Where does the human illustration fit in the era where AI can generate custom illustrations for you?

If you’re an author, you probably don’t think too much about it.

But what if you’re an illustrator and one of your jobs is to do book cover illustrations for authors?

Maybe you can laugh it off at first when you hear all sorts of mishaps about the AI arts.

But now?

It can do way better than the experienced human illustrators can.

Does it mean your role is no longer relevant now that AI can come up with a much better illustration than you?

What if I say, we, the authors, still need you to do the book cover illustrations for us?

While I no longer hire an illustrator to do a book cover for me, I still believe that illustrators aren’t going anywhere, at least for now.

The question that starts it all

As someone who hires an illustrator to do a book cover for me, I can’t hire just about anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that these illustrators’ art styles are terrible or anything.

It’s just that the kinds of books that I write are anime-style light novels.

So, it’s obvious the book cover illustrations have to be in anime style as well.

Back then, finding an illustrator who accepts commission work that aligns with my publishing schedule was hard to come by.

And it’s even harder to find an illustrator whose work would wow me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an art critic per se since I can only draw stick figures for the life of me.

But when it comes to a book cover illustration, you need a beautiful illustration to draw people in.

Any subpar illustration will kill your book’s very chance of success for sure.

The good news is that generative AI, such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, has been improving tremendously over the last few years.

With such a huge leap technologically, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a place for the human illustrator in this age of generative AI anymore.

The epiphany moment about all the illustration works that I’ve commissioned thus far

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here before that I use PixAI to generate all of my book cover illustrations.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a Stable-Diffusion-based anime-style AI art generation website.

If you’re thinking about generating anime-style AI art, then it’s worth checking PixAI.

When I tried using PixAI for the first time, it was impressive for sure, but not without any mishaps.

Missing fingers, extra arms and legs, awkward pose, strange facial expressions, you name it.

But they somehow upped their game in a short time, with them releasing the XL model that solves issues that I had in the past.

Just to be clear, those flaws can still slip through the cracks, even with their optimized model, of course.

But at the very least, I don’t have to waste my credits just to fix those flaws with inpainting.

And the images generated are stunning, too, while being on point with the genre.

This is what matters the most when it comes to book cover – it needs to look like it belongs to that genre, not sticking out like a sore thumb.

If you’ve seen what the generative AI can do, you probably know where I’m going with this one.

As much as it pains me to admit it, the image that I generated using PixAI looks way better than the illustration works that I commissioned in the past.

And I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

Even Gemini also feels the same, saying my book covers with a white background scream a sci-fi romance novel more so than a thriller light novel.

Sure, you can say that Gemini was being harsh here.

But Gemini was right.

The book cover illustrations that I commissioned in the past weren’t bad.

But it failed to convey the actual tone of the book.

Does it spell doom for a human illustration?

Judging from what I say, you probably think that human illustration is now doomed forever, yada, yada.

But in reality, human illustrators still have a role to play.

It’s just that it may not be what you expect, especially if you’ve been doing this for a long time.

While I can’t say this is what most people want the illustrators to do for them, this is what I will ask my illustrator to do if I ever hire one again.

Create illustrations in your own style

Before this, you probably were the one who came up with the original concept for your clients.

While some of them will still want you to do that, there’s a big chance they want you to come up with illustrations based on what the AI generated for them instead.

What’s with such a strange request, you ask?

As you can see here, it’s not that hard for the AI to generate one character design at a time.

But what if you want the AI to generate five different characters in one image?

This is where the AI is facing a stumbling block.

Instead of generating five different characters, it ends up blending the characters with one another, causing it to become unrecognizable.

Rather than wasting credits, knowing well enough that the result will be the same, it’s much faster to let the human illustrator do the work instead.

What’s more, there’s no limit to how many characters a human illustrator can draw in a single image.

If I want to spare myself from misery, that’s what I will do.

Illustration for the sake of the illustration

Seeing how all the illustrations that I commissioned in the past failed to reflect my book’s genre, maybe the reason has little to do with their lack of talent.

However, it has more to do with their lack of expertise in terms of genre expectations.

You can’t expect the illustrator to do a book cover illustration for a thriller light novel when he only has experience in designing magical girl characters, right?

Put them in a situation where they can illustrate without any restriction, and their talent is bound to flourish.

Unless you manage to find an illustrator who specializes in your genre, most illustrators tend to be generalists.

They can create a beautiful illustration that doesn’t tie to anything specific.

But to create something where the success of the book is riding on it?

That’s actually a tall order for them.

I should’ve known this better, but it took me this long to realize.

Human illustrators aren’t going anywhere

I’m sure you’ve heard this countless times about how AI will take over our jobs.

And those who are in the creative field don’t get spared either.

Whether they’re right or wrong about that is something that I’m sure of.

But one thing I know for sure is that human illustrators aren’t going anywhere.

And so do the human writers.

There will be tons of AI illustrations and books written by AI in the market for sure.

But it still won’t deter me from writing and publishing my own work.

If you’re an illustrator, just remember people will still need you, but not in a way you would expect.