Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Satan Illustrated My Bestiary

I have spilt rather a lot of ink dealing with the subject of AI art. (Rather too much perhaps - see previous posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Today I spent an idle moment nibbling at the forbidden fruit by typing some famous monster names into Substack's particular AI image generator. This was based on the theory that if you want to make some pictures of monsters, Satan is probably the ideal artist.

I had originally planned to write an extensive post on this subject, but rapidly discovered a fun way to run a quiz instead. So here goes. Below, I will post a series of numbered pictures as illustrated by Satan. Your job, in the comments, is to guess what they represent. Some are easy! Some are hard! Give it a go. The winner receives unending adulation and glory. The losers - level drain and half hp. Answers to be revealed on Friday.

First, though, I must share with you the great hilarity that ensued when I typed in the words 'Keir Starmer':


I don't know who that man is, but I can tell you that Kier Starmer very much wishes he looked like him. Who the hell is the guy lurking next to him, though?

Anyway, I digress. Here are the monsters. To repeat, put your guesses for each in the comments. 

1.



2.


3.



4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


9.


10.


11.


12.


13.


14.


15.


16.


17.



If anybody guesses them all accurately I will, Werner Herzog style, eat my shoe.

11 comments:

  1. I don't have any guesses (sorry?), but will note that I used AI for a while to generate monster illustrations FOR PERSONAL USE because I found it often sparked a lot of fun ideas and new monsters. I intentionally kept the illos black & white; specified "pen & ink" as a style; and didn't refer to any artists. I usually didn't specify actions or poses; it was more fun to see what the AI came up with. Occasionally I included a country/region name to push the design in a direction I liked (ie, "Russian").

    I personally found them amazing for spurring creativity, but it took some time and practice. I liked that there wasn't another person in the process - it felt a lot more like making something NEW (within the context of the game).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know what you mean and I can see it having value in that regard - in that sense it's almost just like a glorified random generator.

      Delete
  2. Assuming that they are all monsters, I guess: 1. Gorgon, 2. Goblin, 3. Orc, 4. Rakshasa, 5. Lizard Man, 6. Skeleton, 7. Gremlin, 8. Blue Dragon, 9. Tarrasque, 10. Kobold, 11. Vampire, 12. Salamander?, 13. Red Dragon, 14. Ogre, 15. Dragonne, 16. Behir?, 17. Mantrap?

    BTW, the devil is a crappy artist.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1. Gorgon?
    2. Goblin, if Disney-Pixar acquired the rights to D&D?
    3. Ogre
    4. Orc
    5. Given the ocean background, I guess Sahuagin? With an extra scoop of Disney-Pixar.
    6. Skeleton
    7. Kobold?
    8. Blue Dragon, extra chunky
    9. Tarrasque
    10. Lizard Man
    11. Vampire
    12. Fire elementals? Honestly, I don't forking know.
    13. Red Dragon, purchased from Ikea, assembly instructions missing
    14. Troll?
    15. Manticore?
    16. Froghemoth?
    17. Some sort of weird gnome?

    I guess I'll just brace for that level drain now, shall I?

    ReplyDelete
  4. When you look back at webpages designed at the start of the internet era there are certain trends that looked good at the time and that look terrible now. I feel AI art is along those lines but we won't really notice until enough of it is out there, then we'll look back and cringe a bit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A lot of it is really really awful. It baffles me, somewhat.

      Delete
    2. And some is really good. Hopefully the folks have the sense to try and try again until they only get good stuff in their products.

      Delete
    3. Sturgeon's Law certainly applies, but there is some rather good stuff out there as well.

      Delete
    4. To be fair, Substack's version probably isn't a market leader in terms of quality. My feeling is that it can produce some really striking imagery but there is a sense about them that they are somehow slightly 'off'.

      Delete
  5. 1. catoblepas
    2. goblin
    3. orc
    4. lich
    5. lizardman
    6. skeleton
    7. kobold
    8. dragon, blue
    9. tarrasque
    10. horned demon
    11. vampire
    12. fire elemental
    13. dragon, red
    14. ogre
    15. manticore
    16. dragon, silver
    17. yellow musk creeper

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Non-Keir-Starmer is probably due to the fairly pathetic restriction on many AI art programs now, preventing them from doing recognizable drawings or caricatures of real specific people. - Jason Bradley Thompson

    ReplyDelete