The Santara Workshop: Character Visualization
Messing with Midjourney
Hello!
Some may know I make use of Midjourney in my works. Usually, I give credit for the image generation in the image caption. But I haven’t been doing that for the images in The Santara Commentaries.
I’ll start off this post by rectifying my lack of crediting. With the exception of the Map, which I made with Inkarnate, the images found at the beginning of the chapters there are generated with Midjourney.
And that out of the way, I want to show some images I generated. I have been playing around with Midjourney to visualize the characters in The Santara Commenteries. And with main cast now rounded up, I figured it’s time to show them off.
We begin with Aron, King of Dun-a-din.
This is one pretty straightforward and I was able to get what I like no problem. I was looking for a “warrior king” kind of look and this particular image fits how I imagined Aron to look like.
Now let’s move on to Drusus, the Warrior without Equal.
Believe it or not, this one took some tries for me to get right. Though it’s not so much because of the look itself but because of the wyvern. As you might know, the Drusus rides a black wyvern into battle. But the wyvern in the above picture looks a little goofy. But speaking of wyvern…
This is how I would imagine Drusus’ wyvern would look like. Imagine this beast charging at you from the sky. Yeah, I’d be terrified too. Just ignore the guy riding it since Drusus is a blond.
Next up… Arphaxad, the Rider of Dun-a-din.
I’m kind of cheating by giving him a helmet, but this way I don’t have worry about his face. The important thing is that he is a cavalryman.
Next in line is Kochba, the Sultan of Paloe.
Not much to say about this one either. The Sultan is a fire mage so I like how this one turns out. Funnily enough, this image for Kochba looks very similar to the image I originally wanted to put for Aron, so I ended up changing the latter for another image.
Now we get to the big one: Paradisa, the Younger Puncakian Sister.
I’ll be honest, I had worked on Paradisa’s image more than the ones for all the other characters. She’s probably my favorite Santara character so far. I did so much image variation just so I can get the one that I like. I even made use of the “region variation” function because her eyes look weird in the other image.
Of course, her ride is supposed to have wings, but I think that’s just asking a bit too much from the robot.
In addition to author favoritism, I’m also trying to do some parallels with Paradisa, which brings me too…
Inferna, the Elder Puncakian Sister.
This image for Inferna is actually not how I initially envisioned her. For one thing, her hair color; it’s more pinkish instead of red. But I like this image because how it paints a parallel between Inferna and her sister. First, the black horse which contrasts with Paradisa’s white horse. More importantly, the two images for Inferna and Paradisa look similar to one another, making it believable that they’re sisters.
That being said, I still want to share this image below…
This is the early image I got for Inferna. If I can just put the hair color of this image for the character in the previous image, I’d be a very happy camper.
And we round things up with Livia, the Mysterious Nodian Woman.
The last character to round-up the main cast, Livia is a very mysterious figure. Which is why I try to give her an image that gives off an eerie vibe.
But wait… I haven’t shown the picture for Yu, the Tactician. Yes, it would be quite the oversight for me to forget the protagonist. So here it is…
Lol, just kidding.
In truth, I did generate some images for Yu, but I can’t get anything that I like. I think the problem is that he uses a pistol as his weapon, and the AI simply can’t comprehend firearms in (high) fantasy settings.
Though to be honest, this is for the best. He is the viewpoint character of The Santara Commentaries, so perhaps I should just leave his appearance completely to the audience’s imagination.
You may notice that I put a question mark on each of the image captions. That’s because these images aren’t “official artwork” of the characters; it’s the product of me having fun and seeing how they would look like with Midjourney.
That’s all I have! To start reading The Santara Commentaries, click on the huge link below and see the characters above in action…
While I have reservations about AI images these have turned out very good and have the quality of character portraits from games like Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity. I know you say the wyvern with Drusus is off I still like it, not as terrifying as the "full grown" one but still scary enough. Thanks for sharing.
Usually AI generated images are almost the same, all characters without depth. But you gave them a personality. You really did a good job.