Midjourney Daily Theme - Steampunk - 04-11-2023

First Prompt

intricate blueprint schematic of a steampunk time machine, leonardo davinci '--chaos' 25 --q 2 --s 750 --v 5

Prompt Breakdown

Before we get to the generations, let's break down some of this prompt. I am purposely being redundant with "blueprint schematic" because I am really trying to reinforce the idea of a technical drawing early in the prompt, as this will narrow the focus for all other probabilities it needs to collapse.

If I were to tell it at the end "oh, by the way it should be a technical drawing" it isn't going to be like a human and throw away everything it had already built up in its 'head' and start over thinking "this should look like a technical drawing".

Rather, in my experience, you will get something that layers or somehow incorporates technical drawings at a later stage, but not as a primary focus. Secondly, I am naming good ole' Leo, but this comes at the end. Why? Two-fold.

1. It further reinforces the idea of the goal aesthetic.

2. It gives the model a lot of style to work from, broadening the probabilities in a specific area of style that I want.

This is both limiting and expanding the choices of the generator, but in a targeted way. We're already in context of technical drawings, so it isn't going to get stuck on Salvator Mundi or Mona Lisa, it's going think Vitruvian Man, Ornithopters, and cool shit like that. ...Not to say Salvator doesn't have swagger...

We are limiting the scope to our goal, but also increasing the richness of the model's understanding of that goal by providing a whole body of work to consider.

Ok ok... Let's see some generated images! We'll go over Chaos and the other settings after...

oooohhh aaaahhh

What I had in my mind's eye was somewhere between these two, but there's plenty there to work with if I wanted to further tweak the prompt or remix these. Within one or two more prompts I would probably have something very very similar to what I imagined. Soon, I will put out a series on midjourney prompting and share some secret phrases that I've found to really hone in on a specific style. For now, on to the next prompt!

Promptin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

a steamy steampunk punk in a steamy steampunk trunk with a steampunk skunk in a funk '--chaos' 100 --q 2 --s 750 --v 5

I was feeling cheeky, sue me.

I like to make nonsense phrases like this just to play with the model and see what it spits out. Sometimes it's quite good. Oftentimes it's quite mediocre. It's rarely bad though... FWIW I have discovered a few fun phrases doing this, but it's probably mostly a waste of fast hours. Probably. This time, I think we got a couple worth sharing. Stick around at the end for a breakdown on Chaos and the other settings in these prompts.

My headcannon for the above picture is the (obviously) albino skunk is in quite a funk, because he is not recognized as a skunk, and thus is denied his skunkly respect. It's also part truck - part trunk. I think it couldn't decide if I had mistyped, and kinda went with both! That's how I choose to interpret it anyway.

A little closer to a skunk. I will skim past the vaguely racoon-like tail... No punk, but who needs'em with this cute little rascal?? Don't you just wanna hop in that trunk, give that poor scruffy critter a pat on the noggin' and have a spot of tea? Two lumps please.

Prompt Breakdown

Ok, so what's with this Chaos setting?? So glad you asked! From midjourney's docs, we read (because we _all_ RTFM right? Riiiight??)

The '--chaos' or '--c' parameter influences how varied the initial image grids are. High '--chaos' values will produce more unusual and unexpected results and compositions. Lower '--chaos' values have more reliable, repeatable results.'--chaos' accepts values 0–100.The default '--chaos' value is 0.

This means, if we don't specify a chaos level, all 4 of the images that it spits out will pretty much be about the same. Very little variation in composition and style. Maybe a few minor details will be different. It will be more like an NFT where the hat or mouth can change but the same basic image is there in each.

If I am just getting started on a project, and I have an idea of what I want, I want a more shotgun approach than this provides. I want to kick up the chaos and make sure each of those 4 images is going to be fairly different, thus covering more ground finding something similar to work from.

As I hone in on the style and image I am looking for, I tune down the chaos. I'm not sure I ever let it be 0, because I want a bit more change per iteration than that, but I will come down to around 5 when I get to the later stages of a long project. In other projects I may hit what I want before needing to come below 25, so it can vary.

On this last set, I had the chaos turned up to max. Both of these two came from the same prompt, same run. So that's how completely different they can be. Meanwhile my first two images above came from the same batch, with a chaos set to 25, and you can see how much more similar they are.

If you want to see more about the effects of Chaos, check out midjourney's documentation, where they have pretty pictures and you really don't even have to read if you don't want to... https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/chaos