The creator tags have migrated. All "prompter" and "artist" tags have been migrated to "creator". Please check your watched tags, as they might have disappeared from your watch lists due to the change.
@Eragor14
Yeah! It was definitely a headache when I made my very first Autumn Blaze image.
At first, the model simply couldn’t generate a convincing Autumn Blaze (or Somnambula, for that matter). There just aren’t many good references for them, so I had to discard a huge number of images that either didn’t resemble her enough or didn’t match the watercolor style I wanted.
Once I found the best candidate, I still spent quite a bit of time refining a lot of small details: her ears, hooves, mane, eyebrows, the shape of her tail, and of course her very distinctive horn, which took several attempts before it finally looked right. Ironically, the kirin scales on her back and chest came out correctly on the very first try! The backside of the kirin hooves actually gave me even more trouble in my previous Autumn Blaze image with the little bird.
This illustration, however, didn’t take nearly as long. After making two reasonably successful Autumn Blaze pieces, I finally had a good reference image that I could reuse for different poses and situations.
Funny enough, this image actually came from one of my previously rejected generations. I had discarded it because her eyes were looking in different directions and her expression felt unnatural. Then I realized it was actually a very easy fix. I just adjusted her pupils so she was focusing on the butterfly on her nose and gave her a properly surprised expression.
And then… there was the butterfly. I honestly spent more time refining the butterfly than the pony itself. I wanted both wings to be symmetrical, the body to look like an actual butterfly instead of some tiny alien creature, and for it to sit naturally on her nose without covering half of Autumn Blaze’s face.
Much like with Fluttershy, you added a butterfly to the scene to add an additional amount of detail.
I love how Autumn Blaze turned out here. I know Kirins can be tricky to generate since there aren’t that many images that the algorithm can use as reference. Kind of makes me wonder how much additional work you did to make the final image turn out this beautiful.
Yeah! It was definitely a headache when I made my very first Autumn Blaze image.