Playing around with Midjourney

After seeing so many people playing around with Midjourney and other various AI Art generators, I finally decided to have a look at it myself. 😅

I was so out of the loop with all these things that I didn't even realise that Midjourney is a Discord bot: I assumed it was a program that everyone was using. I'm a bit dumb and was annoyed that it wanted me to join a Discord, then I realised that it was a Discord bot.

After playing around with the free trial for an hour or so... and despite not using the fanciest prompts or really even knowing what I was doing... I found myself obsessed and I very hastily bought a subscription so I could dive into it more thoroughly. xD

My first play-around, I was trying to get an image for the story I'm writing at the moment, which I've decided to call Beneath the Evergreen in context to the book in the story the main character is always thinking about. I could see other people creating amazing things, and I tried to copy their prompt process, but I don't think I was doing a very good job: either way, I liked what I ended up with, just that I'll probably try again now that I know the other commands I can use.

This was my very first prompt. And I think it turned out very nicely! Immediately, in my mind, I decided to never buy a book cover in my life ever again: I can just make my own! With the help of my little AI friend.

In part of my story writing, I invented this creature that roams the lands: the scalekit. It's a creature of feline grace with blazing fiery eyes and has a mass of writhing tendrils instead of fur, all of which spit a paralysing venom. I like what the AI came up, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get it quite how I wanted.

I thought these looked really cool, but it wasn't what I was after. As you can see in my screenshot, I had no idea about how to actually utilise prompts. xD

Still cool; still no idea what I'm doing.

Finally I actually did some research and learnt how I could better utilise my prompt wordage and how to better blend and combine my images.

Midjourney comes with an extensive guide, but I'm going to be honest: I'm a layman. I require things in easy to understand terms. I just need a list of all prompt things and what they do and I'm happy. I don't need a 1000 word page dedicated to "blend". Just tell me what to do in a succinct manner.

So I blended my strange cat creature with my fantasy people under the moon. And was very happy with what I saw!

And I kept playing with it until I got this. I think it's fantastic!! I very quickly love-hearted and saved it. It's a beautiful image.

It doesn't quite convey what I want it to, but I love it.

This morning I thought I'd try and create the feline-esque creature again, this time utilising better prompt knowledge.

I added a chaos modifier to it this time so that each image was a bit more varied and I grabbed #2, the fiery panther on the top right.

Then I blended it with some neon green leaves I formulated during my dabbles last night.

And finally this thing eventuated from my prompts and blending. I really like it! It has a feline grace, has blazing eyes, poisonous tendrils across its fur, and it's much closer to what I envisioned than simply a cat like it was repeatedly creating earlier.

These images are just the result of me playing around and seeing what I can do, and there are so many more possibilities. I'm looking forward to diving right into this bot and creating some masterpieces!

I still need to get a hang of the special prompts I can utilise, but I will. This is well worth the subscription cost! XD

I'm looking forward to sharing some more "proper" creations in the future. 😊

 

Until next time!! 😊✨‎‍🎨

 

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_{All images in this post are courtesy of me, @kaelci using Midjourney.}