible content, building a detailed picture of graphic assets, including background images, text overlays, and symbolic elements that embody the theme.

AI’s role in this creative process is important, as it will assist in generating and refining these visual elements, allowing me to experiment with different styles, compositions, and color schemes. By integrating AI into my artistic practice, I intend to push the boundaries of traditional graphic design, creating a piece that not only reflects on the theme of life but also demonstrates the potential of AI in enhancing and expanding the creative landscape. This project will show my view of life’s ups and downs and look at how AI can be used to better express these complex, common themes.

Beginning the journey to launch my own small AI digital design or development company, I feel the need to integrate a blend of creativity, cutting-edge technology, and an understanding of my target market – whether it’s entertainment, education, commercial design, or marketing. Standing on the cusp of a generative AI revolution, I see the potential to create engaging, immersive experiences that are both accessible and unique. I will explore my plan for utilizing AI’s power to create a business that thrives and stands out in a crowded marketplace.

Vision and Mission

The first step for me is to solidify my vision and mission, which will be the core of my company. In a world filled with digital experiences, I need to decide what unique story I want to tell. Whether it’s creating AI-generated soundtracks that adapt to video game players’ actions in real time, or developing personalized educational content that evolves with the learner’s progress, my vision will be bold and elegant.

Leveraging AI

With my vision set, the next stage is identifying the AI tools and technologies that can bring it to life. Generative AI, with its capacity to create original content from images and text to music and video, offers a toolbox of endless resources. Personally, I envision using AI to generate text, code and images to create interactive web art and stories. The key for me is not just to use AI tools, but to push their boundaries, creating experiences that are deeply engaging and profoundly personal.

Adding a Unique Twist

In an era where AI tools are universally accessible, uniqueness comes from how I choose to apply these tools. This could mean developing proprietary algorithms that infuse generative content with a distinct style or emotional intelligence, creating experiences that resonate on a deeply human level. I imagine the integration of AI with traditional crafts, offering a blend of digital and tactile features that can’t be found anywhere else.

From Plan to Reality

My project will include research, development, testing, and refinement. I will begin with market research to identify gaps and opportunities for expansion. I will create a budget, factoring in costs for technology, talent, and marketing. During development, I will use an iterative process that incorporates user feedback to refine the product. Lastly, marketing my unique AI-driven stories is crucial, emphasizing not just the innovation behind my creations, but also the unique, compelling experiences they provide.

Connecting with My Audience

My marketing strategy itself leverages AI, using data analytics to tailor messages to specific audiences. But crucially, it tells a story. I highlight how my unique approach to AI enhances lives, whether through entertainment, education, design, or marketing.

Conclusion

Starting a creative AI business today means I am looking forward, imagining the potential of generative AI, and taking it even further. I will need to focus on building something that resonates, something that carries my unique signature. By blending the power of AI with a clear, innovative vision and a deep understanding of my audience, I’m not just starting a business – I’m crafting the future of AI in the arts.

Regarding the theme of my final project and research paper, I remain committed to envisioning a fashion illustration museum website, aligning with the initial plan I conceived at the semester’s start. Through a rough understanding of the requirements of the Multimodal Reflective Essay, I realized that the construction of a website is a mandatory requirement. Therefore, the direction of my research paper focuses on the content. My final artwork will delve into the technical aspects of image generation, with plans to incorporate a fashion-themed game, though its completion within the project timeline remains uncertain. During the class, I created a new GPT assistant to aid in my final project. Unlike my original assistant, which aided in developing the website by providing creative inputs and strategic AI tool usage, this new assistant focuses on game development.

In planning my thesis, I will explore integrating technology, art, and interactive elements within a fashion context. This involves unifying the project’s narrative across text, visual art, and gaming, ensuring website usability, and prompting reflections on fashion art. A challenge of mine is maintaining a consistent style across different mediums, connecting fashion illustrations with the game, and fostering user interaction. The use of AI tools has highlighted their potential and limitations in creating fashion illustrations, an area of both excitement and concern for me. Ethical considerations regarding AI’s use in my project involve navigating the balance between AI autonomy and my creative perceptions. My choices prioritize aesthetic judgment over AI outputs, ensuring my artistic integrity remains uncompromised.

In short, I want to make this project into a multi-dimensional experience, merging AI technology with fashion art. Moving forward, I will carefully refine my topic’s direction and detail the key content in my essay.

Click HERE to visit the webpage of all things Thera!

Blog Prompt: This week, start thinking/researching/chatting about your final project and research essay. By class, post a description of both your project idea and essay topic.

Essay Topic

   Over the course of this semester, I have developed a keen interest in the application of AI tools in a professional environment. This interest was even more perked after the very insightful visit by the president and COO of Happy Finish, Toby Roberts. Seeing the application of various AI tools working in an integrated system to produce stunning and specific visual content  was an impressive display of not only what is possible now, but what the future holds. As AI continues to proliferate across the tech industry and outwards, I realize the value in understanding the inner-workings of the Tools we all will be exposed to and work with.

For my essay, I would like to explore and work towards understanding a full overview of the process that some of the more prominent AI tools use to generate their content. Using a ground up approach, I plan to examine the process from its earliest stages of data collection, pre-processing, and model training through to the actual generation of content. Through a better understanding of the process as a whole, I hope to obtain not only more knowledge that will improve my usage of these tools, but also give me insight into relevant and useful skills to refine and learn in order to increase my chances of securing a job in a related field.

Project Idea

TBD

Hey everyone, here is the game me and my group worked on.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/dtc338-luers/natures-fury/

I was in a group with Evan and Joseph. I worked on the music and the designs of the enemies/monsters in the game.

Game by: Hailey Gebhart, Haili Kuanoni, and Mercedes Rowland

Play here: https://dtc-wsuv.org/mrowland24/game/

The game I created with my group is https://dtc-wsuv.org/pjauregui23/pumpkin_toss/index.html I worked with Andrew Truax, Marianna Cruz, and Miryssa Casas.

My essay topic is about finding out the implications of the integration of AI in 3-D modeling in animation industries, such as games and film.

So far my project idea is that I will generate a 3D model or 3D animation using an AI generated 2-D image. It will probably involve an automaton that looks smooth but is complicated in detail. There  should be tools out there that can create a 3D model using a 2D image.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/mcruz21/pumpkin_toss/

I had fun collaborating with Andrew, Miryssa, and Pamela on this game toss:) I helped contribute part of the starting ideas, as well as helping with the overall look of the game. When we were in the early stages of the game I added some moving grass to make it look like the pumpkin was on a field but then I also was the one to suggest having a photo background and made a background image using AI tools instead of the moving grass.

I have decided to research and present a project about training AI to write in a voice that reflects my own in tone, structure, and verbiage. I have an outline and rough draft of my essay finished and will feature a project I will perform that demonstrates the multiple steps taken in the training process. I will provide examples of the development and include visual aspects to draw the user into the journey I have taken.

My essay will outline the aspects of identifying my voice, feeding in samples of my writing and showcasing the iterations as I train the GPT.

For my multimodal essay I want to focus on integrating AI with my personal art. During my research I think I will refine my question but will need to investigate AI’s tools abilities to respond to images. I could also try to use different types of AI perhaps drawing in a program then having AI create something from that is a route I could go as well. I think that for starters I’d have to play with this idea and reflect on these findings before I can have certainty on what is within the capacity of possibilities at the moment.

I’d have to do some experimenting with AI tools and its abilities I think a big component of my essay will focus on this type of research which will lead up to my project. For the project I will be executing this plan by provided samples of what the responses and abilities of the AI tools I use are able to transform my art. My project will likely show case results and perhaps its implications. I also think that my project will include how this may or may not affect my art or how the process of art can be changed by integrating AI with traditional fine arts.

As for the material of art that I plan to use within the experimenting I will likely choose a variety and try to include different styles and or mediums to get a good sample. Much of my research will be going back and forth with the AI to get results that I think are at a proficient level. But if the results are also not as they are to be expected then I will likely also discuss and show this through examples. I also think that I will need to have a defined question as I see results.

For my essay section of the Multimodal Research Essay I think I’d like to focus on what I have encountered the most challenges throughout using AI, which is keeping up with consistency and how AI seems to struggle with this. I think I’d like to dig deeper in researching how the language that we use with AI can be misunderstood by AI and the techniques we should use in order to get the results we want from AI rather than just hoping it produces what we want.

As for my final creative project I am still undecided but here are my ideas so far.

1. In my fictional world I’d like to explore creating some sort of novel or that helps illustrate more detailed artifacts from this world so I’d like to dive deeper into the art that is produced in this fictional world and create some sort of book or website similar to the style of the Codex Seraphinianus. Ice art is predominantly what my fictional world produces so creating some sort of book that helps illustrate this would be fun to explore
2. 2. Creating some sort of art gallery for my fictional world and working around to maintain a cohesive theme.
3. Another idea is I’d like to create a video of some sort and have images be generated from song lyrics or dialogue from books. I’d like to investigate how well AI does with different languages so perhaps I can explore how I can have the same story but in a different language and see how similar or different AI produces it. I think with languages, translations do not always get translated correctly so this would be a nice opportunity to see how AI can work around this. Especially with how AI may not always produce what you want it to with the language technique you talk to it so it will be nice to see how this can be explored.