(This is more of a “look what I made” kind of a post, but I do want to share some “how you do?” notes, right up top.)

One of the things I wanted to do was generate some character art, which for visual novels and RPGs both, are important for the stand up and flap lips part of the experience. Since I don’t have the expertise needed to make that myself (translation: I doodle), I wanted to ask StableDiffusion to do it. However, it has been my experience that while SD is great at making unique things, that is the problem: it makes unique things. As in, not consistent. As in, pretty lousy for character art where they turn and make expressions.

CharTurner is apparently my answer. While it still has its creative side, you can ask it to tone it down considerably on the variation. Or the sexy exposed thighs, which while I am sure are great for somebody, who they are not great for is the person I am trying to represent! I wanted to show the evolution of images, then get to the splashy “tada” at the end.

Kinda getting a 1990’s Britney Spears out of these, but I noticed a few things as I was feeding images back into StableDiffusion:

• Gear is very much a problem for these. Unless you specify exactly what the weapon should look like, much as you have to do with the person holding them, they will vary wildly. I told it that I wanted a staff topped with an ankh, not only did I pretty much never get an ankh, I got more badass claymores than I knew what to do with. Its kinda like AI yells “hunter loot!” and gives items to characters who can ill equip them, for the stats, I guess?
• Hats are a problem. The AI doesn’t really like to turn those around. The weird diadems and tiaras that it gave Alastrina are simple enough that if they don’t turn around when the character does, then the audience probably won’t notice. Religious headcoverings, however, are a huge issue. This will be a challenge when I do Jo’jaxon, because he wears a ball cap.
• Sexy exposed legs are something you can ask it not to do. You’ll need to. Repeatedly.

The prompt

(15Charturn_longCap_D: .5) a photographic character turnaround of a priestess. Female, cropped blonde hair, modestly dressed in simple long white robe with red trim, red arm length gloves, burgundy leggings, sandals, holding a staff, staff topped with ankh. ((multiple views of the same character)), Highly detailed, side view of same character, rear view of same character

The negative prompt

costume variations, outfit variations, sci-fi, tight clothes, ((exposed thigh)), sexy, sword, crooked staff, skin tight, muscles, cartoon, 3d, (disfigured), (child) (bad art), (deformed), (poorly drawn), (extra limbs), strange colours, blurry, sketch, lacklustre, cropped, hands, lowres, bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, missing fingers, extra digit, fewer digits, worst quality, low quality, normal quality, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, username, blurry,bad anatomy , liquid body, malformed, mutated, bad proportions, uncoordinated body, unnatural body, disfigured, ugly, gross proportions ,mutation, disfigured, deformed, (mutation), (poorly drawn), wet, cartoon, 3d, (disfigured), (bad art), (deformed), (poorly drawn), (extra limbs), strange colours, exposed legs

A lot of these I copied from the CharTurner gallery; I didn’t personally have a problem with wetness, but maybe that is because I asked to keep Alastrina dry. Remember that parenthesis mean “listen up, dummy!” to StableDiffusion, so me saying ((exposed thigh)) meant “no really she’s humble, can you put her in pants?” To which I got a slitted cat eye glare of “mmm, perhaps…”

So I wanted to show off my new base model for Alastrina:

I really like the leftmost pose, and the face is pretty darn close to the original concept.