A plugin for streaming your canvas as a live art installation - SuprSketch

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Hello Krita artists.

There’s a new platform in development. For artist to display and “stream” their canvas to people’s desktop / background / TV’s etc etc. It also goes further, and it opens ways to display it also at events and galleries, museums etc. It’s strictly non-ai.

They are in the process of updating everything to a new version, so it might no be all working at the moment.

Currently they support Krita and Photoshop, via a plugin.

I’m helping testing and I’m posting it here to find more artists to help testing and get feedback.

You can find more detailed information on their website: https://www.suprsketch.com/

Thanks!

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It is good to hear this from you, because I trust in you. If you have influence on those responsible for the website, they really should remove all this spying and data harvesting stuff from their site. It is very possible to create awesome websites without this, you only need the will to achieve it.

Michelist

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Hi Michelist. I am the CEO and founder of this tech and website. I am a real human. We use webflow for our front end design, I like it because it is like krita for web dev. We use hubspot for email management and form tracking. We previously used memberstack for user management. nothing crazy. We use zapier for automation. We use stripe payment processing for subscriptions to artists. We run everything to our backend AWS cloud services. We use jetboost momentarily to track who you liked and display it as a heart with a counter next to it. We do not share your data and never will. We are very adamant about that because we are artists ourselves. We are tired of machine generated content and are building a safe harbor for artists. We use Microsoft clarity to track what pages users actually click and what pages actually matter to artists and art viewers. Any scripts are used to figure out how to build a functional website experience, or to inject our backend art ecosystem into the webflow frontend.

We are not a massive company. Go to any custom website for a tech startup and this is what they do. I do it because as an artist I care very much about your experience on our website. You should have seen our website when we assumed what people cared about.

Read our terms and conditions Referral Terms . It is very clear about our stance on your data on our website. We will never share it ever. We know that the only way to provide a human only art experience is to be trustworthy to the human artists we have attracted and hope to attract. So we only care about protecting artists and their art data being only controlled by them. the only thing we can and will do with your art data is delete it. otherwise it is locked to your unique artist account ID. We are not data collecting anything from you except your user information that you type in. To be very clear, we will never sell or give your data knowingly to anyone ever. ever. We have worked tirelessly to make your art data protected from machine learning. We are like other sites in the fact that if you are sharing your art on clara or twitter, or even here on krita forums, then someone can manually screenshot it.

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I strongly believe that its our right to obfuscate our hard work. this is a brand new invention and we are trying to make it hard to replicate for as long as possible because we are a small team and know that once a bigger company catches wind of this new invention they will want it for themselves. We hope that when that happens, we are large enough to not be affected and survive it. This is 3 years of nonstop development from me personally, on a brand new technology, every free second I have. Again, no one is forcing you to use it, and we hope to earn the trust of everyone via our reputation over time. I understand the pushback, but this just is how it has to be. Maybe one day we will unobfuscate when we feel like their is no harm in sharing our secret recipe for core parts of our ecosystem of dope art tech. We really believe in being transparent with our beliefs and choices. I honestly didnt think anyone would care it was obfiscated unless they were trying to rip my hard work. please delete your post of my obfuscated code. as this is my personal creation. It is funny that you take what has purposefully be obfuscated and steal it and share it without my consent. ironic and disgusting. check the code yourself but do not share it. thank you.

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Of course you can do with your software whatever you want but the copyright notice in the plug-in’s “decrypted” code (both files) says (emphasis mine):

So this Plug-In (at least for Krita) is GPL licensed, this means you have to make the code available anyway (that’s a requirement of the GPL for you as a distributor if I’m not mistaken), so why hide it behind a base64 string? It is not like your Krita plug-in has any trade secrets anyway since it basically just takes snapshots and does a web request every so often, this is not rocket science. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to mock your efforts, I’m pretty sure the core part of your software, that is the streaming part and the other stuff, took a lot of work.

I was strictly referring to only the plug-in not server side code or your client that is used to show the time lapses which are proprietary and not really concerned with Krita anyway. I don’t demand to open source your core project or anything.

You did gave consent by making the plug in GPL which allows anyone to view and redistribute the code doesn’t it?

I’m writing this as an artist and as a developer myself. Think about all the stuff in recent years that screwed us over. It started with overreaching copyright, DMCA, strike downs, content-id, Crypto, then NFT, AI and a lot of other stuff that promised us “empowerment” and then ultimately screwed us over. We are tired and we are cautious. Every little thing that could possibly be another attack will be met with massive resistance. When I see code that looks like malware samples I dissect at work, of course all my alerts turn on. That said, I still wish you good luck with your project. I think it is a fun idea. I just don’t think the way how the plug-in is “packaged” is good when you want to earn trust.

PS: if it was in a open repo I would happily make a pull request to fix the issues I found.

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Completely agree with this. It’s a massive part of why the plugin is being made and why I’ve quite enjoyed it as an artist, it’s nice to have a platform that is actively made by artists and against exploitative tech. I’d be happy to talk more about my experience, or you could chat with other artists (like Philipp) who’ve been using it.

Do you think it may be a good idea to recreate the thread now that you’ve had the chance to review the code and look deeper into the plugin? I do worry that the first half of this thread is full of folks accusing it of being a scam, which might cause people to just skim over the first few posts and get a negative impression. Plus I think it’s reasonable for the devs to prefer to keep the plugin code private now that it’s been verified. Would also like to take your feedback into account regarding presentation.

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In this day and age, it is hard to trust something like this. I am not accusing; it’s just that the timing is very bad for a product like this, and I personally don’t see the appeal. It is proprietary, and you expect people to spend their money on this, but I am struggling to see why people would spend money on subscribing to artists when streaming websites exist?

It is a kinda cool idea, but I personally doubt that it will be successful.
Why would I pay for a livestream where nothing happens for, likely, most of the time, when I could buy a commission from them, subscribing to their Patreon/Ko-fi, donating directly to the artists or subscribing to their livestreams (Where I can see them and others work with better framerate and even commentary)?

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It kind of depends. I don’t want to remove the previous posts because that simply would felt like silencing their concerns, some of which were legit even though the biggest one turned out not to be true and I rather have the whole context. What we can do is create a different topic that is not for development. We have a few other things already that have double topics to keep development related stuff separated from general discussion in General Forums > off-topic talks for example.

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I would not want to see a second thread made for the same plugin.

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You mean the terms that read amongst others:

12. Final Authority

• These Terms of Service are subject to interpretation and enforcement at SuprSketch’s sole discretion
• SuprSketch maintains the right to make exceptions to any of these terms

Wow, you can really trust those. And maybe if you get lucky you get an email the day before you automatically accept new terms. Maybe it will be in the spam filter.

“will never sell or give your data knowingly to anyone ever”…well we see the knowingly in there. You save every chat forever. That seems kinda…very unnecessary. And maximises the damage if you ever get hacked/social engineered etc. Or if certain authorities knock at your door, US jurisdiction sucks.

Also, what exactly stops someone from saving all the single art WIP images they can get on your site? Something like an obfuscation with base64 like for the “core” of your code, a “protection” that every hacker would laugh at?

Tell me, does perplexity.ai crawler stop based on what the TOS of a website say, or on no-ai flags? How much of the training material for AI was obtained legally? After what you claim is the result of 3 years work and your company secret* was translated to clear text with no effort, why should we trust the security measures you have in place (but do not explicitly explain) for artists?

*Yes I know this may not be in line with the licence claimed, as others have stated.

And you know very well the difference between sharing a final art and maybe 1 or 2 WIP here and having access to every step of the process. Will be hard to prove originality to regular people if everyone has all the screenshots in full resolution and can easily make a video out of it.

Now that being said, I kind of agree that the website is what I would expect from a startup in monetising phase - but that does not make it great for someone really caring about privacy, as the standard is really very low.

While I personally would never use this service, I can’t say I suspect ill intent. However, more likely than the code being stolen because it is so great, my expectation for modern startups is they want to grow, then sell legally to big company asap, and at that point all former promises are in vain. Open source may not be easy to make money with but at least that scenario is less likely, because of possible forks.

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yeah, but usually a krita plugin is like 1-12 mb. Only the A.I. krita plugins are in the Gb realm of sizes. So my guess is that it is AI, but as I said it is a guess. I could make a thing that takes screen shots and would send the images to somewhere into the internet like it is described and it would never go over 10mb. So I donno what is happening there myself to need such a big installation.

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And that TOS bro. no bueno. if you start a business and you are already thinking about selling out.
yeah I just imagine it is made to create a legal way to harvest data. does not matter the terms to which people signed up for initially as the TOS will change right after that but the data remains

But The only thing I really should say is that your website is not working. All online canvases are all broken at the moment.

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Yes, mainly it’s looking at things through rose-colored glasses. On top of that, someone naturally praises its own product to the skies. (At least, that’s what I believed at first.)

Michelist

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@SuprAaron & @Mist :

Actually, I didn’t want to write here anymore, but now, after all this, to ask for a new ‘clean slate’ thread, clearly shows where things are heading.

But unfortunately, there are simply too many inconsistencies, and to try to tell me that all the data collected by tons of scripts does not also flow to those whose servers host and run them is either naive or a deliberate attempt to portray things differently than they are. And someone who can create such a product, including the associated background structures, is not acting naively, but in full awareness of what they are doing. This is also proven by the exclusions of responsibility towards customers and artists at every turn. True to the motto, give me everything you have, and don’t worry about it when it’s gone, because then it’s just gone:

(This is a quote of the SuprSketch website:)
SuprDrive.
A cloud storage web app where you control your created art data. Move, delete, download, and timelapse your art. Store your terabytes of art data on SuprDrive for free instead of your device.

Oh, how wonderful! But, oh, there was something else:

(This is a quote of the SuprSketch website:)
We are not responsible for accidental loss of data.

So, so, “I” control my art data? I should store everything with you instead of with me? And if it’s gone, then it’s gone! Tell me, don’t you realize what nonsense you’re trying to sell people?

You forgot to add this passage, which I add now as a fictive quote:

(This is a fictive quote of the writer of this post:)
And if something happens, your data is gone. But thanks for trusting us this far and falling for our scam!

You’ve gathered a few people around you who already idolize you and try to defend all of this, or are they involved in your company?
On top of that, you’re trying to sell your product to customers like sour beer by denying or ignoring all its existing disadvantages, apparently hoping to foist it on at least the blind, the stupid, and the gullible.

Seriously, enough is enough.

You’ve forgotten a basic principle of business, or perhaps you never knew it: “Don’t think your customers are stupider than you are!” You’re so above it all, and, okay, you’re defending three years of work full of your own naivety and the belief that others are incapable of seeing behind the scenes.

In any case, I’ve had enough now. And I hope, unfortunately in vain, that everyone who registers with you as an artist or customer will inform themselves in advance and also find and read through this topic, which, incidentally, you yourself initiated. Unfortunately, far too many people have become far too complacent these days, so you will at least make some progress with your project.
I shouldn’t care, as I will not be harmed in any way because I will avoid SuprSketch.

Please don’t tag or address me anymore, I’m through and done, all of this here is too bold for my taste.

Michelist

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you are exhaustive. like i stated we can only delete data. the suprdrive is all custom and inhouse just so that no company has access to your art data. you clearly want to be the last one to say something, except everything you say is factually incorrect. I wish you happiness far from me, thank you for pledging to never using our service that is built to uplift and help human artists. I hope you can watch artists succeed while you hate on creativity on online forums. You’re a hammer looking for a nail that doesnt exist.

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I never questioned that. I questioned to rely only on your SuprDrive.
You advise customers to rely exclusively on your in-house SuprDrive system, presenting it as if artists could dispense with their own data backup in the future. (I thought you mentioned AWS, which would be redundant.)
There is no need for data to leak out; if it is really in-house, it would be enough for the building housing the infrastructure to be completely destroyed. But one doesn’t need such a catastrophe, a user error or an administrator running amok would also suffice, as Krita itself experienced long ago.
The data would be much safer stored in Amazon’s AWS or S3/S4 buckets, which are redundantly secured over a wide area and, with appropriate encryption on your part, even safe from access by Amazon or the Secret Service.

But apparently you only read what you want to read.

I am a realist, which is something else entirely, and I have probably seen too many such good intentions fail. That does not automatically mean that this will happen, but it certainly does not rule it out.

This is what you call life experience.

I therefore hope for you and your customers that your project is successful and that you can keep your promises to them.

Michelist

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Hey folks. I think I’m going to go ahead and close the thread for now, thanks everyone offering their perspectives and feedback on the plugin! Going to be saving a bunch of the input here and keeping it available for the dev team to look at since there’s some good insights. Cheers.

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Thread closed at OP’s request.

1 Like