Provenance Creative – GenAI Experiments

A journey down the very uncanny valley.

Prompt: Kim Jong Un painted in a classical style, seated at the heart of his nations culture. Pretty sure the writing is bogus, and there are some spurious references to dragons in this clothing. Maybe he looks a little soft compared to the hard exterior he wants people to know him for.

Client

Provenance Creative – GenAI Experiments

Project

AI Image Generation Exploration

Location

Pōneke, Wellington

Year

2024

Role

Creative Director, Prompt Engineer

Agency

Provenance

Category

AI Image Generation

Contributors

Art Direction

Concept Creation

Creative Direction

Gen AI

I've been exploring generative AI tools for some time now, beginning with Midjourney. While initially curious about the capabilities of these tools, I've come to appreciate their value in the creative process.

Midjourney, known for its quality and responsiveness to prompts, has been one of the mainstays of AI art generation. Its continuous development, including the introduction of a dedicated platform, has significantly enhanced the user experience.

Despite advancements, AI still faces limitations. Issues such as anatomical inconsistencies, occasional incoherence, and misunderstandings of the real world persist. Nevertheless, the results can be inspiring and serve as catalysts for creative thought.

I regularly incorporate tools like Midjourney, Firefly, ChatGPT, Gemini, and CoPilot into my workflow. These AI assistants offer fresh perspectives and extend what my creativity. However, I remain uncertain about their practical applications in the real world.

A significant concern is the data used to train these models. From an ethical standpoint, I believe it’s essential to support human creators, including artists, illustrators, photographers, and writers. While AI can be a valuable tool, it ultimately requires real human input to infuse work with spirit, life, and soul.

I've included the prompts beneath each image, not including specification and filter details, alongside some questions I have...

Prompt: A male lion, leader of his pride, roaring at the sunset from a promontory of rock, last rays of sun cast a golden-red glow on the scene. The tool was a little light on giving the lion his full masculinity, but every other aspect of him looks beefy.

A sequinned troupe of go-go dancers are the pit crew for a formula one team. The formula one car is set in the same salmon-pink sequins. Not sure what the crew are doing, but they are go-go dancers I guess. Pretty sure this car would be non-competitive.

A black, glossy 1960s telephone sits in a bright red office. A taxi-dermied Ibis bird looks on, a skull sits on the desk in the background. Is that a real Ibis?

A wild scene. An Octane render of crazy Anime characters, bursting from a multicoloured wave. 8K. Some acid consumed there, Midjourney!

Twin boys from the same baseball team, 'P' on their caps. They are freckled and stare into camera. Maybe the freckles are a bit overdone? Too much sun?

A 'Where the Wild Things are' style image, Dark characters leaping, 3D render, dark, monochromatic, foreboding, hyper-real. Can see the references, good rendition of fur. Kinda creepy.

A 1960s Lincoln Towncar sits in a vast field of bright red flowers. Doors are open and flowers a spilling out of it. Clearly the doors are closed, thanks Midjourney...

A Kodakchrome photograph of a city scene, where a massive futuristic robot has invaded the streets, yet, people are apathetic to its presence. Good lighting and anatomical symmetry in the robot...not sure about the people however.

Prompt: C3PO doing a celebratory leap in a garden at sunset, premium portrait photography, well-lit, sharp-focus, high-quality, artistic, unique, award-winning photograph. Recognisably C3PO, but probably not passable to experts.

Prompt: King Charles celebrating his coronation by hosting a rave party. He is in his happy place, at the turntables. Love how his sausage fingers came out and assigned him a pink suit – very apt.

No items found.

Midjourney seems to be stuck in a netherworld. Neither real or made up. There is an uncanniness that is disturbing, and yet, it is trying to convince us the results are valid.

No items found.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are on holiday in a European city. The sun is out and they are dressed appropriately for the weather. Love the interpretation as heavy-set middle aged women here. Do those bum bags contain parachutes though?

Prompt: a hyper real, 3D rendered scene of an Anime nymph-like character, in a swirling almost underwater like scene, fantastical plants and forms. Trippy hairstyle rendered here, great colour palette.

Prompt: A Renaissance-esque portrait of Putin as he may see himself; an omnipotent leader, untouchable and almost saint-like. Love the render of the tunic and fur robe. Completes the theme there.

Prompt: A 1960s style kodachrome photograph of two highly unusual twins dressed in the same, but contrasting outfits.

Prompt: An anthropomorphic pig dressed as a court jester, renaissance style painting. Love the wry smile on the pigs face. Looks like a pig in muck.

Prompt: Two frigates are supported by a flotilla of other navy craft. Artistic photography. Well, yes, frigates, I understand that, and I guess as we're talking frigates with sails it needs to be a painting right?

Prompt: A black panther stalks its prey silently navigating a red forest. Brilliant! Couldn't set this up if you tried! And great depth of field here.

Prompt: A fish in a dish. Always fun to see what that throws up. It assumed I wanted it fried.

Prompt: An interstellar like scene of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the surface of Mars. There is redness to the light from the sun. Lots of detail here. Midjourney clearly has a US bias, although he flag and NASA logos are pretty messed up.

Prompt: An Arctic wolf snarling, close-up with its teeth bared. Great detail here, but would the snout really compress into those shapes?

Prompt: An anthropomorphic elk, dressed in the regalia of an English Lord, in the style of a renaissance painting. Great lighting, even with a bit of moisture on his nose, great details, but weird wee attachments to the shoulder drape.

Prompt: A harlequin clown sitting in a cape cod chair on a tropical beach. Well, not sure I've ever seen an upholstered cape cod chair, but you never know. Where's my clown's eyeballs Midjourney?

Prompt: A 3D render of a wild scene, rumpus-like character, multicoloured, wild, anime influence. Certainly trippy result, a bit of Dr Suess in there?

Prompt: An anthropomorphic toad, dressed as a biker, in the style of a portrait photograph. Love the render of the goggles around the eyes. Leather scarf though? Nice rim light.

Prompt: A painterly Mills & Boon style illustration of a pirate king and his love interest in an embrace set on a desert island. Great! Can go straight to cover art can't it? Wait? Do they only have one arm each?

No items found.

So I was wondering about application of Midjourney, and so I teased it out to, well take the mick (so to speak), and explore some interesting visual tropes.

No items found.

I fantasise about writing a Sci-Fi series, in this case a 'hexalogy'. Each would need to be 1200 pages to fit the bill.

Space operas such as these require a soaring imagination. GenAi can help along the way.

Midjourney is so on the mark when it comes to this style of artwork.

What if we re-imagined the classic action adventure novels?

Tongue firmly in cheek here. Rip roaring tales of course!

Romance novels. I've never read one, and there is definitely a formula to writing them. Maybe I could invent a new kind of narrative for these?

The story arcs are really obvious, but that's the point isn't it?

No items found.

Time will tell how useful GenAi becomes. Questions still need to be asked about the ethics and morality of how it gets used. Until then, I will continue seeking out real people to generate finished outputs for my work.