🖌️ AI Art Tips Thursday #26: Let's create an illusion!

💡 AI Art Tips for the Day

Based on popular demand from last week’s poll, I will try to use Midjourney to generate an illusion image.

The concept is certainly not new, I basically got inspired by this image from Facebook:

So yeah, how can I create this image? I have seen a process mentioned by others in another Facebook post where they mentioned that you would have to go with the --stop parameter and the remix mode. I didn’t try to find the original post where the method is mentioned but instead went ahead with trying it myself.

Cool, so here is exactly the step I have followed:

• Generate a character using midjourney and set it to stop at a certain percentage of completion

• Upscale the partially-created image

• Use the Vary function on the upscaled image with a different prompt

• See the output

There are two areas I am not too sure about this process though. One is what type of Vary I should try. There are Vary (Strong), Vary (Regions), and Vary (Subtle) available in Midjourney. So here are my tries with each one of them.

It is pretty clear that Vary (Subtle) is the way to go here. The other two methods just completely recreated the image based on the new prompt provided.

Now, the 2nd question is the stop parameter. Is there a target stop parameter we should try to use for this type of image? Let’s see the differences here:

To be honest, I don’t think there is a clear winner among all the different stop levels. It really depends on what level of illusion you would like to create and the style of output you are looking for. I am quite surprised that --stop 100, i.e. without any stopping, would work given the image is already pretty settled. I was initially expecting the result will be a mix of weird things mashed together, so this is certainly a pleasant surprise!

In conclusion, the key to generating this style of illusion picture is using the Vary (Subtle) feature. One can play with the different levels of stopping and different base images to turn that ideal image in your head into a reality. Happy creating! 🤗 

🖼️ Image of the day

Can you guess the base image for this picture? 🤔