Meet Ryan.
Just a guy from Australia who likes to stretch his creative muscles.
A little real talk.
I'd love to share more but I made the decision early on to remain somewhat anonymous in doing generative art, and keep it disconnected from my personal life. Mainly because of the vocal negative contingent out there, and uncertainty around the legal future of it. I wish that wasn't the case though, but I also truly believe as the technology becomes more mainstream and understood that anonymity will no longer be necessary.
Ryan uses Stable Diffusion, GIMP, and NovelAI to weave his visions into existence. And he says, “if I can ever justify the cost, Photoshop. But I'm also excited to learn new advancements to generative models that we might not even have thought of yet.”
He’s a passionate writer using generative art to kickstart his brain.
Ryan says writing has always been his biggest passion, “and I see generative art as somewhat an extension to that. For as long as I can remember I've been using words to create scenes. I'm still doing that. Just, now I can show those scenes as images as well as words.”
I was, admittedly, in a bit of a writing slump. Creating images though seems to help click my brain into creative mode and has really helped me focus more again on writing too.
“This was the first piece where I'd combined both art and writing into one whole. So, for that reason it's a bit special to me. And something I'd like to keep doing.”
Four thousand followers later…
“I've now got 4000+ people following what I'm creating,” Ryan says. “That's crazy!”
In a more personal way, I can and do suffer from anxiety in social interactions. I'm not going to say generative art has cured that. But I think interacting with the very welcoming and friendly members of this community has been helpful. I still have barriers to push through and would love to interact more with people. But the steps are going in the right direction. Heck, even this interview is something I'd struggle with, but here we are.
A labor of love.
“I'd love to be able to express that this isn't just typing a few words and making pictures happen. The majority of my stuff goes through numerous iterations, edits in GIMP, alterations through img2img, back to GIMP, etc. I've spent hours on some of my pieces,” Ryan says.
From the Couch of the Editor
“Writer’s Block” is real—sometimes it’s based on our own imposter syndrome, stress, or fear. If you have something going on in your life that is inspiring self-doubt, try to tackle that before writing. If you’re struggling to do that, take a look at r/WritingPrompts for inspiration.
It’s the friends we made along the way.
I'd often find when posting writing online that if it didn't get a big reception, I'd just be demoralized. So, I'd never get a regular schedule going. But now, pushing myself to post regularly with generative art I'm learning more to push past that.
There'll always be something else that people might resonate with better. And if not, then all the people that do respond to what I create should be treasured, regardless of numbers.
Building blocks and continuous learning.
“And I definitely want to improve my skills in GIMP, and Photoshop should I get that. I also feel like I suck at social media,” he jokes. “I'm positive I'm not posting in the best way to get myself out there, but I don't know what the right way is. Would love for someone to teach me.”
SOCIAL MEDIA WIZ? Help Ryan suck less at social media on Instagram.
GET-A-PROMPT
Photorealistic, highly detailed, digital painting, a painting of a woman, back to viewer, purple eyes, purple hair, flowing hair, flowing white robes, innocent, gothic, moonlit lake in the background
The Future is Bright and Full of Community
“I’ll be incorporating [generative art] more and more into storytelling,” he said. “I'd love to produce a full comic someday! Plus working with more of the talented people in the community. I’d also love to quit my job and create full time,” Ryan says.
Oh, and shout out the awesome community! Despite some of the negativity, it's a community where positivity seems to reign supreme. I hope everyone in the community who is reading this takes a moment to pat themselves on the back for that.
Support Ryan via his LinkTree.
Another awesome profile. I love finding other writers who are expanding their horizons with generative art!