As mentioned previously, I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, using AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. My most recent piece is a Yorkshire Rose card.
Using ChatGPT’s DALL-E, I gave it a prompt:
Please try to create a papercut greetings card of a Yorkshire Rose.
This is what it came up with on the first attempt:
As usual, my first reaction was “WOW”. But then my follow-up reaction was the realisation that:
1) these designs wouldn’t be very easy to recreate as physical objects, and
2) they were just white roses, rather than actual Yorkshire roses.
…so I had to try to teach DALL-E what a Yorkshire Rose was:
Thanks – those are lovely but they are just white roses rather than specifically Yorkshire roses. The Yorkshire rose is a traditional emblem of Yorkshire in the UK. It is usually shown as having 5 white inner petals and 5 white outer petals – usually with leaves in between the 5 outer petals. It is similar to a Tudor rose, but with all-white petals instead of some petals being red.
Here are the results:
Now we were getting somewhere! For some reason I wanted to create a card that actually said “Yorkshire” on it. So I asked DALL-E to include “Yorkshire” under the rose emblem. This fifth attempt was OK, but again would have been difficult to directly create as a physical card…
…but the sixth attempt was excellent (with – of course – the exception being that DALL-E mis-spelled the only word I’d asked it to include):
Bingo! I instantly loved this design, but there was still a lot of work to do before I could cut it out:
Obviously I needed to correct the spelling.
Some areas wouldn’t work as papercuts because they weren’t attached to any other parts of the card, so I needed to adapt them.
Because of the shadows in the image, I would need to create the image as several layers.
Creating the physical design
This time I opened the Linearity Curve image software, and drew lines around the elements of the design so I could create an SVG file to cut with my laser cutter. I cut it with the laser because I thought I might not be accurate enough if I did it by hand.
Here is the original image on the left, with my physical version of the card on the right:
How well did DALL-E follow my prompts?
As mentioned above, the AI image generator initially didn’t know what a Yorkshire Rose was. However, once I’d explained the concept it did an amazing job… although then it let itself down again by mis-spelling a specific word. The papercut element was great, though. So on the whole I’ll give DALL-E 8/10.
How close is the physical version to the original AI design?
I’m going to give myself 83%. The differences are:
I changed “YORKSHHIRE” to “YORKSHIRE”
I had to link some of the ‘orphaned’ design elements to other parts of the design so that they wouldn’t fall out when I cut them.
I couldn’t get the shadows/lighting the same as in the original image. (Some of the shadows seem difficult/impossible to achieve in the physical version, so I didn’t make too much of an effort trying to get them exactly right.)
To get the right-looking thickness of paper I had to use watercolour card rather than paper, but that’s got a bit more of a creamy colour than the bright paper of the original image.
The laser made brown marks on the edges of the card, so again I haven’t been able to match the brightness of the original image.
Elements where I just left the AI design and didn’t make any changes:
The shapes of the leaves and the rose.
The shapes of the individual letters.
Lessons learned
When making a layered papercut, even if the pieces have already been cut out by laser it can still take a long time to position the pieces correctly so they can be glued into place.
(Solution to point (1) above:) If it’s tricky to position the layers of designs on top of each other, etch the positions onto the backs of the other paper pieces. For example, I etched the outline of the leafy piece onto the back of the large rose piece. This made it much quicker to accurately glue the leaves into place.
Things I still need to learn or improve
Is there a quicker way to automatically (but accurately) convert the JPG image into SVG shapes? I tried to use Curve’s ‘Autotrace’ function, but it wasn’t very accurate so I decided to draw around most of the shapes by hand (using an Apple pencil).
If I get chance later, I might try to match the shadows more accurately, and maybe also try to cut from a thinner, whiter paper or card.
Homework:
Create a specific Barnsley version of the card/artwork.
Create a version with no text.
Try to cut from thinner, whiter paper/card.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or projects – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-assisted images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
Continuing with my ongoing project of “An AI made me do it”, this latest mission was a great excuse to use AI to generate an image that I could then turn into a physical object. I needed a birthday card for my dad, and I wondered if AI would be able to help me. Normally I like to do papercut cards for family and friends, so this project became “Papercut birthday card for my dad”.
I logged into ChatGPT/DALL-E, and gave it the prompt:
As a first attempt, I thought this was amazing. DALL-E even added an envelope! I was impressed that most of the design could actually work as a papercut. There were very few isolated elements that would fall out if they were cut exactly as shown. However, there was a confusing section near the middle of the design where two elements were layered together (the snail or spiral on top of a flower shape).
At the same time, DALL-E also created this card…:
…which I would have immediately tried to cut out – if only it didn’t very clearly say “THUD” right in the middle. What on earth?!
So having discovered that DALL-E knew what a papercut birthday card looked like, I gave it another prompt:
“Great! Please could you include some little light aircraft in the image?”
At first sight these were amazing again, but:
they both had non-standard spellings of “Birthday”,
The left card was almost impossible to turn into a card without a lot of work,
Most of the planes didn’t look feasible as 2D paper objects.
Try, try again…
As usual, just when I thought that the AI was going to produce a fantastic result with the next image, we ended up having a fight instead. It either mis-spelled words (including “Dad”!), or presented the image at a sloping distorted angle, or came up with a design that would be impractical as a papercut.
Also as usual, the designs were nearly right, not really right. Here are some of the rejects:
In the end I just had to pick one that looked possible to cut without many adjustments:
I printed it out on a normal piece of printer paper, then used that printout as a cutting template.
Here is the hand-cut version that I produced first:
…but then I continued to work on a laser-cut version. To do that I used Linearity Curve, which has an ‘auto trace’ function. Auto trace converts JPG files (i.e. photos) into vector graphics (i.e. collections of flat shapes). Auto trace sometimes makes little errors with the shapes (but is still way faster than tracing around the images by hand), so afterwards I edited the nodes of the vector shapes to try to get them to match the original image a bit better:
(The little white dots on the plane are nodes that can be moved around.)
…and here is the physical laser-cut version (on the right), next to the original AI design:
How well did the AI follow my prompts?
I would say about 8/10, for this project. Very successful! Most of the designs looked like papercut birthday cards. And all of them (when requested) contained light aircraft. However – as mentioned several times before in this ongoing series of projects – creative spelling was the opposite of useful or helpful.
How close is the physical version to the original AI design?
I’m going to say it’s about 85%. The differences are:
I didn’t cut out all of the sections that were cut out in the original design – I just etched them instead.
I changed the tail section because if I’d cut it out then lots of the pieces would just have dropped out. (Also, the stripe extends forward from the tail, which doesn’t look quite right.)
Some of the swirly bits have been simplified.
I couldn’t find any dark green card or paper to mount the plane on, so I chose a speckled dark blue piece instead.
The letters in the “Happy Birthday” banner had to be converted into stencil-type letters (otherwise the central sections of the As, Ps, B, D and R would have dropped out).
The elements where I just left the AI design and didn’t make any changes:
The outline of the plane
The design of the banners.
Lessons learned
ChatGPT is great at papercut birthday card designs.
Things I still need to learn or improve
Actually I’m pretty pleased with this project. Even the ‘duds’ had lots of elements in them that I felt could be used in future projects.
Homework:
Convert at least three of the AI’s original designs into actual cards.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
Continuing with my project “An AI Made Me Do It“, I’ve continued to put AI to practical uses by creating physical artworks from AI-generated images. This time I used Kittl to create an 80th birthday card for my mum.
I wanted to do a papercut artwork for the front of her card, but wasn’t sure if the AI would know what a papercutting design should look like, so I tried suggesting an adult colouring page design:
Prompt: “Adult colouring page of a number ’80’. The numerals should be filled with doodles of simple white roses.”
With Kittl you can choose from a set of styles, so I selected “anime vector”, and this was its first attempt:
I thought this was great, but wondered if the AI could keep the floral elements inside the boundaries of the actual numbers. So I used exactly the same prompt again (but not the anime vector style), to see if the design would evolve or if I needed to tweak the instructions. However, see if you can spot the problem with the next few designs…
Artificial “Intelligence”?
They were no good for an 80th birthday card! This is another example of AIs being too “creative” with text. It’s a shame because they were lovely designs – but obviously they were impossible to use because they said “88” instead of “80”.
For a while I tried to generate just the “0” shape by itself, in case I could match any of the designs with the previous 8s, to get the whole figure “80”:
…but none of them seemed to match exactly, so I went back to trying “80” again, with this prompt:
“Papercutting design of a number ’80’, where the 8 and 0 are filled with doodles of simple white roses.”
This time Kittl nailed it first time. (I’d forgotten to select the Anime vector style, but it still did an amazing job):
Cutting it out
I definitely felt I could cut that out by hand. So I printed it (on normal printer paper) and then over the space of three evenings I used an X-Acto knife/scalpel to cut the design. This is the result:
Here is Kittl’s original design on the left, with my papercut on the right.
All the years of doing my “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” project must have paid off! Because technically speaking, this is one of the best papercuts I’ve done. There were very few errors, and the cuts were clean and sharp. I’ve always loved doing papercuts and I’m a member of GAP (Guild of American Papercutters (- there isn’t a guild of British papercutters)) and this was a great excuse to use my cutting skills.
How well did Kittl follow my prompt?
Right from the start it came up with some great rose designs. I think it helped that I started with the Anime vector style, because by definition this needs to use clear lines and shapes, rather than gradients of colours.
As usual though, there was a point where the AI got too creative. This time it kept giving me the number 88 instead of the number 80. (I am begining to think that the “I” bit of “AI” does not mean “intelligent”.)
After I had a break then went back to a similar prompt, Kittl came up with a design that I felt was immediately usable. It is really rare for me to see an AI-generated design that feels 100% right, but this one not only followed the prompt but also looked like the design I had in my imagination.
How similar is my end physical product, compared with the original AI-generated design?
I reckon it’s about 95% the same (if you ignore the fact that I put it on blue card instead of beige). The camera angle of the finished card makes it look a little bit distorted, but the papercut is the same size and shape as the original image (I was cutting it out directly from a printout of the design). I’ve suggested the final 5% difference because Kittl put shadows behind the numbers, as if the 8 was hovering a couple of millimetres above the 0. But because I just cut it as a single piece and then stuck it onto a windowed card, mine didn’t have the shadow effect.
Lessons learned
Kittl seems to be naturally great at creating colouring pages and/or papercutting designs.
Currently (April 2024) AI image generators still have a problem with producing the exact text from a prompt.
Things I still need to learn or improve
One of these days I should really come up with a better overall design for the cards that I put my papercut artworks onto (or into, in the case of pop-ups). On the other hand though, I suppose having such a simple overall design means that viewers have to focus on the papercutting itself.
Homework:
Develop this design as a lasercutting file.
Try to mount the laser-cut artwork on a piece of beige card, to see if I can get it to look even more like the original design.
Create more papercut number cards using Kittl.
See if any of the other AI image generators can produce similar (or better) results for papercut cards.
Summary
For me this felt like a great practical use of an AI text-to-image generator. I needed an original design for a special occasion, and in minutes the AI – Kittl, in this case – created a design that would have taken me maybe a few hours to produce myself. As a result, ‘all’ I had to do was the cutting of the artwork (which of course took a few hours, but it was for a very special occasion so I wanted to put a lot of effort into it).
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or projects – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
As mentioned earlier , I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, where I’ll use AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. This latest project is a real departure from my usual work. Instead of featuring lasercutting or polymer clay, this one involves creating a rose-and-skull fabric design. I didn’t think it would be horribly difficult. I was wrong.
For this project I had a very clear image in my mind of the end result that I wanted. I was aiming for a design made up of large white roses (specifically Yorkshire roses, if possible) and small white skulls. However, my first problem (learned from experience) was that most AIs didn’t seem to know what a Yorkshire rose was. (Have a look on the Wikipedia page for more info, but basically it’s a symbol with particular historical and geographical links.) Yorkshire is a region in the North of England, and its heraldic symbol is a white rose like this:
I’m from Yorkshire so that’s why I wanted a white rose. As for the skull; that was firstly because I often like to have memento mori reminders of mortality around me, to remind me to enjoy (or at least appreciate) life while I can. Secondly it was because my sister used to have a cool scarf that looked like a flowery design from a distance, but up close it was full of skulls. So I wanted to play with that surprise-skull idea.
This was my first attempt at a design, using Adobe Firefly and the prompt of: “Seamless repeating pattern of large Tudor Roses and small human skulls”:
(I used the phrase “Tudor rose” rather than “Yorkshire Rose” because I thought the AI might be more familiar with the term, but obviously it wasn’t.) Some parts of this design were amazing, such as the repeating pattern, and the overall look of the skulls and the roses). Some parts were disappointing, though – e.g. instead of big roses and little skulls it had big skulls and litte roses. Not bad for a first effort, though.
But when I tried to refine the image to get it closer to what I wanted, Firefly stopped cooperating. I went through about 40 iterations of attempting to get it to produce an image with large roses and small skulls, where it was continually ignoring the part about skulls. Example below shows that I even gave it a reference image in addition to the prompt, “Seamless repeating pattern of large Yorkshire Roses and human skulls, on a sage-coloured background. (A Yorkshire Rose is a traditional emblem of the county of Yorkshire in the UK. It typically features five petals, with small, green leaves visible between each petal. It is similar to a Tudor Rose, but all of its petals are white)”:
This is yet another example of when AIs go rogue. Firefly was simply refusing to create any skulls. So I had to give up with Firefly and try Kittl instead.
Kittl created some pretty good roses and skulls, but couldn’t create seamless repeating patterns:
…so I tried ChatGPT/DALL-E. That image generator produced tons of fantastic roses and skulls, but again was completely incapable of producing a seamless repeating design:
By this time I’d spent several hours trying to force the various AIs to come up with a seamless repeating design of large white roses and small white skulls. The different image generators could EITHER create a repeating pattern OR create a pattern of roses and skulls. So in the end I had to give up bashing my head against a brick wall and come to a compromise. I had to take my favourite image and ‘manually’ manipulate the size of the roses and skulls so that they were the right proportions. Then I had to manually adjust the elements of the image so that they formed a seamless repeating pattern.
One day I may create another post showing in detail how to create a repeating pattern, but briefly I used Linearity Curve to create ‘masks’ of the individual elements of the design, so that I could later change their sizes and positions:
Original image (bottom left), then I isolated each element (top left) and removed their backgrounds (top right).
I felt like this manual alteration was cheating, because the AIs hadn’t been able to do exactly what I wanted. But as with so many of my other projects there came a time when I had to recognise how much time I’d already spent trying to get the perfect image, and to just relax and tell myself that the technology wasn’t quite ready for me yet. It was so frustrating, though! I knew that AIs could create seamless repeating patterns, because Firefly had been creating loads of them for me. And I knew that AIs could create roses and skulls together. So why couldn’t they just do what I asked?!
Anyway, I had to just suck it up and do some final bits of image manipulation myself, to get the image I’d been hoping for. This was what I ended up with:
Creating the physical object
Having finally created my repeating pattern of large roses and small skulls, I could move onto the next stage of the project. That was to create a physical object from the design.
I thought I might try to use Redbubble to create an actual physical object. Here is their mockup of what my design would look like if it was turned into a backpack:
I’m still tempted to do that, actually. Maybe when my current backpack dies.
…but eventually I chose to have it printed on plain cotton fabric. I used Maake.com. I was so excited when the fabric arrived:
Here’s more of a close-up view:
The roses and skulls are exactly how I wanted them: you just notice the roses from a distance, but then from closer up you can see the little skulls. The only disappointing thing was that there wasn’t enough difference between the shades of blue. Never mind though – I’m sure I can find a use for this fabric. Maybe that will be another whole project. In the meantime – mission accomplished! An AI assisted physical object of rose-and-skull fabric.
How well did the AI(s) follow my prompts?
As explained above, the three AIs all managed some great individual designs but either couldn’t (in the case of creating repeating patterns) or wouldn’t (in the case of creating skulls) do what I asked. At the time of writing this post (April 2024) Kittl and DALL-E still can’t do repeating patterns. And Firefly still won’t mix roses with skulls. I’d score them all about 6/10 in their attempts to follow the prompts. Some of the images produced along the way were great, but just didn’t fully fit the brief.
Lessons learned
As usual, the technology isn’t quite ready for me yet. I thought my requirements were fairly straightforward, and yet none of the AIs were capable of doing what I wanted.
How to create repeating patterns. That was a real bonus, actually. I think it’s a skill I can use in future projects.
There are some great companies around (e.g. Redbubble, Maake) who can turn digital images into physical objects.
Things I still need to learn or improve
It would be good if I could come up with a way to tell when I’m wasting time versus spending time on the projects. Failing that, maybe I should just set a timer for working on the AI design phase of the project. ChatGPT/DALL-E helps with that, because after a while it stops and says I need to come back in X hours. Kittl and Firefly have ‘token’ systems instead, where you can only ask for a certain number of images.
Apart from that, in general I just need to keep my eyes and ears open for updates in the AI text-to-image generators, to know when I’ll finally be able to ask the AI to create a seamless repeating pattern of large white roses and small human skulls on a green or blue background.
Homework:
Now I need to make something out of the fabric!
Summary:
This unexpectedly turned out to be a monster of a project. I had to fight the AIs all the way to try to get them to create repeating rose-and-skull patterns. In the end I just had to compromise by doing some of the design work myself. However I was really pleased with the end result of the rose and skull fabric.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of what I can actually make with the fabric – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
During my continued project to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks in 2024, (using AI-generated images as the basis for actual physical creative pieces) I have had quite a few successes so far – but have also encountered a lot of frustration and annoyance as well. Below is a typical conversation between me and ChatGPT’s DALL-E image generator. As you will see, I was trying to create a four-name family tree design. I thought DALL-E would actually be good at this (based on my wedding woodcuts experience) but I was wrong. So this is what happens when AI goes rogue. It’s like the AI is deliberately ignoring my requests:
Conversation with ChatGPT’s DALL-E Image Generator:
ME: Please create a family tree design. It should feature a tree with branches and leaves, and should incorporate the names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen” and “Paul”. The design should resemble a scrollsaw or fretsaw woodcut.
ChatGPT:Here is the family tree design you requested, resembling a scrollsaw or fretsaw woodcut, with the names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul” artistically integrated into the branches. The design features intricate branches and leaves, crafted to mimic a vintage wooden cutout.
ME: I asked for the names “Janet, Tim, Helen, Paul”, but your design says “Janet, Helen, Heelen, Paul”! Please try again, with the correct names.
ChatGPT: Here is the revised family tree design with the correct names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul” integrated into the branches. The design maintains the scrollsaw or fretsaw woodcut style with intricate details.
ME:
No, that is ridiculous. The name “Tim” has been missed out again. Please try again. This time try the names in large leaves
ChatGPT:Here is the updated family tree design featuring the names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul” clearly inscribed on large leaves, in line with a scrollsaw or fretsaw woodcut style. Each name is distinctly placed to ensure clarity.
ME: You did not follow my instructions, but I quite like the names within little banner shapes. This time you only spelled one of the names correctly, still did not include the name “Tim”, and you added two extra names. Please create a family tree design which looks like a scrollsaw woodcut design, which includes the following names on banner shapes which are incorporated into the tree’s design: Janet, Tim, Helen, Paul.
ChatGPT:Here is the updated family tree design, following the scrollsaw woodcut style. The names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul” are each inscribed on individual banner shapes that are intricately incorporated into the tree’s branches. The design ensures each name is spelled correctly and prominently displayed.
ME:
OK, this time you finally managed to include the name “Tim”. Well done. However you also invented and included three extra names. This is a stupid thing to do, because family trees are very important to people. It is imperative that only the four requested names should be included. Please try again. The design should look like a photo-realistic wood shape which has been cut with a fretsaw or scrollsaw.
ChatGPT: Here is the corrected family tree design, resembling a photo-realistic wood shape cut with a fretsaw or scrollsaw. This design includes only the four requested names: “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul”, each displayed on individual banner shapes integrated into the branches. The craftsmanship aims to reflect the traditional aesthetic of scrollwork in wood.
ME: Hmmm. Do you have a problem with displaying the name “Tim”?
ChatGPT: It seems that there was an oversight again with the name “Tim”. I apologize for this recurring issue. Let’s try once more to ensure all specified names, including “Tim”, are correctly and clearly displayed in the design. I’ll initiate another attempt to create the family tree design with exact adherence to your specifications.
Here is another attempt at the family tree design, this time ensuring that the names “Janet”, “Tim”, “Helen”, and “Paul” are correctly displayed on individual banner shapes within the tree’s branches. The design mimics a photo-realistic wood shape cut with a fretsaw or scrollsaw, aiming for a traditional handcrafted look.
Please review the image to confirm that all names are presented correctly and the design meets your expectations.
ME:
Thanks, you managed Tim this time, but put in two Janets, two Helens, three Pauls, and one Aneth. Let’s try something slightly different: Please create a family tree design which incorporates exactly four blank banner shapes (so I can insert text in them later). The design should be photo-realistic and should look like it is cut from a sheet of wood using a fretsaw.
ChatGPT: Here is the family tree design with exactly four blank banner shapes integrated among the branches, designed to be photo-realistic and resembling a piece cut from a sheet of wood using a fretsaw. These banners are well-defined and empty, ready for you to insert text later.
Please review the image to ensure it meets your requirements for your family tree project.
ME: That design incorporated exactly seven banner shapes.
ChatGPT: I apologize for the continued discrepancies. Let’s make another attempt, ensuring the design includes exactly four blank banner shapes. I appreciate your patience as we refine the details to meet your specifications.
Here is another attempt at the family tree design, this time ensuring it includes exactly four blank banner shapes integrated among the branches, designed to be photo-realistic and resembling a piece cut with a fretsaw. These banners are clearly defined and spaced for easy text insertion. Please review the image to confirm it aligns with your needs.
ME: This time you included six, so we’re getting somewhere. Try again please.
ChatGPT: Here is the revised family tree design, featuring exactly four blank banner shapes integrated among the branches. The design aims to mimic a photo-realistic piece cut with a fretsaw or scrollsaw, emphasizing precision and traditional craftsmanship.
Please review the image to ensure it fully meets your specifications for the family tree project.
ME:
Nope, that was six banners again. Can you tell me if there is a better way for me to express this design request, so that the GPT creates the image that I want (i.e. a tree cut from wood, containing four blank banner shapes)?
ChatGPT: I understand the frustration with the repeated inaccuracies. It seems that the complexity of the design specifications might be causing the inconsistency in outputs. To improve the chances of achieving the desired outcome, we can refine the description to be as explicit and detailed as possible, emphasizing the critical elements. Here’s how you might frame your request more effectively:
Specify the Number Clearly: Start by explicitly stating the exact number of banners and their importance in the design. Reiterate this number in a different way to underscore its importance.
Detail the Placement and Appearance: Describe precisely where the banners should be placed (e.g., on the branches), and suggest the spatial arrangement (e.g., evenly spaced along the central trunk).
Emphasize the Exclusion of Additional Elements: Clearly state that no other names or banners should be included aside from the four specified.
Use Simple and Direct Language: Reduce the complexity of the language to minimize misunderstandings in the translation from description to visual representation.
Visual Description of the Tree: Describe the tree as looking like a realistic wooden cutout, emphasizing that it should look like it’s made from a single piece of wood.
Here’s a revised request based on these tips:
Prompt:
“Create a family tree design that looks like it’s cut from a single piece of wood using a scrollsaw. The tree should have a realistic wood texture and feature exactly four blank banners. These banners should be shaped like ribbons and placed symmetrically along the central trunk, clearly separated from each other. There should be no additional banners or names included—only these four distinct ribbon banners.”
By structuring your request in this manner, you help ensure that all critical details are highlighted, potentially reducing the chance of errors in the generated image. If this method still doesn’t yield the correct results, it might be a limitation in the image generation process itself, which can occasionally struggle with precise numerical specifications and symmetrical arrangements.
ME: OK, please try your suggested prompt.
ChatGPT: Here are two versions of the family tree design, each featuring exactly four blank banner shapes shaped like ribbons and symmetrically placed along the central trunk. These designs are crafted to look like they’re cut from a single piece of wood using a scrollsaw, capturing the essence of traditional handcrafted woodcuts.
Please review the images to see if either aligns perfectly with your specifications.
ME: Nope. One had seven banners and the other had three. If you were a person I would have fired you by now.
ChatGPT: I apologize for the continued inaccuracies and the frustration it has caused. I appreciate your patience and understand how critical it is for the design to meet your exact specifications. Let’s give this another try, focusing strictly on creating a design with exactly four banners. Here’s the refined prompt for clarity and precision:
Prompt:
“Create a family tree design that looks like it’s meticulously cut from a single piece of wood using a scrollsaw. The design should feature a realistic wood texture with a central trunk and spreading branches. Exactly four blank banners, shaped like traditional ribbons, should be symmetrically integrated into this structure—two on each side of the trunk. No additional elements or banners should be included, ensuring a clean and precise depiction of a handcrafted woodcut.”
I will generate this design now, aiming to meet your requirements precisely.
Here is the latest attempt at the family tree design, created to look like it’s meticulously cut from a single piece of wood using a scrollsaw. This design features a realistic wood texture with a central trunk and spreading branches, and includes exactly four blank banners shaped like traditional ribbons, symmetrically integrated into the structure.
Please review the image to confirm if it finally meets your expectations.
ME:
Wow. That was TEN banners.
ChatGPT: I sincerely apologize for the repeated errors and the frustration it has caused. It seems there are challenges with generating the image precisely as specified, particularly with the exact number of banners. At this point, it might be beneficial to explore alternative solutions:
Manual Creation: If you have access to image editing software like Adobe Illustrator or a similar program, manually creating the design might yield better control over the specifics such as the exact number of banners.
Professional Design Services: Considering a professional graphic designer or a service that specializes in custom woodcut designs could also be a viable option, ensuring that all your specifications are met accurately.
Alternative Tools: Exploring other AI-driven design tools that might offer more precise control over the design elements could be another avenue.
If you’re open to it, I can assist you with guidelines on how to create this design manually using graphic design software, or help locate services that could undertake this task. Let me know how you would like to proceed!
[Review of this experience]
Did you see that? The cheeky b****** told me to go away and design it myself!
The idea of AI as a magical time-saving device is not completely accurate (as demonstrated above). In the five-ish months of using it I’ve rarely been presented with a design that 100% fits my prompt. I really was grinding my teeth over this experience. ChatGPT repeatedly ignored my prompt of including just four banners, and seemed to have a real dislike of one particular name. For me the strangest thing was that when I asked DALL-E to create a better prompt, it actually produced worse images. They looked like really lame clipart images.
Having said that though, it did produce some great designs along the way, therefore I may be able to use parts of them in future projects. Fortunately, this was also only a test project, so I was able to just give up and walk away instead of having to keep bashing away at it.
How well did ChatGPT / DALL-E follow my prompts?
List of four names: DALL-E keeps getting names wrong or leaving them out – especially “Tim”. There were also loads of mis-spellings and even completely invented names. So I think this AI is currently (April 2024) still very poor at including specific text or names within designs. I will score it 3/10 for following this prompt, because at least it did seem to understand the concept, and at least I could use some other drawing software to replace the wrong names with corrected versions.
Incorporating the names within leaf shapes: Scored 0/10 because there were no names within leaf shapes. However, the AI came up with something that was maybe even better than my request, so I give it some credit.
Four banner shapes: DALL-E repeatedly ignored this request! In fact, it was so consistently ignored that I felt like the AI was deliberately rejecting my request. Weird. However, I’ll give it 3/10 because again it did at least understand the concept of banners.
Fretsaw or scrollsaw design: Not bad, actually. 6/10. One or two designs were more like lino cuts than sawn designs, and several had elements that were either ‘floating’ or would be too fragile to cut by hand. However, many others looked like they could be suitable for converting to scrollsaw (or lasercutting) designs.
Family tree: Right from the start the AI seemed to understand this idea. 8/10.
Photo-realistic image: 4/10. To me, most of the designs look quite two-dimensional, and maybe more like screenprints.
Lessons learned
ChatGPT / DALL-E is still rubbish at incorporating text within designs, because it’s happy to generate incorrect text.
Rather than shouting at the machine, maybe I should just accept that the technology isn’t ready for me, yet, and should wait for it to catch up. I suspect that in less than a year from now DALL-E will have fixed this glitch – so for now I’ll just take a deep, calming breath, and move onto another project.
Homework:
Create a reusable four-name family tree design.
Summary
OK, this example is only me trying to create a piece of artwork, but it gives me chills when I think that people are using AI for increasing numbers of applications in the real world, (including medical science). Therefore for obvious reasons I really do hope that AI continues to improve.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got your own examples of when AI has gone rogue I’d love to hear about them! To contact me you can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
As mentioned earlier, one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, (using AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces). My latest piece was for a commissioned artwork, of a wedding woodcut. The customer had seen my previous wedding heart papercut, but wanted a wooden heart instead of paper.
I suppose I could have just used the same design as the papercut…
Personalised papercutting
…but this seemed like a great opportunity to ask an AI to help me with a new design. This time I used ChatGPT / DALL-E. Here is the first prompt (I’m still in the habit of using “please” and “thank you” with the AI):
“please could you create a design for a heart-shaped piece of wooden wall art for a wedding? The wooden object should feature the names “Charlie & Bex.”
and this was the result:
Wow.
It was a lovely design, but it didn’t really scream ‘wedding’ at me, so I followed up with “Please could you try the same design, but with the design cut out using a fretsaw or scrollsaw (instead of carved into the wood)?” This is what came out next:
Wow again. For a start I was impressed that Dall-E actually knew what I meant by fretsaw or scrollsaw! But it still needed to be a bit more wedding-y (and what the heck was that “CERDDING” about?!)
This is why I really like the collaborative aspect of ChatGPT’s Dall-E. Having the interaction as a conversation allows the user to tweak the design in an iterative way, just changing one or two parts of the prompt at a time, instead of having to type out a giant long prompt with all of the required elements of the design. I felt that the second design still looked a bit too flowery, so I asked it to replace the large flowers with doves. Here is the result:
Fibber!
Again, that was a really nice design, but one of the things I’d liked about the previous versions was that the design had included a small blank heart near the bottom, which I thought would be a great place to write the date of the actual wedding. So I asked Dall-E to insert a small blank heart near the bottom.
Dall-E replied “Here’s the updated design with a small blank heart near the bottom, providing space for you to add text later.“
– but that was a big fat fib! Unfortunately, although ChatGPT / Dall-E is fantastic in a lot of ways, it often falsely claims that it has done what I asked. I actually really liked that design, but because it wasn’t 100% perfect I persevered and asked it to include roses or passion flowers. Again, it came up with a lovely design…
…but again it wasn’t quite right. I loved the birds and the overall look and the little banner with the names in, but there were a couple of problems:
There still wasn’t a blank heart for me to add a date later
Some of the lines were getting a bit too fine to cut out
I didn’t really like the big flower in the middle
Getting somewhere…
So I tried again, with this prompt: “Create a design for a heart-shaped piece of wooden wall art for a wedding, which looks like it has been cut out by a fretsaw or scrollsaw. The wooden object should feature: the names “Charlie & Bex”, two doves, a simplified passion flower, and a small heart-shaped area left blank for text.“
This time the GPT had done exactly what I asked…except that I’d changed my mind about putting in a lotus flower.
“Nice! Can you try another design like the one on the left, but with a rose or calla lily instead of the lotus flower?”
Frustration
This is where I started to get frustrated. I’d thought that the next image was going to be perfect, but it was getting worse. It had inserted a passion flower instead of a rose, had mis-spelled Charlie, and changed the doves into seagulls. Sigh. At the moment (April 2024) there always seems to be a point where the GPT turns into a complete arse, and deliberately does stuff to annoy me. We went through about twenty more iterations after that, where it was creating very nice designs, but they weren’t actually what I’d asked for. I swear it was deliberately ignoring my instructions.
After several days of fighting with DALL-E on and off, it finally created a design that I thought could work as a lasercut piece:
This fit the brief in most ways:
Heart shape wedding woodcut
Rose
Two doves
Correct names in a banner
Infinity symbol
Small blank heart (although it was too small to incorporate any text)
Looked like it had been (or could be) cut with a fretsaw or scrollsaw
Final Design
I made a few tweaks to the final design, by:
Making sure all of the elements connected to at least one other element, so no pieces dropped out.
Simplifying and/or thickening the swirling lines of the designs, to make the final piece less fragile.
Swapping the doves for two others from an earlier version.
Converting the squiggle above the heart-and-infinity-sign into a “CB” monogram.
Changing the typeface of the names.
Enlarging the blank heart so I could add text to it.
Changing the decorative edge to a repeating “C&B” design.
Adding a hanging loop.
Altering the squiggles above the rose so that they formed another heart.
Here they are next to each other:
I do love the original, but it just wasn’t practical to cut out exactly as it was (e.g. with some lines being too thin, and some elements not connected to the rest of the design). I might try etching it rather than cutting it, just so I have a version that’s more faithful to the original, but on the whole I’m really pleased with the way the wedding woodcut turned out.
The only real improvement that I feel I made is that I joined the top parts of the heart (above the infinity symbol). Most of the other changes were just compromises, to join up the disconnected or thin sections.
Lessons learned
ChatGPT / DALL-E is awesome. I can’t believe how aesthetically pleasing most of those designs are.
From a technical point of view, I’ve learned how to create ‘masked’ sections of images via the Linearity Curve app (i.e. sections of the design I can isolate, then copy and paste and/or export into other applications).
Things I still need to learn or improve
Why does it do that thing where it starts ignoring parts of my prompts? I need to try to find out if there’s a way to stop that happening.
Homework:
Try to create a specialist ‘Wedding Woodcut’ GPT, so I can design similar wedding hearts in the future.
Summary:
I felt like this was a really successful project. DALL-E helped me to create a design which combined the look of a traditional woodcut with the modern technology of lasercutting and AI image generation.
Thanks for reading this ‘Wedding Woodcut’ post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or products – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
I have just been to the 20Books Sevilla conference, and it was just as inspiring as I’d expected. Before I set off, I asked ChatGPT to come up with some ideas for “author merchandise” (because I’m still on my challenge of creating 52 AI-assisted artworks during 2024.) One of the ideas it suggested was “Author merchandise for recipe book authors”, which should include “A recipe book title etched onto a wooden spoon”. So here is my interpretation below. To be honest I’m nor sure this even counts as an artwork, but I thought that authors of recipe books could put their book title on one side…
…and then they could put a QR code for their website on the other side of the spoon:
As it happens, I didn’t actually meet any authors of recipe books at the 20Books conference so I couldn’t show them my spoon-based wares, but that doesn’t really matter because I’m just doing what the AI tells me to do.
I met lots of lovely writers (even though none of them were authors of recipe books), and I also made a drunken promise commitment to another author (which I will explain more about at a later date…)
As mentioned in an earlier blog post , I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, where I’ll use AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. I feel like I’m still only just beginning to learn how to interact with the various AIs, so for now I’m not being too ambitious – which is why I decided to attempt a design for an adult colouring page as my third AI-assisted project.
[The links in this post aren’t affiliate links or sponsored products. They’re just for info.]
Creating a colouring page with Firefly
This project builds on the very first physical object I created with the help of an AI. I used Adobe Firefly to create a letter “J”, and then laser-etched it onto a bullet journal:
I realised that that image might work as a simple design for a colouring page, if I made a couple of alterations. So I uploaded it into Linearity Curve to convert it to an SVG-format illustration and to tweak the image so it would be more suitable as a simple colouring page. Then I actually coloured it in (digitally) to test it:
Original design by FireflyConverted and amended.Tested with colours
Success!
I loved that idea of being able to make my own colouring sheets, so I tried Firefly again – but this time the results weren’t as good. I used the prompt “Large serif letter “K” filled with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page,” and this is what I got:
These were completely unsuitable as colouring pages. Especially because the AI has even coloured parts of them already! But with Firefly you can select specific styles, so I wondered if that would make a difference. I applied “Art Nouveau / Bold lines / Ink / Line Drawing / Simple”, and there was definitely an improvement:
Although they were better than the first results, they were still no good for my intended purpose (to create a colouring page). It’s hard to tell from this screenshot, but many of the lines just peter out into nothing, which means that anyone trying to colour them wouldn’t have distinct areas to draw inside. And many parts of the designs were far too small to colour, even if the letter was printed at A4 size.
Unlike DALL-E there is no way to incrementally ‘teach’ the Firefly AI at the moment (February 2024). However, aside from applying the styles as mentioned above, it also lets you upload your own reference images to help it. I uploaded the letter “J” design that Firefly had previously created for me, and again there was a big improvement…
…but again none of them were instantly suitable for use as colouring pages. The one on the left was pretty good for colouring purposes, but I’d been hoping for flowers and leaves so the design was a bit too abstract. The other three had areas that would be really unsatisfying to colour.
Creating a colouring page with DALL-E
At that point I gave up and tried ChatGPT’s DALL-E to see if it was any better. I started with the same prompt (Large serif letter “K” filled with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page), and these are the first two designs it came up with:
The designs were interesting, but again they weren’t suitable as colouring pages. I replied to DALL-E with “Thanks. Could you make them a bit simpler and the lines a bit thicker, please?”, and it tried again:
They still weren’t suitable for colouring, so I typed “The lines of the flowers and leaves need to be thicker”. Unfortunately DALL-E applied its frequent quirk – of fixing the thing that was wrong, but breaking the things that were right. It cut off parts of the “K” in the first design, and then decided to invent a new letter shape:
Considering most AIs only give you a certain number of credits to use for creating designs, I find this sort of thing really frustrating. It’s wasting my credits on creating things that I don’t want! So I got it to start again, by saying “Please try again: A literal design for a serif “K”, decorated with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page. The style should look like thick vector-based lines.”
At last! They’re not perfect as colouring pages (e.g. because there are some diagonal shadow lines, and some sections where the lines are too close to attempt to colour them), but the image on the right is getting somewhere.
Detail showing diagonal shadow.
Creating a colouring page with Kittl
Finally, I tried with the Kittl AI, to see if it was any good at creating colouring pages. I applied the ‘Anime Vector’ style, and this is what it designed:
Although some of them had elements that wouldn’t be suitable for colouring, a lot of them looked like they could work immediately, without any alteration, if I just printed them. Here is the proof:
I’m not keen on the flower at the top right – it’s a bit fanciful compared to the other design elements. But on the other hand, the design felt like it was just the right size and complexity for colouring. I love the overall style and all of the leaves and vines. A lot of the flowers are lovely, too. This was a fun project – ending up with a physical item (the colouring page) by just printing out the design.
“Adult Coloring Page Creator”!
Only after spending ages exploring the AIs’ colouring-page capabilities, did I realise that ChatGPT offered the “Explore GPTs” feature:
…and I discovered that users of ChatGPT/DALL-E can save specialised versions of the AI, trained to do specific things. One example is “Adult Coloring Page Creator” by Brent Laing. I tried the prompt: “Serif letter ‘K’ decorated with Art Nouveau flowers and leaves”, and this is what came out:
I think it’s lovely, although it still has some sections which might be difficult to colour.
Critique of the different AIs
This is my seventh week of ‘seriously playing’ with AI text-to-image generators, and they seem to be evolving very quickly. In January 2024, Kittl, DALL-E and Firefly were all a bit dodgy when it came to recognising letters. This is weird, because the prompt actually included the letter. How can’t AIs know what ‘K’ looks like, when I’ve just shown right there in the text what ‘K’ is?) Anyway, these were my experiences for this project:
Firefly:
Pretty designs, but not suitable as colouring pages because the lines were too fine and/or the designs were too complex. However, at least it has learned how to create letters in the last few weeks. For now I don’t think Firefly will be my AI of choice if I want to try to create any more decorated letters for colouring, because I’ve had more success with the other AIs. That’s a shame, because Firefly created the original ‘J’ which made me think about creating colouring pages.
ChatGPT/DALL-E:
Incredibly frustrating. Mostly very good shapes of letters, but the AI constantly ignored my instructions and ‘forgot’ to do what I’d asked. However, other people have successfully trained their own specialised versions of GPTs to create colouring pages, so I might persevere. It would save time to have a specialised GPT that already knows what I want.
Kittl:
Produces very good designs that are suitable for colouring. However I think to get a ‘perfect’ design I’d have to tweak the prompt a bit. (E.g. to ask for realistic-looking flowers rather than fantasy flowers). Kittl has also been a lot better at creating recognisable letters in the few weeks that I’ve been using it.
Summary
I really enjoyed creating, printing, and colouring my own colouring page.
Lessons learned
AIs seem to be especially good or bad at certain tasks, so if I continue using them I’ll probably have to keep subscribing to more than one.
I’d wondered about creating some colouring books, but AIs are getting so good at designing images that it’s probably not worth it now!
Things I still need to learn or improve
How to create my own GPT in ChatGPT, so I can create colouring pages in future without all the endless dialogue.
Homework:
Try to create my own GPT with ChatGPT, for creating colouring pages of letters decorated with flowers and leaves.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or products – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
As mentioned in an earlier blog post , I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, using AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. I was pleased with the first project, the heart-shaped wooden fridge magnet, but it was a relatively simple design and I also couldn’t think of a specific use for it in its original form. But I think this second artwork already shows a real evolution. For a start, the image itself is a much more complex and ambitious piece to laser etch. Secondly, I can think of several applications for the final object – especially for authors or other creatives. So welcome to the second experiment in my “An AI Made Me Do It” project: AI Assisted Artwork #2: Laser-Etched Wooden Book Cover.
[As usual, the links in this post aren’t affiliate links or sponsored products. They’re just for info.]
Where the idea came from:
I’ll be going to the “20Books Sevilla” authors’ conference in March 2024, and although I’m mainly attending with my author’s hat on, I’m also hoping to ask other authors what they think about the possibility of creating some book-related laser artworks.
With that trip in mind I was using one of the ChatGPT AI tools last week, to help me brainstorm a list of ideas for physical items that authors could offer to their readers and fans. That list ended up as a separate blog post, but as a side-product the AI image generator created a mockup illustration of book-related merchandise which might be useful to authors:
This is how ChatGPT described the image that DALL-E had created:
“a variety of laser-cut products designed for authors. This includes a decorative acrylic book cover, intricate paper invitations for a book launch, and character figurines, all set against the backdrop of a cozy writer’s studio.”
I’m not sure what I think about the orange figurine with squid legs, but the central etched wooden book cover immediately jumped out at me. It reminded me of the Aztec calendars that laser machine vendors send out as samples if you’re thinking about buying a laser cutter.
Because I’ve seen those calendars being etched by lasers like mine, I was inspired to see if I could get an AI to create an image for me that I could use as a physical book cover. I gave DALL-E a prompt of:
“a literal design for a laser-etched wooden book cover, featuring a complex steampunk lock, surrounded by demons and hieroglyphs”
This is what came out:
COOL! (and the image generator also spontaneously produced a creepy pen/syringe as a bonus)
How well did the image fit the prompt?
I must say that for me this fit the prompt perfectly:
It’s certainly got demons
There’s a great big steampunk lock mechanism in the middle of it
It features some hieroglyphic-looking symbols
It looks like a piece of etched wood.
I was so excited that I had to immediately go and try to etch it. This was my first effort (on a piece of beech-veneered MDF sheet):
Woo – not bad for a first effort, although I do need to play with the settings. Some parts (especially the main demon’s mouth) need to be etched more deeply.
(Detail of the laser-etched wooden book cover)
Here is a (speeded up) video of me etching and cutting the piece:
…and here are the original image and the physical object next to each other for comparison:
As I mentioned, I want to etch some parts of the image more deeply, but on the whole I’m very pleased with this first attempt at a laser-etched wooden book cover. I even managed to get the metallic grey background to look a bit like the one in DALL-E’s image (by resting the book cover on my laptop).
Summary
AI engine used:
The text-to-image generator “DALL-E”, which is part of the paid version of ChatGPT.
Lessons learned
DALL-E did a great job of understanding what I wanted. At the moment I definitely feel like it is worth paying for this version of ChatGPT.
This style of monochrome image converts very easily into a laser-etchable format.
The settings that I used for the laser etching weren’t quite right on this first attempt, because the demon’s mouth in particular was disappointingly shallow.
Things I still need to learn or improve
I need to find a way to make the etching deeper in some places.
Homework:
Find out how to etch the demon’s mouth more deeply. (Convert to greyscale and tinker with the contrast or brightness? Not sure yet, but I’m going to have a play with it to find out.)
Now I have to find a way to turn this into an actual book cover!
Additional AI thoughts:
Last week someone in my local writing group mentioned an article in the Guardian newspaper, which featured an interview with the artist Ai Weiwei about AI-generated images. He apparently said, “Art that can be copied is meaningless”, and that “even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era”. At first glance this seemed like an argument that “AI must be bad because it can imitate famous artists’ styles” [and therefore they would just give up making art]. However I’m not convinced that Ai Weiwei is against using AI – mainly because of his forthcoming playfully-titled project “Ai vs AI”.
So on second glance, what is he saying about Picasso and Matisse? It looks like he’s implying that those other artists’ work is meaningless because an AI could imitate them, whereas his work is meaningful because he doesn’t have a style that an AI could reproduce?!
One of the great things about AI reaching the mainstream news is that it has stirred up so many conversations about the nature and meaning and value (or not) of art. I’m really enjoying all of the questions emerging from this topic. I myself am currently pondering what artists from previous eras would have thought about the work of a man whose examples include 200,000 broken spouts from teapots or jugs 😉
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or products – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images (or laser-cut art) – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
As mentioned in an earlier blog post , I follow Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn podcast and was inspired by her New Year newsletter where she invited listeners to share their creative and business goals for 2024. Therefore I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, where I will use AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. As the year progresses, I’ll note down what happens and what my thoughts and feelings are about it. In the meantime, here we go with AI-Assisted Artwork #1: Heart-shaped wooden fridge magnet.
[By the way, my links in this post aren’t affiliate links or sponsored products. They’re just for info.]
I’ve already been experimenting with a few AI text-to-image generators in the last couple of weeks, and so far the overall results range from “Wow!” to “WTF?”. I haven’t yet found a single image that feels absolutely perfect for me to use immediately, however, that actually makes me happy. If computers can generate perfect art at the push of a button, then what’s the point of humans creating art? And indeed, what would be the point of humans viewing that art? As a creative person, these thoughts can all be very confusing and unsettling. However, as with most things in life, there is a sliding scale of what people find acceptable or unacceptable. Through this AI Made Me Do It project I’m going to attempt to find where my own views are along that sliding scale. (And if I can get the technology to work, I’ll also attempt to find out what other people think.)
AI Assisted Artwork #1
The first step was to come up with a text prompt for generating an image that could be somehow rendered as a physical object. I already had a laser-etched design in mind when I created the prompt, but it took several attempts to get an AI to generate an image that I could convert into something usable.
I started out with the Kittl AI engine, and didn’t get very far. The images were pretty cool (I thought the photography-style images in particular were amazing), but I didn’t feel like I could do justice to any of them:
I continued adapting the prompts to see if I could produce something simpler:
…but although I thought the images were fascinating and they might inspire me for future projects, they weren’t what I was hoping for. Not to mention that Kittl seemed to be deliberately ignoring my instruction about books and pens. The designs were a bit too complex for a first attempt at making something. (I was trying not to be too ambitious with my first design, so that I hopefully wouldn’t be too disappointed with the end result.)
Because Kittl wasn’t producing the goods, I switched to using the Adobe Firefly generator. Again it took me a few iterations of not-quite-what-I-was-looking-for images…
…before it finally produced an image I thought I could use for this project.
Prompt used: “heart-shaped wooden fridge magnet decorated with leather books and 3 pens, with a circle in the centre for text“
It’s not 100% accurate in terms of the brief:
there are only two pen-looking things instead of three,
there’s a thing that looks quite like a book, but it’s not particularly leathery and there’s only one of it
there is a blank space in the middle but it’s an oval rather than a circle
However I quite liked the design and I thought it had the right amount of detail in it for me to attempt to turn it into an actual physical object.
I imported it into CorelDraw (the recommended software for my lasercutting machine), and tweaked the colours to make some areas of the image etch more deeply than others. I also added a hairline-width border around the design, to tell the laser machine to cut out the heart shape.
The CorelDraw screenshot below records my experiments with the colours and settings of the image. Each one took at least a couple of minutes to manipulate, which shows that the process certainly wasn’t a question of just clicking a button to churn out a finished piece.
Eventually I found the right balance of settings, and then etched and cut the heart shape from a sheet of laserable birch-veneered MDF. Here is the lasercutting machine in action (speeded up!):
Below is the original image on the left, then the actual physical piece that I etched and cut. I was fairly pleased with the result, although somehow the etched design seems flatter than the original 2D image?!
AI-generated imageActual wooden heart
Of course now that I’ve made the thing, I can think of zero occasions when anyone would actually want a heart-shaped wooden fridge magnet with designs of pens and books etched into it. However, I can think of several examples of when a heart-shaped magnet would be an appropriate gift or keepsake, provided it had a different design etched into it. How about:
A “save the date” keepsake item, etched with the bride and groom’s names and the date of the forthcoming wedding.
Gift for a husband or wife for their fifth (i.e. wooden) anniversary
Family fridge magnet with names and birthdays listed
Reminder of inspirational, thought-provoking, or religious quotes
Things I’ve learned
There is definitely more to creating AI-generated images than just typing in some words and pressing a button. For a start, I constantly had to amend my prompts in order to steer the image closer to what I was hoping for. I went through loads of iterations, and in fact with the Kittl generator I just gave up in frustration because it seemed to be willfully ignoring my instruction to include books and pens in the image. To go from the first attempt to finally receiving an acceptable design took nearly an hour of re-tweaking prompts. Then to go from that image to a suitable format for laser etching took about two more hours. It was very interesting to be part of this human/machine partnership, because we were constantly providing feedback to each other and I’m sure that neither of us could have produced that final design by ourselves.
Technical lessons. I’ll skip the details because I’m sure they’ll be boring and irrelevant to a lot of people, but basically I’ve discovered several useful skills that I should be able to build on when I’m creating future pieces. E.g. I’ve learned the pros and cons of converting the original image to greyscale bitmap image versus converting it to a vector graphic. (See? Told you it was boring).
Things I still need to learn or improve
More technical lessons. There are a lot of technical factors that I could improve (mainly to do with the depth and quality of the etching), but considering this is the first time I’ve converted an AI-generated design into a fridge magnet, I won’t beat myself up over it. For now I’m fairly pleased with the result, and I can always try to improve on the object later after I’ve actually gained those technical skills.
How to streamline the process and waste less time. This is related to the first point, but I do feel like I wasted a lot of time trying to get Kittl to understand what I was trying to achieve (e.g. that I wanted the wooden fridge magnet to have drawings of pens and books etched onto it). So I need to try to find out more about how to give better prompts to AI image generators, to ensure a more accurate result. Also, once I get a handle on the technical aspects I might be able to create a checklist of steps to follow, instead of blundering around experimenting with colour/contrast/brightness settings, etc.
Keep better records! Even though I’ve only been using these AI image generators for a couple of weeks, I’m already looking back at some of my first experiments and thinking “Ooh, that might work for another project one day. I wonder what prompt and style I used for that image?”, but unfortunately I haven’t noted them all down. I need to find a quick and efficient way to store and retrieve that information. Firefly does keep the prompt details along with the images if I save them to a gallery, but it doesn’t seem to include the styles or effects that were applied. For example there is a lot of difference between the two sets of images below. They both used the prompt “black cat with blue eyes and bat wings”, but the upper set used styles like “anime”, “flat design”, and “line drawing”, whereas the lower set used styles like “photo”, “hyper realistic” and “fantasy”:
(I was going to criticise the number of tails that a couple of those cats have, but then I realised I’d asked for pictures of cats with wings, so I can’t complain that they’re not realistic.)
Hopefully my skills will improve over this coming year as I continue to experiment with using AI-generated images to inspire physical artworks, but for now I’m pleased to have got off to a successful start. The final design might not be something that customers would interested in buying, but at least I’ve proved to myself that I can produce an AI-generated image that can be etched onto a wooden fridge magnet.
Homework:
Try to find tutorials or tips about Firefly- and Kittl-specific prompts.
Try to create a “Save the date” fridge magnet.
Try to create a heart fridge magnet for a fifth (wooden) anniversary
See if I can find a way to store and organise screenshots of my AI experiments without them taking up too much digital storage space.
Use a normal AI text-based generator to see if I can get it to suggest some further products.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or products – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.
