Why I’m Writing This
Late the other night, I was looking through the comments on one of my videos and ran across someone whining about my process. They were upset because they suspected AI was part of my workflow, demanding that I "prove" the work was 100% my own creation.
At no point in that video did I claim AI wasn’t part of my pipeline. Everything I said was 100% true and factual. What they assumed about my process was entirely on them.
In hindsight, I probably should have kept the comment around as an example, but it was late, so I just deleted it and went to bed. To tell you the truth, I don't really care what they thought. But it did get me thinking about how often I've seen this exact mindset play out over the years.
Which brings me to why I'm writing this today...
My Cheat
I’ve been on this planet for 60 years, and if there is one thing I’ve learned about technology, it’s that the panic never changes. Only the names do.
Right now, the internet is at war over artificial intelligence. People are flinging accusations, line-drawing in the sand, and declaring what is "real" art and what is "slop." I listen to the noise, smile to myself, and keep working. Because I’ve lived through this exact movie four times already.
Pin this Post
The Typewriter Pure-ists
My first dive into digital writing was on an Apple II running Apple Writer.
Before that, I wrote my stories out by hand. But when I shifted to typing and editing on a screen, the reactions were immediate: You aren't a real author if you don't use a typewriter.
It didn't matter that the story originated in my head, or that I had scribbled the initial drafts out by hand in ink on paper. The mere presence of a monitor and a floppy disk meant, to some, that I was taking a shortcut. The machine was doing "too much."
I kept using the word processor. Eventually, the typewriter requirement died off, and nobody questioned whether digital text had a soul anymore.
The Mouse, the KoalaPad, and the "Fake" Canvas
When Adobe Photoshop hit the scene, I jumped in immediately. Back then, we didn't even have proper stylus tablets; I was physically drawing digital art using a mouse and a trackball.
Later, I upgraded to a KoalaPad, and eventually to a series of Wacom tablets. But the gatekeeping shifted right along with the hardware: You aren't a real artist if you use a computer. Real artists use paper, ink, and canvas.
Again, it ignored the actual process. Before digital, my primary tools were Micron pens for fine inking, acrylic and alcohol markers for color—tools I still proudly break out for specific physical projects today. On the computer, I was still doing the sketches first. I was still making every stroke. I was just using pixels instead of pigment.
Years passed, Photoshop became the industry standard. The people who claimed digital art wasn't "real" were left behind, while a whole generation of creators built careers on graphics tablets.
The "Computer Does the Work" Myth (Late 1990s)
In the late 1990s, I worked professionally as a 3D artist and animator.
Back then, the pushback took a slightly different form: It’s not real art because the software renders it for you.
People looking from the outside in didn't see the hours spent building wireframes, painting UV textures, rigging skeletons, setting up light kits, and hand-crafting keyframe animation. They just saw a machine outputting a finished 3D image or scene and assumed a button was pushed and magic happened. They mistook a complex technical pipeline for an automated trick.
Training the Machine
When generative AI arrived, I didn't hide from it. I did what I’ve always done: I experimented.
I spent months training a custom AI model specifically on my own historical catalog—feeding it years of my own inking, my personal line-weight preferences, and my distinct digital coloring style.
Today, the technology has advanced to the point where I don't even need a custom-trained model. I can take one of my own rough pencil sketches, feed in a couple of my own finished pieces as a style reference, and direct the tool to finish and color the piece in my style.
And right on schedule, the chorus returned: "It’s just AI slop."
Pioneers Aren't Cheaters
To tell you the truth, I don't care what the critics think.
They look at a new tool and assume it erases the artist, completely blind to the decades of sketching, inking, coloring, and muscle memory guiding the output. But using a new tool to push your craft forward isn't "cheating."
Pioneers aren't cheaters; they're just early.
Every major technological leap follows the exact same script:
1. Pioneer: "Look at this incredible tool that speeds up my workflow!"
2. Traditionalist: "That isn't real work! You're cheating!"
3. Time passes.
4. Standard: The new tool becomes the baseline, and everyone forgets there was ever a fight.
The people shouting "cheater" aren't buying my work, and they certainly aren't in charge of my happiness. In a few years, using AI to assist, render, and accelerate an artist's personal pipeline will just be called "the work." It will be as mundane and accepted as saving a file in graphics program or typing a manuscript in word processor.
I’ve spent six decades adapting, creating, and building. I didn't stop for the typewriter loyalists, I didn't stop for the canvas purists, and I’m certainly not stopping now.
