Okay, so this is sort of a sequel to my previous big topic. In that one, I was doing some sort of beginner-level art using AI... nothing hugely complicated, and definitely flawed. Since then, I've learned a lot about all of this.
I know there's this idea that with this type of thing you just feed the thing some words and BAM you get a masterpiece, but... no. No sir, that aint how it works. Unless of course you LIKE getting messed up results that really arent quite what you asked for.
Currently, I have access to three separate AIs: Midjourney (what I used to make the previous things), DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. Each works differently, is good/bad at different things, and so on.
But those arent enough, not if I want to REALLY make something. So, in comes Photoshop... which I'd never used until recently. That's bloody complicated and required a lot of tutorials and such to even get started to do what I wanted. But in the end, I could get MUCH better results... but also results that were what I wanted, rather than what the machine THOUGHT I wanted. There's little need to settle for the crude stuff when you can take control yourself.
First of all I want to show the biggest thing I made. Before that, here's the main image I'd made last time... the one that really stuck with me and took the most work to create (took about 3 hours of arguing with it to create this):
This was my favorite of all of them, and the one that the most effort went into. Basically, I wanted to have a character that was all my own... but I'd never tried something like that before. So, this new AI stuff was the perfect way to try it out for the first time.
Now, it *mostly* got the details... decently right. But, there were some artifacts of the process. Firstly, her forehead is all messed up... I couldnt figure out why. And second, what the heck is that bright puffball at the bottom? I dont know what that is... but it sure aint supposed to be there.
But on top of that, I wanted to take this further. I wanted to get an expanded image of her. What would a full-body image look like? What would I like the rest of her outfit to be? And I wanted a better background to it too. I already had an idea as to what sort of personality and such I wanted for her, so standing in the weird spooky void just super close to the "camera" wasnt doing it.
So... enter Photoshop. And way too much time learning some of the basics.
The final result was this:
I want to stress that this took all. Freaking. Day. A long, complicated, difficult process that involved numerous things.
Firstly, I needed to get her "expanded". For this, I brought her into DALL-E, which has that feature. And that means ARGUING with it. The thing is... weird. And not particularly bright. I went through about a bazillion wonky iterations of Sophie (which is her name) in a wild variety of screwy backdrops. At first it put out a series of images where her skirt was all stretched out to the sides for some reason, her hands were... not hands, and she had this weird white aura around her, while standing in a place that definitely wasnt quite what I was after. About a bazillion very specific alterations later, and I had her.
So, she needed a background. I wanted a library... but a just slightly surreal one. The result of that was actually the right half of that background. The LEFT half was an expansion of that, which went through many iterations of its own. You cant see the seam because she is standing right in front of it, but the seam is flawless.
However, there's still issues. the front of her shirt is a bit odd. There were a lot of artifacts there, MOST of which I got rid of using photoshop. But I couldnt quite get it the way I wanted... there's a lot more to learn, you see. I did fix her forehead though.
Again, this took all day. I needed multiple tools including the mighty Photoshop itself, a long series of confusing tutorials, and so on... but I did it! I was tired of the entire bloody computer by the end of it.
With this, I've learned that this process... if I want to REALLY get results... takes a lot more work than I thought. But the more I learn, the more I can do with it, and the more creativity I can inject into it.
So, let's now get to some of the other wonky things I've made recently.
This one, again, took forever. A variety of things came out wrong and I had to learn even more stuff. Had to fix plenty of things on her face and so on. But I managed it! Eventually.
Let's see, what else...
This is actually a photo from my house. Sort of. Most of it really is my actual house. That open door there should lead to my father's office. But not in this image it doesnt. Instead, it now leads to... er... wherever that is. Took some doing, this one. Not as hard as the first ones, but still, not easy.
Here's something funny though:
So, this happened when I was trying to fill in that door. I... I'm not sure what went wrong here. Sometimes when one of these iterations goes bad, it's small bits of weirdness. But other times, it's a giant cursed mess. Out of curiosity I went on and pushed forward with that one, to see what'd happen. I aint gonna fill this topic up with random nonsense, but... boy did it get weird.
Next up: Dogs.
The first one is my grandma's dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Daisy. That one took a lot of work and a million messed up, cursed iterations. After quite awhile, I got something that looked exactly like her. This image actually had a purpose: We put it on canvas and gave it to my grandma for her birthday. Unfortunately, the dog is quite old and her health hasnt been doing so good... we know there's going to come a day when she's gone, so I wanted something special for grandma in honor of Daisy. So, line drawing of her face.
The second dog was an attempt at getting one that looked like one of my dogs, Dingle, a wheaten terrier. It looks MOSTLY like her... but it's kinda fuzzy. Again, lots of messed up things leading to that.
Next, whatever this horrid thing is:
It's October. That meant spooky stuff. I went through a variety of images in an attempt to get something inspired by old PSX horror games. Many of the results were... strange. This one was the best one, upgraded and touched up to get this result. For other variants of this, I tried to get it to look like an actual videogame screenshot, complete with a UI and everything. It did not like that idea. What cursed screenshots those were. I also tried to get it to do one like an NES game, but... hoboy does it not like that idea.
One more for now because it's late and I need to get out of this chair:
Nothing super special here. I wanted a sorta weird indoor image of a labyrinthine mansion with a red & green theme. There's actually a long series of these, which I guess are all part of the same place.
So, that's that for now. I'd show more but again, it's late, and I have to resize and convert the blasted things to get them into a state where the forum here will let me upload them.
Maybe tomorrow I'll show some of the wonky failures that were left on the cutting room floor.
I know there's this idea that with this type of thing you just feed the thing some words and BAM you get a masterpiece, but... no. No sir, that aint how it works. Unless of course you LIKE getting messed up results that really arent quite what you asked for.
Currently, I have access to three separate AIs: Midjourney (what I used to make the previous things), DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. Each works differently, is good/bad at different things, and so on.
But those arent enough, not if I want to REALLY make something. So, in comes Photoshop... which I'd never used until recently. That's bloody complicated and required a lot of tutorials and such to even get started to do what I wanted. But in the end, I could get MUCH better results... but also results that were what I wanted, rather than what the machine THOUGHT I wanted. There's little need to settle for the crude stuff when you can take control yourself.
First of all I want to show the biggest thing I made. Before that, here's the main image I'd made last time... the one that really stuck with me and took the most work to create (took about 3 hours of arguing with it to create this):
This was my favorite of all of them, and the one that the most effort went into. Basically, I wanted to have a character that was all my own... but I'd never tried something like that before. So, this new AI stuff was the perfect way to try it out for the first time.
Now, it *mostly* got the details... decently right. But, there were some artifacts of the process. Firstly, her forehead is all messed up... I couldnt figure out why. And second, what the heck is that bright puffball at the bottom? I dont know what that is... but it sure aint supposed to be there.
But on top of that, I wanted to take this further. I wanted to get an expanded image of her. What would a full-body image look like? What would I like the rest of her outfit to be? And I wanted a better background to it too. I already had an idea as to what sort of personality and such I wanted for her, so standing in the weird spooky void just super close to the "camera" wasnt doing it.
So... enter Photoshop. And way too much time learning some of the basics.
The final result was this:
I want to stress that this took all. Freaking. Day. A long, complicated, difficult process that involved numerous things.
Firstly, I needed to get her "expanded". For this, I brought her into DALL-E, which has that feature. And that means ARGUING with it. The thing is... weird. And not particularly bright. I went through about a bazillion wonky iterations of Sophie (which is her name) in a wild variety of screwy backdrops. At first it put out a series of images where her skirt was all stretched out to the sides for some reason, her hands were... not hands, and she had this weird white aura around her, while standing in a place that definitely wasnt quite what I was after. About a bazillion very specific alterations later, and I had her.
So, she needed a background. I wanted a library... but a just slightly surreal one. The result of that was actually the right half of that background. The LEFT half was an expansion of that, which went through many iterations of its own. You cant see the seam because she is standing right in front of it, but the seam is flawless.
However, there's still issues. the front of her shirt is a bit odd. There were a lot of artifacts there, MOST of which I got rid of using photoshop. But I couldnt quite get it the way I wanted... there's a lot more to learn, you see. I did fix her forehead though.
Again, this took all day. I needed multiple tools including the mighty Photoshop itself, a long series of confusing tutorials, and so on... but I did it! I was tired of the entire bloody computer by the end of it.
With this, I've learned that this process... if I want to REALLY get results... takes a lot more work than I thought. But the more I learn, the more I can do with it, and the more creativity I can inject into it.
So, let's now get to some of the other wonky things I've made recently.
This one, again, took forever. A variety of things came out wrong and I had to learn even more stuff. Had to fix plenty of things on her face and so on. But I managed it! Eventually.
Let's see, what else...
This is actually a photo from my house. Sort of. Most of it really is my actual house. That open door there should lead to my father's office. But not in this image it doesnt. Instead, it now leads to... er... wherever that is. Took some doing, this one. Not as hard as the first ones, but still, not easy.
Here's something funny though:
So, this happened when I was trying to fill in that door. I... I'm not sure what went wrong here. Sometimes when one of these iterations goes bad, it's small bits of weirdness. But other times, it's a giant cursed mess. Out of curiosity I went on and pushed forward with that one, to see what'd happen. I aint gonna fill this topic up with random nonsense, but... boy did it get weird.
Next up: Dogs.
The first one is my grandma's dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Daisy. That one took a lot of work and a million messed up, cursed iterations. After quite awhile, I got something that looked exactly like her. This image actually had a purpose: We put it on canvas and gave it to my grandma for her birthday. Unfortunately, the dog is quite old and her health hasnt been doing so good... we know there's going to come a day when she's gone, so I wanted something special for grandma in honor of Daisy. So, line drawing of her face.
The second dog was an attempt at getting one that looked like one of my dogs, Dingle, a wheaten terrier. It looks MOSTLY like her... but it's kinda fuzzy. Again, lots of messed up things leading to that.
Next, whatever this horrid thing is:
It's October. That meant spooky stuff. I went through a variety of images in an attempt to get something inspired by old PSX horror games. Many of the results were... strange. This one was the best one, upgraded and touched up to get this result. For other variants of this, I tried to get it to look like an actual videogame screenshot, complete with a UI and everything. It did not like that idea. What cursed screenshots those were. I also tried to get it to do one like an NES game, but... hoboy does it not like that idea.
One more for now because it's late and I need to get out of this chair:
Nothing super special here. I wanted a sorta weird indoor image of a labyrinthine mansion with a red & green theme. There's actually a long series of these, which I guess are all part of the same place.
So, that's that for now. I'd show more but again, it's late, and I have to resize and convert the blasted things to get them into a state where the forum here will let me upload them.
Maybe tomorrow I'll show some of the wonky failures that were left on the cutting room floor.
