Do you want to create something more interesting than a standard picture of a single character in a generic pose? Here are some tips that can help you spice things up:
Style
Current models support various tags that can vastly change the image’s style, like
traditional art, pencil sketch, colored pencil drawing, watercolor painting, acrylic painting, pixel art, 2d, flat colors, black outlines, modern art, lineless, vector, limited palette, monochrome, greyscale, black and white, anime style, etc. Try out different tags and see how they affect the picture. You can even increase or decrease the tag weight to get different results - for example, (watercolor painting:1.4) is much stronger than (watercolor painting:0.6).CFG also affects the style - the lower the value, the more artistic, desaturated and messy the result is. Test which values work best for you. For Illustrious/Noob based models, it would be around 1.5 - 3.5. For Pony-based models, it would be around 3.5 - 7.5.
Some examples of different styles:
Narrative
Implanting a narrative can give some actual impact to a picture that would be pretty forgettable otherwise. When creating something, ask yourself these questions: What kind of an idea am I trying to get across? What am I telling the viewer? Are things shown in the image clearly helping with this?
When deciding on a narrative, you can draw inspiration from one of the MLP episodes, a fanfic you’ve read, a meme you’ve seen, or something you have experienced yourself. The possibilities are endless. You can also use text or dialogue, but you would probably need to insert it yourself, since most models can’t generate text reliably.
Some examples of narratives inspired by different things:
Meme:
MLP fanfic:
MLP song:
MLP episode:
Personal musings:
Magazine cover:
Characters
A trend I’ve noticed in a lot of generations - a character with a generic smile and a basic pose, just standing around and doing nothing. No interesting pose or expression, no unusual outfit, no interaction with their surroundings or other characters, just nothing that would capture the viewer’s attention (apart from the character’s anatomy, perhaps).
Think of these questions: Why would your character be in this place? What would they do there? Does it fit their personality? What kind of expression would they have? What kind of outfit would they wear (if any)? Does the whole composition make sense? All of these have to fit in the narrative you have chosen.
There is a lot you can achieve with a single character, but having two or more gets even more interesting. Are they friends, enemies, strangers, lovers? Maybe there is a group dynamic you would like to portray? Unfortunately, generating more than one character can be tricky, especially if they are interacting with each other. Techniques like img2img, inpainting and regional prompting combined with some manual editing can get you very far, but it requires work and patience.
Some examples:
Holiday theme, matching outfits, character interaction, different expressions:
Unusual outfit and a goofy expression, tied by a short story:
Friendship/rivalry:
Cozy Glow being Cozy Glow:
Two ponies stargazing while enjoying each other’s company:
