by Heather Crank
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS I’ve been experimenting with various types of Artificial Intelligence trying to answer the question, can I dream in AI? In current climate of perfect, slick imagery, can I add a human element into Gen AI? Can I use “hallucinations” the same way I use experimentation/trial and error in my Non-AI work? Can I adapt Gen AI to my creative work flow?
As coders attempt to “fix” mistakes and “hallucinations” I double down on creating distortions, extra fingers and strange interpretations of the human form. My biggest breakthroughs occur with trial and error, taking ideas apart and putting them back together in a new form. Mistakes are where the magic happens.
During college, I learned the basics of art and design. Once I had the fundamentals down, I began breaking the rules. It’s no different with AI.
Methods I’ve tried:
Uploaded my personal work into Mid-Journey, Firefly, Stable Diffusion to build a prompt library of my personal style.
Built a scene in Mid-Journey, uploaded a photo of my backyard and blended the two images together.
Rendered out an image in Firefly, uploaded the image into Mid-Journey, added prompts and/or asked for a description and created a new comp.
Iterated in Mid-Journey and Firefly, brought the images into PhotoShop and regenerated sections to create different comps. Then bought that image back into Mid-Journey and continued to iterate.
Copied a prompt from Mid-Journey, pasted the text into chat GPT. Used chat GPT to improve and create variations of the prompt.
Uploaded my personal work to Firefly as a style and created several variations.
Currently I’m working on a painting from a Gen AI image…playing with the tension between human imperfections and machine “hallucinations”. The possibilities are endless, epically when I integrate the methods and software (PhotoShop, Illustrator, Aftereffects, Cinema 4D) I’ve used for a decade. The human/machine mashup is an interesting canvas to explore, as AI reflects back to me fragments of society swimming around on the web. I wonder what new stories will be told? Am I hallucinating, or am I dreaming? Maybe it’s both…
Heather Crank is an Art Director | Motion Designer | Generative Design Specialist | and Rebellious moonbeam, reflecting the light of the sun, pioneering the transcendence, All text and images on this page are © Heather Crank and Crahmanti Design, All Rights Reserved.
