Artflow.ai

[telophase]

I ran across this AI art-generating site that you can use to create avatars. You drop in a description of what you want, like "Young gandalf," "WWII tank commander," or something longer like "He had short brown hair, a small moustache and a fancy suit. Yet he clearly a slimeball, his gold tooth giving away his lack of class." (All of those grabbed off the front page right now.) It uses those descriptions to generate a headshot of a character.

I suspect it also uses the VQGAN+CLIP thing that I've messed with before, because I noticed that it also works if you add "unreal engine" or "trending on artstation" and I decided to test it out. I used "warhammer 40k space marine" as the base for all of them, because they're on my mind for Reasons (not that exciting--related to an RPG oneshot I'll be playing this weekend).

First up, we have "warhammer 40k space marine unreal engine."




Not terrible. Your basic fireplug of a white man, a standard video game type. A bit of a hint of scifi with that one eye going on. Dramatic lighting, but flat black background.


Next, I tried "warhammer 40k space marine trending on artstation."




Oh yeah, this is seriously working out--we've got a much better painted portrait, still the basic fireplug-white-man model that is very Warhammer, and we've got hints of a dress uniform. Beautiful soft lighting, and a nice portrait-style background.


Finally...I tried Deviantart. "warhammer 40k space marine deviantart."




Holy shit I LOLed because NAILED IT! Proportions slightly off, colors flat, earnest attempts at shading using dodge/burn. I REMEMBER THE DAYS I PAINTED LIKE THIS. Honestly, I was expecting an anime version, but I'll take this!


What do you think I should drop in next?

edit: Thanks to myrialux, the next thing I dropped in was "warhammer 40k space marine rob liefeld"




Honestly? It's got that right amount of not-as-good-at-art-as-he-thinks even though it didn't get the comic book style. His head is simultaneously dead straight and yet slightly turned, producing an unsettling effect. I'll call it as "Nailed it!"

Comments

THIS IS THE ICON

[yhlee]

EXCELLENT.

Re: THIS IS THE ICON

[telophase]

XD

[movingfinger]

Someone has asked for "Geralt of Rivia painted by norman rockwell" LOLOLOLOL

[telophase]

HAHAHA How did it look? I'm seeing "Steve Buscemi as a young boy" that looks like it might be accurate.

I'm saving these on my only-used-for-retweeting-corporate-stuff Twitter account (chatproblem)--the links back to Artflow just go to the home page, but the image itself gets tweeted, if you want to see the Steve Buscemi (and some of my other space marines).

[movingfinger]

Someone's on a roll, now I'm looking at "Snoop Dogg in the style of Titian" and it... really works, like Snoop Dogg should use this. SnoopaDogg Mundi.

"Geralt of Rivia painted by normal rockwell" is a bit too rough on the brushwork, looks impressionistic. It's possible the AI doesn't have a lot of Rockwell reference.

[telophase]

re: Snoop Dog--cool!

[rachelmanija]

I tried to get an avatar of myself by requesting a middle-aged white woman with glasses and rainbow hair.

https://artflow.ai/img?i=aea9a1d561304907b9486ce37abe28e5 via artflow_ai

[telophase]

Their links don't work right now, alas. But if you tweet it, the image shows up on Twitter.

[rachelmanija]

https://twitter.com/Rachelphoenix/status/1448363680781852673

[telophase]

A dead ringer!

I asked for a Space Marine that was also a Disney Princess and got...Sailor Moon?
https://twitter.com/chatproblem/status/1448361463534419971

(that's my throwaway Twitter for corporate retweets)

[dhampyresa]

This is really cool and frighteningly accurate.

[telophase]

I know!!