i have been playing with this program called mid journey it's an ai that generates art
through word prompts it's currently an open beta and i have a few hours in it already
and it's pretty shocking you throw in some words of whatever you want the ai to imagine
and then give it a minute to work and it spits out some thumbnails and it's really impressive
what it generates then with those thumbnails you can either work from there upscaling or
making it generate more versions until you get something good this tech has got me
really excited and of course the question i ask myself is how can i use this for mini painting
hey guys jay here welcome to eons of battle this ai art is pretty phenomenal it uses text to image
synthesis which converts language text into realistic images and it's pretty good the
way to think about it is that you're asking the program what do you think this looks like here
is what the ai thought a small goblin wearing a chinese takeout bag very realistic looked like
he's pretty cute here's what the ai thought a monster with huge teeth very detailed desolate
background looked like and yeah it got it exactly right and here is what the ai came up with for the
prompt goo fawn bird a really strange collection of words but it came up with something really
nice it's not perfect but it's pretty amazing that in just a few seconds you can go from a
nugget of an idea in your head to looking at a fully realized image on your computer
and i think this could be a valuable tool for coming up with color schemes on miniatures
picking color schemes is a really hard thing to do how do you pick what color that you're going
to be using on your minis from now on i always do it right off the top of my head and sometimes
that works out great but sometimes not it worked out really well for these tao stealth suits
the bright red and bright green contrast really nicely off of each other but on these jeans dealer
cultists with dark blue cold purple dark red and gray all these mid tone colors make for a model
that has poor readability on these tempestacions the high contrast colors with light blue and
light red really makes them feel grim dark while still being really readable but a similar style
is let down by color choice on these sister's novitiates their bright saturated colors doesn't
really match the sculpt and kind of makes these grim dark ecclesiarchal soldiers look like toys
so colors are hard and the ai seems pretty good at picking colors that work well together and
make for a cohesive piece and that is just what i need because i have an army that needs coloring
i have been collecting this grenade army for about three years now and my idea was that i would buy
and build everything and then paint it all at once i want the army to be completely cohesive
with a really unique paint scheme compared to my other armies with those collections i painted
them as i got them and everything looks a little different i want these figures to be perfect the
paint scheme idea i had in my head was to just do a little better job of the games workshop box art
silver white and red but maybe there's a better more interesting idea out there and maybe the
ai can help me think of it in addition to my granite test model i also want to try a piece
that is truly random where the ai comes up with something and i just do it sit down and try and
replicate it the only problem with that idea is that if i'm the one giving the text prompt
it won't be truly random so i'm going to get nick in here to generate an image so i have absolutely
no control over it i would like to introduce you to the mid journey box awesome this is the ai
that will generate whatever we want okay so i want a knight from the future i want it in the style of
digit digital art a glowing sword because of their power weapons actually they're force weapons and
i want it in 16 by nine boom it takes like a couple of minutes yeah yeah and as you see those
powdery powdery images are what it thinks those things are oh my gosh okay yeah we're going yeah
and so it slowly refreshes and it gets better and better and it's impossible not to stop staring at
it and right looking at it 95. it's getting close all right all right let's take a look at these
oh my goodness i'm incredibly torn between this one yeah and this one that one's so cool yeah
i mean you have more colors to choose from if you go with the one on the bottom well what i can do
i like this one yeah but i don't know if i love everything about it
so i can this is one two three four i can tell it to give me more versions of four okay here we go
oh there we go now we're talking okay damn all right
this this one i like a lot yeah i like this one a lot too i think i would go with that
i'm gonna say this one and now we can upscale it and it'll kind of finish it off and add in
even more details so i want to upscale option one and when it upscales it just
makes the image larger and then it adds in more details as it thinks of them
like texture it did to it oh it added a lot of texture and it's gorgeous i could i could i could
break that i could gray knight that all right why don't why don't you give it a shot so you have to
type slash imagine imagine goblin wing a lay's potato chip bag hey horse photo realistic oh boy
i have no earthly idea i have no idea either i bet it's very different from what i generated
oh god oh my gosh i'm scared i am too oh my god oh my god
it looks like a wonton well that's the winner right there easily oh my god it made a potato chip
bag it did it did it made a potato chip bag i didn't know what laze was yeah oh
it's kind of cute it's a very nice horse and you know what that is a very nice chip bag goblin
it is all right well those are our two images you watched us do it
and that generated us a punky sci-fi night and a wonton riding a horse a friendly little horse
all right i have my ai inspired artwork so let's see what happens looking at this image
i see really dramatic lighting with a speckly dotty abstract style on the body of the figure
with a really smooth vertical blends on a sword that stand out against the craziness of the rest
of the model so bright light blues and bright reds that's what i have to try and replicate
i kept the base simple just a little super glue and then i sprinkled on a few grains of sand and
attached my gray night i primed the model black a lot of this model will be very dark so i want
to work up from a black base then i did a xenothe highlight of white paint only from
the top left of the mini so the head and left shoulder took the brunt of this white paint
now the lighting was good but i want to apply a little texture so i put some white paint on
my palette and picked it up with a really ratty brush then i stippled and dry brushed this all
over the mini in random patterns it looks a little crazy now but in the end it'll add a nice effect
this is a process called undercoating instead of just priming it maybe doing a xenothon and then
working on my base coats i'm actually using white and black to create textures and highlights that
i want to carry through to the end product it'll probably be a little subtle but it's really nice
to have it there to work off of now time for some color i worked so hard on the undercoat i want to
apply transparent paint over top so i don't just cover it up artist inks are a great tool for this
if you look at the backs of the bottles they tell you how opaque or transparent they are and they
get even more transparent when applied through the airbrush you can just spray less and get even
more see-through layers i put some light blue in my airbrush and sprayed this over the bright
white xenothol then i put some dark blue ink and sprayed this over the rest of the night and then
some red i sprayed this over the base and over the gray night's text that is etched into the armor
and he's already looking a little bit like the ai artwork the color scheme was inspired by
i set up my palette with red yellow blue purple and light blue a very cold palette then i took
that dark purple and began shading all the darkest areas of the armor then i took the blue and glazed
that where my light blue ink and dark blue ink met i put red over all the text of the armor this
is the brightest red i own but it took a lot of coats to get it anywhere near as saturated
as the original image i have quite a few hours playing with the ai arts and it's pretty darn cool
i really like digital painting i've done quite a bit of it and what was kind of weirding me
out the first time i was playing with it is it can create way better stuff than i can ever draw
but after doing a whole bunch of research watching a lot of videos reading a lot of articles
it was kind of nice to see that everybody was actually kind of digging on it and there weren't
a lot of doomsday sayers saying that this is going to destroy arts or that all artists are now going
to be out of a job because it's really just a tool it's going to speed up the process of making
digital paintings and it's going to get rid of a lot of busy work i am really really digging it
and i think it's going to be really cool to see how i can use it to miniature paints
obviously it doesn't have a ton of like direct applications but i mean presumably one day
there will be an ai for sculpture and so you'll be able to throw some keywords
into some sort of a sculpting ai barbarian sword in the left hand acts in the right hand standing
on a tactical rock and it'll be able to make something and that will be really really cool
the final touches for this fellow was doing lots and lots and lots of dots
i made small dots of very light blue and white all over the mini this is what i saw when i
looked at the ai image and it looks really nice on the model it kind of looks like many dings
and scratches reflecting the dramatic lighting that's being cast on the model and it makes
for a subtle more interesting outline to the armor pieces than just a typical edge highlight
on the sword i switched up the painting style and globbed on a big coat of wet white paint and then
some streaks of blue paint and then i wet blended them together by making long dragging strokes
it's always interesting painting with a reference and this is a reference that i kind of made i mean
the ai did all the work but when i was making the ai make the image i had an idea in my head and now
the ai has created an image that i'm looking at now and whenever you're working with reference
material which you should if you want to grow and get better as an artist it's always a good idea
to not use minis as reference i mean sometimes you can and you should but if you are not using
a miniature as reference you have to make a lot more decisions and extrapolations based on what
you're looking at in the image i see leather and i see light interacting with that leather
how can i use my paint medium to recreate that or how do i want to recreate the look that i'm seeing
and interpreting in my own mind and how do i recreate that on the miniature i was nearing the
end of this gray night with the ai paint scheme and i painted the rim of the base black this was
really really interesting if i sat down to paint up test models for my gray nights yesterday i
would not have painted it like this but it turned out really good the sort of abstract stippling
and highlighting highlights the shapes and pose really well instead of the model getting bogged
down in all its details and changing up the style from stippling to blending for the nemesis force
halberd really makes it stand out even though it's all the same colors that are already on the model
this worked out great as a test i am pretty satisfied the prompt was knight future digital
art glowing sword and this is exactly that i feel like the scheme even though it's simple
and it doesn't have the free handing decals and metallics that you'd imagine from the gray nights
i feel like this might actually be a better representation of the mysterious grey knights
a secret organization of psychic soldiers who protect the universe from demons without anybody
even knowing they exist i think i might do another test model and try to introduce another color
maybe hot pink for the swords and eyes but i think i have my scheme
now it's time to work on nick's prompt alright well it is time to paint
the fried want on a horse boy i cannot wait to see what happens what i see when i look at this image
is much more photorealistic than the last one it has bright colors and is very evenly lit like
the subject is being lit by the sun it has some abstract elements but i think that's more down
to the imperfections the ai than the actual piece being abstract i have the perfect mini to try and
replicate this art a little gobble on a squig i glued them down to the base and then poured
on more glue and sprinkled some sand to blend the little mushroom detail into the base then i primed
the mini black but i decided to go a different route than on the night i put white paint on my
palette loaded up the brush and then dragged the bristles over the model laying down thick
streaks of white paint and you know what else has thick streaks that's right our patreon over there
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videos where we critique viewer models and weekly discord hangouts we also have merch link in the
description i covered about 95 of the model with this highlight leaving only the deepest recesses
black this is also undercoating just like i did on the last model that reference material the ai
generated image had really dramatic lighting and so i replicated that with the airbrush xenothal
this model this reference has very even lighting and so and it has a sort of a painterly texture
to it and so i've tried to replicate that with dry brushing there are lots and lots of different ways
to do undercoating and all of them yield slightly different results and so it's fun to play with
all of them and see the different results that you can get i loaded up my palette with a tan
a yellow a green some red black and brown i mixed the red and green together to make a brownish
grayish color and then i watered it down a lot and i used it to do some shading on the goblin's robes
i wanted a brown without a lot of warmth so this will change the black into a nice brown then i put
an orange wash over the robes to change the white dry brushing into light orange so that there was
no white showing through then i mixed together the light tan white and yellow and thin it down with
water and glaze this over the raised areas of the rope to try and pull off that potato chip color
next i stippled on some tan paint mixed with white making lots and lots of small dots which will add
up to that chip texture that i'm going for then some more stippling of pure white to get that
golden brown contrast from bright orange in the recesses all the way up to that shiny salt white
now for the face the ai image gave the bag dark beige goblin ears so on this gabo i glazed beige
over his face hands and feet then i glazed brown over his skin to darken it and then a final
highlight of the original beige color applying less paint than before so all my other layers
are still present i don't know if i achieved the crispiness of the reference material but i
think i've gotten pretty darn close to the correct colors yellow is a really hard color to replicate
light colors in general tend to be really really hard to paint with
light color paint tends to have white in it and so that means that it covers really really well which
means it's really hard to glaze with because the you have to thin it down a lot further
before it becomes as transparent as a darker color like a blue or a red on his trusty steed i glazed
a reddish brown over the whole body the wateriness of the paint made sure that the white dry brushing
showed through then i did a second coat of brown mixed with black and then a glazing of pure
black on the belly and back of the squig in the reference the horse has a slight blue reflection
in its fur so i added some blue to the black and glazed this over the shoulders of the swig
then for his one big eye i painted a big dot of black leaving the white showing around the bottom
then a little bit of blue on the bottom half and then a dot of white in the top half of the eyeball
the horse's teeth are not visible in the ai image so i chose to replicate the slightly
yellowed parchment background and put this color over the teeth on the squig
then on the base i stippled with a small dry brush alternating between green blue and yellow
to replicate that small patch of prairie the horse and his chip are sitting in and i blended it out
using that parchment colored paint now to finish it off with a few special effects a couple of
small green grass tufts here and there and then i brushed on a little wood glue and applied some
static grass this model is very unique but you know what it works the prompt was goblin wearing
a lace potato chip bag on a horse photorealistic and i can see the reference in the finished piece
i don't know if it's just that this is a great model and would look good in any color but i
think this scheme really takes advantage of the model the light yellow goblin pops on the dark
brown squig and the dark squig pops on the light tan base it all comes together and is really
readable this was a strange project painting horses and lace potato chip goblins but i can't
argue with the results i can imagine an army of goblins like this and it would look pretty good
squiggs are usually bright red but brown kind of makes them look more natural like a real creature
and the more realistic yellow makes a little bit more sense than the bright vibrant yellow
of typical gloom spike gets good job ai these are two very different models i would not have painted
them this way if i did not challenge myself the gray knight probably would have looked like the
box art and the squig hopper would have probably looked like all my other works but having gone
through the challenge of replicating what the ai came up with i learned so much and i can now
take that new knowledge and those experiences and use them in my standard day-to-day painting
the mid-journey bot is really amazing here are some of the other things we've come up with
just screwing around with the app the prompt on this was goblin green smiling showing teeth long
arms short legs white hair black clothing smoking cigar digital art this one is wienermobile on fire
in the woods watercolor a very scary looking fella from the prompt space marine grim dark digital art
very detailed on this one we gave the ai comic book art orc smiling with a top hat on a stage
dressed as a clown and look at him go and another prompt that might make for a good 40k thing
medieval warrior wearing large armor heavy shiny reflective the moon in the background dangerous
what made this project really fun was that it forced me out of my comfort zone and to
try new things things i didn't have any say over what happened and in the end
it led to some new experiences for me also mid journey beta is free it uses discord and you
can go try it out right now yourself i'm gonna go generate some more images right now bye bye