Anyone Can be Their Own Illustrator

My journey with creating AI-generated images started in 2023 after having a challenging school year.  I had a Pre-K student in class who tested every rule and boundary.  She liked reading stories, and I searched every platform for stories about the main character exhibiting similar behaviors.  The problem was that most of these characters were animals; she was unable to relate to these characters because, in her words, “I’m not a dog.”  I understood her point of view and wanted to find something for her that she could relate to.  Surprisingly, the options were limited; she needed something very specific to her situation.

This got me thinking: I would write stories but never publish them because I didn’t have the time for illustrations.  They were just verbal stories or rough drafts that I wrote on paper with grainy images that I drew.  With AI platforms coming out for public use, I decided to try one.  After researching the pros and cons of various sites, I decided to try Midjourney.  As stated in What is Midjourney (2024), “Midjourney is a bot that generates images from text prompts in seconds, allowing you to create stunning visuals without any specialized hardware or software.” I’d never used such a program, so I needed to learn the basics.  

Naturally, I turned to Midjourney YouTube videos for beginners (Grapichs, 2023).  Once I had a working knowledge of the setup, I installed Discord onto my laptop and got started.  Learning the platform was faster than anticipated, so I jumped in and got going.  It didn’t take me long to find a direction I wanted to pursue, and I needed a subscription plan due to the volume of images I would be creating.  I needed a private server in Discord to find my pictures easily.  The public ones were fun to browse, and seeing the creativity of others was terrific, but your generated images got lost quickly with everything coming in.  

Once I had my private server, I started playing around with the images I wanted for my children’s book.  I watched more YouTube videos for tips and tricks on the language needed to write the prompts and to have consistent images.  While creating the main character all details, including age, dress, expression, posture, and background, had to be included in the search for consistent results.  Once I am happy with an image, I can generate additional variations based on the main image.  I honestly got image-making happy, creating so many in a day and weeding through them to see which ones would make the cut.  

The images were not always perfect, there could be blurs or missing features that needed to be corrected or disregarded entirely.  I couldn’t use Midjourney for the whole process.  Yes, you can get individual pictures, but there still wasn’t consistency in generating images with lots of details.  For example, a student in the Pre-K classroom sits with other students on the carpet while listening to a teacher reading a book.  These details would need to be inputted separately into Midjourney because it was too much information for multiple pages.  Midjourney would alter details along the way; for example, the background in the classroom would change with each image.  

So, how did I bring them all together?  Adobe Photoshop played a significant role in bringing the characters together on the page.  I’m not proficient in Photoshop; honestly, I never really needed a reason to use it.  But I needed to learn Photoshop, so naturally, I turned to YouTube.  I was familiar with the layout but not all the details of using the platform to its fullest extent.  I spent lots of time watching tips and trick videos during this process.  Overall, I successfully used Photoshop to make simple character adjustments.  I could change an arm that wasn't going in the correct direction.  I could fix the character when turned in the wrong direction.  It became a fun and tedious process but well worth it.  

I could see the book coming to life as I completed the pages.  The last step was publishing; I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to take that additional step.  I’m an introvert and I don’t like my work being shared or seen due to non-constructive criticism.  However, I had great support during this process and decided the best thing to do was use a pseudonym.  The name I used, Daisy Jones, is actually my great-grandmother's name.  Amazon has a self-publishing platform called KDP.  With a super user-friendly platform, I could self-publish my children’s book.  The next step is to make it available for print and self-publish on Barnes and Noble.  You can check out this fantastic work, The Worst Day Ever (Silkin, C. 2023) available on Amazon.

References

Grapichs, S. (2023). Midjourney Beginners Tutorial – Getting Started & Creating Your First AI Art. YouTube. https://youtu.be/90tXPbyRGS8

Silkin, C. 2024. The worst day ever.

https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Day-Ever-Daisy Jones-ebook

Tome. (2024). Midjourney: pricing, reviews, & top 2 alternatives. Retrieved on

September 15, 2024.  https://tome.app/productivity-tips/midjourney-pricing-reviews-and-alternatives