Using Generative AI to Create Lunar Equestrian Dreams
Testing a whimsical astronaut-on-horse prompt, I dive into the imaginative side of Generative AI.
Funny enough, I'm still having a surplus of fun creating AI art. Between challenges and random ideas, it's been quite a year. I love reading articles and seeing what other creative minds come up with. Reading "This AI Tool Combines Stable Diffusion's Level of Control and Midjourney's Image Quality — It's Called Distillery," by Jim Clyde Monge, I was intrigued by some of his images and thought I'd give it a whirl with my own whimsical prompt.
# Moon horse.
Outlandish? Unoriginal? Perhaps, but whimsical enough for me to give it a go. Naturally, with my plethora of NightCafe credits burning a hole in my digital pocket, it seemed the perfect testing ground. My prompt was simple: "an image of an astronaut riding a horse on the moon." I normally have a few go-to modifiers that I find bring images to life, but for this experiment, I decided to stick with the original prompt.
The outlandish prompt, which I’m sure isn’t imaginative nor unique, was whimsical enough to give it a go. Of course, seeing I have a plethora of credits on NightCafe, it seemed best to try it out there. I used a simple prompt: ”an image of an astronaut riding a horse on the moon.” This doesn't include my normal modifiers that I find makes better images that are more interesting.
My rationale for excluding my modifiers was twofold. First off, I wanted to see if Stable Diffusion would get close to what Distillery's output was doing. Second, I wanted to allow the AI model more freedom in choice. The randomness of the algorithms can create some imaginative images. The prompt could be shortened further as you don’t need to tell Stable Diffusion to generate an image—you can just describe what you want. Of course, I still dabbled with different AI models to see what worked best with my lunar equestrian vision.
Moon horse. AI Generated image, 2023 by Steven Reid
The final image stole the show. It went beyond my bare-bones prompt, adding a sprinkle of magic without straying into the realm of extra limbs (thank goodness). The monochromatic palette resonated perfectly with the stark emptiness of space, and while the abundance of moons might raise an eyebrow or two about equine respiration, that's a conundrum for another day.