Experimenting with Conceptual Story Art
An AI interpretation of characters and settings from my novels.
One of my favorite parts of storytelling is imparting visual details of characters and settings that have existed in my head for many years. I love painting a picture of an alien planet or a monster lurking in the shadows — bringing those things to life for a reader who seeks out my stories.
This week, I experimented with AI-created art by describing a character or scene from my novels to an AI bot and setting it loose. The bot then produced a piece of art based on those shared details. I previously chronicled my experimentation with AI novel-writing apps in an earlier post. Once again, the AI-generated results are a mixed bag. Some conceptual art captured my vision almost perfectly. Other pieces lacked critical details I first visualized when I created specific characters and settings.
I wanted to share a few conceptual art pieces with you all and let you see how the AI bot interpreted my artistic vision.
Calandra Menankar
Xttra Oogan
I loved how the AI bot visualized the co-protagonists in my Alien People Chronicles trilogy. You can see their innate kindness and strength in their faces. Their eye coloring isn’t quite as vivid and striking as I’ve always pictured in my head, but it isn’t a huge quibble. Many other physical details like hair coloring and style, skin tone, and facial structure, are right in line with how I first imagined these characters.
The ancient witch in Pandora Reborn
The AI bot perfectly captured the essence of my Pandora Reborn antagonist who terrorizes Deer Falls. You can believe she is a malevolent witch who is as cunning and deadly as she is beautiful. (I purposely withheld her name here to preserve the mystery of her true identity for anyone who hasn’t read my novel yet.)
Ron
Christina
Once again, the AI bot did a wonderful job with this snapshot of two main characters from Pandora Reborn. Ron is an arrogant soccer player with a tender heart. Christina is a strong, kind outcast with a vulnerable side. I wished the hazel coloring in Christina’s eyes was rendered a bit more vivid, but the art aligns fairly close to my original vision as a whole. The AI bot nailed the hair, skin tone, and facial structures of both teens.
Lathos
Rubrum
The AI bot didn’t do as well at creating alien planets and animals from my stories. Some details did not line up well with how I visualized these things in my head.
Conceptual art of Lathos — homeworld of Calandra and Xttra — does a good job of portraying the architectural style of buildings in Luma and captures varying red hues and shades on trees and vegetation along the Nectura River. I also like how the Aurora Mountains are portrayed in one piece. On the other hand, both images show only one moon that’s too close and too large when two moons orbit the planet. Luma also has many more buildings than what the AI bot portrays. The capital city of the Lathoan nation of Ra’ahm is home to nearly two million residents.
Conceptual art of Rubrum does not fully capture the imagery I shared within the pages of Under a Fallen Sun. The setting is supposed to portray a ravine frequented by Melody before she fled the dying alien planet. It does show a slowly drying brook. But the vegetation should be darker — a result of altered photosynthesis from Rubrum orbiting a dim red dwarf star. I also didn’t like how the AI bot portrayed a giant moon in the sky instead of a small red sun.
Finally, the alien animal portrayed at the top of the article — a Lathoan animal species known as a cala — isn’t quite what I had in mind either. A cala should resemble a cute hybrid of a domestic cat and a squirrel. Unfortunately, the AI bot interpreted that to mean giant eyes and giant ears. The result is a cala which looks like some gremlin DNA mingled with its family tree along the way.
What are your impressions of this conceptual art I shared? If you’ve read my novels associated with this art, do the images match how you envisioned these settings and characters? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Very cool! I always love seeing other people’s worlds get brought to life how they envision it. Daniel Davison has some great ones on his Substack, too.
Interesting stuff! What prompts did you use? Actual passages from your work, or custom descriptions?