The first 2 hours testing Dall-E 2 for thumbnail and cover design functionality

So I got an invite from Dall-E to be one of the pre release testers, and spent a couple of hours learning the system, and trying a few things out.

I snapped a few photos along the way.

Some show the AI prompt I created to generate the image, some are variations the AI created of OG Save Point art, some are experiments for creating thumbnails.

Basically I'm just trying out a lot of things to learn the system.

For those that aren't acquainted with Dall E 2, this is kind of a big deal, it's the most advanced AI visualization software ever created, and it's essentially the end of one era of human art, and the beginning of the next.


DALL·E 2022-08-16 07.09.21 - a gold robot riding a horse into a gothic future city, digital art.png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 071520.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 07.10.45 - a gold robot riding a horse into a gothic future city, 50 mm, dig...png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 065155.png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 063915.png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 064241.png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 064333.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 07.00.11.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.59.24 - an h r gieger illustration of an orange and white cat walking thr...png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 064432.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.59.19 - an h r gieger illustration of an orange and white cat walking thr...png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 065033.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.57.53 - an h r gieger illustration of an orange and white cat walking thr...png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 064610.png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.55.20 - an h r gieger illustration of a cat walking through a high tech d...png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.50.52 - an h r gieger illustration of a cat walking through a high tech d...png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.36.48 - a cat walking down a gold catwalk surrounded by gold gears with r...png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.36.31 - a cat walking down a gold catwalk surrounded by gold gears with r...png
DALL·E 2022-08-16 06.36.05 - a cat walking down a gold catwalk surrounded by gold gears with r...png
Screenshot 2022-08-16 071658.png
 
Last edited:
I can't believe no one has yet singled out my artistic masterpiece from this batch

"Dragon with glowing eyes ordering fast food No. 4"

or it's equally impressive cousin, "Dragon with glowing eyes heats up a pop tart with it's fire breath no. 4"
 
Day 2. gradually triangulating towards more useful results. Right now, I feel like this thing makes fantastic thumbnail sized images, but starts to fall apart at larger sizes. Still a lot to learn, and it's definitely not set up for my uses out of the box, meaning that there might be some problems getting access to the controls. I might have to end up using a lesser open code solution, since I have a very particular use case. I wouldn't want to be a digital painter right now though. It will only be a few years now before painting for money is a thing of the past.

DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.52.23 -  a cat made of glass inside a building made of glass, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.39.09 - golden palace lanterns illuminating an indoor river, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.40.37 -  an indoor river with iridescent chandeliers, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.27.13 - glass clockwork cobra , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.09.22 - a pencil sketch of Tiamat.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.18.30 - metropolitan city with crystal spires, photograph by annie liebow...png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.27.51 - glass clockwork , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.27.47 - glass clockwork , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.22.33 - glass cobra, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.28.46 - glass clockwork , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.47.14 - a skyscraper in a city made of YouTube thumbnails, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.53.40 -  a cat made of glass, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.33.21 - a tall clock tree , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.33.24 - a tall clock tree , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.35.17 - a tall clock tree in a cave with light bulbs , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.31.58 - a clock tree in a jungle , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.29.39 - glass clockwork cathedral , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.32.40 - a tall clock tree in a jungle , digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 07.24.29 - a ferret driving a Fiero, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 07.24.23 - a ferret driving a Fiero, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-18 07.26.34 - a 50mm photo of a cat made of glass inside a building made of glass.png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.29.49 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.22.14 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork, digital art.png

DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.22.18 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork, digital art.png

DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.28.20 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.30.00 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.30.24 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 04.38.43 - an orange and white cat  in the jungle painted by Boris Vallejo.png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 04.27.29 - a cat that looks rambo in the jungle, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 04.27.32 - a cat that looks rambo in the jungle, digital art.png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.34.52 - an orange and white cat inside a blue and grey mechanical clockwo...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.34.57 - an orange and white cat inside a blue and grey mechanical clockwo...png
DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.34.15 - an orange and white cat inside a blue and grey mechanical clockwo...png
 

Attachments

  • DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.35.26 - a tall clock tree in a cave with light bulbs , digital art.png
    DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.35.26 - a tall clock tree in a cave with light bulbs , digital art.png
    1.4 MB · Views: 101
  • DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.40.32 -  an indoor river with iridescent chandeliers, digital art.png
    DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.40.32 - an indoor river with iridescent chandeliers, digital art.png
    1.8 MB · Views: 99
  • DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.35.22 - a tall clock tree in a cave with light bulbs , digital art.png
    DALL·E 2022-08-18 06.35.22 - a tall clock tree in a cave with light bulbs , digital art.png
    1.5 MB · Views: 93
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.27.48 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.27.48 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    1.7 MB · Views: 93
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.29.11 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.29.11 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    1.8 MB · Views: 94
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.26.03 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork vault, digi...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.26.03 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork vault, digi...png
    1.7 MB · Views: 100
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.30.24 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.30.24 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    1.9 MB · Views: 90
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.31.00 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.31.00 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork cathedral, ...png
    1.7 MB · Views: 94
  • DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.23.49 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork room, digit...png
    DALL·E 2022-08-17 05.23.49 - an orange and white cat inside a mechanical clockwork room, digit...png
    1.8 MB · Views: 97
Could i use this to quickly create a comic book from one of my scripts?
Could also do like audio book visualizations type thing -- is it good at creating unique characters and keeping them recognizable across various scenes?
 
Could i use this to quickly create a comic book from one of my scripts?
Could also do like audio book visualizations type thing -- is it good at creating unique characters and keeping them recognizable across various scenes?
These are the right questions. Basically, the answer is yes, with a few significant qualifiers.

From my experience with it so far, it's better at making ideas than it is pictures, which is surprising to me, as I was expecting the opposite. I'm not too dissapointed though. This is a landmark achievement that raises a bunch of uncomfortable questions about the future. Without question they'll be constantly evolving it though, and I expect stronger performance in as soon as 6 months.

with some practice, and money (it's coin operated), you can get great art out of this, and even maintain a theme and look across hundreds of pictures if desired. It's far from perfect, but very powerful for your application.

Here's your actual solution, and if you do this, yes you can make a comic book or graphic novel, and it could look amazing and hold character and style to a large degree. It's a bit expensive, but will work amazingly well for an entry level artist. TLDR, you need to rotoscope and stitch every picture in your book, likely from several outputs, and only one in 10 outputs or so will be very useful.

1. Buy a bunch of Dall E 2 credits, for a graphic novel, you're probably looking at 600 bucks worth before it's over. Not too bad for 200 pages of incredible comic art.

2. Buy and Ipad Pro, 2021 or later.

3. Buy Procreate for Ipad Pro. I think it's 10 bucks. There is no better program for this job. New gen apple pencil required. 130 bucks.

4. Set up google drive, install the app on ipad. Create a google drive folder named whatever, and copy only viable output from Dall - E 2 to that folder.

5. Learn to use procreate, it's relatively simple and intuitive. There are many alternative programs that will do this task, including free desktop software like krita. So this can be swapped for the above ipad and procreate stuff, but procreate will make the entire 4000 hour process fun and intuitive, and that will effect the energy you can put into design.

6. Create each main character in Dall E until you're happy, bank that image, upload it back to dali. Now you can type commands and modify that image. So I'd provide image "guy standing" and ask dali to make it guy standing with coat, or guy jumping, and it can make decent variations from the base image input.

7. Often, basically always, there will be fantastic parts of an output you can use, and then parts that don't look good. This is where procreate comes in. It's also for your main characters and still post.

8. Take the frame where your character is perfect for scene x, and use procreate or your compositing program to rotoscope it into scenes.

9. Dall E puts out square images only right now. That will likely change at some point, but here you would also use your compositing application to stitch backgrounds.

10. Add word balloons, and you're done

At the end of the day, if one was willing to do a great amount of work, you could make an AMAZING comic book with this thing in a month, and an amazing graphic novel in 6 months or a year, I mean something that would get distro from a publisher somewhere. I'm actually super tempted to do at least a short one, just because this is a brand new possibility.

It would be kind of cool to try and automate a public domain audiobook with this, like I did with book of dragons.
 
Last edited:
These are the right questions. Basically, the answer is yes, with a few significant qualifiers.

From my experience with it so far, it's better at making ideas than it is pictures, which is surprising to me, as I was expecting the opposite. I'm not too dissapointed though. This is a landmark achievement that raises a bunch of uncomfortable questions about the future. Without question they'll be constantly evolving it though, and I expect stronger performance in as soon as 6 months.

with some practice, and money (it's coin operated), you can get great art out of this, and even maintain a theme and look across hundreds of pictures if desired. It's far from perfect, but very powerful for your application.

Here's your actual solution, and if you do this, yes you can make a comic book or graphic novel, and it could look amazing and hold character and style to a large degree. It's a bit expensive, but will work amazingly well for an entry level artist. TLDR, you need to rotoscope and stitch every picture in your book, likely from several outputs, and only one in 10 outputs or so will be very useful.

1. Buy a bunch of Dall E 2 credits, for a graphic novel, you're probably looking at 600 bucks worth before it's over. Not too bad for 200 pages of incredible comic art.

2. Buy and Ipad Pro, 2021 or later.

3. Buy Procreate for Ipad Pro. I think it's 10 bucks. There is no better program for this job. New gen apple pencil required. 130 bucks.

4. Set up google drive, install the app on ipad. Create a google drive folder named whatever, and copy only viable output from Dall - E 2 to that folder.

5. Learn to use procreate, it's relatively simple and intuitive. There are many alternative programs that will do this task, including free desktop software like krita. So this can be swapped for the above ipad and procreate stuff, but procreate will make the entire 4000 hour process fun and intuitive, and that will effect the energy you can put into design.

6. Create each main character in Dall E until you're happy, bank that image, upload it back to dali. Now you can type commands and modify that image. So I'd provide image "guy standing" and ask dali to make it guy standing with coat, or guy jumping, and it can make decent variations from the base image input.

7. Often, basically always, there will be fantastic parts of an output you can use, and then parts that don't look good. This is where procreate comes in. It's also for your main characters and still post.

8. Take the frame where your character is perfect for scene x, and use procreate or your compositing program to rotoscope it into scenes.

9. Dall E puts out square images only right now. That will likely change at some point, but here you would also use your compositing application to stitch backgrounds.

10. Add word balloons, and you're done

At the end of the day, if one was willing to do a great amount of work, you could make an AMAZING comic book with this thing in a month, and an amazing graphic novel in 6 months or a year, I mean something that would get distro from a publisher somewhere. I'm actually super tempted to do at least a short one, just because this is a brand new possibility.

It would be kind of cool to try and automate a public domain audiobook with this, like I did with book of dragons.
I see.. what about something simpler like assigning characters a color.
protag could always be a blue man. and supporting character an orange woman, etc and that way they are always recognizable.

Right now my focus is on other stuff so I don't think i could learn all those apps, but if you were interested i could volunteer my script for the saddest painting and direct the voice talent, and you could do the visuals / cinematography.

Seems like its a great script for this sort of thing since it's about artwork.
could turn it into a short story audiobook with actors for characters
 
Last edited:
Couple of questions. How long in minutes is this story if read by voice actors. Are we still talking about still images using Dall E? like comic frames with VO work?

You could do better than just color coding the characters, but as outlined above, it would take significant time.

lastly, the techniques I'm talking about in the software programs, they are very easy to learn, I'd say a couple days max in affinity or 10 minutes in procreate. The big issue for me would be affording the Dall E time. If we're taking 20 illustrations, then maybe.
 
Couple of questions. How long in minutes is this story if read by voice actors. Are we still talking about still images using Dall E? like comic frames with VO work?

You could do better than just color coding the characters, but as outlined above, it would take significant time.

lastly, the techniques I'm talking about in the software programs, they are very easy to learn, I'd say a couple days max in affinity or 10 minutes in procreate. The big issue for me would be affording the Dall E time. If we're taking 20 illustrations, then maybe.
yeah still images, i think 20 would be fine. thats about an image every 15 seconds for a 5 minute story.
what is the dall e cost for 20 ?
 
Last edited:
I don't yet have enough experience to say for certain, since I've only had a couple days to work with it, but probably in the area of 30-45 bucks. It costs $15 for every 115 queries (type in a line of text for 4 variations, or get 3 variations of an extant image for 1 credit)

So maybe 1 in 10 turn out usable, and it takes some experimenting to get what you want. The posts above were the output of 230 credits, and even though I picked out the best ones, many of those would be unusable for publication, or at least require roto and handpainting to fix.

Point being, 20 strong images would be the result of 300+ dali searches, along with probably 20 manual touch up runs. It would probably be close to 3-4 days work total including sound and mix. That's the real expense.
 
Last edited:
I don't yet have enough experience to say for certain, since I've only had a couple days to work with it, but probably in the area of 30-45 bucks. It costs $15 for every 115 queries (type in a line of text for 4 variations, or get 3 variations of an extant image for 1 credit)

So maybe 1 in 10 turn out usable, and it takes some experimenting to get what you want. The posts above were the output of 230 credits, and even though I picked out the best ones, many of those would be unusable for publication, or at least require roto and handpainting to fix.

Point being, 20 strong images would be the result of 300+ dali searches, along with probably 20 manual touch up runs. It would probably be close to 3-4 days work total including sound and mix. That's the real expense.

no skin off my teeth, just thought you might want to turn your dall e beta testing into something with a product release
 
Well, send the script over and maybe I'll take a shot at it. It sounds like a fun project, I might do it, for exactly the reason you said.
 
Not bad at all, I like this one.

Not sure if Dall E will paint graphic violence for me, I can check. It's stopped me a few times, like when I asked it paint a picture of tucker carlson burning in hell, it waved a finger at me.

Honestly I could do this, but I'm really broke. If you want to cover the Dali credits, I'll pitch in the work time to make it happen. I was living on 300 a month surplus, and then the power company "changed pricing structures" last month, and now I'm working with 100 a month. You can see how that puts a damper on just dropping 50 bucks on a side project.
 
Not bad at all, I like this one.

Not sure if Dall E will paint graphic violence for me, I can check. It's stopped me a few times, like when I asked it paint a picture of tucker carlson burning in hell, it waved a finger at me.
Oh yeah what about if you ask it to paint kathy griffin holding trumps severed head. lol.
not surprised it doesn't let you portray death threats to specific individuals, but yeah check it out if you can do things like a man bleeding to death or someone hanging. or someone jumping to their death off a building. stuff like that.

$50 is something i could handle.
 
I do actually like this script. I'm a big twilight zone fan, and it feels like that kind of story.
thanks!

It was actually inspired by an australian kid that posted his short period piece from film school here on IT.
film was gut wrenching, i wouldn't recommend that anybody watch it bc all it did was make you feel bad.

and then his ego blew up at everybody. so i was kinda meditating on people that only create feel-bad art when i wrote it.
 
Last edited:
This guy once made a 10k indie film called "lilya 4 ever" and it actually succeeded, not financially, but as a film. It was just so effective at being extremely sad that it turned out to be a powerful film.
 
If you've got the time right now, here's my suggestion. Meet me over on the discord, I'll screen share, I'll drop 15 bucks into the Dall E coin slot, and we can try this out to see if the results would be worth it.
 
If you've got the time right now, here's my suggestion. Meet me over on the discord, I'll screen share, I'll drop 15 bucks into the Dall E coin slot, and we can try this out to see if the results would be worth it.

rain check on that, nearly 3 am is def time for me to turn off the pc
 
Back
Top