Journeys in a Silicon Dream @silicondream - Tumblr Blog

I am, when life permits, a GM for tabletop games; I have a homebrew setting for D&D 5e in which I have run several games. And recently, I set out to try to use Midjourney to illustrate some of the locations in that setting.

In particular, Ennisbay and Dolindë, two of the most-often visited locations in the setting. Ennisbay is a port city built as much on the water as it is beside it; I've always described it as something akin to Venice, if the architecture incorporated influences of Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. It is also the headquarters of the Adventurer's Guild, and thus serves as a common starting place (or place to return to, for that matter).

So here we have Ennisbay, as rendered by Midjourney.

Honestly, that's far closer to what's always been in my head than I expected. Dolindë proved more difficult.

Dolindë is the "city of scholars", but it began as the crossroads of three trade routes: two caravan routes across the desert, and one barge route along the river that Dolindë was built next to.

However, a number of scholars soon realized that being at the nexus of multiple trade routes meant access to books and materials from all sorts of places. As the little cluster of scholars in this trade hub grew, so did the resources and references they amassed; over the course of several centuries, the library at Dolindë became the most comprehensive repository of knowledge in the known world. And now, people travel to Dolindë as much for scholarship as for mercantile goals... though it is still a huge trade hub.

Needless to say, when adventurers need to get answers to something, Dolindë may not be conveniently located, but it is often where they go nonetheless.

Dolindë's architecture tends towards rounded shapes, to (somewhat) lessen the wear-and-tear of the occasionally sand-heavy dry wind (a'la the real-world sirocco). However, it is also a city that tends towards color where possible; the desert is so monochromatic, the city itself strives to provide some relief from that.

Getting Midjourney to spit out art that resembled Dolindë took a lot longer than for Ennisbay, and in the end I only ever got a couple of images that felt right; I will likely keep trying. But still...

As an added bonus, I did manage to get a spot-on image of a particular caravansarai on the route between Dolindë and the coastal port most accessible to ships from Ennisbay.

(The tower within the caravansarai is an alchemical engine attached to an underground spring. It uses an alchemical reaction to create negative pressure, drawing the water up and into a holding tank at the top of the tower; gravity then works to bring the water down as-needed for guests and their animals.)

I think I will continue to work on getting good illustrations of the locations out of Midjourney, and then I can make an illustrated player's guide to the setting for future campaigns...

#computer generated art #midjourney #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons

silicondream

Final Fantasy, as conceived by an AI

So while playing with Midjourney, an interesting image of a giant crystalline-blade-like tower with a chip out of it came up, and a friend and I quipped we'd love to see what the story behind that was.

Then we got to thinking.

This led to getting a text-generating AI (GPT-3) to write a summary of a nonexistent Final Fantasy game, and then trying to get an image-generating AI (Midjourney) to create concept art for it.

So, here we go.

For eons, the world of Eobenica has been protected by the light of the Silver Sanctuary's Worldcrystal and the Essences it allows Spiritcallers to summon. The Spiritcallers have long held the Golwildom Empire and their magitek forces at bay, but when the Worldcrystal is damaged in an Imperial attack, the Spiritcallers must find a new source of power to save Eobenica. They journey to the lost city of Ivaldia, where they discover the Worldcrystal's dark twin: the Shadowcrystal. With the Shadowcrystal's power, they are able to drive the Empire back, but at what cost?

The dark power of the Shadowcrystal corrupts the Spiritcallers, turning them into monsters known as the Shadowspawn. The Empire takes advantage of this and launches a full-scale assault on Eobenica. The player must take control of a party of adventurers to stop the Empire and save the world from the Shadowspawn's corruption.

The adventuring party is made up of a diverse cast of characters, including:

A young man named Daryus, who is the last of the Spiritcallers and must come to terms with his new power.

A street urchin named Nym, who joins the party in hopes of finding a way to get revenge on the Empire.

An exiled knight named Sirra, who is seeking redemption for her past mistakes.

An enigmatic thief named Rixen, who has his own reasons for taking on the Empire.

silicondream

A few more bits of GAN-generated artwork...

Our brave adventuring party needs some artwork, of course.

And it's always good to have a few supporting cast members.

And of course, we need our Shadowspawn.

Not everything is 100% clear what it is, as usual with computer-generated artwork. Presumably this is a fight of some sort:

(...is that Amon's hat?)

Midjourney definitely made a valiant effort to emulate Amano's style, though.

silicondream

So, revisiting the world of Eobenica now that Midjourney's algorithms have improved, let's see what our cast look like now. Suffice to say, the artwork is considerably better; the characters are now very definitely recognizable individuals. (And, y'know, have human faces.)

First, of course, we have Daryus, our poor Spiritcaller trying hard not to fall and become a Shadowspawn:

Then we've got Sirra, our disgraced knight seeking her redemption:

And Nym, our bitter and vengeful street rat:

And of course, Rixen, our enigmatic thief:

Now, Midjourney still can't spell/write worth spit, but with appropriate guidance it came up with a pretty solid logo concept:

And, of course, the ruins of Ivaldia, where the Shadowcrystal is buried.

And also the Worldcrystal itself:

Of course, some of this improvement is that I am a great deal more practiced at crafting things in a way that Midjourney can understand them than I was previously... but some of it is also that Midjourney's algorithm has gotten worlds better.

Sometimes literally.

#computer generated art #final fantasy #imaginary video games

star-across-the-universe

My good friend Packetdancer used Midjourney to made me this wonderful set of portraits of my OC Lowan Pipeleaf and the expressions are so good ;D

Please look at my dumbass son and view his impish smiles

Lowan is an incorrigible artist/dockworker turned dinosaur-wrangling adventurer and is sometimes a hobbit (and occasionally an alien octopus).

silicondream

Did some artwork for a friend. Midjourney's algorithm is definitely improving!

silicondream

Final Fantasy, as conceived by an AI

So while playing with Midjourney, an interesting image of a giant crystalline-blade-like tower with a chip out of it came up, and a friend and I quipped we'd love to see what the story behind that was.

Then we got to thinking.

This led to getting a text-generating AI (GPT-3) to write a summary of a nonexistent Final Fantasy game, and then trying to get an image-generating AI (Midjourney) to create concept art for it.

So, here we go.

For eons, the world of Eobenica has been protected by the light of the Silver Sanctuary's Worldcrystal and the Essences it allows Spiritcallers to summon. The Spiritcallers have long held the Golwildom Empire and their magitek forces at bay, but when the Worldcrystal is damaged in an Imperial attack, the Spiritcallers must find a new source of power to save Eobenica. They journey to the lost city of Ivaldia, where they discover the Worldcrystal's dark twin: the Shadowcrystal. With the Shadowcrystal's power, they are able to drive the Empire back, but at what cost?

The dark power of the Shadowcrystal corrupts the Spiritcallers, turning them into monsters known as the Shadowspawn. The Empire takes advantage of this and launches a full-scale assault on Eobenica. The player must take control of a party of adventurers to stop the Empire and save the world from the Shadowspawn's corruption.

The adventuring party is made up of a diverse cast of characters, including:

A young man named Daryus, who is the last of the Spiritcallers and must come to terms with his new power.

A street urchin named Nym, who joins the party in hopes of finding a way to get revenge on the Empire.

An exiled knight named Sirra, who is seeking redemption for her past mistakes.

An enigmatic thief named Rixen, who has his own reasons for taking on the Empire.

silicondream

A few more bits of GAN-generated artwork...

Our brave adventuring party needs some artwork, of course.

And it's always good to have a few supporting cast members.

And of course, we need our Shadowspawn.

Not everything is 100% clear what it is, as usual with computer-generated artwork. Presumably this is a fight of some sort:

(...is that Amon's hat?)

Midjourney definitely made a valiant effort to emulate Amano's style, though.

#final fantasy #computer generated artwork #ridiculous shenanigans

Final Fantasy, as conceived by an AI

So while playing with Midjourney, an interesting image of a giant crystalline-blade-like tower with a chip out of it came up, and a friend and I quipped we'd love to see what the story behind that was.

Then we got to thinking.

This led to getting a text-generating AI (GPT-3) to write a summary of a nonexistent Final Fantasy game, and then trying to get an image-generating AI (Midjourney) to create concept art for it.

So, here we go.

For eons, the world of Eobenica has been protected by the light of the Silver Sanctuary's Worldcrystal and the Essences it allows Spiritcallers to summon. The Spiritcallers have long held the Golwildom Empire and their magitek forces at bay, but when the Worldcrystal is damaged in an Imperial attack, the Spiritcallers must find a new source of power to save Eobenica. They journey to the lost city of Ivaldia, where they discover the Worldcrystal's dark twin: the Shadowcrystal. With the Shadowcrystal's power, they are able to drive the Empire back, but at what cost?

The dark power of the Shadowcrystal corrupts the Spiritcallers, turning them into monsters known as the Shadowspawn. The Empire takes advantage of this and launches a full-scale assault on Eobenica. The player must take control of a party of adventurers to stop the Empire and save the world from the Shadowspawn's corruption.

The adventuring party is made up of a diverse cast of characters, including:

A young man named Daryus, who is the last of the Spiritcallers and must come to terms with his new power.

A street urchin named Nym, who joins the party in hopes of finding a way to get revenge on the Empire.

An exiled knight named Sirra, who is seeking redemption for her past mistakes.

An enigmatic thief named Rixen, who has his own reasons for taking on the Empire.

#final fantasy #computer generated art #dumb experiments

Visions of the Future

So, I haven't touched this blog in ages, but I've been deep in the guts of Midjourney recently, and this seemed an appropriate place to put some of the results.

Unlike Artbreeder, which has very specific generators and sliders to tweak, Midjourney takes text prompts -- albeit with some optional special markup and weighting -- and then tries to generate images from there. It's as much an art as it is a science to get a good seed and begin making generations of variations until you get one you like, but when you hit on a good line the results can be amazing.

In this case, I was trying to convince it to visualize some futuristic cities with an environmental or solarpunk vibe to them. I rather like some of the results!

#midjourney #landscape #computer generated artwork #solarpunk