First, Have Fun with Free AI
Non-Designers, Start Here
[Designers: jump to the next section]
Updated bi-weekly
Every day, there are more free tools online for generating text and images, logos, layouts, wireframes, animation, and videos. Have fun and play! If you are not a designer or illustrator, and you keep your expectations low, you will enjoy yourself.
- Describe your image in the Prompt field
- Type anything you don’t want in the Negative prompt field. Usually not necessary.
- Choose an Art Style
- Choose a Shape (orientation)
- And — very important — choose the number of images.—no more than three at a time or it may stall.
- Click on Tools and choose "Create an Image", or "Write or Code"
- Type your instructions
- Answer ChatCPT's questions about your content and format
- For text, once created, you can revise your draft
- For images, be prepared to wait a bit. Once your image is created, you can suggest revisions
Don't worry, all the images are synthesized, not “copied.”
- The only way an AI can use somebody else's photo or artwork is if you upload it to AI to use as a model. (That’s a no-no without permission.)
- The person in the image is not real. “A young man with white hair in a blue shirt is sitting in a brown leather armchair” will generate slightly different features each time, although they may look like brothers or cousins.
One of many, many arthropods designed for a variety of tasks, in dry and wet environments
For Designers:
If you are a graphic designer, web designer, or illustrator, you can use AI to generate enough ideas quickly enough to speed up your concept development or find new direction for a project. That makes it worth learning these new tools. But plan to edit, re-write, or re-paint, because the AI will make hilarious mistakes. It will certainly surprise you! Take advantage of those surprises, and use AI as a way to try out new concepts. And if you already have strong writing, editing, digital painting, drawing, photo editing or graphic design skills, you’ll be intrigued instead of frustrated. Read on, for my Tips on Training Your Djinn, below.
But creating exactly what you or your client needs for a designed communication, or even getting reproducible results, requires learning how to train AI. To actually master AI, you'll need to learn a great deal more. See the Generative AI resources listed below.
I offer a Designing with AI course in my undergraduate Digital Multimedia Design Program and AI-Driven UX/UI Design in my graduate program. Corsera offers a one-week free trial week to learn everything they have to offer but the course would actually take longer. Still, at $49 per month, it's a good deal.
About the Ethics
Although an AI can synthesize new images from billions worldwide, it leans toward imagery and styles from popular culture, unless trained to use a model. That's why your towns may look like Tokyo or New York. If you request "a female warrior" the characters may resemble Disney's Mulan, even if your prompt is very specific. If you request a “mermaid,” the characters may resemble Disney’s Little Mermaid. (You really, really want to avoid getting a "cease and desist" letter from Disney's lawyers.) To avoid having your AI-generated character look like it might be copied, you must provide your own work as a model. You could also start with a composite of images that are copyright-free from an image bank, such as Unsplash or Pexels.
This is true of text as well. If you think that your writing style has unique and recognizable qualities, such as your descriptions or dialogue, provide AI with sample—the more, the better!
One iteration of an iridescent arthropod checking the eggs.
Tips on Training Your Djinn
TIP #1. Watch Your Language
On writing prompts: Asking an AI to do anything is like negotiating with a Djinn. It will do its best to give you what you request in your prompt (instructions), but you have to be very careful. If you ask a Djinn to make you live forever, you had better specify, “as a young, healthy woman of 27” or you’ll be stuck in a creaky, 68-year old body for all eternity. Even when you provide very precise instructions, AI can't know what you really want. Some AI image-generators may not understand similes. If your prompt states “skin like a fish,” and you get unexpected results—such as fishes everywhere—try prompting, “skin with small scales.”
To create original mermaids, instead of Disney's Little Mermaid, I described each major body part, chose the best of dozens of results, and with each iteration I adjusted the description further as the AI and I both learned what results I would accept or reject, and what prompt phrases worked best.
For example:
“A female with a human face, orange hair and red eyes, and a human torso with slim hips merging seamlessly into a fish tail; orange scales and orange fins. Full figure, swimming, side view. In the background is a kelp forest in blue water, with rays of light. In the foreground are pink shells and red coral. Full image, detailed, concept art style.” And then you need to go through a hundred iterations (see the mer-people, below).
TIP #2. Curb AI's Adolescent Impulses
Unless trained out of it, AI adds full lips, sultry eyes, and very large curves to every female character, and huge muscles with lots of armor and big weapons to every male character. It seems as if AI is being raised by programmers with the fantasies of 12 year-old boys, and is heavily influenced by popular culture.
With non-human characters, the AI can become very confused. I have seen eye shadow and lipstick on monsters, bugs and reptiles. As well as spikes, bat wings, dripping saliva, and fangs, of course, on any character not actually defined as "friendly" or "beautiful".
Therefore, when prompting in Perchance and other free AI services, I usually specify these negatives: “No legs, no teeth, no fangs, no claws, no tongue, no armor, no breasts, no big butts, no clothes, no weapons," and add the positives "beautiful, not scary."
Note that Photoshop's AI is more cautious about sexualizing images:
- When I specified "no clothes," I had to check a box to confirm that I'm over 18.
- When I requested a golden "breast plate" on a female warrior, I got an error message and had to change it to "chest plate!"
The claws and legs were not in my prompt. Oddly, they were in my negative prompt, along with breasts
TIP #3. Be Prepared to Layer, Remove, In-paint and Re-paint
Stable Diffusion and Photoshop's AI both got confused about the number of limbs, even when creating a human. See the dogs, the astronaut, and the green witch, below. You may get an extra leg. Or three. You may also get extra eyes or fingers, or none. In particular, Photoshop's AI has a lot of trouble with hands and faces. If you want your character's hands to clasp the hilt of a sword, better be prepared to re-paint the fingers, if you have that skill, or ask AI to in-paint using many iterations. If your character's face is lop-sided, re-paint it. Or keep refining and training your AI.
TIP #4. Get Help. Join a Club. Take a Class!
I used Perchance's instance of Stable Diffusion and Adobe Photoshop's Generative AI to create the mermaid images above, while trying to train the AI. But it took forever. And most of the results needed fixing. Then I learned that to get predictable and reproducible results, you have to download an instance of an AI to your own computer, and then train it on a model, and that takes a whole different level of knowledge. So you have to train yourself first. And that takes time. A lot of time.
Your education in using AI will go more smoothly if you have support, such as a club, or take a class. I asked the opinion of a friend who has been using AI to build his own characters and environments for two years, and he offered to tutor me. (Thank you, Delonzo!) If I get any of this wrong, it is entirely due to my own errors in understanding.
This image of Bogey required combining two images, repainting, and adding filters.
TIP #5. Get Your Own AI and Build a Model
As you might imagine, I am most interested in creating my own images. So I uploaded a compressed file of my original paintings, sketches, and photos of a clay bust of my character, to Replicate, which built a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) composite model for me. This will guide an AI in building characters and environments. Then I downloaded Diffusion Bee and Draw Things (two different instances of AI) to live locally on my computer, and started building character models I can rely on going forward.
Draw Things AI based my arthropod character at right on my LoRA, which was in turn built from 10 incomplete photos. (Note the extra arm.) My prompt specified "feathery" antennae, but I did not provide a sketch of the antennae to create the LoRA. So you get what you ask for. Some day, I'll be able to rotate, apply textures, add lighting, and more. (Thank you, CutScene Artist!)
See more arthropods, architecture, and examples of repainting below.
Full, green elytra (wing covers) were in my sketch. The petal-like wings and green blade were not