BoM/TWS Message Forum

AI got bashed around a lot in the last active thread, and I know that AI art comes in for especially fierce attacks. But I do like playing around with it. This afternoon I gave a number of AI engines the same detailed prompt for a scene out of "Book of Masks." I thought I'd share the best five here.

Sadly, there were originally seven, but the two made with Flux LoRa the Explorer failed to download properly, and I closed the windows before I realized it.)

None of them are perfect of course, and these "best of five" were out of about thirty attempts. Perchance's AI generator, in particular, threw out a lot of garbage, but three were good enough to save.

Here's the prompt: Draw a teenage male of high school age. He is Caucasian with a dark tan and short, dirty-blonde hair. He is wearing a large red t-shirt, khaki shorts, and white socks and dirty-white sneakers. He is wearing a sloppy and battered white ball cap on his head. He is sitting on a concrete floor with an open book in his lap. The book is an old and battered grimoire with red leather covers. In his hand he is holding a theatrical mask (a mask of Thalia). The mask is glowing with an eerie blue light. The male is staring at the mask with an open mouth and wide eyes. The background is blurry but it looks like a storeroom of some kind with shelves of junk on them. The lighting is dim and eerie.

The results:



Perchance lets you make stuff in a lot of different styles. The one above is supposed to be "manga." If you're judging it by fidelity to the description and by lack of errors, it like all the others will fail. But there are a lot of authors who will tell you that the art on their book covers is atrocious and nothing at all like they what they imagine is inside the book. (Tolkien was particularly prone to denounce his book covers—those that didn't use art he himself provided—as "imbecilic.") So in the above image, the book's cover is deformed; the mask looks like a "grey alien"; I had to recolor part of his leg; and that foot ain't quite right. But I like the picture a lot, as it captures a definite mood and look for Will, and it has a fun vibe.





Perchance also has a "70s oil painting" style that is good for imitating the look of the covers of boys' pulp books from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which is a strong style that I like a lot. The first one again can't get the mask right, and I don't know how that book is holding position in his lap. But I like the positioning of his body (especially his feet), and again there's quite a lot of character in his face. The second one does a good job with the book's placement and also with his feet. I kept it not because it was otherwise good, but because that is a really wild interpretation of the mask. Also, check out his deformed right hand. Between that and the mask, there is some low-key body horror going on here, which isn't a wrong look for it.





Flux-Realism only has one mode, and I was really impressed with it. These are two yields out of two tries. The top one forgets to include the book, and that's a weird-ass mask. But I like the picture of Will. The bottom one adds some weird hair to the mask, but again is very good with Will.

Now all the people who hate AI can come in and kick the guts out of them.