Robots
Fun with Stable Diffusion
A giant monster attacking a modern city with the military fighting back against itThis was maybe a little too on the nose and had a distinct Godzilla feel to it. Since I tend to generate five images at a time, you can often see it going in a bunch of directions. Some of these were more akin to something that you would find in a Doom video game, but I mostly liked the general direction it was going. Essentially what I usually do is feed the image that was just generated back into the prompt in order to iterate on that idea. I find that over the course of what ends up being a few hundred generations, it slowly narrows down the focus to get closer to what you were actually wanting. I wanted to go in a different direction, so I tweaked my prompt a little bit and fed it the previous image.
A giant monster that looks like Cthulhu attacking a modern city with the military fighting back against itBasically, I supplied that I wanted it to look more like Cthulhu to steer it away from Godzilla… which worked like a charm. However, remember that bit where I said that the models seem to really want to draw boobs? I included this specific image just to show that point. I took a bit of a pivot because I didn’t want this to end up being a pretty boring drab scene. So for the next prompt, I started adding some style elements to it. I also wanted the city to look a bit more ruinous.
a vaporwave scene featuring A giant monster that looks like Cthulhu attacking a modern city knocking down buildings some of the rubble on fireI noticed that some of the elements of the monster how were mechanical looking, which made me start shifting in a slightly different direction. Could I get this to make it give me a scene of a Kaiju fighting a Robot over a ruined landscape? Unfortunately at this point going forward… I don’t have exact prompts. The images that generate are named based on your prompt, and my phrase got too long for the file character limit. I kept the prompt above but instead added that it was fighting a Giant Robot that was wielding a laser sword. The generator got confused as it often does… and just started making the monster look more robotic. While extremely cool looking… this was not really what I was going for, but it was a key step in the process nonetheless. I tried a few more rounds of generation, feeding my favorite from the previous round into the next round… but no matter what I tried it seemed to be hung up on a single “monster” figure. I am including this one mostly just because it looked pretty freaking badass. I have no clue what is going on with that building but I am on board with the bio-organic mech with a giant laser sword thing that is going on here. It was around this point that I decided that I needed to tweak things up a bit further. So I specifically called out that there were two figures, the monster, and the giant robot and this finally began to produce paydirt. It started out a bit ephemeral at first, with this pseudo-robot-building thing in the background. However, that gave me a thread to expand on, again feeding one generation into the next round of five generations. After a few more rounds of generation, the idea was starting to finally take root. I say idea because in fiddling with this nonsense, it does seem like the generator gets something stuck in its head and you have to sort of forcibly dislodge it at times. I was getting somewhere though, but knew it would take many more instances of taking an image that was the closest to what I wanted, and then feeding it into the next loop… and doing this over and over until the results started to turn in the direction I wanted it to. Then after legitimately two or three hundred rounds of this nonsense and the course of an entire afternoon wasted… we have this glorious piece of nonsense. I think what I find so interesting about Stable Diffusion so far, is that it can serve as this rapid ideation platform. If you want to quickly iterate on some ideas you had in your head, you can come up with something that is still… very visually wrong at times but contains the flavor of what you wanted. I could see this being honestly an amazing tool for an “actual artist” to test out some ideas and have the machine keep iterating on something until they get a layout and subject matter that they wanted… that could then serve as the scaffolding to build something interesting. Even for wordsmiths, this could be super interesting because I can already wrap a story in my head around what is going on in this picture. It is also sometimes just super interesting to feed it a prompt and see where it goes. This is a hundred or so generations off of the prompt “Belghast”. No clue why but it seemed to really latch onto a military and zombies theme when I used my chosen moniker as the prompt. This delightfully ominous scene was generated with this prompt:
a skinwalker stalking a group of hunters in the woodsSo while I would not at all consider that to be a successful prompt as far as subject matter goes… it still looks freaking cool nonetheless. Again this image has a story to it that is just begging to be told. I feel like trying to make one of these image generators create exactly the image that you were wanting… is a path to madness. However, if you sort of go with the flow and iterate on the patterns that you are seeing emerging… it can produce some really interesting things. While I don’t exactly consider this art on the same level as the things being produced for me by Ammo… there is definitely an art form that is emerging from guiding the machine. It somewhat reminds me of carving a woodcut block, and allowing yourself to lean into the imperfections of the material… rather than trying to fight against them. Anyways I thought this was interesting. No clue if anyone else cares about it, and I have no clue if I will ever walk through one of my generative steps again in the future. The cool thing about this blog is it is a “me” blog more than it is a blog devoted to any one particular topic. I’m enjoying creating nonsense with Stable Diffusion and thought I would share that with you all. The post Fun with Stable Diffusion appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
On Mini Giant Robots
LBX is a 3DS game about fighting model robots. It’s a recent release in North America and Europe, but it’s a 3-year-old remake of a remake of a game that came out in 2011 in Japan. It’s kind of cheesy and clearly intended for a younger audience, but I love it anyway. The fighting itself has elements of games like Virtual On, and the structure of the game reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network, both games which I enjoyed a lot. More than that, the entire concept reminds me of one of my favorite games on the Game Boy when I was younger: Power Quest.
Tiny Fighting Robots
Power Quest was one of the early games for the Game Boy Color, and I got it as a Christmas gift when I turned 12. It is also a game about fighting model robots, but the core gameplay is a fighting game.The game itself involved you roaming around town, earning money to upgrade your model (by beating people around town in duels), and occasionally getting interrupted by the plot, which is mostly nonsensical and involves the Bad Hyenas Gang and your best friend. At the end of the game you fight in a tournament and defeat a masked wrestler to end the game. I probably wouldn’t consider it a very good game at this point, but on reflection it’s the first fighting game I got heavily invested in. I’d played Street fighter 2, but I didn’t really know how things worked until later.
While the plot is largely an excuse to fight robots, one thing that stuck with me is that about halfway through the game, your best friend moves away. Thanks to timing, I played this game shortly after I moved halfway across town (which might as well be halfway around the world when you’re 12). Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which was incredibly good for a Game Boy game.
Bigger Fighting Robots
LBX turns out to have a surprising amount of surprisingly well-done voice acting, and has an actual plot. It’s a lot like Pokémon in that an organization is using these things for evil (so of course you have to use them to put a stop to it), but there’s also a hint of a Last Starfighter-esque plot where this turns out to be training for actual giant robots down the line. (This is in the opening, so I don’t consider it a spoiler.) It also leans heavily on Defeat Means Friendship, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting alongside bosses after you beat them. Your own robot is quite customizable, so while you start with Achilles, you can eventually use almost anything you want. I’m eager to see where this one’s going, because I really like it so far. There’s also a cross-media element that might be a bit dangerous, but more on that later.
On Mini Giant Robots
LBX is a 3DS game about fighting model robots. It’s a recent release in North America and Europe, but it’s a 3-year-old remake of a remake of a game that came out in 2011 in Japan. It’s kind of cheesy and clearly intended for a younger audience, but I love it anyway. The fighting itself has elements of games like Virtual On, and the structure of the game reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network, both games which I enjoyed a lot. More than that, the entire concept reminds me of one of my favorite games on the Game Boy when I was younger: Power Quest.
Tiny Fighting Robots
Power Quest was one of the early games for the Game Boy Color, and I got it as a Christmas gift when I turned 12. It is also a game about fighting model robots, but the core gameplay is a fighting game.The game itself involved you roaming around town, earning money to upgrade your model (by beating people around town in duels), and occasionally getting interrupted by the plot, which is mostly nonsensical and involves the Bad Hyenas Gang and your best friend. At the end of the game you fight in a tournament and defeat a masked wrestler to end the game. I probably wouldn’t consider it a very good game at this point, but on reflection it’s the first fighting game I got heavily invested in. I’d played Street fighter 2, but I didn’t really know how things worked until later.
While the plot is largely an excuse to fight robots, one thing that stuck with me is that about halfway through the game, your best friend moves away. Thanks to timing, I played this game shortly after I moved halfway across town (which might as well be halfway around the world when you’re 12). Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which was incredibly good for a Game Boy game.
Bigger Fighting Robots
LBX turns out to have a surprising amount of surprisingly well-done voice acting, and has an actual plot. It’s a lot like Pokémon in that an organization is using these things for evil (so of course you have to use them to put a stop to it), but there’s also a hint of a Last Starfighter-esque plot where this turns out to be training for actual giant robots down the line. (This is in the opening, so I don’t consider it a spoiler.) It also leans heavily on Defeat Means Friendship, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting alongside bosses after you beat them. Your own robot is quite customizable, so while you start with Achilles, you can eventually use almost anything you want. I’m eager to see where this one’s going, because I really like it so far. There’s also a cross-media element that might be a bit dangerous, but more on that later.