Imagine gnomes taking over the world: Exploring AI Art.

Last week I got started with Midjourney, and oh my god, it’s amazing! It’s an AI art visualization tool that lets you imagine & visualize everything you can think of, by simply typing the words.

Gnomes taking over the world? Midjourney visualizes it. Two goats fighting over a piece of pizza? Can do. A holy teddybear? No problem either. You want them in a Van Gogh style or more like Rembrandt? It’s all possible.

Within a week I created (or well, I just type stuff) over 450 pieces of AI art.

Join me as I explore the amazing capabilities of this AI art visualization tool, its limitations, and the exciting opportunities it offers for creatives in their daily work.

Briefly, how does Midjourney work?

Midjourney is like an AI you can talk to. For example, you ask, ‘Imagine gnomes taking over the world,’ Within a minute, you get four visualizations of how this looks, according to Midjourney.

Below are a few examples of images that Midjourney generates.

Below each image, you can read what I asked the AI for.

A few examples of what Midjourney creations.

At the end of this blogpost more weird sneak peaks into my imagination.

My main tip get better Midjourney results: Don't be too specific.

That would be my main tip. Don’t be too specific. If you enter “Gnomes taking over the world,” that is generic. But “Goats fighting over a piece of pizza in the middle of a forest” is too specific. It’s too hard for Midjourney to do this.

‘Taking over the world’ can be anything. It’s almost like, you need to leave some room for the imagination of the AI.

However, you can be specific in how it should feel. Things like ‘Dreamlike,’ ‘Realistic,’ ‘Detailed,’ ‘Horror,’ ‘Scary’, and ‘Happy’ all help to get the mood you’re hoping to achieve.

Other than that no magic tips. Just play around. Retrying, adding, or leaving out a few keywords can do the trick to get better results. But don’t expect too much of it yet. Especially faces of both humans and animals will still look a bit broken.

Midjourney AI Art in the daily live of a creative

A few ideas you can use Midjourney for:

Album Covers: As I said earlier, Midjourney results can be a bit arty, but that is perfectly fine for album covers. Either use what you get right out of the box or as a source of inspiration that you tweak or recreate in your favorite design tool.

The starting point for a branding or design project. Designers often get the challenge of visualizing specific brand values. Enter those brand values and see what you get. You probably get some colors, in a particular style, with certain patterns and shapes. Great input for some creative explorations, whether it’s a post you have to make or a branding: it’s fantastic.

Cake design: I’ve seen people in the creative food industry use this tool as a creative starting point. Want a design direction for your next ‘A 3 layer golden wedding cake’? Go ahead, ask Midjourney.

Architecture: It’s great for visualizing buildings or houses. I’ve added an example of this at the end of this post.

Illustrations: Midjourney is excellent in combining two or more art styles. You can get creative by combining, say, 17th-century Rembrandt combined with 19th-century Picasso and Cubism.

Midjourney AI compared to other AI's

I did notice that Midjourney, compared to Dall-E 2, usually gives a very artistic outcome. It looks like Midjourney always applies some artist style, painted, digital art, watercolor, and so on, but never seems to end up in photorealistic results.