5th year of Inktober: ✅

Somehow, I did it again.

I’m really proud of myself for completing it this year, mostly because I’ve refined the overall process while juggling personal commitments and professional deadlines. Props to those who have figured it out, because it’s seriously challenging. That said, it’s shocking to realise that this marks the fifth year.

To celebrate that, Mother Nature partied hard with a thunderstorm at 4:20am. Y’know, the kind that rattles your mind, and leaves an aftershock in your soul. Yeah… I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I decided to reflect on my artistic journey this month.

The reflection turned into this collage. I’m so happy with it, what a fantastic start to November.

Inktober: 31 Summonings, 2025 – warlockwolf

Personal reflections

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from this year’s challenge is that I am the youngest and freest I’ll ever be again. It’s both liberating and terrifying at the same time, because that usually translates to bigger challenges and more responsibilities. But I’m here for it. I want to be a better son, brother, professional, friend, etc.

Above all, I want to be better at being me.

Spending my time on this year’s Inktober is one way of doing it, and buying new tools is another. I recently bought a new microphone, which came highly recommended by friends. No clear plans for it yet, but when I saw the discount, I knew it was a sign to cop it.

The second lesson is this: I’m someone who will continue using AI in my creative process. I see huge value in the speedy iterations, especially as references or ideas. However, I do draw the line at typing a prompt and calling it “mine”. It just doesn’t seem right to do so when AI models were trained through generations of human artistry. If you haven’t added a personal touch, you didn’t create it, so you can’t own it.

While the final output should be personal, there’s a place for AI to contribute, which leads me to…

The verdict

If I had to rank AIs so far (purely based on visual generation on my Inktober experimentation), it would be:

1. Midjourney

2. DALL·E

3. Stable Diffusion

I’m sure there are others out there, but these are the three that I used and I found that Midjourney has the fastest, smoothest and stylistic flair compared to the rest. It boasted 4 iterations on the go, the ability to upscale, zoom out, and reiterate strongly or subtly at the click of a few buttons. At the same time, you can animate the artwork and the results are cooler than expected.

DALL·E takes second place with its accuracy to sketch-based refinement/regeneration. Also, being able to have active conversations with ChatGPT is a plus, but it doesn’t receive instructions very well. I believe there’s a lot of room for it to grow before it creates more visually accurate images.

In third place, we have Stable Diffusion. It’s a little clunky, but reliable and best of all, free. For better or worse, it’s also the most open-minded in the listt. This allows more graphic content to be created whereas Midjourney and DALL·E were more sensitive to certain keywords.

While I’m curious to seeing where things go with AI in the creative scene, that’s only one aspect of it, and the future tends to move a lot faster than we imagine. Every day brings us a new feature, and every new feature inspires a new YT videos which usually leads to our impending doom through superintelligence. Will man and machine find mutual understanding to prevent armageddon?

…

I don’t know, but let’s hope so lol.