There’s a certain creative freedom when you don’t need a specific art to show up. Maybe its because humans like drawing monsters, or maybe its because AI art naturally gravitates towards making monstrous freaks when you tell it not to, but either way, it can be really creative when you don’t tell it “give me an orc” or “some gnolls plz.” Sure, it can do stock fantasy monsters, but give it a little license to be creative and you can generate some truly adorbs things. Or, C’thulian horrors. Usually both.

Flonk is my risk taking character, and he’s all about sowing chaos in battle. Of course, sometimes he gets absorutely nothing, but that is the nature of the beast, which he certainly fits the profile of. Also, the gambler character James can help cheat on dice rolls towards better outcomes, but more on him much later. A little like Alastrina, when he’s fighting against monsters, he can pull off a special move along with his attack, and these tend to be more high risk, high reward than Alastrina’s surety in her faith.

But: I opened this with monsters of the most devilishly diverse and deviant design. Behold:

I didn’t ask it for a golem or a weird beetle pine cone monster, the AI just.. came up with those. I had leaned towards describing the ball as a coiled up cannonball, so the beehive looking thing, sure, I see that. The ropey flesh on the golem/construct, maybe? But that pine cone monster, he’s just screaming “NOT IN THE FACE!” and I wouldn’t hit that face. It’s cute! Flonk, however, has a 33% chance of hitting that face.

These look a bit like monchichis if you told them nobody really loved them and they were merely the gateway drug to the cabbage patch kids. Also, apparently they have a bit of a tribal outfit thing going on, like Smurfs wearing white pants despite the fact that they live in the forest and Papa Smurf hasn’t invented bleach yet. Man, growing up in the 80’s means you have deeply ingrained corporate mascot TV shows in you.

What’s with that guy’s horn? Or is that the female of the purple monchichi rage midget species?

Last but certainly not least. This was an offshoot from my shoe work from yesterday. I did not plan on a yarn elemental in my game, but the yarn elemental did plan for that. Maybe fate’s weaving a tangled skein and produced this multicolored freak? Still need to playtest what they’d actually do in combat, but A-fray-d totes works.

I don’t know that I will be able to stop calling this WIP any time soon but it is very fun to discover art with a computer.