Why We Commission Human Artists (And Say No to AI Art)

AI-generated anime art is everywhere now: anime merch marketplaces and conventions, X timelines, and Pixiv recommendations. Some is obvious slop. Some is polished enough to pass at a glance. When it goes unlabeled or is passed off as human-drawn, it makes every image you see harder to trust.

You can like how an image looks and still care who made it. Nice to look at and worth owning are two very different things. For us, the illustrator is part of the reason to bring a cover home.

That is why every Heart Club dakimakura cover is commissioned from a human illustrator. We don't use AI generation, AI upscaling, or AI touch-ups at any stage, including references and placeholders. Generative AI is bad for artists, bad for culture, and bad for the human soul.

Short answer: We believe the artist is part of the art. Generative AI treats human expression as raw material and the process of “making” as something to automate away. We commission illustrators because we want the way they see a character, not just a usable image. Better image generation cannot replace that.

AI art is bad for the human soul

“ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary.”

Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files #248

By the human soul, we mean one person paying attention to the world, shaping what they notice, and trying to reach someone else through what they make.

An illustrator chooses what matters, rejects what doesn't, revises what feels wrong, and discovers things that were not obvious at the start. Those decisions are not delays between an idea and a finished file. They are the work.

Is all of this a bit heavy for a pillowcase? Maybe. But dakimakura art lives closer than most art ever does. It shares your room and gives physical form to a character you may have carried for years. For something that intimate, it matters that a person was there on the other side of the image.

Generative AI promises the opposite: the appearance of human expression with less and less of the human practice behind it. It turns existing creative work into training material and treats “making” as friction between a request and an output. The image remains; the person and the purpose become optional.

A culture saturated with generated content gives us more images, but it gives us less reason to care who made them, what they meant, or whether anyone was trying to say anything at all. It weakens the habit of looking for another person in the work. That is spiritually empty, and better image quality does not fix it.

That hollow feeling would remain even if the training material were fully licensed. Licensing would address exploitation, but it would not turn replacing an illustrator into a human creative relationship. Heart Club exists to commission art from people, not generate its appearance without them.

The artist's intent is part of the art

“Art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception.”

Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art”

A character is not a checklist of hair color, clothing, and body type. The difference between a smirk and a smile matters. So does the energy of a pose, the mood behind an expression, and whether the character feels relaxed, guarded, playful, or completely out of character.

Before the first sketch, we can spend days or weeks looking for someone whose work feels right for one particular character. Most of that time goes into portfolios on Pixiv, Skeb, and X, where we look closely at how each illustrator handles expressions, vibe, personality, and body language. We have passed on excellent artists because a beautiful drawing can still be the wrong read of the character.

John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing that “every image embodies a way of seeing.” When we commission an illustrator, we are asking for their way of seeing this character. A generated image could print perfectly and still miss what we care about. No illustrator stood behind it and meant those choices.

Who drew your cover matters because of the time you have spent with the character, whether days or years. You may have loved them through an anime, game, manga, or novel. You remember particular scenes, expressions, and traits that made them matter to you. When a character means enough to you to bring them into your bedroom, you want the artist to understand why. That is what Heart Club commissions: a human illustrator's interpretation of a character you already care about.

A commission is a conversation

“What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn’t be an artist if you didn’t want to share an experience, a thought.”

David Hockney, That's the Way I See It (1993)

Once an artist accepts the commission, we build a specific moment around the character: the situation, mood, expression, outfit, and relationship between the front and back. A Heart Club original can take weeks or months of conversation and revision.

1. Before work starts, the artist and Heart Club agree on what will be made and how the finished artwork can be used. The no-AI term is part of that agreement.
2. The illustrator sends an early sketch so the pose, expression, framing, and character read can change before the composition is locked.
3. We talk through what is and is not landing. Sometimes the issue is an eye shape, mouth, posture, or hand. Sometimes the character simply does not feel right yet. A human illustrator can understand that imperfect feedback, apply their own judgment, and find a better answer with us.

The example below shows an early sketch and the finished artwork for Bookworm-chan [Wedding Night Ver.]. Though the artist wishes to remain anonymous, their decisions are visible in how the piece took shape.

Drag the slider to compare the early sketch with the finished artwork.

Sketch Finished

Artwork shown: Bookworm-chan [Wedding Night Ver.]

The finished cover has a history. An artist interpreted the character, we responded, and the work changed because we understood each other. As you live with it, your own experiences and memories become part of what the cover means to you.

If art matters, artists matter

Dakimakura and doujin culture exist because illustrators keep making things worth caring about. We want the money from a cover to reach the person who drew it. We do not want their art turned into raw material for replacing them. Every commission is another chance for an illustrator to try something new and keep developing.

When you bring home one of our covers, you become part of that cycle too. Your purchase helps pay for future commissions and puts money back in the hands of the artists this hobby depends on.

Generative AI systems draw on enormous collections of existing work. Much of that material was gathered from the open web, where being publicly viewable does not mean the creator authorized it for training. Most creators whose work entered those datasets were neither asked nor paid for that use. The U.S. Copyright Office's 2025 report on generative AI training describes the scale of those collections and the uneven state of licensing.

We agree on payment and commercial merchandise rights before release, and every new commission includes this term:

By accepting this commission, you confirm that the artwork will be human-created and will not use generative AI image models, AI image-to-image generation, AI paintovers, AI-generated references, or AI-generated content in any visible part of the work process or final deliverables.

Because appearance alone cannot prove authorship, we rely on the working history around each commission: the artist's portfolio, our direct communication, sketches, revision stages, and the written no-AI term.

When an illustrator wants public credit, we name them on the product page. Some artists prefer privacy, especially around adult commissions, and we respect that. Public or private, there is still a real person who accepted the brief, made the art, and got paid for it.

Our answer will still be no

If generated art gets cheaper, faster, and better looking, our answer will still be no. Every Heart Club cover begins with a human illustrator and stays human-made through the final file. When you open the package, a person drew what is in your hands, decided how that character should look, and was paid for it.

Frequently asked questions about human artists and AI art

Sources and further reading

• How to Commission Dakimakura Art
• U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training
• Ted Chiang: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
• Nick Cave: ChatGPT and making things faster and easier
• John Berger: Ways of Seeing
• David Hockney: That's the Way I See It

About Heart Club
Heart Club is an independent doujin dakimakura circle commissioning human illustrators for exclusive anime body pillow cover designs on 2-Way Tricot.

See our current artist-made dakimakura covers, with the illustrator's public credit listed on each product page.