This one is a digital painting based on an AI image that was, frankly, alarming -- and there's a story behind this, so stay with me! I've been trying out an engine called Lexica, which is a lot easier to work with than the other three I've tried so far (Wombo, Dreamlike and Playground). Lexica will at least get into the ballpark, even if its people do tend to have fourteen fingers and three legs (rolls eye). But...
I gave it a pretty simple prompt. I asked it for an elf warrior maiden ... and I pretty much got what I asked for, right off the bat. Cool, right? What could possibly go wrong, then, if we decided we wanted Legolas as well?
Change the prompt to say YOUNG MAN, and MALE, rather than maiden, and surely it ought to just click over into the masculine filters and give me the beautiful young male version??? Harrumph.
No, I haven't signed off on these: I haven't done anything to them, they're just as Lexica handed them to me. On the left, "elf warrior maiden." Okay: good one. On the right -- oh yeah, here we go. Change the parameter from female to male, and it changes from a beautiful young woman to a malevolent old coot with a scowl and a horned helmet! The tropes are alive and well at Lexica, I see. Soooo...
Yep, this was always going to be a painting, although it started with Lexica's closest attempt to Legolas: he still looks like a Marvel Super Villain crossed with Grand Moff Tarkin, with bits of a helmet growing right out of his skull!!!??? But it gave me a place to start painting --
So, three hours of painting later ... Legolas. Gone are the vacuum-sucked Moff Tarkin cheekbones and the scowl, the scarred cheek, and the trenches of lines and wrinkles in his face, and the dumb hairline, and the even dumber helmet horns that somehow sprouted right out of his cranium. Gone is the long, thin face that looks like a 1930s movie villain ... Fu Manchu, anyone? Grrrr. Three hours of painting. You bet your life I'm going to sign this one.
Anyway ... I wanted Legolas, I got Legolas, and AI gave me a good place to start, but ... I give up. I've been looking at the most amazing things that people can get these AI engines to do, but after six weeks I still can't make it work for love or money, LOL. So tomorrow, I'm going back into Krita. If we're going to paint, let's paint and enjoy it, right? Right.
