I am a failed art student…actually I’m a failed pre-art college art student. I love creativity but I know my limits. I can go so far with a sketch, do some good stuff with digital graphic design. I make a mean poster. I talk CRAP. I guess I have a good eye for aesthetics and I like to frame my phone shot photographs of random stray cats meticulously.
There’a a new form of creativity in town. AI tools have cut out the actual draftmanship of creativity. So, now, if you can’t draw or paint or sketch out your amazing idea then the focus of your creativity goes from the paper to the prompt. It’s oddly and oddly naturally rewarding to see the results.
You didn’t create it but your prompt did. The creation doesn’t exist anywhere else because of you.
Midjourney is an AI app that takes your wild prompts and gives you four options to get higher rez downloads or four more variations of the initial image response. Midjourney lives in Discord which makes it a few hurdles more to get into for the lay person but once you get organised, it’s easy. It’s also easier when you pay as you get direct message access to the bot then to make for a less cluttered interface.
Let’s go through a new version of the creative process then, shall we?
As is the norm nowadays we start with a prompt. In Midjourney you start with /imagine and then spew forth what you want to see. I wanted to conceptualise a sneaker because I’m a sneakerhead.
/imagine a nike shoe based on the irish flag and elements of modernism in its shape and style
So at this point you have a few options. Try the prompt again = Press the reload button. Press any of the four U buttons to get an upscale pic (U1, U2 = top left, top right, U3,U4 = bottom left, bottom right. Or. OR press one of the V buttons which will give you 4 variations of whatever image you wish. Let’s get more variations of image 2 as that has the Nike swoosh more prominent.
And with that range of variations, U4 is my fav so I will upscale it so I can have it at a crisper resolution.
The one thing I keep coming back to is that this tool levels the playing field for all creative thinkers. What if I have all the ideas but none of the practical skills? Does that make me less creative? At what point does creativity kick in during the creative process? I feel ownership over the end product. The debate will rage on and no doubt the professional designers and artists who make a living will be on one side of the argument. Or they will use AI just like the rest of us.
Anyway, in conclusion, here’s a wolf in pink sheep’s clothing in a crowd of sheep. My next album cover.
