I studied Fine Art in college and have vivid memories of being in studio with charcoal fingernails, obsessing over every little mark. The same soon applied when I transitioned from traditional fine art to digital art, then to indie filmmaking, then VFX and 3D animation, and the same held true, I was still toiling over every decision, whether it was a timecode edit or an animation curve.
Back then, my creative output was shaped by countless micro-decisions I barely even noticed. It wasn’t raw innate talent that gave a piece its power, but the sheer density of high quality choices, each one adding another layer of meaning, even if I couldn’t fully explain them.
These days, AI can generate endless images, videos, and story scripts with a single click, encapsulating a myriad of creative decisions (that which traditionally a creator would have needed to make over hours, days, or years) within a single AI generated output. It’s enough to make you wonder: Where’s the real creativity?
Instead of sweating every stroke or sentence, we’re knee-deep in a flood of AI outputs, sifting through it all to decide what stays and what goes. That’s the new craft: guiding an avalanche of possibilities until it forms something coherent and worthwhile.
In a (creative) universe that naturally grows more complex, I believe we too grow in our affinity towards creative works of thoughtful complexity, those that can unify a dazzling number of purposeful, high-quality decisions. We will still admire technical skill, but the real gravitational pull is complexity done well. Maybe the best creators won’t just be the ones with exceptional technique, but the ones who can mold a tsunami of AI-generated ideas into something cohesive, surprising, and alive.
In the end, Creativity has always been about decisions, large and small, deliberate and instinctive, conscious and flow-state, that shape our work. AI won’t kill creativity but it will redefine craftsmanship, redirect, and democratize it. It will emphasize creative decision making over technical capability and place value on the skill of knowing which decision paths are critical and worth following, and which to leave behind.
But if anything, AI accelerates how many choices we get to make. And if you’re willing to navigate that endless labyrinth of possibilities, you’ll carve out something distinctly yours, just without the charcoal permanently lodged under your fingernails.
a snippet from @marks.artsytime
