I recently created a new website to show off some of the AI artwork I've created that I thought was neat. It's a basic gallery with a compilation of artwork from various applications and services. You can visit it here: KuJoe.art

Currently most of the content is from Midjourney's Discord bot and Stable Diffusion's app. I've just mostly been playing around with them and learning the art of prompt crafting but it's generated so many interesting results I decided to share them with the world in a simple little online gallery.

The thing I love most about this is I have ZERO artistic ability, I cannot draw a circle to save my life. I've tried learning but it just never worked out for me. It's not for a lack of trying, but I just don't have that part of my brain where I can take what I see in my head and put it on paper, it just doesn't work. I tried finding alternative methods of showing off my creative side and they rarely work out also. Being colorblind has been a huge obstacle for me also, but I finally have an outlet that I can utilize and create something I never could before. Not only can I create things and show them to others so they can see what I picture in my head, but I can create things for other projects that I've never been able to do because of the lack of art assets the project required. AI art opens up a new world of possibilities for me and I'm excited to explore them all.

Now I must include this paragraph before people get mad at me for using AI apps instead of hiring artists to do the work I cannot do. I want to be perfectly clear, I've tried. Like REALLY tried. I've hired many artists over the years and while a lot of them do great work, only a small few have been able to take the image in my head and make it real. Additionally, I've spent a long time trying to hire a person to create a profile picture for myself and all of the artists I've found whose art style fits what I want either ignored me or were not willing to work with me for various reasons. And funds were never the issue, ask any artist I've ever hired and I've always paid more than the agreed upon price, sometimes double the price for the few I really liked. AI is not a replacement for artists, it's just another tool available and both have their place in society. AI will not replace artists no matter what people might think.

Okay, rant/clarification over. Back to the AI art.

Here are a few of the images I created without any experience or special skills, and without spending a dime! (Click to visit gallery) Steampunk soldier standing realistic 4kFuturistic steampunk anime doctor 4kCyberpunk soldier realistic 4k

In addition to the amount of fun my friends and I have been having with creating AI art (we have 2 channels dedicated to it on our Discord), it's been a very eye-opening experience for me because there's so much potential I didn't even realize until I started working with it. I've made a lot of images that would work perfectly as assets for either a video game or a table-top RPG and one of my friends has been using it to create icons and character profile pictures for his MMO guildmates in another Discord.

Are you a DM for a table-top game and want something specific to give your campaign a little extra touch of detail to wow your players? How about make a fancy dungeon map? Dungeon_map_blueprint_4k

Maybe your adventurers find some good loot? floating_gold_necklace_with_glowing_red_amulet_realistic

Maybe they're about to meet a new and unique monster? fire_demon_surrounded_by_smoke

All 3 of these images I generated within 60 seconds with minimal effort, and I bet they would buy you some brownie points with your group if you handed them a unique picture when they hit that important milestone in the campaign.

So now you want to get started making AI art but don't know how to take that first step? Well you're in luck! My friend Addie has a whole YouTube channel dedicated to AI art creation and includes simple guides and plenty of information to get you up and running: analog_dreams

If you want to jump right into it, here's his Master Class on using MidJourney playlist: MidJourney Master Class

Looking for something completely free that you can probably run on your local PC? Check out Stable Diffusion: Stable Diffusion Guide

I plan to do more blogs about AI art, but mostly from a user perspective with things like thought experiments, philosophical ideas, AI in the real world, application reviews, and things like that. I do not plan on doing any tutorials or handling anything from a teaching perspective, follow Addie for that kind of info.

Hopefully this opened your eyes to some of the fun things you can do with this technology.

Go out and do good things! 👍
-KuJoe