Continuing on Midjourney themes, let’s talk cowgirls and American Indians. At least they know how US cowboys look – sort of.
Cowboy hats, boots, jeans (mostly), guns (modern cowboys. no revolvers in sight), gun belts, and topless in the desert – gotta work on that tan. Looks like the bottom left got thrown from her horse and has a bit of road rash going on. I did prompt for cowgirls, so I’m not sure about the block at the top left. He seems to need water.
Let’s inform Midjourney that we need revolvers, a Winchester, and horses to complete the vibe.
Wait, what? Is the woman on the lower left the missing centaur from the other day? And what’s with the low-riding woman in the middle right? I think the top left looks like a tattooed woman wearing a sheer top. Not sure.
Let’s see some gunfire.
Yep. These are authentic cowgirls, for sure. What else do they do in the Wild West – saloons, right?
Evidently, this place doesn’t have a no-shirts policy. I’m sure they’re barefoot as well. I asked for boots, but these girls rule the roost.
Let’s see if Midjourney allows drinking.
Maybe. Sort of. I did promise some Indians.
Midjourney seems to have a handle on the Indigenous American stereotype.
Can I get a cowgirl and a pirate in the same frame?
The answer is yes and no. To get two subjects you need to render one and in-paint the other. I didn’t feel like in-painting, so this is what I got. Only one image in the block has two people. I’m sussing them to be cowgirls rather than pirates. Some of these other models are just random people – neither cowgirl nor pirate. Let’s try again.
Ya, no. Fail. Let’s try some sumurais.
Nope. Not buying it. I see some Asian flair, but nah. Let’s try Ninjas instead. Everyone knows those tell-tale black ninja outfits.
Hmmm… I suppose not ‘everyone’. Geishas anyone?
Not horrible. Steampunk?
Man. Lightweight. Perhaps if we call out some specific gear…
Ya. Not feeling it. Any other stereotypes? How about a crystal ball soothsayer?
They seem to have the Gypsy thing down.
I end here. I’ve got dancers, church, angels, and demons. Let’s save them for tomorrow.
Thar be pirates. Midjourney 6.1 has better luck rendering pirates.
I find it very difficult to maintain composition. 5 of these images are mid shots whilst one is an obvious closeup. For those not in the know, Midjourney renders 4 images from each prompt. The images above were rendered from this prompt:
portrait, Realistic light and shadow, exquisite details,acrylic painting techniques, delicate faces, full body,In a magical movie, Girl pirate, wearing a pirate hat, short red hair, eye mask, waist belt sword, holding a long knife, standing in a fighting posture on the deck, with the sea of war behind her, Kodak Potra 400 with a Canon EOS R5
Notice that the individual elements requested aren’t in all of the renders. She’s not always wearing a hat; she does have red hair, but not always short; she doesn’t always have a knife or a sword; she’s missing an eye mask/patch. Attention to detail is pretty low. Notice, too, that not all look like camera shots. I like to one on the bottom left, but this looks more like a painting as an instruction notes.
In this set, I asked for a speech bubble that reads Arrr… for a post I’d written (on the letter R). On 3 of the 4 images, it included ‘Arrrr’ but not a speech bubble to be found. I ended up creating it and the text caption in PhotoShop. Generative image AI is getting better, but it’s still not ready for prime time. Notice that some are rendering as cartoons.
Some nice variations above. Notice below when it loses track of the period. This is common.
Top left, she’s (perhaps non-binary) topless; to the right, our pirate is a bit of a jester. Again, these are all supposed to be wide-angle shots, so not great.
The images above use the same prompt asking for a full-body view. Three are literal closeups.
Same prompt. Note that sexuality, nudity, violence, and other terms are flagged and not rendered. Also, notice that some of the images include nudity. This is a result of the training data. If I were to ask for, say, the pose on the lower right, the request would be denied. More on this later.
In the block above, I am trying to get the model to face the camera. I am asking for the hat and boots to be in the frame to try to force a full-body shot. The results speak for themselves. One wears a hat; two wear boots. Notice the shift of some images to black & white. This was not a request.
In the block above, I prompted for the pirate to brush her hair. What you see is what I got. Then I asked for tarot cards.
I got some…sort of. I didn’t know strip-tarot was actually a game.
Next, I wanted to see some duelling with swords. These are pirates after all.
This may not turn into the next action blockbuster. Fighting is against the terms and conditions, so I worked around the restrictions the best I could, the results of which you may see above.
Some pirates used guns, right?
Right? I asked for pistols. Close enough.
Since Midjourney wasn’t so keen on wide shots, I opted for some closeups.
This set came out pretty good. It even rendered some pirates in the background a tad out of focus as one might expect. This next set isn’t too shabby either.
And pirates use spyglasses, right?
Sure they do. There’s even a pirate flag of sorts on the lower right.
What happens when you ask for a dash of steampunk? I’m glad you asked.
Save for the bloke at the top right, I don’t suppose you’d have even noticed.
Almost to the end of the pirates. I’m not sure what happened here.
In the block above, Midjourney added a pirate partner and removed the ship. Notice again the nudity. If I ask for this, it will be denied. Moreover, regard this response.
To translate, this is saying that what I prompted was OK, but that the resulting image would violate community guidelines. Why can’t it take corrective actions before rendering? You tell me. Why it doesn’t block the above renders is beyond me – not that I care that they don’t.
This last one used the same prompt except I swapped out the camera and film instruction with the style of Banksy.
I don’t see his style at all, but I came across like Jaquie Sparrow. In the end, you never know quite what you’ll end up with. When you see awesome AI output, it may have taken dozens or hundreds of renders. This is what I wanted to share what might end up on the cutting room floor.
I thought I was going to go through pirates and cowboys, but this is getting long. if you like cowgirls, come back tomorrow. And, no, this is not where this channel is going, but the language of AI is an interest of mine. In a way, this illustrates the insufficiency of language.
I use generative AI often, perhaps daily. I spend most of my attention on textual application, but I use image generations, too—with less than spectacular results. Many of the cover images for the articles I post here are Dall-E renders. Typically, I feed it an article and ask for an apt image. As you can see, results vary and they are rarely stellar because I don’t want to spend time getting them right. Close enough for the government, as they say.
Midjourney produces much better results, but you need to tell it exactly what you want. I can’t simply upload a story and prompt it to figure it out. I’ve been playing with Midjourney for a few hours recently, and I decided to share my horror stories. Although it has rendered some awesome artwork, I want to focus on the other side of the spectrum. Some of this is not safe for work (NSFW), and some isn’t safe for reality more generally. I started with a pirate motif, moved to cowgirls, Samuris and Ninjas, Angels and Demons, and I’m not sure quite what else, but I ended up with Centaurs and Satyrs – or did I?
It seems that Midjourney (at least as of version 6.1) doesn’t know much about centaurs and satyrs, but what it does know is rather revealing. This was my first pass:
Notice, there’s not a centaur in sight, so I slowly trimmed my prompt down. I tried again. I wanted a female centaur, so I kept going.
So, not yet. It even slipped in a male’s face. Clearly, not vibing. Let’s continue.
Trimming a bit further, it seems to understand that centaurs have a connexion to horses. Unfortunately, it understands the classes of humans and horses, but it needs to merge them just so. Let’s keep going. This time, I only entered the word ‘centaur’. Can’t get any easier.
It seems I got an angel riding a horse or a woman riding a pegasus. You decide. A bull – a bit off the mark,. A woman riding a horse with either a horn or a big ear. And somewhat of a statue of a horse. Not great. And I wanted a ‘female centaur’, so let’s try this combination.
Yeah, not so much. I’m not sure what that woman holding bows in each hand is. There’s some type of unicorn or duocorn. I don’t know. Interesting, but off-topic. Another odd unicorn-horse thing. And a statue of a woman riding a horse.
Satyrs
Let’s try satyrs. Surely Midjourney’s just having an off day. On the upside, it seems to be more familiar with these goat hybrids, but not exactly.
What the hell was its training data? Let’s try again.
Not so much. We have a woman dancing with Baphomet or some such. Um, again?
We don’t seem to be going in the right direction. I’m not sure what’s happening. Forging ahead…
On the plus side, I’m starting to see goats.
There’s even a goat lady montage thing that’s cool in its own right, but not exactly what I ordered. Let’s get back to basic with a single-word prompt: Satyr.
Well, -ish. I forgot to prompt for a female satyr.
Ya, well. This is as good as we’re getting. Let’s call it a day, and see how the more humanoid creatures render.
Philosophics 