Creator interview: Brian sykes

In these creator interview posts, I’ll be asking a series of questions to people using AI tools for their work or artwork.
I hope you will enjoy the read and learn one or two useful things ;).

Madebyai: Can you tell us who you are and how you ended up Doing Ai generated art ?

Brian: My name is Brian Wilson Sykes. So, who am I?

I am the founder of 2 businesses. AdJourney & HeadSpace Branding

AdJourney for 23 years was a Marketing Agency, but this past July I made a pivot in the business. AdJourney now provides CONSULTING and affordable, quality, digitally delivered, self-paced TRAINING on the subjects of branding, marketing and effective communication for Inventors, Entrepreneurs and Early Stage Business Founders in Accelerators, Incubators, Seed Funds, etc…

#education #marketing #entrepreneur #founder #startup

Once I pivoted AdJourney… I also launched a NEW business in July called HeadSpace Branding. So, what does it do?

HeadSpace Branding provides clarity to CMO’s and Leadership facing misaligned messaging and stagnant growth due to a lack of clarity in their market purpose. We help brands internally and externally reposition for growth through strategic, verbal and visual brand clarity. (CLARITY folks… if you do not have a Brand Strategy – you are not seeing clearly!)

#branding #brandstrategy #brandidentity #strategy

We’re centrally located in North Carolina (Southern Pines to be exact), but work with clients across the US (with a number of awesome friends around the world!)

I am currently at the forefront of AI Art Generation training – providing daily lessons that garners hundreds of thousands of views each week on LinkedIn and will soon take this training to YouTube and TikTok. Excited to be a part of the AI / CC group, and offering lessons & engaging in the AI space daily.

But let e get back to your question… how I ended up doing AI Generated Art. I came across some random links over a year ago with whispers of these things being worked on. They were so rudimentary but promised some pretty impressive possibilities. That perked my interest. Chris Do of TheFutur had started exploring with AI this year and sharing his creations. After a couple of images, I decided to hunt this things down… and I was not even sure of what it was I was looking for. But the terms I heard – Discord’s Midjourney, Dall-E, Google Colab – all sent me into a deep dive. Before long I was trying AI art generators and sharing my early attempts – each time crediting Chris Do with the introduction.

There were a lot of hurdles to get to these things. No clear instructions. No standards of prompting properly. I decided that needed to exist, and so I set out to learn by exploring, and share my discoveries. The results have been pretty exciting.

Madeyai: You create different kind of ai art but the first thing that caught my eyes was your car related artwork ( as I am a fan of car design, JDM and other geeky things ).

I saw that your agency did marketing work for a company that supplied NASCAR. How do you imagine the use of Ai generated stuff, both short term and long term, for ANY industry ?

Brian: That is really the question I think, as with any new technology… How do we use this thing?

First there’s the round of fears that explode out. AI is going to take over the world – don’t forget Terminator. AI is going to be doing your job…

The thing I recognize about AI, is it is a really cool tool. But a tool without a defined purpose and understood use – can be as shiny and fancy as you can imagine it – without purpose it loses value. So it is up to the early adopters to use, explore and imagine HOW the tool will be helpful. 

How do I imagine AI generated stuff will impact industry? MANY WAYS!!! I believe the AI Art Generators are superb at iterative concepting. In other words – we can supply a series of possibilities and spit out concepts almost as fast as we could sketch them out before.

AI Art Generators can help us marry concepts together to determine new product lines. It is only a short time before AI will be cross collaborative with 3D CAD systems, computational number crunchers, etc – and be able to produce and idea, test and evaluate it and refine a solution in minutes instead of months. On this topic I could spend a lot of time – dreaming. That is what happens on this portion of the journey… AI is in its infancy, and we get to define the paths where we want to grow and explore it.

Madebyai: One of the prompt you shared on LinkedIn worked really well for me to generate nice cars and concept cars. You probabaly know that here is already a new website where you can sell prompts, do you think this is a new sustainable business model or do you think the ” prompt design skill ” will take another path ?

Brian: I can work wonders in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. These are skills I developed by LOTS of use. As you may have noticed, getting a prompt that works well, especially when starting from scratch, is a time consuming process. I believe there may be prompts that will be desirable – much like Kyle’s Brushes were for Photoshop and Illustrator. But it is possible, the same way Adobe bought his brand and hired him outright, that in time the battle of the AI Art Generators, they may compete by having the best collections of prompt feeds you can easily reference and use.

As the AI tool becomes more practical, each artist using the tool, will develop their signature styles (the things they are known for). I have already been affectionately dubbed “The Teacher” and “Professor Sykes”… Its the people who are empowering others that can be most impactful on this whole system. 

It may be that one day my prompts will get to have an embedded tag to them (like photos and documents) – so that anyone else who uses them – I will be notified. If they are not “owners” or “have a license” for the tag – they will be docked for use (particularly commercially.) More and more, everything online is trackable. Why not code? Why not images created from MY version of Midourney. Easy enough to add it in… Easy enough to include the entire prompt in the information. Data security around AI creation will become more and more of value as time and use progresses.

Madebyai: I am wondering what will be the next business ideas that will soon start related to Midjourney, Dall-E, SD and the likes. In your opinion, what are the new small businesses that are going to rise using these AI tools?

Brian: Many ideas mentioned above. It ultimately is a new tool. How it gets leveraged depends on us, does it not? We are those on the forefront of the technology. My friend Jonathan Ijzerman commented the other day that in sharing – we just make the pie bigger. I like that. I want to make some freaking BIG pies… and see what the truly creative do with this tech.

Madebyai: With your experience using the tools, you probably discovered a couple of tips and tricks, Which ones would you be ok to share with our audience?

Brian: I share openly every single day. Follow my profile to learn first hand. But the most basic is the core formula. Using the formula of A + B + C – improves predictability.

A = description & characteristics.

B = style prefs

C = size & render

If you do not get your “A” right – the stuff you add to the end is just going to multiple the problem at the end. Work in order of priority!

Madebyai: What is the next big thing you are going to try using Ai tools ?

Brian: The notion of Video gets me really excited… but I am still scratching the surface of the prompts for still images! While I am not familiar with any – I would also love to discover a midi sound generator that lets you plug in a basic melody prompt and generate music in the same way we have been able to do art.

Madebyai: Is there anything else you want to share with our audience ?

Brian: Sure, the best way to grow, is to do. Practice. Try things. Learn… Then turn around and give back to the community what you figured out.

Madebyai: Where can people find put more about you?

Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianwsykes

LinkedIn is where I am most active. Ring my bell and follow me there. If you have questions – hit me up. I will try and help. 

Also, my 2 businesses are on LinkedIn. You can find them easily by going to my page. I give away a lot of good, useful stuff. Whether it is AI Art, Branding, Marketing, Effective Communication… following what I put out can help you.

I want to say a big thank you to Brian for sharing these insights with us, check also some of his creations that I added in the “ studies “ section.