Imagining New Creatures

Been playing a lot more with Midjourney and refining my skills with writing prompts. Also, MidJourney released version 4, and while it’s not perfect, I think it makes better images.

Here are a few creature designs I’m making, based on Brian Froud’s work which I showcased in my recent post about Dark Crystal. For these guys, I went with very photorealistic looks. What do you think?

The names for my creatures (Ano, Zukongo, Fuzibo, and Lulazi) were all created using FantasyNameGenerators.com.

This next group of creatures are a bit bigger. I like how they seem like they would blend right in with their surroundings. It must be hard to spot them!

I also created some characters that were a bit larger. I haven’t named these guys yet, but they look very wise and knowledgeable. Perhaps they are minor wizards of the forest.

Speaking of wizards, here is another creation, the young female sorceress Niobe Depraysie. She is a character with a deep and dark feminine aesthetic.

Niobe Depraysie
The sorceress Niobe Depraysie

Niobe Depraysie was a mysterious and powerful sorceress who lived deep in the darkest parts of the forest. She was known for her incredible magical abilities, which she used to protect the forest and all of its inhabitants.

Niobe was a reclusive figure, preferring to keep to herself and only emerging from her hidden home when necessary. She lived in a secluded clearing, surrounded by towering trees and thick underbrush. Her home was a small hut, crafted from branches and leaves, which blended seamlessly into the surrounding forest.

Niobe was a true forest creature, with a deep connection to the natural world. She wore a dress made entirely of leaves, which rustled and swayed with the gentle breeze. She had a wild and untamed appearance, with long, flowing hair and piercing green eyes that seemed to glow with a magical light.

Despite her fearsome reputation, Niobe was kind and compassionate, and she used her magic to heal the sick and injured animals that she encountered in the forest. She was fiercely protective of the forest and all of its inhabitants, and she would stop at nothing to defend them from danger.

Despite her many abilities, Niobe was not immortal, and she eventually passed away. But her legacy lived on, as the animals of the forest told stories of the magical sorceress who had protected them and kept them safe. Even long after her death, the memory of Niobe Depraysie lived on, as a symbol of the power and beauty of the natural world.

Midjourney for Landscapes

It seems like everyone has heard of Midjourney by now. They make an amazing Discord bot that generates beautiful AI images from text prompts. And the images that it creates are stunning. You’re really only limited by your imagination, and because it’s all done in Discord chat groups, you can easily be inspired by others.

I decided to give Midjourney a quick try on something very simple: landscapes. I started with a prompt that just said:

desert landscape

and then I let the AI image bot do it’s thing. In about one minute, it had four choices for me.

Four possible desert landscapes created in a minute with AI (Midjourney)

Wow. Beautiful stuff! I decided to make higher resolution versions of all four of the options. I had to wait about another minute for each, but here’s how they all came out.

Desert Landscapes

These are all incredible images of a desert landscape and it only took the AI a few minutes to prepare high resolution versions of all four. I could print these out on canvases and hang them in my living room, they’re so beautiful.

I decided to try it out with a few other landscape themes, just for fun.

Jungle Landscapes

Lush and beautiful, don’t you think?

Mountain Landscapes

The thing is, these are all just really simple prompts. You can get much fancier with how you construct your prompts to get just about any style or look that you want. You can even write very specific prompts to create entire scenes. Half the fun is tinkering with your prompts and seeing the progress of the AI at work.

One example, here I decided to combine a desert landscape background with the image of a figure in the foreground. I wanted the figure to look a little bit like the actress Margot Robbie, but in an anime style. This was my prompt:

margot robbie anime standing in front of a desert landscape, hyper quality 

And this is what I got back from the AI.

A painting of an anime version of Margot Robbie standing in a desert landscape.

I could go on for hours and hours!