Why I am doing this

Ok, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am just another cyber snake oil salesman. I am just trying to sell you something that you don't need. I am just trying to make money off of you from some very basic knowledge that you can find on the internet for free. Well, trust me , I am not. I am a developer and know nothing about digital art. I recently got unemployed , that is the reason why I am doing this ---pursuing my dream as a digital artist.

I am not trying to sell you anything but use this website as as sort of note book to record my art journey as well as share some of the knowledge that I have learned along the way.

A risky decision

I heard a lot about AI is taking over the world and the long lasting debate about whether AI art can be considered as art. So it is extremely risky for me to pursue my dream as a digital artist. Especially now I am unemployed and got no income. Artists are not making a lot of money in the first place. So I am not sure if I can make a living out of it.

But it turns out that having the power of AI and my programming skill is a huge advantage. I can create art in a way that no one else can. And AI can be a great tool to learn as well as create.

Intro of Midjourney

The first AI tool I am going to use is called Midjourney. It is extreme powerful AI and can do tones of things. But for me , It is kind of mentor. It can help me to create art and learn at the same time. It is a very powerful tool. So I am going to share with you guys my journey with Midjourney as the first article of this website.

Ok, without further ado, let's get started.

Get everything ready

First, we need to get the environment ready. We need to install Discord, which is a great place to hangout. I got my own discord server, you can join it by clicking this link: https://discord.gg/sGKuucPu

So after you installed Discord, you need to join Midjourney's server. So basically, Midjourney does not have an APP, but it is a bot that you can add to your server or just join their server.

A quick way of doing it is to go to their website: https://midjourney.com

And Click Here:

Your Discord should automatically pop up and you can see that you have joined their discord server:

OK, Now you are ready to try out your art leg (or hand) Did I use it correctly? Sorry about the unnatural usage, English is not my mother tongue.

AI whisper time

Now is time for creating.

All you need to do is to enter the newbies channel and you can enter the prompt.(Like a whisper to AI, and all the magic happens)

Let's try this prompt.

/imagine an apple

Remember , you need to enter /imagine first. Or you are just saying this in the group chat. Like this guy:

Awkward

Only using slash will be recognized as a command.

And you may have a hard time find your image because the channel is too noisy and your image is easily flushed away. I will share how to use the Midjourney bot in your own channel or using DM in later tutorial.

Let's look at our 4 images.

Basically , right now you can to 3 things: upscale it, make variation of it ,and roll the dice and make another 4 images to choose from.

Midjourney is very smart so it can learn from your choice and make it's model better. So , the more you use, the better the image.

Say I love the third one. But it is a little bit boring, so I click U3 first to upscale it.

This is the upscaled version of apple.

And Click V3 as well, so I can see the variation as well as the bigger apple that I like.

Once I click the V3 , you can see a prompt like this:

I enter prompt like this:

an apple, less shadow--v 5.0 

Then you can see , a new set of 4 images :

To be fair, the 3 one does have some shadow at the right side. But The rest of the apples cast no shadow on the floor. Which is amazing!

So I choose the juicy first one to upscale it.

If you compare the second one with the original one. You will find amazing result coming just from natural language.

It is amazing tool to use as reference image for your drawing and creating process.

To wrap it up

Midjourney is a amazing tool that you can use to create and help you create digital art in just few lines of natural language. In the next article, I will share my understanding of the anatomy of prompt and how to fine tuning the image that you are generating.