Greetings everyone!
I will try to keep this short and concise but I have also kept putting this off for a while now after every follower milestone I wanted to do it so lets see how it goes.
First off then: a big thank your for everyone who decided to follow me, I hope you all have found something interesting or really liked and hopefully still do when you look around again. And to be honest I never expected to get more than a 100 or so followers so I am still actually amazed that the number kept climbing to this day. If you are a bot then I commend your for your good tastes. And also a big thank you for every reaction and tip!
The Journey So Far...
So how did I got involved with generative AI?
Well I would like to say that I kept up with it since the first Stable Diffusion release but that would be a lie. So let me tell you all how I really started.
It was a dark and stormy night...well, it was dark and cold but that doesn't really matters. What matters is that I was reading Hogfather and get to the part where Ponder Stibbons starts musing about the nature of Hex (a supercomputer built by wizards) and realizes that at this point he has no idea how it actually fuctions and that it might be just a shadow of a much more complex thing they can't grasp or understand yet. He also expresses his thought about feeling like taking part in a cargo cult because of this. So then I was like: "huh...maybe I should try doing some prompts too!" and that was it. And so I registered on CivitAI.
(Sidenote: in the book they very much converse with Hex like we do with an LLM)
This was around the time when Flux became the default option in the Generator. And I am not ashamed to say that I looked up at wrong guides, not knowing that it is a natural language model and not tag based. I let everyone imagine the results and the buzz cost-effectiveness of spending 35-40 buzz as a new user on a 5-10 tag long prompt. Luckily I discovered the draft option next and also decided to expand my vocabulary with fancy descriptive words like "scintillating" when I learned how Flux should be used more effectively. Still, 99% of these result never left the generator's feed and has been long since claimed by the digital sea of code which spawned them.
I kept this up for a month or so, then I discovered the usefulness of LoRAs. That was also the time when the whole thing clicked within me and was able to get into the right mental flow. And with the inclusion of tag based checkpoints to make some big anime ti...I mean nice looking waifus my image output increased considerably. With varied quality of course but I decided to keep them as a reminder to where I started.
The Journey Ahead
All things considered I am happy with where I am right now and how I did so far. I will never consider myself as some kind of artist because in real life my never progressed beyond stickman figures. I was always more of a writing person. It is a personal rule, I don't apply it to anyone else. And I can safely say that there are many people here with great artistic sense.
But despite being here for quite a few months now and spending a lot of time on improving my prompts and myself there are still lot of ways to go. For example I have absolutely no idea about samplers for example (I have an article saved for later reading though) and I don't know how to make a LoRA, which I would like to explore in the future.
Closing Thoughts
I want to apologize for the days when I am really just phoning it in and just slap style LoRA on an established character, upload it and call it a day. This is very much still just a hobby for me so sometimes other things get in the way or I take a small(ish) break while trying to keep the images flowing.
And I would like openly say that feel free to remix my images. In fact I highly encourage it. If you think your know a style or checkpoint which would suit it better then go for it. And even link the results to me in a comment or a DM so I can see it and tip you some buzz.
Now I would like to mention some people who helped get here. Mostly involuntarily through their LoRAs or images:
VelvetS
I learned LoRA usage from the Mythic Fantasy style and I am still exited to see a new release.
ChronoKnight
Awesome images and LoRA collection. Some of them are not available anymore.
bo4rsworld
I love combining the "Abyss" LoRA series to see what comes out in the end. You will never know.
Deto15
Lots of great images of anime and video game ladies. Highly inspired me when I started out.
HailoKnight
Very good concept LoRA collection. I should use them more.
VisionaryAI_Studio
Amazing LoRA styles. I highly recommend them.
And of course all the cool people, old and new friends I have met along the way.
Thank you for reading! Feel free ask questions in the comments.
