i was wondering if you had any tips and tricks for creating characters on artbreeder. i have ocs that i’m dying to make but i can’t seem to figure out how to use the site. if you’re not comfortable with sharing that is alright!
Hi! thanks for getting in touch. Admittedly, they've changed a lot of the UI since my personal heyday on the site, but I'm sure I can offer some assistance!
So, first off, for someone new to the platform I would recommend starting by building off of another user's base product. So find a portrait that achieves some of what you're looking for in your OC (be it hair or skin or face shape similarities, whatever). Click the remix button to enter the editor. Here we are with my portrait of Margaery:
The most important trick I've found to creating nuanced portraits is in cultivating a robust gene library. This takes time, of course, but it is integral to the process! So, upper right hand corner is the add genes button. Click on that and another menu pops up. This menu allows you to browse recently created genes or look through your selection of favorites. As a long-time user, I have a few people I would recommend for their work creating genes. First is user zenozip. They helpfully have labeled everything they make with their username, so we can use the search function to find their genes.
Many users don't label their genes in this manner. Instead, you've got to search terms with your fingers crossed. Let's say you want something to increase contrast in your image. Well, you can try the term 'contrast,' or perhaps 'light' (as in lighting - I shorten terms to the simplest version because a text search will pick up more broad results that way) or maybe 'sharp.'
Once you find a gene you're interested in trying out, click to add it to your editor. I've selected the sad eyebrows gene for our example. It's helpful to get an idea of what a gene is doing to the elements in your portrait if you hope to make the best possible use of it. That means trying it out at slight increments as well as extreme ones, and seeing what happens in either direction of use:
Green on the bar (left image) is indicating positive values whereas that purpley shade indicates negative values. We can see a number of things have changed! For one, the obvious difference lies in the arch of the eyebrow. But the nose is more snubbish and shorter in the right image, her right mouth corner is more distinct. Her hair is also slightly wispier. However, the vast majority of the image remains the same as it was - this is something to keep your eye out for. Genes which focus on one feature or element and don't mess with the rest of your image are fantastic because you'll have to do less fine tuning in the long run. This gene is good at isolating it's major effects to the eyebrow ridge. But perhaps at some point you would want to make use of the effects it has on the nose, so it helps to keep an eye out for these sorts of things. I have plenty of genes in my catalogue I use more for their unintended or negative value effects than their stated purpose!
Making use of genes and having a handful you're confident in using will definitely improve your portraits. I also recommend saving often (the checkmark under her chin) because you can always build off what you've done so far. Also, if you're having trouble spotting the effects of a gene, try upping the chaos of the image (see below). This makes the effects of every change more (or less) extreme.
See? The thing I was saying about the hair is much more prominent now, right?
Another tip is to tag your images. As you build up more and more saved images, you're going to lose track of what you were doing. It also helps in that experiments can be pulled back up and resumed. I personally have a whole bunch of experiments with hairstyles and colors that I tag for so I can search my library of images and utilize them.
For example, I'll give Marg different hair. After resetting the image, I'm selecting to 'add parent' (at top). I call these blends.
Note my selection on the searchbar at the bottom. I'm going to try to make her hair more a pink shade, since that's easier with brunettes.
You can add several parents at a time. The factors you can mess with here are 'face' and 'style.' Face refers to the shape elements of the portrait, whereas style alters coloration and lighting. This is useful to play around with! If you made a portrait where the shapes of everything, the eyes, nose, hair, etc, were exactly as you wanted it, but you wanted to make a significant change in the color of the eyes perhaps, this is one method to doing that. For example, with Targaryen portraits, this is very helpful.
You can use this for makeup, too, or just lighting effects.
Anyways, I hope that's given you enough of a jumping off point! If you'd like to see more of the genes I'd recommend, there's a link to my Artbreeder account on my profile. From there, you can see the genes I've liked and try them out for yourself!
(note the setting on the search bar above) (also note the usernames seen here, specifically ivia_sedai, nikkio, and drconfused; I've used their genes frequently)
Good luck, and feel free to ask any clarifying questions you need!
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