The Computer Wore Artist Shoes

I meant to share this a week or so back, but when I write a blog post in the Blogger itself, it doesn't save it until I connect to the internet (it's a whole thing), and my laptop hates me more than you do.

If you're a Patreon supporter of me (and if you ain't, HERE'S THE LINK yet again), you've already heard a bit about this (in my November Patreon address), but I've been experimenting with one of those A.I. art programs, such as this image of a "woman wearing a Guy Fawkes mask," which was my prompt:

People have speculated about how A.I. will destroy us all for decades, but it's really ramped up since you could just go on the internet and tell it to write you a paper, create you a painting, or arrange the death of your wife.

You see this, don't you?  Somehow, this woman is sitting on a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair, or possibly a two-headed Jabba, that happens to match the giant olives she's holding (not to mention her bikini).  Artists are strange.

Anyway, the time had come to put a cover to my novella "Bundling Made Easy," which is the third Lara Demming story I wrote, back in 2020.  It took me practically the whole summer and fall to get the audio done, and when it came time to create a cover for it, I had rediscovered one of those A.I. programs--oh wait, I just mentioned that in the above paragraph (this blog post has also taken weeks/months/year)--and I thought I'd see what it could do for me.

In the prompt box, I typed "blonde girl holding bouquet of blue mushrooms," and it created three images for me, including this one: 

I quite liked it, so I saved it, then changed "girl" to "teen," and this was the result:

This time, I added the word "glowing" before blue mushrooms, and it put a field of 'shrooms behind her . . . as well as too many fingers.

I noticed, by the way, that the girl kept having the same face, though you're seeing only a third of the images I was seeing.  I liked the one below, but she looks like an angelic eleven or twelve year old to me, and Lara Demming is sixteen in "Bundling Made Easy."

This time, I added a word to the prompt, so it said, "cute blonde girl holding bouquet of glowing blue mushrooms," and I liked it, but again, the girl's face is too young, and much too pretty.

This one was "cute blonde teenager holding bouquet of glowing blue mushrooms," and it was the best one yet, though my god, she'd somehow gotten even more beautiful than--  What the . . . she grew and extra hand!

So, I thought I would overcompensate a little, and typed "Ugly blonde teenager holding bouquet of glowing blue mushrooms," and the result was . . . well, I can't explain it.  

Elle Fanning and Gollum had a love child, apparently.  At least the face changed, I suppose.

One of the options was to make a Magic The Gathering card instead of the usual cover, so I tried that.  And I like it--again, the girl is too beautiful*, but that's a complaint you'll rarely get from me.

This next one seems to have her in some sort of futuristic/fantasy world leather outfit, which doesn't work for the story I'm telling, but would be great to see in a movie sometime.

More card art, and again, there's that face.

This one is excellent--still got a background full of mushrooms, for some reason--but it worked great for me, even though it's that same, angelic, perfect face.  Fun how the hairstyle changes, pretty much on its own, right?

So, I thought the problem was that the template I was using (or whatever you call the type of image) was too realistic, so I told it to be more like a painting.  It changed the face, now it's more like a specific art style, but the gal is wearing a mushroom as a hat, and, well, that's just weird.

On the one below, I decided to use my dad's word "homely" to describe the teen girl holding the shrooms.  

I don't hate it, but again, it looks too realistic--of all the images it's produced so far, this seems the most like a photograph to me of a real person.

So this time, I told it to make me a "cartoon teen blonde holding the blue mushrooms."  And it interpreted that pretty literally.

I went back to the original template-thing for this one, and thought it made Lara seem VERY young, like, twelve or so, but again, way too beautiful.  Her sister Emma was the beautiful one.  Her sister probably looked like this.

But not with so many fingers.

Finally, it was getting late, and I'd been doing this for a half hour or more, so I told it to do a "blonde teen student" holding shrooms, and I liked it better, since it appears to be in a room, and though she's in a European-type school uniform, I said, "This is it, this is my cover.  I'll just crop out all the mushrooms at the bottom and send it to Big."  

And that's what I did.  The trouble is, I hadn't noticed the arms--did you?

He sent me a message saying, "Uh, dude, that girl has three arms . . . and seven butts."  I didn't believe him--how had I missed that?

I had been tired, I guess, and desperate for a look I could live with.

And for some reason, I decided I liked what I liked, so I (rather-crappily) painted over the third arm, and told him to do his best.

And this was the result:

I'm happy with it, frankly.  It was a fun experiment, and I hope (some of) this was interesting to you, too.

*I've often heard theories/accusations that A.I. just takes existing images and artwork and pulls from it, so it makes me wonder if that girl's face is based on a real person or combination of real features.  At the same time, I have been curious what it would do with real people, so I asked it to do a Britney Stears one (I had her brandishing a spear against a giant spider, and it instead turned her into a giant spider), a Bruce Willis one, and one where I typed "Alexandra Daddario floating in outer space," which produced this: