The Secret of Survival in the AI Era - Unbounded Talk Dialogue with Digital Concept Artist "Potato Man"

Text: Wang Jiajian

Learning AI painting from scratch, 5 months, becoming a big V of Xiaohongshu, swiping the screen of the whole network, linking with dozens of big-name dreams, successfully transforming into a digital concept artist…

How did it work? What’s the secret? Can his success be replicated?

On July 6th, the sixteenth session of the Unbounded Talk live room welcomed a full-time digital concept artist, curator, and Xiaohongshu expert —— “@蜜人tudou_man”, he spent more than an hour sharing and unbounded Members of the AI community shared their own legendary experiences, and also shared the stories behind his use of AIGC technology to realize creative content and the creation of explosive models.

In fact, Tudouren did not stumble into the “AI world” by mistake. He used to be a teacher of visual communication at the university and was also a creative partner of Youmen Interactive. Yika" and many other excellent cases in the advertising industry. These experiences have accumulated rich experience in his personal creation, and also provided him with extraordinary and keen observations and opinions on marketing and advertising industries.

“When the creativity takes less than 5 seconds to be produced, countless industries cease to exist.” Recalling the past experience, Tudou people said that it is creative materials that maintain the survival of most advertising companies, and it is manpower and aesthetics that maintain the value of creative materials. , technology, creativity. However, in the radical upgrade of AI in recent months, these four thresholds have been leveled and destroyed one by one.

The Tudou man jokingly said that when he saw such powerful capabilities of AI tools, it seemed like a building collapsed overnight. The short-term “anxiety” in the industry made him think that he must jump out of his comfort zone, relearn, reposition, and recreate, so as to constantly raise his creative threshold and increase the value of creativity. Therefore, on the one hand, AI tools are the “last straw” that crushes the industry, and on the other hand, they become his “life-saving straw”.

What exactly is AI technology used for? Tudouren made a “plan” very clearly: AI concept creation, AI art installation, AI art exhibition. It is the creation in these three directions that gave birth to wonderful and explosive cases. This makes the Tudou people not only become celebrities in Xiaohongshu, but also a representative figure who uses AIGC technology to create today.

"AIGC will replace the vast majority of traditional art design and content creators. Everyone needs to reposition themselves to find the effective value of the new era. On the contrary, AI will not replace artists. Innovative application tools and capacity release will create new opportunities for artists. Bringing greater potential for gain.”

The following are three classic creations, and you can see more wonderful works on @蜜人tudou_man’s Xiaohongshu account.

AI Concept Creation: Nike Chongqing Concept Store by: @蜜人tudou_man

AI Art Installation: Companion Heart by: @豆豆人tudou_man

AI Art Exhibition: Regeneration Art Museum Project by: @蜜人tudou_man

The following content comes from the dialogue between Ruiya, the host of the Unbounded Talk live room, and Tudou. These questions come from the audience and the Unbounded AI community, and are sorted by Babbitt.

**Rui Ya: Your works have a lot of ideas, how did you come up with these ideas? How can we improve our creative ability, imagination? **

Tudouman: Creativity certainly does not come out of thin air, but comes from the accumulation of work and life. A very important term in our advertising is “insight”. Many small things in life can actually inspire your inspiration and creativity. Accumulate one by one. You have to watch a lot of content every day, and it can help you connect A with B in the hall of thinking. Creativity is not achieved overnight, it requires long-term accumulation. Train more, train more, watch more, think more.

The biggest advantage of AI for creative people is the release of production capacity. I created more content in the first three months of using Mid jouney than I did in the previous ten years combined, which is an incredible thing.

**Ruiya: During the creation process, is the work generated by AI consistent with the picture you want? Do you let it go, or do you try to control it precisely? **

Potato Man: Most people will encounter this problem. I have enjoyed it and struggled with it.

One of the things I really enjoy is that it surprises me a lot. In the early days, I threw some very simple words, which can give me more content that I couldn’t think of, and it helped me make up for my creativity.

After using it a lot, I will have control appeals. I have a lot of ideas, and I hope it can be expressed concretely. You will find that the clearer you think, the less AI can do it. It was a painful stage, and it forced me to learn more techniques to help me do better presentations.

At this time, we have to make good use of different tools. Let me give you an example, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. They are a bit like Meitu Xiuxiu and Photoshop. They are both tools with strong technical support behind them, but their corresponding audiences and final output may be biased.

Sometimes, when using Midjourney, it can quickly present ideas, present the desired atmosphere, rhythm, and produce a big feeling I want. But it is inaccurate, especially in some concrete expressions. Then I might use it at the sketch stage.

Stable Diffusion, it can achieve deep control, I know how to modify and which links to adjust. Every small function of it is actually a big topic. I am learning every day.

I’m not plagiarizing or copying, I’m concretizing the ideas in my mind. If I can do this step by step, I think I can control the AI.

Maimai Museum Series by: @蜜人tudou_man

**Ruiya: We saw the McDonald’s series, the works are very textured, how are these textures expressed through descriptors? Need to combine SD (Stable Diffusion) for generation? **

Potato Man: This group uses MJ (Midjourney). I think everyone can do this, it just needs a training job. More valuable things come back to creativity itself.

Potato Man: Some of my works will take 12-15 hours to complete, but the rendering here (a picture) is actually very fast. What’s more, I feel that the details have not reached the position I want in my heart, and then it took a long time to optimize, and I even think it can continue to be optimized. In the past, when I was painting, I drew in octavo format and later drew it to quarto format. I needed to fill in more details. We call it painting in, which is very important.

Ruiya: I never understood why those artists turned to AI to generate their works. Compared with ordinary non-art majors, the completion and completeness of his works, including creative content, are a little different. . The teacher’s answer just now perfectly solved this question. An artist has his own requirements for art, and he will spend time improving for this requirement. Even small details can take a long time to hone in on. You can try it and get a feel for how to draw it. After painting in, the work may also have a qualitative leap.

New Wave of Takeaway Coffee by: @蜜人tudou_man

**Ruiya: When you first started learning AI technology, what was the biggest challenge? How did you solve it? **

Potato Man: Persistence is really hard. I believe that many friends who were in early contact with AI or are currently playing with AI will get lost while doing it. They don’t know what they are creating and why they are creating. This may be a big problem that everyone faces. I have also experienced it. in this situation.

But I think there may be professionalism accumulated in my career, which helps me. I know what my next goal is to do, and every output and every creation of mine is purposeful. This matter helped me solve the problem of blind creation, or creation without purpose.

**Ruiya: As far as the current development speed of AI is concerned, which jobs do you think are more dangerous and have the possibility of being eliminated? **

Potato Man: I think creators without creative ability may be eliminated. This is an inevitable trend. Now in most Party A markets, everyone is seeking to reduce costs and increase efficiency. It happens that people are the biggest cost.

We only have to add weight for ourselves, not only to learn, but also to create our own unique value. When you are not replaced by AI, you have your own post value.

Don’t worry, at the current stage, if you master the skills of AIGC, you are already ahead of many people.

This year I also hope to form a team of my own to build my own Tudou studio. In my Tudoustudio, I hope to attract more outstanding creators and artists, who can create in different fields.

I’m also working on areas such as AI-generated video. Xiaohongshu has also updated several videos created by me. I am also adding more weight to myself, hoping to create some fun things that no one has seen before.