The SHIP Renaissance is Coming

[Superman246o1]

I was inspired to write this after reading Ernie's post regarding the SHIP Golden Age being over. I agree wholeheartedly with many of the observations that members made on that thread. The volume and variety of videos that we see today are not what they once were. A considerable percentage of the talent that might otherwise be active in the SHIP genre right now are instead finding OnlyFans to be far more lucrative while still providing them with more control over their content. (Good for them, I say.) For all intents and purposes, we appear to be in the SHIP Dark Ages right now. But that does not mean all hope for the genre is lost.

Quite the opposite: I genuinely believe that the best days of the SHIP genre, and pretty much every other genre imaginable, may be found in the days to come.

As good as the SHIP Golden Age may have been, it was not perfect. Most producers, even those that I frequently supported, were working on relatively modest budgets. This is not a knock against the many wonderful producers that were and continue to be active in the industry; you guys and gals do amazing work with the resources available to you, and many of us appreciate that. But there were nevertheless countless videos that were obviously filmed in someone's living room, or in a hotel room, or in a garage, or in a garage with tarps hung up to try to obscure the fact that it was a garage. A considerable number of SHIP films featured store-bought costumes that didn't fit perfectly and that didn't capture the iconic heroism found in the original outfits. Some scripts were clearly written by people who did not love the genre as much as they loved the idea of making a quick buck, and their storylines featured 90 seconds of actual plot before going straight into 58 minutes of non-genre-specific pornography.

Just as we need not look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, we do not need to look at the future with despairing eyes. The ever-increasing rate at which technology continues to improve will have a democratizing effect on SHIP content as the biggest barrier to entry -- the cost of producing content -- gets smaller and smaller. In the past, I wistfully dreamed of what type of content our community could get if SHIP producers had Hollywood budgets of $200,000,000/film or so. And even though Hollywood continues to blow away money on questionable projects, we will soon see technologically-enhanced homemade projects that will be able to approximate the television shows and films that inspired our interest in the SHIP genre in the first place. Just as we're now seeing AI art -- which is still in its infancy -- provide ever-improving creations that almost (and someday, will truly be able to) replicate hand-drawn art, the day is coming when a number of technical applications will be able to provide everyday people with the means to bring their stories to life without need of a studio or exorbitant budget. And if amateurs will be capable of doing so, just imagine what experienced producers will be able to share with the SHIP community, finally limited only by their creativity.

I'm not saying we don't have some time before AI-enhanced/generated projects can pass a Turing Test of sorts, but the day is approaching when we'll be able to purchase -- and make ourselves! -- the type of content we could only dream of in the past. So I encourage you not to lament the death of SHIP's Golden Age. In it's place, something even greater awaits.

[sugarcoater]

I share this optimism, though my understanding of AI is fairly limited. But from what I've seen here, it seems there will be some amazing opportunities for fans to make some truly stunning videos and images in the years to come. Maybe those who have the AI skills can start a thread here and post their creations, if they are okay sharing their work. I would be intrigued in seeing the changes and evolution of the AI super heroine projects over the upcoming months and years.

[Mr. X]

In main stream it maybe dead but yes, in the amateur sphere it will take off.

[sensualbarbarian]

I think that when it comes to SHIP, Hollywood should not even be a consideration. The kinds of peril we used to watch in the 70s and 80s in the mainstream in non-existent today and I do not see what the issue is. I mean SHIP is a fetish, not often suitable for the mainstream. However in Japan with anime this does not seem to be the case due to cultural differences, heroines in massive peril is normal for that audience in Asia. That said, the mainstream is irrelevant because they are not always consciously aware that what they are doing is SHIP. SHIP is a niche fetish and if we look at where these budget films were in the 90s and look at where they are now in all their diversity with bigger budgets and special effects, it's quite impressive. Definitely there have been less films since covid but I do not think that is a bad thing. What is needed is more creativity, not bigger budgets or special effects.

The AI hype is just hype. The apocalypse is not on the horizon and AI is just a primitive tool of humans that is no where near passing any turing test or acquiring sentience of any kind. A programmer leaving Google and writing a book about the evils of AI is just a good business move. At the moment chatGPT sucks for creating original fiction, and AI art is limited. AI will always be limited as it will always lack emotional content and emotional awareness, the essence of all creativity and art.

[Abductorenmadrid]

I wouldn't say specifically that a SHIP renaissance is coming but I'd certainly say that a general content creation eruption is about to happen and SHIP as well as all other topics and genres are going to get a lot of love from their respective fans.

If you were to consider the development of the the aeroplane, car, train or ship. If you consider the development of the home computer and the speed of the internet. Or the gadgets we carry around with us like phones and audio devices. And if you consider how things like 3D printing have gone from science fiction to fact, or that powerful little drones can be purchased and piloted by almost anyone. If you consider all that, then I think we would be unwise to think that the AI we have today is all that AI will ever be. AI is going to be an incredible disruptor and empower people on a budget to bring their imaginations to life.

[hagarb]

AI is already powerful for generative images. What we need is trained model for our specific need. Myself I like fighting and combat related images, so I need a trained model for that, and AFAIK todays this is very time consuming doing this, but completely doable.

I see that scene like brushes for digital painting, we get new models everyday, sooner or later we’ll have models for that.

[Mr. X]

One thing I've noticed is places like Pixiv are banning just AI art packs. I've also noticed a lot of voice products being sold on DLSite and I suspect people are using voice synth to generate products.

[sensualbarbarian]

what are the best generative AI art for SHIP? was wondering what creators are using. I have played with some and there are restrictions on what you can do

[LindaD]

AI can´t match human imagination and diferent artist styles. I dont think it ever will.

[sugarcoater]

AI can´t match human imagination and diferent artist styles. I dont think it ever will.

But the issue isn't AI replacing artists and imagination (as I see it). My thinking is that AI will be a supplement for people to use to bring life to their imagination. I see it as a tool used by people who lack artistic skills to make their visions into a tangible art form.

[PartsUnknown]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

[sugarcoater]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

But if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films, why does that mean the genre is doomed? If the AI images are that good that they can replace producers' videos, then the genre will just shift towards a different creative style.

[Mr. X]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

But if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films, why does that mean the genre is doomed? If the AI images are that good that they can replace producers' videos, then the genre will just shift towards a different creative style.

We also thought producers would be doomed cause of 3D which didn't happen.

[Dogfish]

The thing with the AI stuff is that you still need to learn it, and frankly it's going to be easier to get to a higher standard with the real thing, be that actors or artwork than it is to fake it with AI. But if your standards are not high, go nuts, it's pretty fun messing around with the prompts and whatnot.

Things like interactions between characters is incredibly hard for an AI, largely because it's mostly random anyway.

It's like, the AI never understands what it's drawing or how. It's why for years there was the whole problem with too many fingers, and it's still a thing. You can't tell an AI "Hey listen Robotman, humans only have five fingers on each hand, K?" because the AI doesn't have a clue what a hand is. This makes it more and more difficult to get a decent image if you want more than one thing on the screen or you want two things to interact.

But it's getting better all the time, so we'll have to see.

[AIVICE]

The thing with the AI stuff is that you still need to learn it, and frankly it's going to be easier to get to a higher standard with the real thing, be that actors or artwork than it is to fake it with AI. But if your standards are not high, go nuts, it's pretty fun messing around with the prompts and whatnot.

Things like interactions between characters is incredibly hard for an AI, largely because it's mostly random anyway.

It's like, the AI never understands what it's drawing or how. It's why for years there was the whole problem with too many fingers, and it's still a thing. You can't tell an AI "Hey listen Robotman, humans only have five fingers on each hand, K?" because the AI doesn't have a clue what a hand is. This makes it more and more difficult to get a decent image if you want more than one thing on the screen or you want two things to interact.

But it's getting better all the time, so we'll have to see.

I'm making AI images with superheroines defeated/in peril and I agree here. We do a lot of post production in different tools, including PS and it's hard to imagine right now that AI will ever be an independent tool that will generate a desirable result by just typing one sentence. And partially, this will not happen cuz the companies will limit or will be forced to limit the capabilities of AI engines for the public use. We'll see. But I enjoy the fact that lacking the talent for drawing I can make my fantasies come true and then use PS to even make my images better. I recently introduced myself so you can check some of my works, they would be hard to reproduce with real models/actors, just because with AI stuff you can go, well, quite beyond.

[Dogfish]

The thing with the AI stuff is that you still need to learn it, and frankly it's going to be easier to get to a higher standard with the real thing, be that actors or artwork than it is to fake it with AI. But if your standards are not high, go nuts, it's pretty fun messing around with the prompts and whatnot.

Things like interactions between characters is incredibly hard for an AI, largely because it's mostly random anyway.

It's like, the AI never understands what it's drawing or how. It's why for years there was the whole problem with too many fingers, and it's still a thing. You can't tell an AI "Hey listen Robotman, humans only have five fingers on each hand, K?" because the AI doesn't have a clue what a hand is. This makes it more and more difficult to get a decent image if you want more than one thing on the screen or you want two things to interact.

But it's getting better all the time, so we'll have to see.

I'm making AI images with superheroines defeated/in peril and I agree here. We do a lot of post production in different tools, including PS and it's hard to imagine right now that AI will ever be an independent tool that will generate a desirable result by just typing one sentence. And partially, this will not happen cuz the companies will limit or will be forced to limit the capabilities of AI engines for the public use. We'll see. But I enjoy the fact that lacking the talent for drawing I can make my fantasies come true and then use PS to even make my images better. I recently introduced myself so you can check some of my works, they would be hard to reproduce with real models/actors, just because with AI stuff you can go, well, quite beyond.

Yeah it's a wild paradox. Can't get a picture of a hand, but I can tell an AI to draw me a futuristic cityscape or an alien jungle or a haunted car in hundreds of different styles with an almost infinite number of variations, and it'll pop out a stream of different concepts in seconds.

I'm not sure about the limitations side of things either, I think the genie is out of the bottle on this stuff now. I have not been at it long at all but I've seen the language model stuff shoot forwards leaps and bounds, and the art side of things too, if SDXL takes off the way that SD1.5 did (but weirdly not SD2) then it'll push things forward again. Also the capacity to turn images into animation on the fly has been improved.

It's kind of why I've stopped myself from ever saying that something can't be done. Every month there's something new.

[PartsUnknown]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

But if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films, why does that mean the genre is doomed? If the AI images are that good that they can replace producers' videos, then the genre will just shift towards a different creative style.

I don’t think AI will produce anything as good as the real thing. But if people go with that rather than paying for professional quality work then yeah, that’s the end of it as an industry. As it stands, it’s not very different from piracy: what people casually call AI isn’t really intelligence. It just takes parts from other images and repurposes them, never actually creating something new.

[sugarcoater]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

But if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films, why does that mean the genre is doomed? If the AI images are that good that they can replace producers' videos, then the genre will just shift towards a different creative style.

I don’t think AI will produce anything as good as the real thing. But if people go with that rather than paying for professional quality work then yeah, that’s the end of it as an industry. As it stands, it’s not very different from piracy: what people casually call AI isn’t really intelligence. It just takes parts from other images and repurposes them, never actually creating something new.

I was thinking of the way AI was used to alter the face of the Bluestone model to look more like Lynda Carter. Producers might use AI to enhance their work (or perhaps make it less expensive to make higher quality products). But I'll admit upfront that my understanding of AI's capabilities in the future is highly limited.

[PartsUnknown]

I don’t see how AI is going to save anything. More likely it leads to the death of the genre if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films.

But if people would rather make AI images than pay producers and actors to make films, why does that mean the genre is doomed? If the AI images are that good that they can replace producers' videos, then the genre will just shift towards a different creative style.

I don’t think AI will produce anything as good as the real thing. But if people go with that rather than paying for professional quality work then yeah, that’s the end of it as an industry. As it stands, it’s not very different from piracy: what people casually call AI isn’t really intelligence. It just takes parts from other images and repurposes them, never actually creating something new.

I was thinking of the way AI was used to alter the face of the Bluestone model to look more like Lynda Carter. Producers might use AI to enhance their work (or perhaps make it less expensive to make higher quality products). But I'll admit upfront that my understanding of AI's capabilities in the future is highly limited.

That’s fair. It’s possible there are other uses I’m not aware of. I just get concerned when I hear about how AI is going to “revolutionize” this and that because often those statements are coming from corporations that just don’t want to pay creatives and are looking to cut them out.