A journey into Midjourney (Part I)
Leaping and hurtling down the AI machine-learning art-generating rabbit hole.
Midjourney—and AI artwork broadly speaking—is the subject of much controversy and division, especially among the art world, where artists often see it as encroaching on true art, and as a potential threat to the livelihoods of artists. You can see why. The above image is the latest I’ve made using the software.
In the Midjourney Discord channel I simply typed /imagine portrait elf skull mask horns crown of flowers oil painting and got these two extraordinary, and extraordinarily different, images. This was using the latest v4 version of the software. Earlier in the day, I typed /imagine (which you need to type in order to craft image prompts) portrait elven pointy ears horns skull face crown of flowers oil painting into v3 of the software and came up with these:
…and…
They’re not quite as realistic, but I think I prefer them to the v4 renderings. But no matter how you spin it, these are quite lovely. I like these version of horned elves, so ancient they’re turning slowly into bone and thorn and flower. As a writer, generating these images feels inspirational. I want to write a story about these grim figures. How have creatures, presumably once beautiful, come to this decrepitude?
I have become so obsessed with these strange and haunting versions of elves that I made more a couple days later. I’m dreaming up some fantasy story to put them in—I’ve found that tinkering in Midjourney is a wonderful way to get inspiration and kickstart creativity. In many ways, it’s a leaping off point rather than a destination. You can see the full image below by clicking over to Instagram (where I’m posting lots of these images).
I made a series of Lord Of The Rings characters in the style of The Last Unicorn, because I would love dearly to see an animated limited series that uses that kind of vintage, 2D art and tells the story as close to Tolkien’s writing as possible (clicking through below will take you to a series of 10 different characters including Frodo, Aragorn and more).
I also tried to portray Galadriel as Cate Blanchett wearing elven plate armor, as a kind of rebuke to the version we got in The Rings Of Power. I think she’s stunning.
And just look at the detail in this portrait of a wrinkled old man:
Last night I came up with some of my favorite images so far in my week of obsessively tinkering with Midjourney.
A man standing on a rocky outcrop near a stormy sea gazing out at a dragon. But in this other version, the dragon becomes a magical gate—a portal to some other world.
This one I upscaled three times and it transformed it into a more abstract piece, almost like an oil painting. Often, further upscaling can have bad outcomes, warping faces or distorting images, but I like how this turned out. I like both these images for different reasons. And again, I want to write a story about these mysterious dragon gates.
There are infinite possibilities here. You can drastically change outcomes by using different keywords and prompts. You can use commands to change the resolution. By default these will come as a set of four squares, each with a different version of the image. My daughter came up with this one—the Queen of Hearts playing a red electric guitar. I love it.
And my son came up with this one simply by typing omori whitespace.
I love this one also! The symmetry of the third image; the boy whose hair is a tree, its roots growing down his neck.
You can change the default squares to vertical or horizontal rectangles and open up a whole new world of possibilities. Here are some wizards of the coast in vertical rectangles. The prompt for this one was an old weary man, tall and bony, wild white hair and gaunt cheeks, sour with sadness in his castle by the sea full body in the style of the Last Unicorn --ar 2:3
And here are some knights standing in an empty field in horizontal rectangles (—ar 3:2).
I’ve made so many of these, going back through them some feel like distant memories despite being just a few days old. Scrolling through them all is a challenge in and of itself! It’s addictive, but at least I’m getting my money’s worth with my $30/month subscription. You can check out Midjourney here.
And this is already too long of a post to show up in its entirety in your inboxes, so I’ll end here. I’ll have another with more thoughts on the threat this poses to artists—and the opportunity it also presents to creative types who want to utilize this technology as another tool in their kit. I’ll also share more of my favorite pieces here at diabolical and put together a beginner’s guide to Midjourney.
In the meantime, I’ve been posting these to my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I always appreciate the follows! Thanks for reading and subscribing my dearest droogies! Peace and love! Be sure to let me know what you think of these pieces and of AI artwork/generation as a medium/technology in the comments!