I’m posting this AI art I created today, because I’m thinking about the children in Springfield Ohio who are afraid to go to school because of bomb threats. We need less lying made-up culture-war nonsense, and more discussion about the future.
#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI
This guy has a lot of issues. He also has a tie.
#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI
#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI
He can’t stop thinking…
#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI
Robot Roll Call 0005
#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI
This one is just for fun.
Last month actor and writer Wil Wheaton who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: the Next Generation, got a rare Dall-E invite, and used “Wesley Crusher riding a unicorn into battle” as his first prompt, “because OBVIOUSLY.” You can see what he got here on his tumbler.
I decided to see if the Midjourney art machine was up to the same challenge. After several tries with the Beta –test renderer that weren’t very good, I tried the good ol’ V3 engine and finally got this image. It almost looks like a Star Trek uniform. It almost looks like Wesley Crusher. …And he almost has legs. It’s wonkey and creepy but we like that, ‘cuz that’s the way AI art should be. A few years from now when AI art is perfectly realistic, artists will attempt to re-create this wonky style just like Instagram filters today try to make your digital pictures look like old fashioned faded film prints. Because realism is nice but interesting is better…
As you already know, my previous attempt to make the perfect social media avatar didn’t work out too well. Facebook was the biggest problem because sometimes their avatars are really, really tiny and the “man with no face” concept didn’t read. Also, shortly after I started using the side-view no-face avatar every single social media site changed their avatars from a square to a circle. Twitter, facebook, instagram, artstation, flicker… Everywhere. Aaaaarrrrrrgggggg!
OK, I needed something new, something simpler to understand and centered so it would look good in a circle. Enter Generic Man:
I kept things as simple as possible, centered face, no color, plain background. Getting the light right took time. Usually I like to set my own lights but this time I tried lighting exclusively with an HDRI dome. I tried many different light patterns until I got the glossy highlights and the deep set eye shadows just right. I didn’t want the light to be too flat but I also didn’t want it to be too shadowy either. This particular light pattern worked the best.
I also had to spend quite some time working on the white porcelain “skin” material too, especially since the neck of the original model was a different material. Finally I dialed in a slight asymmetrical facial expression just to give it a little something.
When I first rendered it out I kept the contrast very low. I liked the way it emphasized the eyes but it didn’t read well online at smaller sizes so I upped the contrast in Lightroom. This is the original render.
I’ve been using this avatar for several months now. It seems to work well at all sizes, even really small. It works in a square or a circle too. On Halloween I made an alternate and posted it for a day on facebook.
Here’s a few screenshot examples on social media. Facebook (so tiny!):
Twitter:
Deviant Art:
Tumblr:
It looks good in a square or circle, even very teeny-tiny on facebook. I think this one is going to last me for quite awhile.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
HP Prototype YC-7 for Genesis 3 Male
iRadiance – Studio HDRIs for Iray
My eternal quest for the perfect CGI avatar continues. I’ve grown tired of my current avatar artwork. People think it’s a picture of me and I have to explain that it’s CGI. I need something that doesn’t look human. Perhaps something creepy…
Mannequins and faceless people have always freaked me out ever since I was young. I attribute that to this scene from Star Trek…
…and the Anything People on Sesame Street.
A freaky “no face” avatar would be cool and no one would think it was supposed to be me. Perfect!
I started with a faceless character model I had and I replaced the skin like surface with a different shader. I experimented with many, many different surfaces trying to find something cool.
I tried cloth, wood, metal, rock, plastic, glass, grunge, paint, rubber, wax, anything I could think of.
I tried to avoid chrome because I had done that several times in the past but in the end I caved, because I really liked this particular dusty anodized aluminum surface.
I posed the figure tipping his hat with a 1960s fedora. I wanted him to be creepy and friendly at the same time. A sloppy overcoat and loose necktie seemed to fit so I added that too.
Give that man a handThe fingers of the alien no-face character were creepy long, which looks OK but I like to make everything difficult so I decided to try and replace the hand with one that was human sized.
To do that I had to add another entire human sized figure and position the hand in the same place, grabbing the hat. It took awhile but I got it into position. Then I “turned off” (made invisible) the rest of that human character. For the no-face character I turned off the hand. The sleeve of the jacket was just long enough to hide the fact that the arm and hand didn’t meet exactly correctly. Everything came together when I layered the same aluminum shader on the human hand.
Dramatic LightThe lighting was difficult because of the reflective metal on the face. I ended up with a lot more spotlights than usual for a simple head shot just to get the reflections right. There are seven spot lights on the character and one blue spot on the background, which is just a gray wall panel.
After rendering it out I pumped up the color a little in Lightroom…
…and uploaded the avatar to Facebook.
Unfortunately I saw almost immediately that you couldn’t tell what the picture was at very small sizes. It was the high contrast lighting, the same problem I had before on my first CGI avatar. It looked fine at larger sizes but when it was super tiny the bright shine of the face looked like an unrecognizable white blob on a blue background.
I went back into DAZ Studio and tried to even out the lighting. The best way was to set up a few more lights to fill in the dark spots. I didn’t like it as much when I was done but I rendered it out anyway just to test it on facebook. This is the “flat light” version.
It worked better at small sizes as you can see but still not as well as other avatars I’ve created. Humans are programed to recognize faces easily, which is why facebook can make their avatars so small. I’m asking people to recognize “no face” so I guess that’s more difficult.
So it sort of works at the tiny sizes and doesn’t look as good as it could at larger sizes. I guess that makes this avatar attempt a bit of a failure. I still like it though, so I’m going to keep it for a time before I try again. I can also upload the first version to other sites that don’t have such small avatars. What do you think?
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
The Slim Man for Genesis 3 Male
Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.3 for Iray
Amazing Hat
Eldritch Seeker
After using my new CGI profile picture on facebook for awhile I started to dislike it. It looked mean, especially at small sizes. Part of the reason I think was the contrasty film-noir lighting. I thought I would try something a little different with softer light. I also turned the face to the side similar to my original photo that I used for years. This is what I came up with.
I started to dislike it as soon as I uploaded it. I thought the face looking away from the text had an aloof quality. I turned things around, used a longer lens so the face wouldn’t be so distorted, and gave him some hair. This is my newest avatar.
I’ve been using it on facebook for about a day now. So far I like it. I’ll upload it to other social media sites and live with it for awhile.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
FWSA Aiden HD for Michael 7
Awesome Fantasy Eyes
I’ve been using the same avatar across all of social media for many years. It’s not very good. If you look at the original it’s actually out of focus, but you can’t tell when it’s a teeny tiny avatar on facebook. My wife CAT is in it too, which is nice.
I always intended to replace it but it was working, doing it’s job, so I didn’t. When I shaved my beard over a year ago I thought, “Well now it doesn’t even look like me. I really need to make a new one!” But it was still working. People still knew it was me. So I didn’t change it.
Cut to a few days ago. I was in DAZ Studio and I decided to experiment with different ideas for a new avatar. I figured I could come up with some “concept art” and then take a picture of myself with the same theme, same lighting. Simple. Maybe even use the same CGI background so I wouldn’t have to deal with that in the photograph. But, what to do?
To all those people who have their kid, or their dog, or cat, or a movie star, or an anime character, or their feet, or a sports team logo, or Abe Vigoda in their avatar: Nobody can figure out who you are! I go through this all the time. The name sounds familiar… Did I know this person in college? Did we grow up together on the same street? Did we work together ten years ago? Is that YOU as a kid? Or is that YOUR kid? Now I have to be a detective. It’s frustrating. Put your friggin’ face in your avatar! /rant
I like an avatar with a big face so I started with that. The bigger the better because sometimes these things are super small. I decide to try something similar to what I have now, an evolution if you will – the same but better – a big face but a little arty and off to the side. Centered is so boring. I used a long 200mm lens to blur the background, making the face stand out.
I decided to go for hard side light with a blue kicker (back light) to give it a shadowy tech-noir feel. I wanted the style to reflect my personality. I’m one-hundred percent SciFi and my avatar should be too!
I then spent a lot of time trying to get good skin. There’s a trend in CGI these days. Reality. I think reality is overrated but in this case it makes sense. An avatar is supposed to represent a real person. …And it doesn’t hurt to learn new things. I spent a lot of time experimenting with skin translucency, glossy reflections, roughness, bump maps, and scores of other surface controls. Endless tweaking. (Welcome to CGI.) Ultimately I got something that looks like a real person. The guy doesn’t look like ME, but he looks relatively real.
And then I put a glowing cross hair in the eye. Screw reality! I like robots!
About-FaceAnd here it is. It turned out much better than the “concept art” that I intended so I’ve decided to use it straight-up as my new avatar. So to the people who have their kid, or their dog, or cat, or a movie star, or an anime character, or their feet, or a sports team logo, or Abe Vigoda in their avatar: I’m now one of you! My avatar is now a synthetic man that doesn’t look like me. If you can’t beat ’em join ’em. We’ll see if it works.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
FWSA Aiden HD for Michael 7
SciFi Passageway
Awesome Fantasy Eyes
UPDATE: After using my new CGI profile picture on facebook for awhile I started to dislike it. More in this post: My quest for the perfect CGI avatar