The use of A.I. in Waifu sets
As technology advances, the world changes. I'm sure this is not news to you as the reader. One of the biggest technological advancements recently that's changing the world is artificial intelligence. Its having a profound effect on the Waifu card industry.
A.I. generated artwork has rapidly overtaken the entire Waifu subculture. Nearly every imported card set is 100% AI generated, with very little post generation editing or touchups. We're getting cards that are serialized even (i.e. numbered XX/XX) where characters have not just extra fingers but extra HANDS... Its lazy and gives AI generated artwork a bad reputation.
From the RELUCTANT promo binder booklet:
The problem is that traditional artwork takes a dedicated team of artists several months to finish. Small companies like mine cannot afford to hire large teams and dedicate so many resources into the creation of sets. While Chinese Waifu card production teams do tend to already be large enough to handle manually creating artwork, it's less cost effective so they won't.
Is there a compromise to be found? I think so. Not every piece of artwork needs to be fully hand drawn and colorized for it to be beautiful. Generating an image and then manually drawing on top of it is the middle ground I use for Caffeine Critical sets. While I could draw these all by hand, color and edit them, it simply isn't feasible while doing the countless other tasks that need doing while running a successful business.
Here is an example of before and after. The top image was generated using AI. The second image was drawn over using a digital art program.
As you can see there's a stark contrast. Essentially her entire face has been manually redrawn by hand. I'll share another example.
Before:
After:
Doing things this way enables the use of AI without lazy/soulless "artwork" being churned out.
So in conclusion, things may not be changing for the better in terms of imported sets. Until AI improves, there will likely continue to be a steady stream of poorly designed cards and boards. We can still have fun collecting them, and many still look really good even with a purely AI generated approach. However if you want a little something more, where each card was given the love and attention to detail that it deserves, look no further than Full Glory Waifus, FlipCard: Hentai Dungeon, and many of the other original sets published by Caffeine Critical. Thanks for reading, have a great day!