GroundA career plan that's only as generic as what you tell it.
Ground doesn't tell you AI is fine, and it doesn't tell you to panic. It takes six honest answers about your actual practice and gives you back a blueprint grounded in them — nothing invented, nothing that could apply to anyone else.
1. Honest read
Your fear is not irrational, but it's mis-aimed. The clients most likely to replace you with Midjourney are the ones paying least and briefing worst. Trade publishing is different — picture books need 32 pages of the same child, same dog, same house, from twelve angles, with consistent emotional continuity across spreads. Generative models remain bad at that.
2. What you already have
Character development and worldbuilding — the thing you love — is the part of this job that survives longest. You also have twelve years of publisher fluency: how a text is paced across spreads, what an art director means by "warmer."
3. Workflows that extend your process
Kill the blank page with image generation — you hate thumbnailing, so generate twenty options, throw them away, draw the right one. Feed reference and mood boards into your existing Procreate process.
4. Your first 30 days
Week 1: read your last three contracts for AI clauses. Week 3: email three past art directors about their AI policy — intelligence-gathering and relationship maintenance at once.
| Blueprint | Created | Discipline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blueprint — Aug 8 | Today | Children's book illustration | Ready |