1 million %

Careful what you wish for

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It's on the official Harry Potter site. A bit of a generic and lackluster article but it's there.

https://www.harrypotter.com/news/new-harry-potter-pinball-machines

Ok this is fair. I respect someone sticking to their values.

Aurich buried the lede; congrats on doing the Predator art! Is that his first gig for a manufacturer?

This artwork ai attack is no doubt fueled by folks within Stern, their loyalists etc. They have done it before.
JJP have been poised to take the throne finally after producing better games for the last few years. As they launch Potter it was clear the tide was turning. Thousands of kudos comments even from some Stern loyalists. Over a week went by and NOBODY noticed the art discrepancies.

Once pointed out, the man child’s of Pinside whom were not even fan enough, detailed enough to notice themselves are claiming the game is now off their buy list, a game that was never on their list to begin with. Their mission is to make this molehill into Everest.

Now everyone is an art collector, an AI pro.
When a product excels in so many ways and becomes a threat to the fan boys of a company that’s as innovative as apple these days, their stock is at threat and therefore you have these petty hate filled threads of what only illustrates the slop of the Pinside membership demographic.

If anyone had a desire to make a pinball machine or start a pinball company, how on earth would you want to when the online pinball community is full of such hate and trolling. Such assholes. People going after the WB IP folks like Karens…

I do encourage JJP to make a statement or post on this here.
You guys deserve so much better and the products you make are f’ing the best pinball has.
F the haters.
Keep adapting and innovating.

JJP has been poised since inception. The only thing we know for sure is they always find a way to step on their own toes. Always.

Yup, a thousand percent. Stern's internal covert ops team notified the troops on Telegram this morning. "Attack the AI thread and don't relent," no uncertain terms. Reminds me of Operation Cake Topper. Pathetic, really.

Aurich did the art for Alien, and also worked on ABBA.
https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/aurich-lawson

Still, congrats on Predator!

Cool, good to know, thanks!

Just my guess: Jack & Co. wouldn’t wait months or a year to get paid.

You know,
I've got the world up my ass.

That's ok I think I solved the mystery, at least in my own head cannon:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jjp-harry-potter-pin-coming/page/182#post-8733510

Yes they used AI, yes they didn't catch some really bad issues before they sent to mirco. They got some playfields with bad art, maybe even built the games before they noticed. Hence 70+ unnumbered "display samples"
But they caught after and promotion material shows some of the issues are fixed. Presumably production games will look like the promo pics and not the display samples.

Dragon was the biggest issue for me and that one is fixed, but hopefully other stuff fixed to. Someone else can go do the same comparison for other spots.

Man, if that’s right, there has been a ton of wasted energy by people lashing out at each other over “display samples”. Wow.

I was just randomly thinking of this song this morning for no reason at all. Then you posted this. Weird.

And Aurich made a classic replacement Translite package for Star Trek. beautiful.

Well, at least you can’t get pregnant that way.

I had a pro with his art package, still regret parting with it.

I guess fixed is subjective. It’s still nonsensical AI slop with the weird second eye almost removed.

well mirco has got away with it for years so anything is possible!

Dood - I’m sure you are a nice guy but print this post out and go into the shitter in your house that has the most echo and read this out loud - record it on your phone and then play it back to yourself.

Can’t see the license holder going for that based on my experience in dealing with WB in the past. If they want a specific art to be used then you will have to use it. The risk of expensive pain if you don’t do what they want for JJP wouldn’t be worth it.

I’m pretty sure they knew about it, and recent news seems to support it.

Explain the rationale why it’s always the downvoters in JJP threads that:
1. Have zero to the least JJP ownership
2. Wishlists that primarily feature Stern but no JJP games
3. Obsess and comment over JJP machines more than JJP loyalists

I get no manufacture / machine is perfect but it’s difficult to sit back and see the hate thrown by this demographic at a machine or company that deserves credit even from folks like you Neil.

Nobody truly respects opinions including my own when we are just one sided.

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I tried.

Sorry, just back from vacation, not up to date on everything. Has JJP responded to the accusations?

No but it seems to be the case that the issue was at least in regards to some points already corrected in the non-display samples of the game.
Looks like the license issue could have been becuase of this issue.

Hey Drax, chill out, it's an expression. Also, im Generation X.

Well, the wizard on that Genie backglass has only four fingers on his right hand, so I guess AI's doing a great job of replicating classic pinball art!

I always thought that the problem with Stern Photoshop was not just that it looked bad, but that the customer thought of it as lazy cost cutting design work that is unexpected on a top of the line product.

Like if you want to charge top dollar, then show some pride in your work and prove to the world you are the craftsman that deserves $10k of my money.

I don’t see how anyone can argue the merits of AI generated work. There’s no pride and craftsmanship, just lazy cost cutting design that will hopefully get the job done good enough.

Off topic. I’m a property maintenance manager that can fix most problems with a building or property. I don’t foresee AI or robots taking over my job anytime soon

Don't Care

What were JJP and WB thinking? How does this pass?

give them a break it's not like its easy to show all that detail! I mean they ALMOST got it as accurate as this centimeter long lego sword. That's good enough right?

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I’ve never cared so little about something in my life. It’s some campy art, based a children’s theme, on an all-ages arcade game. Some of you adults must have very little else going on to focus this much energy and emotion on something so irrelevant and unnecessary.
I’m embarrassed for many of you… Crying publicly as if all your hopes and dreams have been destroyed, doing side by side comparisons of the art, cancelling orders, contacting the licensor, producing stickers to cover up art on your brand new game, speculating who knew what like it’s some murder mystery. It’s all very sad.

I hope anyone that feels distraught over this somehow finds happiness in something else very soon.

Nice car anyway

I blame the Hungarians.

Lol hyperbole much? I am sure everyone will go on with their happiness in life despite us all having to look at JJP slop AI art.

There’s 8 full pages of everything i just described, right at your fingertips. If my accurately describing the sentiment is hyperbole, then so be it.

Hmm. Ok.

On the contrary, *I* am embarrassed for those who so badly want this game to be a hit that they scream "TAKE MY MONEY!" while being willing to shill for JJP and overlook any potential negatives. To each their own, I suppose.

I was unaware that the only alternative to behaving like a child on the internet over some innocuous luxury item, was shilling and mindlessly throwing money away. Would’ve imagined there’s some rational middle ground. Who knew?!?

You never cared about anything so much in your life but you cared enough to say something? Ok. When I don't care about things, I just move on. Its almost like this is a discussion and people can having varying opinions.

As one of the most vocal professional artists here (at least that I've found), just hit this thread. Talk about destroying your own company AND the IP you've paid for in one asinine decision to be cheap. This is a new low. Hell, even some of the worst drawn artwork I've ever seen on a pin (looking at you, Flash) is still miles better than this AI slop. In addition to all the comments about mistakes and visual errors, taking this approach has removed all character from the art - it's literally the iconic AI fake-art look - lifeless, with no artistic flair, everything is treated to the same level of detail. What I mean by that I've put in an AI slop image below. Even when things look correct, everything is that exact level of perfect. Completely dead from any artistic perspective.

But what JJP has done is an abomination to the industry and to our community. I could rant about the whys and go into it in depth, but you all have been doing a great job without my two cents. This pin and JJP are lower than snail smegma. I hope the company feels the message you have posted here in real and tangible terms of their sales.

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And this is EXACTLY the reason why the problems pinball players have with STERN, JJP and quite frankly all the other pinball manufacturers still exist because many are just willing to give over their money regardless of the issues. I guess it’s a rich man’s problem

Fixed can only happen if you scrap the entire AI art package and redo it with a real artist. Putting patches on AI slop is still AI slop. Don't bite.

This is just the beginning of the backlash against AI. There will be a huge market for human crafted art, just like the growing demand for kenetic experience.

Nothing wrong with supporting artists and human craft.

Fuck AI slop.

Yeah the more I think about and the more we see it's obvious you can't salvage this. I'm holding out hope and will wait years but i don't see them fixing it in that fashion too many ppl like that dude above who will just hand over their money like a fucking idiot for JJP to feel the need. What a letdown. Yet still i feel bad for JJP here i don't think they knew I hope this artist gets black listed. If he went rougue what a fucking loser.

AI is not currently heavily used in corporate work for art. The fact that AI fake-art cannot be copyrighted because it's using stolen artwork is one major reason. Another is AI slop is just that - slop. Everyone with a bit of an artistic eye notices. It's lifeless. That you would come here and be a cheerleader for stealing our copyrighted artwork is disgusting to me. And the good news is, with all the loser wanna-be artists who use AI instead of putting in the time to train and practice flooding the internet with AI slop, those algorithms being used are getting worse as the stealing (scraping) of the internet means they are eating their own slop. And then of course, Disney has a beautiful new lawsuit about that practice.

Just look at the pushback here. I've seen it for board game developers too. No one wants to pay money for work that's worse than phoned-in.

Disney can go fuck off. No tears for them. Suing Midjourney but will also televise AI slop commercials because money talks.

People are noticing things on an expensive, highly anticipated product for sale, pointing these things out and discussing them in a public forum. So embarrassing!