Frozen Suburbia

This week, we had a freeze here in Austin, which seems more common here in Central Texas. But also something we’re not equipped—on a variety of levels—to handle. Thankfully it didn’t effect my family and me much, but I feel for all those it did touch. I took a walk through my neighborhood yesterday, and it looks like an ice tornado came through. Beautiful, yes, but it is beauty built on destruction.

Here are some photos I captured.

Experiments with AI art workflows

Hello, journal. For the last few days, I’ve been playing around with taking AI-generated images from Midjourney and running them through a bit of workflow using Photoshop and Illustrator, resulting in a full vector image. The goal here is to be able to manipulate better what Midjourney creates.

My biggest hurdle at the moment is my lack of skill with Illustrator. I don’t know how to use it well, let alone optimize things. I can correct colors and simple shapes, but making the paths more efficient and more complicated tweaking is beyond me. Still, I think something is interesting here.

I’ve also tried hand tracing, which works much better. It’s a bit time-consuming, but it’s fun and engaging. The results are much better, as you might expect, but I’ve run up against barriers primarily because of my lack of knowledge of the tools. In this case, I’ve been using Figma because Illustrator feels difficult.

You can see some progress here, the Midjourney image on the right and my vector drawing in Figma on the left. I quite like how it’s shaping up.

I think there might be some workflow that uses a combination of these. Once I finish working on this current conversion, I think I’ll dive back into Midjourney. I think there is a lot I could do to work the prompts to get something cleaner, to begin with. Then I could use a combination of Image Trace in Illustrator and hand tweaks to get something nice. I might even start experimenting with Procreate to add some hand-drawn flourishes. We’ll see.

The Eldritch Arrival

The Eldritch Arrival

I’ve been playing around with vector art lately. Still getting my footing, as it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this, but I’m having fun.

Experiments with Midjourney

Good morning, Journal. Today I’ve got a lot on my mind, and even more on my to-do list, but I' wanted to share some of the work I’ve been doing with AI. Much of these are proof of concept pieces, as I learn the boundaries of Midjourney and explore some concepts. I’ve begun to sketch out a project that I think will be interesting and a great way to learn, but also touch on a few of my interests in an entertaining way. More on that in future.

I’ll just leave these here. For now.

The Teller

I spent some time this week playing around with Midjourney, working on a specific challenge to come up with pieces that felt like they fell into the uncanny valley—that off-putting feeling one feels when experiencing something just on the edge of being human. It was a fun way to explore style and prompting in ways I’d never thought about, and I came up with quite a few weird—and a few wonderfully creepy—results.

This one was my favorite. I call it “The Teller”, and it was an attempt to recreate a memory of seeing a 1960’s era animatronic display. I don’t remember exactly where I saw it; there are several places—Disney, some World War 2 era military museums—but I remember the feeling of seeing the display and being creeped out by it. I think it was the first time I’d heard the term “uncanny valley” and it’s stuck with me, even if the specifics of time or place have not. Memory is a strange thing, and I don’t fully trust my own, especially for things from a long, long time ago.

Echoes of Tomorrow

Echoes of Tomorrow - A gothic castle high in the mountains, done in a similar style to that of the American illustrator and architect Hugh Ferriss. The concept was imagined with Midjourney and refined in Procreate.

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I’m not what I’d describe as a visual artist, despite being a designer and having done quite a bit of graphic design and art—illustration, some drawing and painting, and a lot of photography—my whole life. I don’t draw all that well, and though I want to get better, it’s always been challenging and frustrating.

I’ve wanted to learn Procreate and have been playing with it lately. I’ve also been playing around with Midjourney—an AI art tool. I’ve become reasonably proficient with the prompting and have quite a few creations I think are good, but there is always something slightly off about them. So I’ve been exploring AI as an artistic helper, something that helps me capture a vision but also helps me learn the craft. I know many people are scared of AI, and many artists are rightfully against it, but I don’t think it’s going away, and for me, it’s helping me create things I never dreamed I’d be able to. As well it’s been a fantastic visualization tool, finally allowing me to transform my imagination into reality, something I can’t do all that well in my head.