A spur of the moment blog, because I just had to post something about this amazing new character creator I was recently told about. It’s called Leonardo.AI, and if you are a writer, game designer, or just love to create characters, you need to sign up on it PRONTO. It’s an artwork generator, so it’s not specifically for creating characters, but that’s definitely one of the things you can utilize it for, and it does an incredible job. It’s also pretty damn easy to use. You basically just type in what you want and it creates images for you based on that. There’s a bit of a trick in learning how to type your prompts correctly (separate them with commas), but the more you learn how it responds and the more you see what prompts other people are using, the easier it gets and the better the images turn out. You can even upload pictures for input to help it reference and shape the generated images. It’s not perfect, but you can create a lot of amazing artwork with some trial and error, good prompts, and editing if need be. And like I said, it’s not just characters. It’s great for creating settings, locations, items, objects, you name it. You can pretty much design and create any visual thing you want with it. But in general, it’s just fantastic for creating concept art and worldbuilding.
And, what’s even more amazing, is that you can CURRENTLY do this for free. With a free account you get 150 tokens a day to use for generating images. It’s a fair amount, probably even a generous amount for most people, but if you’re like me you’ll go through them fast. I admit I anxiously await my tokens resetting everyday, I just can’t wait to see what I can make next. Creation is truly addictive. Especially when you’ve been waiting so long to put what you see in your mind onto an image on the screen. I’ve seriously been dreaming about this kind of technology for years. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see it while I was still young, and I had no idea it would be this easily accessible. It’s been a really pleasant surprise. A manifestation come true. I’ve always wanted to be able to make artwork like this. I’ve had some slight drawing talent since I was a kid, so I’ve pretty much always had artistic potential, but I don’t know if I could have ever reached the level of artwork like I’m making with Leonardo. It may be “cheating” as an artist, but honestly all I really care about is making the images in my mind visually real. I know I’ve expressed a lot of disdain for our modern world, and that includes much of our modern technology that is making humans lazier and less physically capable. I seriously don’t like technology that replaces simple human effort or the digitalization of everything, tying us more and more to the grid. But I am very interested in creative and artistic technology that enables us to do things that we’d be very unlikely to do otherwise.
So, if you’re like me and this sounds like what you’ve been dreaming of too, hurry and get your access to Leonardo.AI. You can create stuff just for fun or for things you intend to sell or make money with. Leonardo CURRENTLY states that you own any images you generate and can use them for commercial purposes, even users with a free account. I say currently because I don’t know if they plan to change those terms sometime in the future. I sure hope not. I’ve got too many plans and ideas. It’s just been about a week and I’ve already been cranking out characters like crazy. So far I have been creating images of D&D/fantasy characters that I had a concept of in my mind, but had not yet made physical pictures of. Well, I say that, but some of them I had actually attempted to create on the Portrait Workshop app from World Anvil (now called PortraitWorks). I don’t know if I’ll be using that app much at all now, I just love what I can do with Leonardo.AI so much more. PortraitWorks is a fun and useful app though and was worth the money at the time. I won’t miss their emails talking about what the trans and “nonbinary” community wants, however. Or seeing the weird bodies in the app. Nope, won’t miss that stupid crap at all. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if Leonardo.AI was just as retarded Leftist as every other company is, but so far I’m just enjoying all the creativity and the specific, personal envisioning we get to implement.
Also, it’s just really fun to use and experiment with. I think I’m going to try to take characters I made on Neverwinter and create images of them with Leonardo. I’m so curious about the potential of this technology and what I can do with it. I’ve tested out making some town settings and building interiors, so that’s something I want to do more of as well. I know I could get real serious about worldbuilding with a tool like this. I also need to look more into the editor. I haven’t really figured out how to use it yet, but it could certainly be useful if I wanted to edit and fix some things, which I do.
But, at the moment, I’m pretty pleased with how my creations are turning out. My characters are looking better and more life-like than I ever expected. I know this will help me to really flesh them out, and hopefully inspire my writing.
everdreamworld 