A Midjourney Book Cover
This Midjourney starts with a Solar Harnessing Core. In my science fiction novel, The Council of Light, the known universe is powered by these giant orbs, which surround and suck out the power from suns. You might be thinking it would be more accurate to say “stars” rather than suns, but in the universe I’ve created, they call the star inside of a Solar Harnessing Core a sun. Because what is a sun but a particularly useful star?
Anywho, these Cores are very important to the Council of Light universe because not only do they power the dozens of inhabited planets, but they also provide the exajoules of energy required for faster-than-light travel. Naturally, I want them to be on the cover of the book. And I knew Midjourney could help make that happen. See my previous entry where I talk about what Midjourney is, and how it works.
I first wanted to see if I could create an image of a Solar Harnessing Core that even remotely resembled the one I had in my head. In the book, a Core is described as “a metallic orb…with cylindrical beams of light poking out of the evenly-spaced holes in the exterior as though it were a grey, spiky disco ball”. So I give this a try:
“disco ball shooting out rays of light”
Pretty cool, but not interesting enough. On the Midjourney Discord, I’ve seen other users get impressive results from extremely complex prompts like “I like to sit on the dock in the morning in my Adirondack chair and watch the sun rise with a cup of coffee in my hand, birds are chirping, everything is purely peaceful, this is Zen, ink drawing, extremely detailed, serenity” - @HorriblePete. This could result in a more interesting image because in a way, you’re introducing more data into the equation that Midjourney is trying to solve — Midjourney utilizes a Diffusion model to generate the images, which works by reducing the randomness of an image by finding the pixels that correctly relate to the words you give it. If there are more words, there are more “correct” pixels for it to find, which can result in a more complex or interesting image. It can also result in Midjourney ignoring half of the words you typed, because it can find enough “correct” pixels without satisfying all of your demands. So I rolled the cosmic dice and introduced a bit more context to the prompt.
“a disco ball exploding and a planet exploding in space”
This is interesting — the orb has the sort of grid-like pattern I imagined for the solar harnessing Core. The Cores are actually made up of thousands of individual energy conversion units, which each harness the energy from the solar fusion reaction happening in their portion of the star. Now, I wanted both a planet and a core in the picture, but even after multiple tries, Midjourney continued to struggle with putting both in a single image. So I went with it, and starting using the term “disco ball planet”.
“a disco ball planet shooting rays of light in deep space, stars”
Hot dog, I’m finally on to something. Now to go through the refinement process…Step 1) pick my favorite variation of the four options, Step 2) make variations of that one, Step 3) repeat. Until…
“a disco ball planet shooting rays of light in deep space, stars”
Boom. Not exactly what I imagined (for one, its missing giant antennas hovering on either side) but dang, that’s pretty sweet for something that doesn’t exist in any form in real life. Now I’ve got to put it on a book cover! Luckily, Midjourney allows you to create images of different aspect ratios using “--ar “.
“a disco ball planet shooting rays of light in deep space, stars, nebula background”
“a disco ball planet shooting rays of light in deep space, stars, nebula, ultrarealistic”
They’re all so cool, I don’t know which one to pick! And there’s the other planets I wanted! Looks like Midjourney just needed more representational space on which to create its AI art. Some of the images upscaled better than others (perhaps I’ll delve into upscaling in my next blog), and eventually I chose an image to be my cover. After adding the title using GIMP, we have our finished book cover.
I’ve been painting and drawing for almost two decades, and this might be the first time I created a picture that has made me scream in delight. If it were up to me, the Louvre would tear down the Mona Lisa and put this cover up there instead. If you’re interesting in reading the book behind the cover, please sign up for my newsletter at remywelch.com or follow the book on Inkshares.com!
