FAQs

There are no advertisements in Fluffy and never will be.

It just “hits different”. The emotional impact of a high quality image printed well is quite a bit higher than a phone or tablet screen. It’s just a better experience. The magazine was designed for people like my mom, who no longer have the capability to manage electronic devices. A large magazine can be read over and over and provide many hours of stimulation and enjoyment. Part of the delight that comes with Fluffy comes with the surprise of seeing something genuinely new. We have seen the pattern of online media being "loved" to death and the joy and surprise just dwindles away.

Absolutely not

My name is Micah, and my wife, May, and I are the creators of Fluffy. We have worked together on a variety of projects and are excited to use our design, photography, and technical backgrounds to make something fun.

We try to only use animals that exist in reality, but the images themselves are completely computer generated. The specific animal(s) shown were never real and no animals have been harmed in any way in the creation of Fluffy.

Fluffy will be poly bagged and shipped like any other magazine by US Postal Service.

We don’t think so. AI image generation is quite remarkable and has opened up the possibility for small independent creators to be able to create imagery and projects that would have been impossible just months ago. To us, however, “art” implies more than just clever algorithms.

Fluffy was made using diffusion-based AI image generators, specifically OpenAI and MidJourney. The poems were made using OpenAi’s GPT3 Davinci-003 with light human intervention if necessary. Layout and image cleanup was with InDesign, Lightroom and Photoshop.

We have done a lot of research in this area, had long debates with professionals who make their living in IP, and discussed with other artists and photographers. Our stance is that using a specific artist's style to guide the AI or try to impersonate artists is not something that we approve of or would use in Fluffy. We feel that even if not legally required to do so, it would greatly benefit the AI image companies to create an opt-out database so that artists have some control over whether their work is being used. Until this is in place, we pledge to only use the “physics” side of the AI image creators, which is simulating photography equipment, light transport, film grain, and environment. We also are only using animals and situations that exist in real life and did not take the creative input of an artistic vision to make a reality. In other words, no illustrations of baby Yodas.

Absolutely. We have long been inspired by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and its work bringing books to millions of children. If any nonprofit with a similar mission is interested in Fluffy we will either provide them access to our print and distribution at cost, or provide the digital files to their preferred printer at no cost.

Fluffy is 8.5x11”, but we are looking at the possibility of a Fluffy Mini which would be approximately 5x9”. Fluffy XL was not only designed to be large and easy to view and read for young and old eyes, but we left half of the pages without text so that they can be easily framed or creatively hung by our readers. Both my wife and I grew up in households where wall art was a very rare luxury and we wanted to provide an option for those in similar situations.

In short, no. The best analogy I have found is that the neural networks in the AI image creators act a bit like a path in the woods. The path may be worn down by many individual footsteps (training images) but in the end, you are left with the path, and not the feet. You can’t ask a path for a specific foot, and you can’t ask a diffusion AI image creator for a specific training image. We have actually reverse image searched a large number of the images in Fluffy using several tools and there just isn’t anything close. It makes sense to us, as the things we are asking for (A photograph of a Maltese dog doing a ballet jump wearing a tutu on vintage film grain, for instance) are extraordinarily unlikely to have ever existed. Right now, the only way we know for such images to be created are through 3D rendering or photorealistic digital or classical painting. Both of these would be so incredibly labor intensive that it just doesn’t make sense for anyone to make them for such a silly reason.

Issues will range from 100 to 125 pages, all of which are full color, full page images except for a short letter from the editor explaining how the magazine was made.

Not yet, but if we get lucky enough to grow our subscriber base large enough then we have a number of ideas on how we can provide other languages.

Most magazines get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. A popular fashion magazine, for instance, might have $35-$45 of ads per copy. The low subscription price per copy barely covers shipping. In addition, the printing and paper (80# vs 50#, for instance) options we are using are quite a bit more expensive than a typical newsstand magazine as we wanted Fluffy to have the look and feel of an art book more than a disposable magazine. Finally, doing a small print run is much more per copy than the million copy runs the big publishers can manage. If we are lucky enough to grow our subscriber base, we are very excited to be able to pass on our savings and make Fluffy as affordable as possible.

We designed Fluffy to be appropriate for all ages visually, with the poetry ranging from second grade to fifth grade reading levels. More importantly than age, though, is our focus on creating a very gentle magazine for anyone who needs such a thing. There are no images of violence or conflict and our goal was simply to make our readers forget the world for a little while and maybe share a laugh with their loved ones.

For real animals, absolutely not. Wild animals need to be left alone as much as possible and protected everywhere. For imaginary real animals, though, we think we are OK.