Standing in the Twilight Zone, Lost in space and all alone Blindly searching to find me (Woman that I used to be.) I could not find me, I was blind. I widely searched but could not find The me I knew was somewhere near. I was confused but felt no fear. Then in the darkness, in the gloom, A hummingbird lit up the room.
Nix's rival (and potential love interest), Ramon Charay.
He is some kind of faerie-made amalgamation, with two spirits occupying a single body. We're trying to get to the bottom of it.
Lucien, the final PC in my second Ars Magica game. He's a Blatantly Gifted Criamon on the Path of Strife. His tattoos bleed when he over-exerts himself.
I am no artist, but I always try to find portraits and relevant art or pictures to show to my players during my games. So, that means I have to borrow some pictures, and it's sometimes quite time consuming to search for hundred of portraits for all the characters of a tribunal.
I tried something different yesterday, and I'd like to share the results, as I find it very promising. You may have heard from it, it's AI generated art. Here are some examples of pictures I generated with my trial account :
I gave the AI the description of Shadrit Ex Miscellanea from Dankmar (Guardians of the Forests : The Rhine Tribunal p 63)
I also made another version with the same description, but this time asking the AI for medieval illumination style, it came different but also very good
This is the result with the description of Jiphella Ex Miscellanea from the same covenant, with the style of Velasquez (a Spanish painter from the Renaissance)
Also here are the pictures generated by the AI for the PC covenant, and another covenant nearby (real castles that I know pictures exists to feed the AI)
I tried stable diffusion lately, it's different but it allows other ways to create art (and also I can use it on my own computer, and it's free). I still have to work on it, but here is one of the pictures it produced that I really liked, as you said it has a "trippy fever dream weirdness" vibe.
Don't know if this counts or not, I am working on a campaign in Hebrew, using Ars magica as a base for a Harry Pooter-based game, set in a minor school in Israel.
I have created the crests for the five houses in the school.
Next step in my "ars magica art by AI" journey, img2img...
You feed the AI with a picture and a prompt, and it tries to produces something using both.
I used stable diffusion v1, and gave it some very crude drawings done in paint (it's quite ugly but also quite fast to produce, and I don't own photoshop at the moment)
This was better, but I guess it produced weird stuff with the staves because I also tried to make it generate a forest background, which does not exist in my original picture.
Notice how it struggles with hands : this is an issue it has in common with midjourney AI.
It also produced several other versions of old women in blue bathrobes wielding various wooden sticks in one or both hands...
Next I decided to try the AI on a scenery, drawing this as the interior of a roman temple that could be of use for my next game :
Final tests, as I need some art for a future meeting with the mages of Atsingani : Vivianna as a fortune teller, and her faerie wagon. I still need to do something for Jacques of Flambeau (from the Lion and the Lily)
I hope this is not too boring, and sorry for the long post, but I really find this new technology quite fascinating. It's still very early, but it means that soon anyone could be able to produce nice art with minimal efforts, the potential is just huge !
Damn! The img2img stuff is really cool and may be the thing that finally gets me to set up an account and start paying for one of these AI art services. Even without that I think it significantly beats what I’ve done in the past with just trying to find a “close enough” image through google.