inter alia

The Artist Spotlight is your inside look into the influences, collaborations and prompts that drive the NightCafe community.

We catch up with some of our most original creators to find what inspires them, who their favorite creators are, and how they use image generator algorithms as part of their work.

NC: WHAT INFLUENCES YOUR WORK?

My profile lists a few of the major themes that inspire me: “beauty, masculinity, felinity, surreality”. Beyond that I try to do my own thing, experiment, and not follow the latest trends too closely.

One of the nicest side effects of being on NightCafe is that I’ve gotten a much greater appreciation for art history. Artist names are some of the most powerful keywords in a prompt, and learning which artists have what effects, and especially what happens when you combine them, has been an endless source of both entertainment and education. Visiting an art museum is definitely a different experience for me now than it was a year ago.

A major influence on me lately has been the chat group I started, “The Male Form”. I discovered early on that imagery featuring men, and especially queer imagery, are at a distinct disadvantage on NightCafe, and noticed that a lot of queer creators seemed to be getting discouraged and quitting, or even deleting their accounts after a few weeks. I wanted to create a space where they could feel welcome and appreciated. We’ve gathered an amazing and diverse group of lovely and talented creators, who have been a tremendous source of inspiration for me.

NC: MOST UNDERRATED ARTIST ON NIGHTCAFE?

What, I have to pick just one? There are so many great creators who don’t follow the popular trends and have never gotten that many followers.

Curpo is one I’ve been following from the very beginning, and whose page is filled with beautiful images of men and male couples in all manner of styles.

But there are so many I could name who deserve much more visibility! Use the “Newest Creations” feed, and also look who the creators you like are following, and see what nuggets of gold you can turn up!

NC: PROMPT THAT MOST SURPRISED YOU?

“Gay romance novel cover by [artist name]” turned out to be a surprisingly evocative prompt. 

It doesn’t work quite as well in SDXL, but in SD 1.5 it really picks up the style and spirit of the individual artist, sometimes delivering quite steamy results, other times wryly comical. 

Some examples (all safe for work!): 

René Magritte
Vincent van Gogh
Frans Hals
Beatrix Potter

NC: ANY TIPS FOR PROMPT WRITING?

Less is more. The trend in general seems to be for very complex prompts, but I find if I’m having problems finding what I’m looking for, the first thing to do is to ask what words in my prompt are extraneous and might be causing the AI to make associations that I don’t want.

When I was just starting out, I used the Epic preset a lot. When I tried to use it to get images of people dancing, it kept throwing back these barely coherent, wild images of Dionysian excess.

I found that when I edited the preset to remove the words “epic”, “dramatic”, and “maximalist”, I got much more coherent and dancelike results. (It’s not an especially good preset to use for dance images, but I didn’t know what I was doing then!)

When you’re starting out, it’s good to explore the presets, but once you have a basic feel for it, start editing them, remove and add words and see what happens.

NC: WHAT LED YOU TO USING NIGHTCAFE?

I was actually trying to find an image for an internal webpage I was creating at work, and not able to find a suitable free stock image.

Never did manage to get what I was looking for, but I was hooked!