The Making of T-KAWAII
So there's this art contest for AI Artists that is held weekly called the OLAG... This week is the week I finally decide to dip my toe into doing the weekly OLAG contest, and oh boy, do I have a story for you.
This is the story of the making of T-KAWAII, and how we went from some weird 90s chick in full leather to a kuudere with explosions in the background.
tl;dr?
If you keep an open mind, you can get results beyond your expectations.
Use weights of similar value to change clothing.
Booru can be used to make backgrounds too.
Contest Details:
Create the next big thing in robotic domination! Show us what you've got in terms of originality, style, and of course, destruction capabilities - Create the next TERMINATOR!
Initial Concepting & Theme
"What the hell is a Terminator...?" - Author-kun
Of course, Author-kun does know what a Terminator is, but mostly through memes.
It's some sort of killer robot wearing an (young) Arnold Schnezewagger skin and speaks with a thick accent, isn't it? Author-kun has never seen the movies before but he kinda has an idea.
Initial Prompt:
terminator \(series\), female terminator sitting on a throne
It's... not very good.
First off, Anything.ckpt is great for creating animu and manga images, but it's not that great at doing Western style images.
The Western images I get are... okay, but they are flat-toned and feels like I can get them from somewhere else. You might say that it is a little robotic and souless. (yohohoho!)
Booru Prompt:
1girl, robot, mecha, science fiction, (beautiful girl sitting on a throne made of (mechanical hands)), (black leather jacket), (black tank top), (black tights),
A more anime/booru centric prompt calls anime images, but it certainly does not look Terminator feels more like someone out of Muv Luv.
Once again, I asked myself: What IS the Terminator?
To my mind, the Terminator is a robot that is scary, but also cool and badass. Keep in mind that at this point Author-kun has never saw the movies before and all he knows about Terminator is that he looks like Agent Smith but much cooler and has more guns.
Oh, he also runs solo apparently, unlike Smith who needs an army of simp clones. That's part of the appeal, one badass hero who can do anything.
Something cool and scary.
With that in mind, I set out to create my new terminator sitting on a throne.
Mecha Horror Prompt:
robot, mecha, science fiction,background, horror, science fiction, a throne made of (disjointed mechanical hands) many
Perhaps what we need are the science fiction elements? So I started dipping into mechanical horror.
Initially I wanted to have a throne made of many disembodied hands grafted together, you know, to poke fun at the AI for not being able to draw limbs.
But the AI really doesn't want to do that, the one time I want disembodied limbs it flat out refuses to make a throne out of limbs. Perhaps this idea is a a little too far out. The AI cannot make images it has no concept of. The throne of hands ala Elden Ring and Game of Thrones was a little too far out for it I suppose.
At this point I recognized the design of the mechanical throne, overlaps with the God-Emperor's throne. That's... not horribly original. And it's the wrong franchise too. (lol)
While I got a lot of scary and cool pictures out of this prompt, it wasn't what I wanted.
I briefly dipped my fingers into Cthulhu-esque thrones but quickly discarded the idea. More attention should be paid on the science fiction side rather than the Cthulhu side, despite it making sense; the Terminator is a horror that merges biology and machine.
Girls Frontline
Met with failure after failure. I decided to go back to what I am good at and like, cute anime girls.
When I think about something that merges biology and machine, the thing that instantly pops out in my mind is Girls Frontline.
Girls Frontline was a major inspiration for /Conspiracy/ Girls, having played it right up until I started writing my book seriously. It's a gacha game which tells the story of killer dolls with the faces and bodies of young girls named after and using modern day guns. So you have killer dolls called HK416, M4A1 and so on.
Now that I think about it, the naming system of T-Dolls is a reference to Terminator itself, something I never noticed until now.
Girls Frontline it is.
Anything.ckpt must have a lot of training on HK416, because despite me not using a LORA, it pops out characters with very "HK416"-esque clothing and hair. Sasuga all you need-chan.
But even then, HK416 was not what I needed. I needed a Terminator, and she had to be cool and badass.
At this point, I ditched the horror requirement because it's hard to do both without revealing mechanical parts, and I didn't want to do that.
I also think Anything.ckpt got the point as well, because once I ditched the horror requirements, it started to give me images very close to the Girls Frontline style.
QUESTION: How do we capture the 90s feel of cool and badass?
ANSWER: We put everyone in leather jackets and pants.
Black leather seems to be the trademark of an Arnold, so I put HK416 in that, and behold! She DOES look a little more Terminatory. If not a little Arknights Operatory.
I should note that making HK416 wear different clothes was not easy. She still stubbornly insisted on wearing her default one-piece, so I had to up the weights on her separate pieces of clothing individually to make a complete piece.
The result was this prompt:
1girl, absurdres, detailed, science fiction, full body shot, wide frame, beautiful sexy hk416 \(girls' frontline\), sitting on a (throne made of a mess of wires criss crossing each other) with crossed legs, (white_tank_top:1.3), (black_leather_jacket:1.4), (black_leather_long_pants:1.3) that show off the thighs (thigh focus)
As you can see, upping the weights on clothing alone will help in changing clothing. Something new that I learnt today.
I did have major trouble with the white tank top, and moved the slider from 1.1 to 1.3 until I had all the pieces of clothing at 1.3 for good effect. She also looked a little too much like she stole nu-Tifa's outfit, so I upped the weights on Black Leather Pants as well.
As a final touch, sunglasses. You can't have a Terminator without shades.
Terminator, da yo:
1girl, absurdres, detailed, science fiction, full body shot, wide frame, beautiful sexy hk416 \(girls' frontline\), sitting on a (throne made of a mess of wires criss crossing each other) with crossed legs, (white_tank_top:1.3), (black_leather_jacket:1.4), (black_leather_long_pants:1.3) that show off the thighs (thigh focus), (futuristic_sunglases:1.5),
This... this is it! That's the feel that I was going for! A cool woman with the "Terminator" look! I left out the horror part of the prompt, but it's my work, so I prioritize cute and funny above all.
Backgrounds
"Since when were you under the impression that you didn't need backgrounds?" - Kubo
One thing that I know from playing GFL a lot is that it's character sprites are printed on clear backgrounds, so for the prompts leading up to T-KAWAII, the characters also returned white backgrounds.
But the image wouldn't be complete without a cool background, so I set out to make it.
After a quick look on youtube on famous Terminator scenes (i.e slacking off), I settled for something that references the famous ending of Terminator, where the Terminator is lowered into molten lava and gives a thumbs up.
Problem 1: Try as I might, the background still remains white.
The AI refuses to integrate the background into the image, even when (White background) is in the negative prompt.
Problem 2: Making a background separately creates poor looking backgrounds.
They are probably good for a DnD session but does not mesh with the anime aesthetic very well.
I thought about just inpainting the background into the image, a sudden inspiration hit me.
Why not... look up backgrounds on booru?
I now instinctively look up booru for tags of characters I want to create, so why don't I do the same for images?
I quickly chanced upon a fabulous image of a warrior fighting a dragon in molten pit and took the fire and brimstone related ones.
After some wrangling and weight sliding...
T-KAWAII FINAL:
1girl, absurdres, detailed, science fiction, full body shot, wide frame, beautiful sexy hk416 \(girls' frontline\), sitting on a (throne made of a mess of wires criss crossing each other) with crossed legs, (white_tank_top:1.3), (black_leather_jacket:1.4), (black_leather_long_pants:1.3) that show off the thighs (thigh focus), (futuristic_sunglases:1.5), detailed background, (film grain1.2), background (molten rock:1.3) (red theme:1.1) [embers] fire fantasy,Negative Prompts:
out of frame, red trim, cartoon, 3d, ((disfigured)), ((bad art)), ((deformed)),((extra limbs)),((close up)),((b&w)), wierd colors, blurry, (((duplicate))), ((morbid)), ((mutilated)), extra fingers, mutated hands, ((poorly drawn hands)), ((poorly drawn face)), (((mutation))), (((deformed))), ((ugly)), blurry, ((bad anatomy)), (((bad proportions))), ((extra limbs)), cloned face, (((disfigured))), out of frame, ugly, extra limbs, (bad anatomy), gross proportions, (malformed limbs), ((missing arms)), ((missing legs)), (((extra arms))), (((extra legs))), mutated hands, (fused fingers), (too many fingers), (((long neck))), Photoshop, video game, ugly, tiling, poorly drawn hands, poorly drawn feet, poorly drawn face, out of frame, mutation, mutated, extra limbs, extra legs, extra arms, disfigured, deformed, cross-eye, body out of frame, blurry, bad art, bad anatomy, 3d render
This is it! This is the feel! There were a couple of final candidates that were close, but this is the one I liked the most. It almost feels like she is bursting out of the lava!
Final Prompt & Lessons Learnt
I hope I did the Terminator some justice despite never seeing a single film (laugh), I like T-Dolls well enough so I guess that counts too?
Some things I learnt on this adventure.
If you keep an open mind, you can get results beyond your expectations.
Initially I wanted a horror/mecha themed terminator, but I realized I was not very good at horror nor mecha. So I turned my attention to waifuism. That worked out far better and I was much happier doing my work.
Use weights of similar value to change clothing.
You might have to play with the values a little, but the key is consistency. The weights have to be set so that you get the clothing >YOU want consistently. If you are only getting that jacket 70% of the time, up the weight by that much until it fits.
Booru can be used to make backgrounds too.
I haven't gone deep into this, but Booru also tags backgrounds; not as thoroughly as characters, but what you are looking for are the key concepts. The "low twintails" to your "red theme". Find an image that has the 'elements' you like and mix and match those elements with different weights.
That’s about it. It was a fun ride.
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