I recently came across an article for an AI-created art program called Midjourney and wondered if anyone on here had ever used it.

 

The online art that it generated was pretty impressive.

I've been playing with it a lot, lately.

 

Here are a few of my favorites I've generated

A ring for my Genie warlock in D&D 5e:

 

Character portrait for the above Warlock

The Helm of the Fallen Paladin (same campaign)

 

Amused Blonde with purple Streak

 

The Goddess of Icecream

 

And so many others.

 

13 hours ago, Dr.Device said:

Character portrait for the above Warlock

 

Um, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but your Warlock seems to have serious cataracts in one eye and a blown out pupil in the other. Should probably get her to an eye cleric. 😁

 

On a more serious note, that's some pretty cool stuff, I'm going to go check this thing out.

5 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Um, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but your Warlock seems to have serious cataracts in one eye and a blown out pupil in the other. Should probably get her to an eye cleric. 😁

 

On a more serious note, that's some pretty cool stuff, I'm going to go check this thing out.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen is that the program seems to have problems generating eyes right. I’ve been getting some great character portraits out of it though. It’s also fantastic at doing things like city scenes and structures, such as castles and cyberpunk skylines.

7 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Um, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but your Warlock seems to have serious cataracts in one eye and a blown out pupil in the other. Should probably get her to an eye cleric. 😁

 

On a more serious note, that's some pretty cool stuff, I'm going to go check this thing out.

 

Ha

 

I'm actually replacing both eyes,( because my warlock has funky eyes) but just wanted to show what MidJourney actually produced.

Do they allow you to use the generated images for anything other than personal use?

Just now, Pattern Ghost said:

Do they allow you to use the generated images for anything other than personal use?

My understanding is that the art created is considered your property and can be treated as such, sold or whatever. Note that there are two levels of paid accounts available, and it might require a paid account for this though. I can’t remember. I bought a paid account because it removed the limits on how much you can produce. A free account will be used up pretty quickly.

You can use the images however you want, but so can anyone else, unless you pay for the private upgrade. I just paid for the regular upgrade, myself.

OK, so I finally got bitten by the MidJourney bug because I had to set up a Discord account for something else.

 

After a little fiddling around, I made some images for a hypothetical noir planetary romance story I've had rattling around in the back of my brain:

 

Our hero:

 

 

a troubled war veteran, after catching a minor case of death from getting involved in the wrong situation with the best of intentions, awakens

 

 

in a ruined city in an alien desert, after dreaming of a woman who has haunted his nights ever since he woke up in that Army hospital tent, our titular Jade Eyed Princess:

 

 

He's astonished to find his old war wounds healed, but is soon set upon by a group of primitive hunters

 

 

who don't look quite human. These, he will later dub Big Heads. First, he must escape! Which he does. Fleeing into the desert, dawn breaks and he realizes he really isn't in Kansas (or the Bronx) anymore. The need for water sets in, so he tries to obtain some from a cactus-like plant

 

 

which lashes out at him with tentacle-like appendages, and nearly takes him down with a fast-acting poison. He manages to drag himself to a cave before the survivor of the Big Head hunting party shows back up with his clan. He awakens to find

 

 

an unusual, slightly grotesque, yet somehow adorable creature . . . chewing on his wounded leg! He's alarmed, and the creature jumps back and makes submissive gestures. He hears an amused laugh from the back of the cave, and turns to find

 

 

an ophidian woman with iridescent skin watching over him. She assures him the creature is only trying to clean the poison out of the wound, and in his fevered state, our Hero decides to just roll with it, because none of this is probably real anyway.

 

Some time later, the pair (trio!) are found by the Big Head search party and decide to deal with the situation head on. Which means a trial by combat. The festivities are interrupted before they begin by

 

 

a Royal Navy airship. The Big Heads have been in conflict with the Empire for some time. This is because the Empire controls the weather machines and has been withholding rain from the desert side for months, forestalling their brief annual rainy season, and the Big Heads have been raiding border settlements.

 

However, it turns out the airship is also looking for their Immortal Princess. Our Hero and Snake Lady (mostly Snake Lady) broker a tenuous truce and enlist the Big Heads to help with the search for the Princess. This, because the ship's commander discloses that the weather machines have been taken over by a rebel faction. All hope that the Princess can help sort this out.

 

Of course, there's that trial by combat to sort out first.

 

Our band finds the Princess. Hero, Snake Lady, and Head Big Head all fly off to

 

 

The mountain city capitol of the Empire, where Hero is fascinated by the Princess despite the warnings of Snake Lady. Political negotiations ensue. A small force lead by our Hero sets out to secure the weather machines.

 

That's all I have in pictures. Hero will find out some unpleasant truths when he meets older versions of himself in the form of both the Emperor and the rebel leader, and begins to once again question the reality of his situation . . . He's being made a plaything of by the Jade Eyed Princess.

 

Some writing software, like Scrivener, has a feature to save inspiration pics or reference pics for writers while they work on a story. I've always disregarded this habit, but I'm kind of warming up to it! MidJourney is pretty cool stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fed a MJ four image spread back into MJ and got this interesting result trying to turn the below into a black and white line art:

 

 

I didn't really think MJ would do a straight conversion, but the result was interesting.

The Scholomance (from passing mention in (Dracula )

 

I used it a few times but you can only use a small number of times on a 'free account'.  Here are some other AI options:

• https://stablediffusionweb.com
• https://openai.com/dall-e-2/
• https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/text2img

Doing some more experimentation with MJ today. This time, playing around with Neji mode and Image to Image rendering.

So, I started with this sketch/color map I made in about two minutes:

 

 

Uploaded that to MJ with a prompt describing the scene, in the style of Miyazaki. Got some output, found one I liked, then upscaled it. Then, I took the upscale and fed it back into the same prompt, picked another to upscale, and fed that one back with the same prompt, but instead of "Miyazaki style" put "anime style" and added "detailed" because the background was way too muddy. Final result:

 

 

One thing I noticed is that the ponytail didn't come through from the original to the AI. I don't think it caught the detail because the outer line of the ponytail follows what would be the outer line of the general body. That's actually bad composition anyway. Even when I put "ponytail" in the prompt, I mostly got the short haircuts, and that's probably the AI enforcing genre conventions. So, between the two, I got what I got. Still not shabby for a collaboration with a computer.

 

*EDIT: Forgot to mention: One key here is to generate grids until you get something you like, then upscale one. Then right-click on the upscaled pic and "copy image location." Take that, paste it as the first part of the prompt, then re-enter your text prompt and run it again. Doing this over several iterations will add in details. Your very first result will be a lot less detailed and not look that impressive most likely. The upscale function increases resolution, but to do so must add details to the picture. So, multiple upscales = more details. At least as I understand it.