Trunk Monkey

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?

Most of what I create is influenced by my experiences with, and fears about, living with a chronic degenerative disease.

Some are fairly dark images, but mostly I attempt to capture the same ideas in a more palatable / attractive way by creating portraits that juxtapose traditional beauty with elements that are warped, deformed, or exaggerated.

Also Karol Bak, I love his art, and he certainly influences my work.

NC: MOST UNDERRATED ARTIST ON NIGHTCAFE?

Jace F.

NC: PROMPT THAT MOST SURPRISED YOU?

This is a difficult question to answer. Most of my prompts are the result of a long process of back and forth between rendering and modifying the prompt. By the time a prompt is usable, there aren't many surprises.

However one recent surprise came from an attempt to look at the effect of different artist references in SDXL1.0.

I expected a Victorian style portrait, what I got was an image of a hybrid steam / sailing ship:

"Victorian, High Society, Beautiful, iridescent, mage, fluid black, Deep colors, 8k hyperdetailed, highly intricate, hyperrealism delicate detailed complex, sophisticated, sinister, fog, golden hour By Artist John Berkey"

NC: ANY TIPS FOR PROMPT WRITING?

There is no need for punctuation, and prompts don't need to read like well-formed sentences.

The impact of punctuation is unpredictable, and Stable Diffusion doesn't need punctuation to parse the prompt.

So it's better to leave it out initially, then use punctuation sparingly to apply small tweaks when finalizing a prompt.

Stable Diffusion generally works with words and some short phrases, but it doesn't need actual sentences.

At the same time, items near the beginning of a prompt have a stronger influence than items later in the prompt, so changing the order of items in your prompt is a powerful tool for adjusting the impact of each prompt item.

NC: WHAT LED YOU TO USING NIGHTCAFE?

In a sense, I've been playing with 'generative art' since I first had access to a Mandelbrot set fractal compiler in the mid 80's, and I've long used various generative techniques with my synthesizers when creating music.

So text to image generators seemed like a natural progression. I wasn't impressed with the early generators that I looked at, but the release of Stable Diffusion changed everything.  

NightCafe happened to be one of the first sites I found that offered Stable Diffusion, and while I've looked at a number of other sites, NightCafe remains my platform of choice.