AI and Art: A Match Made in Creative Heaven?

Create Art Podcast Interview David Miller hello friend.This is Timothy Keem O'Brien, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. Now on today's episode, I have with me David Miller.He is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist specializing in photography, animation and sound design.His work fuses lo fi aesthetics with cutting edge technology, creating art that is organic, surreal and noir focused, yet accessible through a pop art sensibility.Now, as an arts educator, he encourages students of all ages to explore expressive and experimental approaches using the tools that resonate with them. In his latest book, the Beginner's Guide to Procreate Dreams, that's by Rocky Nook Publishing that showcases his expertise in digital animation.Now, recently he's become an advocate for embracing AI tools in the same spirit as pioneering artists, filmmakers and musicians who pushed technological boundaries to realize their creative visions. And I gotta say, I had a fantastic time talking with David. He is huge into AI. He is all into AI and I am getting close to being all into AI.I use a lot of AI in my work and you'll find out more about that in this interview.But I think if we use AI to help us as a tool, it's just going to make our art that much better and perhaps make it easier for us to produce great works of art. So at this time I'm going to step back and go ahead and play for you the interview that I had with David Miller.

All right, thank you all very much for joining us here on Create Art Podcast. I have the privilege of having David Miller on the show here with me today. David, how is it in LA today?

Got to 72 and you know, that short weather. I actually live in San Pedro, which is the south southern harbor tip of la and we're by the ocean, so breezy, bright, sunny, beautiful.

I think we all wish we could be out there except for the fires and the earthquakes and all that stuff, but besides that, we all just need to go to California.Well, I'm glad you're on here today because I'm going to talk a lot about AI and artistic expression here today and that's something that you've been exploring a lot. And my first question off to you is how do you see AI being used for genuine artistic expression?

I think the opportunity that sort of one man band artists like myself have is we can be production studios from soup to nuts, A to Z.And by that I mean If I have a vision of a sound, a soundtrack to a film, I want to make an animation a particular way something moves around or like an object that I need for. As a maybe like a prop for a character. Because I do a lot of animation, I can generate those.And those of us who are capable of putting our vision into words are able to achieve that vision the same way that in the past, let's say it was a production studio that had the wardrobe designer and a soundtrack person and so on and so forth. You describe it the best you can to those people.But if they weren't vibing with you, especially if your vibe is kind of weird, you know you're not going to get the result that you really want. And then you're going to be, like, struggling, even though maybe you can articulate it as best you can in words.It's like the receptor isn't understanding what you're doing. And before he died, David lynch really didn't seem to have any opinions on AI that I ever heard of.But he was really into digital video and Photoshop a lot. And he would say things like, it's getting so anything you can imagine, you can dream, you can create without even having to leave your house.Now, he was describing Photoshop in that particular interview. But this is far beyond Photoshop and the things that I've been making with AI mostly over the last six months.My favorite tool currently is called Suno, and it is a music generator. And early on it seemed like everything was kind of like a gag or it was of low quality.But as I progressed and figured out how to articulate what I was really looking for, and also kind of using other AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT and those things to break down elements that weren't even musical.But let's say the films of Guillermo del Toro and David lynch, there is a particular vibe that in the case of Guillermo del Toro, kind of goes along with Edgar Allan Poe and Gothic horror and Gothic romance. And in the case of David lynch, it's sort of like following on the backs of the 1930s surrealists.You know, there is art history that articulates what that is, and so I've been able to make pieces for what I do that continue in that tradition.Now, I think a lot of the reason why I gets a super bad rap and people think it's not quite going to generate things of quality is because one, people aren't very good at describing what they want or thinking, like, I need this thing, even though they would do that. If they were like trying to find props for their period piece short film.But also because the people who created these AI tools aren't artists and they think in the sense of we want to replicate the most popular things that are around. So of course, when you start dabbling with.Gives you, I don't know, if you're trying to generate characters and stuff, it'll give you like pretty girl that looks like an anime character. That looks like an anime character looks like, you know, but that doesn't mean you have to think like that exactly when you're getting to it.So I kind of challenge people who are 100 against AI, you know, what is it that you're currently engaged in creating now that's taking up weeks of your time, years of your time, years of, you know, and is it worth it to you?You know, is it any better to have a prosthetic mask that looks cool on film, but the actor has to sit in the chair for eight hours in the morning and that prosthetic falls apart after two days and you find yourself having to shoot it against green screen and that you can't even like, you know, light and key and cost.And in the process of that particular film project, maybe you're seeking thousands of dollars and running all these crowdfunding campaigns and going to loan sharks or, you know, or mortgaging your house or like getting so anxious about the entire production process that you develop like a drug habit or something or you ruin your family life. Is that worth it? When the. I think his name is Matt Stone, but one of the people who makes. Or the.Both the guys make south park, they have an AI company that allows an actor to act as themselves and then it generates the character over them, you know.

Yeah.

And then the. It's more efficient, the production is smoother, it's less stress on everybody involved.And in the sense that it, you know, presuming that technology is as feasible, as good looking on screen as all that other stuff that probably won't even get made because of all the hurdles I just mentioned. You'll get your work done and everybody will be more mentally and physically healthy.And I do think it's also important that we speak to the times we live in.

For sure.

So.So it's great that there are filmmakers out there that, you know, are dedicated to the tradition of 35 millimeter or 16 millimeter 8 millimeter filmmaking, but that's so inefficient. It costs so much. So many things go wrong with it.David lynch abandoned filmmaking with chemical processes at a certain point in his career and just went all digital video. And, you know, I'm not really into period stuff anyways. I think you should, like, operate in the space, the times you live in.

For sure, for sure.

And AI is omnipresent. It's part of what we are. Just like the Internet and electricity and all that.

And I've listened to a lot of podcasts, I've listened to a lot of people, you know, really downgrade or besmirch whatever, you know, word you want to use for it. AI, they say it's the lazy tool and all that. What are you finding as the biggest misconception about AI generated art?Because I know when I use it, when I first used it, I didn't know what I was doing, just like anybody else. You know, when first using a paintbrush, when you're first shooting a film, you don't know what you're doing.But then after you get into it for a while, you learn that there's a lot of steps to it. There's a lot of thing, you know, you have to be very precise.And I liked what you said, you know, being precise with your language when you're using AI. But what are you finding is everyone's misconception or I guess, fear of AI?

I think that the biggest misconception, the thing I hear the most, is that it lacks soul or that it will never replace this thing, or that, you know, that there will not be AI songs that make you cry and so on and so forth. I think the reason why that is wrong is because it just makes a lot of assumptions.I think the first one is that anything made by, you know, everything has to be 100% made by human hands. And we are wearing clothes. You have books that were mass produced. You.We've all taken pictures with digital photo and video making equipment that makes us feel something.And certainly every new generation that comes up, like, my kids are 16 and 18, they've never known what it's like to not have an Internet, you know, and I work in a school and I've got kids that when the WI fi goes down, it actually physically hurts them. Like they. They just do not understand what it was like to live pre that time. Old people like us are saying, well, I can't. You know, there's.The only way humans exist and communicate and feel things is by the way that we grew up. And that's just not true.You know, I think that as I was saying, though, we all have things that involve technology that Even right now, us communicating this way is kind of unique to our time, but it can be soulful. You know, quote unquote. The way that an AI image becomes soulful is that you have to, you know, imbue it with meaning.I keep quoting people that I like, but Bjork, who's done electronic music for 30 years, she said, you know, people say computer music has no soul, and you can't blame the tool for it because if the soul's not there, the person didn't put it in there.

Right.

You know, AI doesn't. The AI art we're talking about, let's just say that it doesn't just generate itself, it has our brains to activate it. Right.Of course there will be self generating, self replicating art. People like Brian Eno do things that it has that built in, where it generates on and on.He has an app called Bloom, and he's done that with these like, AI paintings.But the idea that you have, and I'm trying to think of, like a story for a movie that maybe would get our heart, you know, maybe the breakup of a family or child abuse, or connecting to an animal on a spiritual level, or, you know, just generally being lonely or suicidal or something like that. All of that can be a story that you tell in a song or visual art piece or video piece using an AI tool.Now, most of them have built in, you know, content filters for violence and sex, but I'm sure there's ones that go around that if you need that.

Yeah.

And even if there isn't, you can still make a part of. Of an AI image or something and then incorporate it into something else that you make. So I.And I've made some videos that weren't, like, violent and sexual, but they were, you know, political. And there's a lot of funny political AI going around right now. There was a video with Trump sucking Elon Musk's feet shown at the.One of the departments. I forgot which one. Housing and Development or something. It was on the screens.

Yeah.

And then somebody made a movie that had like a. AI Vladimir Putin as the main character. And it was supposed to be a documentary type thing, but they were inserting him into their footage.So on that level, I think you can communicate whatever you really want to communicate with it. You just kind of have to articulate it a certain way. And the more that I've used the AI music tool, the easier it is for me to articulate it.Also continuing on and not being soulful, I feel like we kind of need to examine what humans think soulful means, you know, or what is it, what is it that you think is this like unassailable organic element that's only unique to things that people generate without electronic help. Now I understand there's people who are like into artisanal crafts.

Sure.

You know, and there's a big mark or there was a big market on Etsy, but you know, time has shifted it. So Etsy has sort of become more Amazon.But it used to be entirely handcrafted and you would go to like a local brewery or something and try beer that you knew was made there. And then you kind of had a story to tell. But I think that's really all there, really there is to. When we think about what's.What's unique to the human experience is that you can kind of attach your own story to. Isn't much of a story to say. I sat down with Suno and I generated a thing.However, I will like take my iPad or my phone and I'll work on artwork by the ocean where I live. And all of a sudden it's kind of like plein air painting where I have my entire production studio in my device. But I'm absorbing what's there.And I just, I look at the pop charts and I look at a lot of the movies that, you know, are real popular, make money. And I look at movies that maybe were critically appraised but. And celebrated, but they aren't like burning up, you know, people's conversations.And I was like, what is it in any of this stuff that couldn't have been done in AI? Like why would it be so special?And I don't really know, you know, I know that there's a lot of things like before you started running, we were talking about the Pixar films.

Yeah.

And you know, up to a point those movies have made everybody cry. And when they were first being made, when the first Toy Story was being made, nobody believed in it.And they're like, this is two dimension animation. It just got something to it, you know, it's so much soulful. This computer stuff's crap. Nobody's gonna watch this.Everything looks like plastic, you know, which is why they made Toy Story about plastic.

Yeah.

Because they couldn't figure out how to make humans looking the way they are.And then, you know, fast forward just a few years and they have like the Planet of the Apes films where they like get real close in on Caesar's eyes at the end and it's all motion capture or Gollum From Lord of the Rings. Same actor, Andy Serkis. And it communicates spirituality and soulfulness the same as anything else. We just learned how to do it better.

Yeah, I remember seeing a Final Fantasy movie. I believe it was.

Oh, this is the Spirits Within.

Yeah, that one. And when it came out, it went to a. It was an old time movie theater palace kind of thing in Richmond, Virginia. And my background is theater.So I went with a bunch of actor friends and they were like, oh my God, we're out of a job.Because there were times you forgot that it was cgi, that it was computer generated and you could, there was bits and pieces where you can connect with it.And you know, you and I are of a certain age, but with what's coming out now, those little bits and pieces are turning into like 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes of a movie that you're just like really invested in. You forget that it's cgi, you know, the, the Planet of the Apes.I remember when that first came out, you know, where people were in really horrible masks, you know. Yeah. The later ones, they were just. The costuming was horrible for it. The first ones were good, but the last ones were bad.But then they came out with all the CGI and it just blew up. I was amazed with how great it was and how I got carried away. And I'm a theater guy. I know I'm going to be manipulated by it and I accept that.But I was just amazed at how quickly I was manipulated by it and how invested I became in it. I'm a big fan of it.Something that you had talked about is, you know, with AI and with the technology that we're having now, independent artists, you know, struggle with, especially in the past, they wouldn't be able to, you know, do these kind of productions, you know, maybe 20, 30 years ago, you wouldn't be able to go out on the ocean and, you know, you know, do your, or do, do your digital art. What are some ways that independent artists can lower their production costs but maintain that high quality work?

Well, as you know, when you talk about resources and production costs, that's what's held back a lot of the really creative, innovative stuff over the years.Not that those people didn't exist, but it was very rarefied air where they would connect to a patron who would fund their ideas but not mess up their project. Not like completely trash.You know, when you are accepting thousands or, you know, millions of dollars, in the case of films from investors, be they benevolent or, you know, borderline gangsters, then you are kind of forced to compromise your vision.And that's why when it came time for like the Shape of Water and Guillermo del Toro made it for 19 million, he didn't have to compromise very much at all. His previous two movies were Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak. And they both cost. They cost a lot.Pacific Rim made the most money, but it also costs the most he's ever spent on things. And so the way to keep your production costs down, I think that usually starts with, you know, what do I want to make?What can I make with what I have? And then you can be ambitious in your dreams and be like, okay, what do I want to make?And when we were just talking, you were mentioning the Apes films and other ones where you get invested into the story. I mean, usually it's because it's a good story and then it's executed well.I'm trying to think of a good example of a story that's really good but was executed poorly. And I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I know they exist. You know, same with, like, comics that have good writing, but the bad art.And you're like, can't do this. The working within your means.It doesn't just mean what locations you have access to or what people can act in front of your things or what models you can shoot. You can be creative with that in the sense of, well, I don't have an alien planet, or I don't, you know, I want to have a dreamlike sequence.But I'm thinking of having, like, people fly around in space and stuff. So I need maybe a harness and a rig for my actors. Tweak it a little bit. I use procreate dreams to animate on my iPad.And what if I did a little animated sequence for that dream sequence and I just did it myself? You know, that cost nothing versus getting a warehouse and a rig and having, like, insurance and all that.I couldn't even imagine what that little bit would cost. Or you take a photograph of somebody, cut it out with scissors, you know, doesn't have to be all digital.And then you just kind of like move it around and like a time lapse or stop motion effect or any of the other, like, super creative ways that people in the past have done things.A lot of times I go back to the 1930s and 1920s and George Millay from the early 1900s, you know, because they did stuff that is so achievable by human standards and in your own apartment today. But a lot of People kind of forget about those old time effects for sure. I think.I think a lot of the ideas that an independent creator or independent production studio could do to save costs is not imagine everything is like fantasy and science fiction, but maybe, you know, start with the real world and then build their fantasy and science fiction elements on top of it.Because if you look at filmmaking or animation or whatever in general, well, animation and comics are a little different because all drawings cost the same.

Right, right.

It doesn't matter if you're drawing something epic or something small scale. It's just, you know, lines and elements moving on a screen.But if they're trying to do something in reality and all of a sudden it involves period costumes or special effects, it balloons. So I just saw this really good film and it's called Snack Shack. And I'm. I don't remember the filmmaker's name, but he came from Nebraska, same as me.And it was a story in 1990.One of these two goofy teenagers who have all these schemes to make money and they think that they're going to make a lot of money out of the Snack Shack by a pool in summertime. No special effects at all. You know, great writing, hilarious premise, very relatable. And I didn't look up what the budget of the film was.But, you know, the lower the investment to begin with, the less pressure it is for it to be more and more of a. The less likely it's to be like a total failure disaster that's going to make you lose your house or something.So, I mean, to summarize, I think, you know, what you have access to. What are alternate ways to express ideas that might be more complicated? And start with reality before you build in the things that cost the most.

For sure, for sure. You brought up that, you know, you're from Nebraska, you've lived in. Well, you're near Los Angeles now. We had a fun chat about Phoenix.Love that town. It's trying to kill you, but I love it.What are, you know, like, the advantages and drawbacks of locations like that of those three areas for an artist, I have a theater background. Everybody in, you know, that I was learning from and growing up with saying.

Go to New York, go to New York.

Me being from Chicago, I'm like, no, because they have horrible pizza in New York. And you can do everything in Chicago that you can do in New York for half the price. How does location affect what you're trying to do?

Well, Omaha being the Midwest, there's not a lot of, like, outside cultural influence.And people are really in the mentality of you go to your job, you get married, and then you, like, when you get off work, you go to dinner with your family. There's more restaurants per capita, apparently, in Omaha than anywhere. Or there was at one point in time when I lived there. And then you.You watch TV and then you rinse and repeat. And there have been creative people that have come out of there, but much like Phoenix is kind of few and far between.If I was to name names, 311 is a band that. They went to Millard north, and I went to Millard South High School. But Matthew Sweet, Johnny Carson, maybe.Like, there's not very many names, you know, and that. That was a long gap of time that I just mentioned there.Oh, and then there was Saddle Creek records in the 90s, in the early 2000s, which had a band called Bright Eyes and one called the Faint. It's, you know, weird art and even, like, trying to have a career in it. It's not supported.Arizona is a little different because there's a lot of cultural tourism there. But the art that is supported there on the whole would still be Native American and Southwestern kind of rustic stuff.A lot of things that are made out of junk, like literal junk and trash. And the issues with both of those locations is that there's a part of the year where everything is just crummy.You know, Omaha is, like, cold and nasty in this. Not as cold as Chicago, not that bone chill, but from the lake. But it's cold and sludgy and gray.I remember it was gray for six weeks once when I lived there. And then in the summertime, it's humid because we're on the river. And I had allergies. So, you know, you're. You just kept getting knocked down.Arizona is the same with the heat. And a lot of the art museums will close. Everything closes in August.You know, the beginning of the heat is usually like April and May, but by August, to use an analogy, chickens. If you ever see a chicken in an Arizona heat, it's got its mouth, its beak is open, and it's just panting. It's like that.

Yep.

And I.I drove from there with a friend from Los Angeles to see my kids, and I was like, watch when we go in the stores, the people are just going to ring you up, and they're not going to say nothing. You know, there's no chattiness or whatever. And it was exactly that they got. It'd be like, 4:50. Thank you.Have a nice, like, because they're just wiped out. And everything that you might accomplish in those, like, productive, nice weather months, you. Your inertia or your momentum will get cut in half.And your motivation. And now that I don't live there, it's almost three years. And la, my kids do message me and say, like, I just have no motivation for anything.You are being damaged physically. Los Angeles.Another reason why we have our industries, our creative industries, is because, specifically the movie one is because the weather is pretty temperate, the light is different coming from the ocean, and you can reliably have a production run for three months. And, you know, that'll be rainy days and stuff like that, but generally it'll stay in a comfortable zone that you can create in.And then just in general, like, if you're a creative person, it makes sense to be an actor, a musician. People understand you and they support you and you're supporting other creative people and you have creative friends and things like that.When I lived in those other places, I had a few creative friends, actually.I think a lot of my model shoots that I did in Arizona and Columbus, Ohio, where I travel in Nashville and stuff like that, I would find the few weirdos in those cities and we would be able to create really cool stuff, but they didn't have a purpose to it. You know, they. People want to be creative, but they want to do it in small doses.And if they don't have a purpose, it'll just be a thing that fades with their, you know, their 20s or whatever here.You know, being on podcasts, going to shows, making new music, being on social media and talking about my stuff and supporting other creative friends, like, it has a purpose to it. And it's an understood. I don't have people around me going, why are you doing that? When you know, oh, we got to go to dinner with family tonight.I know you had. I know you were deep in this book project, but, like, you know, you can do that anytime. The momentum keeps up, it goes somewhere and beyond that.I've never lived by water in my life, okay. And it feel maybe in 20 years time, bad things will happen and I'll be like, I'm done. You know, a lot of people are like that in Los Angeles, too.They have bad experiences.

Sure.

But I chose the area I live, which is. It's adjacent to Long beach and Palos Verdes.

Okay.

Which are very much less populated. In San Pedro, we had a really famous author. Who's the most famous drunk author you.

Can think of, Charles Bukowski.

That's Him.

Yep. So.

So this is where he lived and.

Yeah.

And although. And we have really well known punk rock club here where the Minutemen were a famous punk rock band that came out of San Pedro.And we have a lot of like classic car culture and it's just nice and isolated. Nobody where I live is Botoxed or anything.And I hadn't considered myself a writer, but I'm seeing how like this sort of seaside isolation, San Pedro and Palos Verdes and Long beach, has benefits writing. And the book I made last year was for a publisher, it was like a gift. Beginner's Guide to Procreate Dreams.It was a sort of how to manual for an iPad animation app. But I find like, just I live by the ocean. It's got a pulse to it. The air is different and it makes you feel a little more lively.And when I go back to Arizona, I'm just shriveled like a mummy now. I'm not acclimated to it at all.

Yeah.

Do you find that different places you've lived have benefited you in different ways creatively?

Absolutely. So being from Chicago, it's a different kind of mindset. It's, you know, everyone's doing their stuff. Everyone is supporting everybody.You can be, you know, you can be a weirdo or a freak or whatever you want to be, but, you know, everyone's scratching for whatever attention they can get and whatever audience they can grab, and everything is pretty well accepted now. When I lived in Abilene, Texas, when I was in the Air Force, I did that for three years. That was, you're in the middle of nowhere.You have 10 people that are, you know, as nutty as you are, and that's it. And there is no community support whatsoever.We're having the cops called on us because we're having a drag show or we're, you know, we're reading poetry out in the street. After a poetry reading, you know, we're actually going out there and reading poetry and cops get called on us.So Texas was kind of strange, but the people there were really nice. They just didn't support the arts. And now that I live here in Virginia, it's big enough. We have one of everything, maybe two of everything.And there are pockets of culture here. It's a lot of history, a lot of Revolutionary War and Civil War history is the big thing. But there's pockets there.I try to, you know, be the old man at most of the pockets and, you know, encourage them and stir them up a bit and get them going. It's tough, though, because we're kind of a bedroom community because most people commute to D.C. from here.So it's finding that audience that isn't commuting up to D.C. that is, you know, staying in town and. And connecting with that audience, that's.That can be difficult because after an hour and a half commute, you tired, you want to go, you know, go home, have dinner, go to bed with, you know, and put the kids to bed. And you don't have much of a social life after that. So that's the struggles that we have here right now. So hopefully it gets better.But, you know, I retire from my day job in about seven years, so maybe I'm moving to California.

I don't know, man.

Well, the two other things I forgot to mention, one is that because we attract all these like creative black sheep, the talent level is just higher. When you work with a makeup artist or something here, they know what they're doing.They've like, yeah, they've been on productions and they do the Universal Horror Night and you know, Shacktoberfest, which is Shaquille O'Neal's Halloween Festival by the Queen Mary, which is like a boat bigger than Titanic in Long Beach. But. And the other thing is that the culture supports.Here are any night of the week, if you were wanting to get out, you could go see a band that you like and you've heard of, or you could go to a museum that has one of your favorite artists. And so like the bro Downtown LA is free and has like a lot of modern postmodern. I see the Basquet paintings that I like. I just stand there.And then I came to go, you know, didn't have to pay admission. Just went and hang out in that room and catch some vibes a little bit and then move on. They have a lot of Keith Haring, who I really like.And then, you know, band wise, I think when I moved here, I had a vehicle I that got trashed. And I since learned to do all public transport. But I was seeing like Metric Death Cap for Cutie Muse, which I weren't sure of.

Nice.

All these bands in a row. And then I signed up for something called Du La, which is like $5 a month. And they give you tickets to events that aren't selling out.And so I would go see like M83 and Uncle James Lavelle's like trip hop, like for five bucks. And that was pretty cool. So, yeah, anything that doesn't sell out, they have extra tickets and they just Try and, you know, get the venue full.Arizona was far and few between when I actually went and saw shows. And then Omaha, we would get lucky a couple times. Like Nine Inch Nails came twice in 94, 95, because they wanted to film a concert the second time.But yeah, it's the magnet for people. And bigger shows, more well known stuff.Yeah, even like the little scrappy artists here are really good because of what they're exposed to and what they have access to.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you can only listen to Bright Eyes so many times before, it's just like, okay, I'm done. You know, it's like in Chicago we have Violent Femmes. Well, they came from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Love the Violent Femmes.I can, you know, put them on repeat for maybe a day or two. And then I'm like, okay, I gotta hear something else. I gotta, you know, I gotta go listen to some.I'll throw on some jazz or I'll throw on some punk rock, but I'm just like, yeah, I'm done.

Yeah. And you know what's funny is I never listened to bright eyes or 311 or any of the other one. Matthew Sweet, never once.And I might have heard it on a radio or something. And I had a friend who played a trumpet on a Broadway Bright Eyes album, but our trombone don't want to mess that up.But my music tastes were never like that. And then the only Arizona band that I liked but they didn't play while I lived there is Jimmy Eat World is the Middle.And the other Arizona bands would be like the Funk Junkies and the people who made the. The Refreshments, who made the King of the Hill theme. Oh, yeah, and the Gin Blossoms. And that's all I can think of.Occasionally there's like, you know, Alice Cooper and Stevie Nicks and stuff like that lived there, but I didn't listen to that either.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to an Alice Cooper album. I couldn't tell you. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. Not this decade, that's for sure.So one kind of get a little bit more personal on your end here, you know, working in, if I heard you right, working in education, teaching. Does that fuel any of your creative work?

Yeah, I got My degree in 2006 from ASU in Fine Arts photography. And then I went back about a month or two later and I said, what do you do with this? To my professor.And of course she's a professor, and she's like, well, you get into educate. You can teach people how to use this stuff. And it's like, well, that's not why I became an artist.However, I am kind of an evangelist for all these mediums and the.Not every single creative tool there is out there, but the ones that I really connect with that I think are like, suitable for my kind of esoteric interests. And so I got into teaching, but Arizona didn't have that many high school art teacher jobs available.And I ended up doing more on like the art center side Mesa Arts center. And then mid 2010s, there were things like Skillshare and Udemy that were getting big and popular.And up to Pandemic times, I was filming a lot of tutorials on my own. And then when the pandemic hit, that's when people like had nothing to do and they really got on those.I actually encourage anybody who's creative and can speak in front of a camera, do a YouTube channel, and then have bigger art tutorials on these other sites because there are videos that will make recurring income for you as long as your information is, like, unique and you teach well. The. The way that education helps one is for people who want to learn things.You know, it brings their eyes to the work that I actually do, but also it's an incentive for me to learn new things all the time. Like Character Animator is motion capture software that Adobe has where you make a.You basically design a puppet in Illustrator or Photoshop and then you move around and it animates and you can do live animation, you can live stream your characters, you can make animated shows. They don't have to be drawings, they can be photographs.And so I've done things that have that kind of Terry Gilliam look to it, but knowing that if I learned that program or if I learned Procreate Dreams when it came out two Thanksgivings ago, if I just sit down and learn it and screen record everything I'm doing and turn those into tutorials, then one, I'm an early adopter.

Yeah.

And those lessons or those videos kind of like lead to other things. The Procreate Dreams videos I made on skillshare led to writing a book for a publisher.And it's still, as far as I know, is the only Procreate Dreams how to Book that's out there. But the other thing is it's in the teaching process. If you're teaching to students, they ask questions.You're like, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll find the answer.You learn A lot through the process of teaching and of all the ways that we make money as artists, you know, you can design your own wares and then sell them, you know, at a, on a table, at an arts event or on gallery walls or on a shop like an Etsy or ebay or all that you can do freelance, where you go around and find who needs your skills and then you're applying for those jobs, be you a comic artist or a makeup artist or a photographer, you know, hire me to do your photography. Well, the reality of that is you, if you're kind of more pursuing your own vision, then you're not going to like the jobs that you get paid for.The other ways to make money as artists, you can flip gear, you, you can get kind of good at identifying, especially like the camera world, lenses and stuff like that, and go around to estate sales, be more of like a, you know, like those Storage wars people are ebay flippers or whatever. Or you can teach like those are primary ways to make money.There's other ways, of course, you could generate assets like a stock creator, so you create stock photos, videos, textures, illustrations. But I find that teaching is rewarding and social. And I have a vision, so I like generating my own stuff.And I usually do it on a scale I don't need to, you know, do any sort of crowdfunding or backers or anything like that.

Understood. I agree with you. The whole education thing, I. My degrees in theater pedagogy, so theater education with a specialization in directing.And when I was teaching, taught scene shop and I taught speech class, public speaking class, hence why I have a podcast, of course.But that interaction with the students and their unique vision, what they bring to the table, and asking those questions, I would see my other grad students and my other adjunct faculty kind of cringe and go, I can't tell them. I don't know. I'd be the first one to tell them. I don't know the answer. Let's find out together.And I mean, yeah, I sat through some wonderful lectures, had some wonderful professors, but when I was able to go with my students and learn with them and then take it to my professors and go, this is what we learned that was well worth the price of college. I really enjoyed those interactions with you. So I can definitely, definitely support what you're saying there for that.So my, my, my last question for you here is, what's next for you? What's coming up? What should we be looking out for in terms of projects that you're doing? Maybe a new book. What should we be looking out for?

So circling back to AI and I was recommended the one that I like the most, called Claude, by very famous entrepreneur named Seth Godin.

Yeah, he has a lot of.

Yeah, he's a genius. He's really empathetic and artistic and creative minded for being somebody who's all about business. And I've kind of been.I'm always like recycling old ideas I have of things I've never ever finished. And it got me thinking at least to get a structure. The area I'm weakest in as an artist is like the structure.You know, I tried to make screenplays and things where I just like what goes where and what, you know, ramps up tension and what. So AI is especially helpful for getting a structure of a thing together.I took 10 hours of my YouTube channel from last 6 years and downloaded all the videos that I've had, at least the successful ones, and put them in Premiere, got transcripts of everything and then have been feeding Claude the transcripts to pick out stuff that there's like a certain amount of material in my own words, but that could be structured into books. So the one that I have the most content for is called the INFP Creative.And I'll probably put that independently because I'm curious on what difference it makes on the Amazon metrics between the one that was released by a publisher and what I've learned from them as far as like having to market it. And I'm going to see if I can do it myself. Sure. You know, my YouTube channel is multimedia arts and education. But part of it involves INFP Creative.INFP is one of the Myers Briggs personality types that I happen to have and a lot of the well known fantasy writers and fantasy filmmakers and you know, empathetic photographers who work with like unusual people like Diane Arbus or Man Ray, people who investigate their dreams more, you know.

Sure.

Filmmakers and Andy Warhol and David lynch and Guillermo del Toro and Neil Gaiman, I know he's canceled currently, but Alan Moore, those kind of Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson and all that.So I've actually got 80 pages of that book, done it as a first draft and then that was structured by AI based on the 10 hours of material I have already done in my life and fed through it. I have similar ideas for film.One involves the continuum of creativity because everything that people complain about AI, like absorbing what I just said, you know, I fed it my own material.

Yeah.

The idea that it like vacuums up everything in the Universe and then puts out its. Not its own iteration of. That's not unique to AI. That's what we've been doing as a species.And folk melodies like the song Green Sleeves, you know, which is an old, very centuries old English melody. And it's carried through to modern times.People like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, you know, the folk tradition is regurgitating the past in new forms. And then, like I said, I grew up in the era of when hip hop was a lot of sampling and techno. I love collage as an art style.I think it's very like honest and direct. And it also. So it was a way to showcase what your influences are, for sure.You know, and a lot of the things that we celebrate as innovative, original, be it the original Star wars, which we know is based off of like a dozen other sources. Joseph Campbell and Kurosawa, the Hidden Fortress and. And Dune.It's so funny to like, I've never read the Dune books, but to sit in the theater and then there's an emperor in the desert planet and there's like all this. The Force and all this stuff. Stuff.It's just like, that's what Star wars, you know, or to read Jack Kirby's New Gods books where the villain's name is Darkseid and instead of the sword the Force, it's the source. But that all came out prior to Star Wars. Even Guillermo del Toro I keep talking about because I love him. Like, he's made a movie about Pinocchio.He's made the Shape of Water, is the Creature from a Black Lagoon. He's got Frankenstein coming out. He's done movies on vampires and Hellboy and Blade, which were, you know, common.Marvel care or I'm sorry, Hellboy is not Marvel, but they're. They were established pop culture characters.

Yeah.

And then things like Pacific Rim is basically Ultraman and other kinds of Japanese old Sentai type shows fed through his brain. Like the levels of originality in that are. Or anything else we could mention, they're not as. They're not as original as you think.

Right.

But they're original because they're translated through a person.So I want to make a film that weaves together all these kind of narratives where we aren't just looking at something that's a gestalt or a juxtaposition or whatever, like a synthesis as a bad thing. Because it's how we've always operated.And I even want to explore bootleg toys and some of the sillier ways that we take an original idea or an IP or a sound or something, and then like mutate it in a. Its stupid way. Stupid but fun. And that's the kind of project I wanted.I was like, the way you can make that as an artist would be you have interview footage, as all documentaries do, but you do animation and you use archival footage and you use AI and the soundtrack is all collage. And like everything would be collaged in every direction. The closest thing I could point to somebody is like the vision for this is.It's a short film. I think it's like 14 minutes long. It's called the Was. And the music is by Avalanches. And I have to look up the.The animator or the video editor because they did such a good job. Avalanches is. I think they're Australian. They're a production duo.And all of their music is completely sampled in a similar way to like Fat Boy Slim or Chemical Brothers or something like that.

For sure.

Okay. Soda Jerk is the name of the other artists involved in.It's on YouTube and it has all these elements from TV shows, animation stuff, mostly from the 70s and 80s, and they're all interacting. And another example would be this Steve Martin movie from the early 80s called Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Where. Who's Mel Brooks's comedy partner?

Oh, he's had.

He produced. Yeah, he. This guy did the three movies that Steve Martin is the funniest in. The Mammoth, Two Brains, Dead Man, Don't Wear Plaid and the Jerk.And at the time, I think the film company was like, we need to renew copyright on all these old films. So Carl Reiner, that's what it is.

That's.

He go. They go to Carl Reiner like, what can you do? And he said, well, I'll make a film where Steve Martin is interacting with them, you know, and forth.I did a similar project with character animator and it was all public domain comics material and public domain radio show stuff. I took one actor male that I really liked, and one actor female that I really liked.And I went through all their hundreds of public domain 1940s and 50s radio shows and pulled out all their quotes and then collaged it together. Same with the imagery. I picked a blond guy from 1950s Comics and brunette woman.And because the comics in the 50s were like war, romance, they weren't. Didn't have superheroes, sci fi and crime. I made as. It's not like the best film in the world, but it went. It was like a journey through those genres.Everything was collage and so that's how I envisioned this continuum of creativity. Film.

Nice.

And the way I pictured it actually had, you know, AI, of course, helps structure budgets and timing and locations and what would be good starter shots. All of us human beings should use our imagination after we get the list to like, enhance it and change it.And you're like, okay, that's a good idea to start with, but I can do better.

Right.

That's something that'll probably take a few years to get together, but I think it's a worthy endeavor. And I think there isn't anything long form that would cross over those boundaries.Usually when you see sort of like a music or creative documentary, it focuses on a particular era or a particular, like a drum machine or something and how it's been used, some piece of technology, which are good entry points for. For viewers. But I think that conceptually the idea of you're. You are a sponge, right? And you sucked up things as a kid.You've had things happen to you, you've lived in different places, you saw movies that sometimes they would have been the best movie ever, but you were in a bad mood, so it didn't affect you. But you saw some trash movie and you were feeling really low and it made you like all of that translates through to what you make.And it doesn't matter if it's an acoustic guitar, a sampler, a turntable, a AI generative tool, a digital drawing app or digital photography or film or whatever, but, like, it's the same concept. And so that is a very long winded way to say that's a film that, like, I'm really passionate about and I'm hoping to get out there.I think the first step, though, is to get some interview footage. And also I've been doing a lot of little collage animations for my Suno music project called Magdalena.And also I've been animating Marvel stuff just to get more eyeballs on the procreate dreams thing. So it's all animation, but it's like my. The esthetic that I'm describing is all in all present in those.And so I'm going to have material, then I can stitch together like 10 minutes and say, this is what it's going to look like. And that includes I use my phone when I walk around because I'm on foot.And I photograph all the letters on the local Los Angeles signs that have some sort of like industrial wear to them, or it's a donut shop. So the O is a donut type. You know.

Right.

And anywhere I can get a collection of letters, I have this really long procreate template that has all my A's, all my B's. Kind of like, you know, an old printing press would have their various fonts and stuff.Well, I have that all in Procreate, and they're all kind of unique. I had to do it because I was using a ransom note font, and it looked like a font, and I hated it.

Yep.

I'm seeing letters everywhere. You know, maybe they're on a sign way up there. Maybe they're like the spray paint on the ground. Or maybe it's somebody's tag or something.Or a bus stop advertisement for a movie called the Wolfman or whatever, had cool W. But that's all present in the recent animations I've been doing. So.And I have found that just that little extra level of texture, you know, it's from my own experience. It isn't all AI generated, as someone might think, you know? And again, like, the overall collage aesthetic comes through, and I make all the. I go.I work in micro projects to make the big project, so.

That makes sense. No, that makes.Because I've dabbled a little bit in collage, mainly because of, you know, the show here, because I was trying to challenge myself to different projects that I haven't done before, and I actually cut up a. A comic book magazine that. It was like a trade kind of thing that my. My guy who was comic book store owner, he was handing these out for free.So I was like, oh, let me try this.And I was cutting stuff out and putting it together, and then I noticed, wait, I'm doing this a certain way, and there's a message in there that I'm subconsciously putting into it that I can see and other people could see most of it. And, yeah, collage is. It's still magical for me. It's still a magical art form for me, and that's why I enjoy it.And, you know, with you talking a lot of collage stuff, I'm like, all right, when are you putting this stuff out? We got to see it. So.

Yeah. Well, I think the. The collage patchwork mindset is just unique enough that too many people think linear. Linearly.And I mean, movies aren't even made, you know, Right. In order of scenes. But when you think that way, it's complex, but it's very simple. It's almost like brutal the way you're talking about.You just got scissors.

Right.

And.

Yep.

Decision tape. And you can make something Cool.That's got some appeal because we learned in art school that engagement of a viewer requires some sort of, like, mystery or some kind of, like, connection where you have to, like, imagine, you know, what this ethereal woman who's like, covering, you know, like, there's interest there, but if you just had a person standing there and there's nothing to guess at or like, to finish in your head, right then the brain is not as engaged. And the same with collage. It's like you're kind of figuring out how the puzzle pieces fit a little bit and.But more to the point, I think it is a wonderful way to get a thing done.

Exactly.

And on a, you know, a grander scale. Films that are shot against green screen, not that I think those are the greatest films. It doesn't matter. If it has good story, then it's.It can be that way. But.But they're collaging in the background or I watched on one of those Hollywood roundtables, filmmaker of Blade Runner, spacing his name off the top of my head Gladiator and. Oh, he did Gladiator 2 recently.

Yep.

And so he was Ridley Scott.He was describing how the character, the actors were filmed in one location, maybe Sardinia or something like that, and the actual, like, location around them was filmed in Morocco or some other place. And then other, the third elements that were Compton and it was all seamless and like, that's just a grander form of collage.So when you think like that way, though, it's not impossible for a person to film an interview, change the setting, or, you know, in your case, you're doing podcasts, maybe someday you choose to do a thematic one. And so you just cut up parts of all these interviews that relate to that theme.I see that on a Film Courage YouTube channel where it's like, oh, yeah, this is the two hour episode about funding your thing. And it has all this advice from different filmmakers and sometimes contradictory because their experiences were all different.But, you know, if you wanted to, like, have a master's class in funding your film, watching two hours of people who've actually done it, and variety perspectives is cool way to engage it.

Awesome.

Awesome. Well, I think we can all use a little collage in our lives, in our artistic practice, that's for sure.And you know, and recognize that's kind of what we're doing. So, David, it has been fantastic talking with you here today. A lot of the references that you made, I'm just sitting there going, I know that guy.You know, when you said Seth Godin, I just about ah, you know, I.

About lost good person to listen to. You know, he's a helpful mentality. Like he's not there to take, he's there to give.And he thinks being generous with your knowledge and your time and your resources is a way to succeed in business, which is unfortunately not the way a lot of people perceive it. They view more dog eat dog but you know. Yeah, makes you like realize that you don't have to be a jerk to pursue your dream or whatever it is.You really build a business.

You really don't. Well David, thank you so much for joining us here today.Thank you for all the generosity that you've given us here today and definitely appreciate what you've just shared with us.

That was great talking to you.

All right, well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Creator Podcast with David Miller. Just a couple of things I wanted to toss in there. A couple of takeaways that I got.

Was that AI tools aren't just for.

You know, tech savvy artists. They can enhance your creativity and streamline your process.And it's really important to articulate your vision clearly when using AI because, you know, if you use vague prompts, it's going to be disappointing and then you're not going to use it. And you know, if we embrace AI, it can reduce your production costs and the stress that you have for creating things.And maybe because you're reducing the costs, you can create bigger and better things. You never know. Now you're probably asking yourself, hey, Tim, how did you get David on your show?Well, I use a service called Podmatch and what that does is it allows podcast guests and hosts to connect with each other. Now I do receive a small commission for that and I do have my links in the show notes.But I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to bring anybody on this show that I have not personally talked to and know a little bit about. And if I don't think it's worth value to you, I'm not going to bring them on the show. Obviously, I think this brings a lot of value to you.So that's why I brought David on for today's episode. Another service that I use, and this is mainly for my podcasters that are out there, is called Podcast Beacon.And what that does is it gives you a wearable that's connected right with your website.So you can, instead of, you know, handing out just business cards that get thrown away, you can hand, you can, you know, stick out your wrist and have somebody put their phone over your wearable and it'll take them right to your website. Or there's key fobs, and if you have to have a business card, they have that there, too.And you can have whomever you're handing it out to go right to your website and put it right in their phone again. Affiliate links are going to be in the show notes, and I do get a small commission for that.And the last thing I want to talk about is that this is a production of TKB Podcast Studio. That's my new podcast production company. That's where I help my clients lead through the noise with quiet professionalism.To find out more, go to tkbpodcaststudio.com and let me help you create the next best podcast. Now, if you'd like to be on the show, please feel free to reach out to me. Or if you have ideas for the show, definitely reach out to me.Timothyreateartpodcast.com Love to hear what you're doing. Love to see here if you're using AI in your artistic approach. So definitely email me, let me know what's going on there in your neck of the woods.All right, I need to get on with my day. I'm going to let you get on with your day, but as I always say, go out there, tame that inner critic. Create more than you consume.Make a new friend with AI and go out there and make some art for somebody you love. Yourself. I'll talk to you next time.