As I’ve played with Midjourney I’ve found that sometimes I can get some interesting effects by creating images in layers rather than trying to get them all into one prompt. Today I was playing with dreamscapes using a paper cut style.
Paper cut gives an effect as though someone has created the picture by cutting and layering paper to form the design. I’ve seen some beautiful images created with the style but I’ve not played with it before.
Using the Blend Command
In version 4 Midjourney introduced a /blend command that allowed you to add multiple images which were then blended into one image. I played with it briefly in version 4 but didn’t often use it. This morning I created a couple of images and then tried blend in version 5.
This first image is one of the dreamscapes with paper cut design I created.
I then created an image of Kawaii people dancing. By doing a separate image, the people wont have the paper cut design applied.
Then I used the /blend command to get this image:
I liked the result but would have seen it take up the whole image space. But, if I wanted to use it for something I could always crop the excess white out and upscale the image.
Playing With Layered Images
Another way to get different styles into an image is to create them in layers which is a term I’m using because I relate to it. Basically the idea is you create a base image in the style you want and then use it as a reference image to add another style on in the next image and so on until you’ve added the elements you want.
You wont be able to control the output, it will be up to midjourney how it adds the subsequent elements to each reference image. It really boils down to if you want an image to look exactly like you imagine it, then create it yourself with different art mediums. If you’re going to do generative AI, get used to varying outcomes.
To this image I added “brightly colored Kawaii people dancing and playing in a line” to get this:
I liked this outcome, the paper cut background and the cartoon like characters make a nice mix.
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Next I tried something a bit different. The river in this landscape caught my attention.
To this image I added “a couple looks at a rowboat on the river as 3 deer play in the background”
The result here was surprising but interesting. The paper cut designed stayed in the foreground while a photographic outcome was in the rest of the image. The couple didn’t appear and the rowboat became a canoe. The deer seem to be playing with the canoe.
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To this image I added “couples stroll among the landscape, birds fly across the sky and the sun shines brightly”
The paper cut style lost some of its prominence in this image. Version 5 doesn’t support image weights yet which might have allowed me to retain the style by weighting the image more than the couple.
If you notice the header image on this post, I used the same add on to that image as for this one and the result retained the paper cut style.
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To this image I added “a kawaii bear, kawaii lion, kawaii squirrel, kawaii owl frolic around the landscape”
I was pleased with how these two came together. The paper cut was retained while adding the animals at play effectively.
Final Thoughts
I know some people don’t consider generative art using AI to be art however, as you can see, it’s not just a matter of throwing up a prompt and getting results. The prompts need to be crafted, thought needs to go into how to craft the prompt, when and how to use references images and even when and how to build an image up successively.
As others say, AI generative art is a new medium just like brushes, oils, watercolour, pen, pencil etc. Anyone can play with any of those mediums but it takes effort to start to understand how to create well. I'm working on that.
Shadowspub writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s.
Some of the image work may have been done in Midjourney for which I hold a licence to use the imges commercially.
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