Ep. 24: Midjourney Moodboards, Mayhem, and Magic

0:00:00Holiday Chaos and Rice Ball Dreams

Play from 0:00:01 8:88:88 0:00:01 what's up everybody Midjourney Fast Hours podcast welcome ho ho ho Edition Merry Christmas you filthy days after Christmas hi your kids hi your wife uh we are just doing a little Friday afternoon Midjourney after dark during the day kind of thing cheers cheers to that and dude I'll be honest I'm I'm actually really stoked that you know we did two guests the last two weeks I'm that it's just us again I'm stoked that we have something to dive into with Midjourney an update which we're going to cover with mood boards and the multiple personalization stuff how you feeling man how was Christmas catch us up on everything it's

Play from 0:00:46 8:88:88 0:00:46 good it was good chaos let's just put it that way pure chaos 50 or chaos I'd go like 85 on this one just like we had a we had our first like big Christmas party yeah big Christmas party in a long time like full family like extended family 15 kids 40 people just like Mayhem you know Santa coms all that kind of you know stuff so it's the first time just like rolling with the punches there then you know Christmas same thing big big crowd big Long Island uh Christmas loud lots of food couldn't breathe after I was done eating um you know kind of stuff so what was the best thing you ate I love my mother-in-law's rice balls I don't do you even know what you know rice balls are are you familiar

Play from 0:01:31 8:88:88 0:01:31 with the uh with the tradition I don't know maybe maybe not so it's it's risoto uh like okay cheese yes but you knowed like probably not legit legit like I've probably had a legit one at an Italian restaurant a couple years ago you know what I mean like yeah it's a labor of love to make them they're not easy they take a long time but my my wife's mother God God bless her she can I she just like I If I Could bottle her energy and give it to me like I would be you know I'd be like a billionaire I just don't know how she goes from like 4 in the morning till like 2: in the morning that day just on her feet never stop moving need like a time-lapse camera to watch we need we need some of that we need some of that energy yeah where' the energy go need it cuz it was

Play from 0:02:19 8:88:88 0:02:19 you know this is the first time doing Christmas with with a baby so this was the uh you know all the gifts hilarious number one but also just like it's everyone's you gifts it's like this is for [name] this is for [name] this is for [name] and just so everyone knows this will be the first podcast in a long time where f is probably not going to make an appearance she's she stayed at Grandma's for a day so yep yep now we also we also did version two of a music video for her so I don't know if I sent that to you but yes she did yeah that was a Christmas gift for every great but uh yeah man just I'm I'm glad that it's like I like the holidays but I'm glad that they're sort of done I need to need like back to normal no no

Play from 0:03:06 8:88:88 0:03:06 more like back and forth travel all this other crap yeah I do like this week though like that week between Christmas and New Year's you know where everybody like 90% of people aren't working and you you hit on this last podcast but it was just like you said those are my favorite days I was like dude yes those are my favorite days no calls no calls crap yeah yeah yeah you know just like go have fun like this is the time everyone who's listening right now go learn a new tool go do something nuts great time this is the best the most time you'll have probably I'm guessing unless you're just like you know totally busy right now which is we could be but everyone else is sort of off if they're working in an office my my new my new tool is the little dj little DJ mixer that got for Christmas it's so dope that

Play from 0:03:54 8:88:88 0:03:54 look so dope yeah I there's like a studio uh setting on there too where you can like actually record you know what you create and I was just like really yeah I filled it up already recorded like five tracks you know kids kids toys from our era the 9s epic but I also think they're pretty damn good now like I see I see them yeah you know what okay you know what else we got um the kids was I know you'll remember this remember the little fishing game with the the fish that spin in the circle and they open their mouths and you got to drop the little fishing pole in yeah that's a that's a '90s game you know that's like a so we got my kids that they love that too but those throwback toys are undefeated well let's C let's catch up on Midjourney yes dude

0:04:30Midjourney Mood Boards: What’s New?

Play from 0:04:42 8:88:88 0:04:42 so I mean we I mean we teased it a little bit last week with mindo when we were talking about mood boards but we didn't really go in depth and so let's let's dive in let's go in a little bit deeper like what's your biggest takeaway so far with playing with mood boards and let's just say like on a scale 1 to 10 how excited are you about it 10 easy really that was for whatever reason I I've wanted this feature for so long like I did a post a while back about like how to create like your own srf codes which was like you know like how do we how do you dial in text prompting so hard that you get exactly the style that you want yeah I had to hack around it a little bit yeah you don't have to do that anymore like now it's now it's to me this is mood boards has been

Play from 0:05:28 8:88:88 0:05:28 something I've been looking for because I I've always I missed the style tuner let's talk about that cuz that was to me one of my favor that was your favorite W give that up I won't give that up cuz that was awesome and then they were just like yeah we're not doing it anymore why that was that was legit yeah I just yeah invested like 20 hours with style tuner yeah and now you can basically go back to that I I would say though that style tuner was really good at producing the style consistently yeah you know what I mean maybe that's my one hang up so far so maybe let's talk through that a little bit how do you make sure you're getting something really consistent and dialed in you know because I've I think it's like for me it's kind of been Case by case I've got some that work really

Play from 0:06:13 8:88:88 0:06:13 well I've got others that don't work really well you know for whatever reason and so I'm wondering like why there's that inconsistency there's sort of that component too now where you can select you know when you're prompting like maybe maybe let's actually show this so let's go to the tape okay so so for example right like you can put something in here but also let's just put like give me something give me something Rory uh Lamborghini oh man you're G to make me Spell lamborghini right now let's go I think I think you nailed it all right so but like this this part two right you've got personalize oh I didn't even know that and now you can

Play from 0:06:59 8:88:88 0:06:59 add you can multi- select these things and so maybe this is where I'm also getting tripped up so now I've got two selected first off didn't even know you could select it in the drop down here yeah yeah so like this is maybe where it's like there's just a little bit of education and experimentation that needs take place here but like I I'm getting tripped up on okay should I just run this on my Global profile with this code should I actually select this in addition to my Global Pro should I just select this I've just been using the the mood board itself without my personalization add go so like let's just take yeah so maybe that's why you haven't seen it right yeah so let's let's just turn it off but you know what I mean like so so I think there are a lot of different options there you have the mood board Plus or without

Play from 0:07:45 8:88:88 0:07:45 personalization you've got mood board with global profile you've got mood board with your profile then also the mood board can you select multiple here too like Chrome and doodles yeah oh all right so I guess you could like them together you know like it's just no one's talking about that I'm not really sure what that does yet you know what I mean um and so I think that's worth playing around oh so I this is legit for me I love let's take a look at this I love chrome cars like love that one yeah so for you so far with mood boards it sounds like you're running that with the code for the mood board without personalization just to see what it's like and then I'll run it with my

0:08:00Why Mood Boards Are Game-Changers

Play from 0:08:30 8:88:88 0:08:30 personalization to see what it's like to see what the the variance is cuz I think there's two ways to go about this right like I think or maybe maybe there's more there's probably a lot more but I think if you want like a you want like a more General style like your personalization code right like then you put a broader set of images in there and that'll give you something that's a little bit less predictable each time but like a little bit more towards like an overall overall like Global style right like what they call then the other way I think to do it is if you keep your image set like super tight like it does look like a srf code in there and then that's going to give you like something every time because I think what it does like for me specifically is I don't have to have like these super long text prompts right to like get what I want I can just use

Play from 0:09:16 8:88:88 0:09:16 my mood board and then write octopus enter and it comes out exactly how I want it so like I think there's a few things there you know that you can do then the other way not to go too deep we can get into this a little bit is to actually treat it like a mood board which is like you know like here let's put some Textures in let's put some colors in let's put some you know some Shadows lighting like different elements of an of like the images or like the sort of mood board that you're looking for and then it'll sort of blend it together I have a couple examples of those but like with this you know like perfect it's Chrome you know like is there and now if you ran this with your personaliz now so yeah so this was the thing right so here's what I just did uhuh and and let's just see so this one right here we ran without

Play from 0:10:02 8:88:88 0:10:02 personalization on just with the mood board this one we ran with the mood board code and the global personalization okay my personalization this one we did with both meaning if you've got it on you can select both things here and then this last one we did just Chrome just the mood board 2 personalized so I'm just confused you know a Midjourney part maybe this is something we can get some clarification on either from a listener or Midjourney during office hours but why is this here right because if like why do I even need to select Chrome if I've already got the mood board here and then it's confusing because personalize is

Play from 0:10:48 8:88:88 0:10:48 kind of it's not the same thing as mood board yeah it's different right and so like I think that's also tripping me up too because if you go here like these don't look any different I had to name this you know d-p just to indicate that otherwise you're just like looking at this little button here it doesn't stand out so what's a profile versus a mood board right and so I just think it you know we need a little bit of explanation there where did hold on where are we getting those profiles from so the profiles this is what you would click for a standard profile right so oh I okay so like for me I was thinking okay like let me do one just focused on photo realism which is kind of what I did for my Global profile

Play from 0:11:33 8:88:88 0:11:33 anyway let me do one just focused on illustrative Styles right and so this is your typical ranking the images so I'm looking specifically for some sort of illustrative style you know maybe I like the guy sketch so I'll just hit two right and like so so that's how I would build the profile out got it this I think what they were saying is you you need somewhere I think more than 40 images but somewhere around 200 it becomes much more stable that's where I was getting really tripped up were you confused by that in any way because I think I was just like interchanging mood board and personalization for a minute there in my head yes that's I was I created another profile I was like why do I have to rank this stuff again right it's like oh I

Play from 0:12:20 8:88:88 0:12:20 see I was treating a mood board as my own as like a personalization itself like I'm going to go you know for this type of style this is what I want which is why I want all these things to be super tight now yes this makes more sense now that you go in there and you rank then again cuz that'll be again which is what we always talked about was basically you know if you have one personalization code rank based on what you want to produce basically or how you typically produce because then it'll get really tight right but then you don't want to go too far down the line because then you might have a lot of influence on your personalization code which might make it weird um for you but now you can do whatever you want so I kind of kind of love it we need yeah we need some clarity though cuz like are these four different things that I just ran or is this two different things right like so is this with personalization off and on

0:12:30Personalizations vs. Moodboards: TF is the Difference?

Play from 0:13:07 8:88:88 0:13:07 or is it really four different things in terms of personalization off personalization on with global profile and chrome mood board but I can see the difference in your the ones you ran with the personalization code so like the F the top the top one is with your personalization code and the third line is with your personalization code right let's see this one was without without this one was with with um definitely with I didn't have Chrome selected although right it looks like that pulled it in there because obviously I had the code in there yeah then this one had both of them selected and what I mean by that is this and this and then the last one right this just had Chrome selected okay because I

Play from 0:13:53 8:88:88 0:13:53 can tell your profile code because that's why I ask for it sometimes people secretly behind the uh behind the scenes I ask for cuz there's well we we actually have a really good mix I need to play with that more cuz this one I can tell this it's a little bit softer on the ones with your personalization code a little less like see how there's like the if you go to like the first the first one you ran right if you go to the first one you ran the background details like this one on the left with all the crazy that one with all the crazy background noise like that doesn't feel like your personalization code it's not as like clean and like very like aesthetically soft and like Awesome from The Shadow perspective when when you go to the these like when you go to these now you have that clean background you have like a lot of like the smooth Contours and like the yeah like this

Play from 0:14:40 8:88:88 0:14:40 looks way more to me like your personalization code I know yeah it does yeah we're gonna man so I think we're GNA have to play with that you know what are your big takeaways obviously you're really excited about it how do you see yourself using it when are you using it when are you not using it well I think this will work really well for number one if anyone is doing this for a client now you have a now you have a way to actually like siphon out a client aesthetic and put it in a certain place without having to go and text prompt like specifically for it every single time or use a bunch of srf codes play with style waiting all that kind of now you can kind of do this all within mood board and then also you can share that with them so then they can play with it too so I think like that's a great piece of it number one number two

Play from 0:15:25 8:88:88 0:15:25 is like storytelling if you're trying to create something let's just go say on on the video project right you want to do something with Runway Luma cling Minx whatever like now you can create a mood board and get like a very similar aesthetic so everything stays tight which I think is super important because again you know from a color grading perspective making sure everything's consistent especially if you're going to be a little more creative with it and it's not like you know black and white footage right like that's where this can be really helpful or if you just you know if you're a brand and you want to go create images for your website your whatever and you know you have your own store or whatever it is and you want to keep similar look and feel you have now your profile your profile code or your mood board code and it's can all be you know tight it can be

Play from 0:16:13 8:88:88 0:16:13 loose it can be whatever you want it to be I just think it's been really consistent when I've directed it the right way so for example let me pull I'll pull this one up so when I look at these right like I've done some really tight ones like the fact that when I go into this like HP art face tattoo right like we're looking at the mood board where this is all pretty like intrinsic stuff like this is not easy to replicate yeah yeah you know what I mean like that's you would have a tough time prompting for just text yeah so with this I mean this is a mixture all of these are a mixture of like image prompts and like a lot of you know different you know multi- prompts and waiting and it's a really complex prompt to get to something like this but if I go to view Creations from this like it's

Play from 0:16:59 8:88:88 0:16:59 all very tight like and you know I'm not I'm not asking for much here just Samurai in a bamboo forest right and then just the mood board right and it comes up that way which I find to be awesome that it can do this cuz that's you know this is a lot of work to to get to this this image like a lot of like prompting you know I'm not really adding much here just adding the you know the mood board code and I get things you know like even with these flowers and stuff like I love that it can just take that whole aesthetic and apply it to an orchid like it's so simple but like that's where I'm finding it to be awesome cuz then when I look at something like this one here like this one I wanted to go super tight right like this was basically like an srf uh like an srf

Play from 0:17:46 8:88:88 0:17:46 project that I was working on where I wanted to have like all these super like gritty grainy like harsh black and white like high contrast like super tight composition you know like a lot of different things going on where you know you can you can see all the depth and the texture and the Grain and that's what I wanted right like I wanted things to look like this hand basically like I wanted all that white background most of the time so you can start with something like I feel like I started with like one of these like an image like this it was one image and then I was just using you know sref and prompting to get the rest of these images right just to be like okay instead of you know cowboy with a hat over his head and like you know man you know putting his head on a horse's head or you know coffee kettle on a

0:18:00Cracking the Code on Consistency

Play from 0:18:32 8:88:88 0:18:32 wooden table so now that I have this right now that I have like this very tight aesthetic and I can you know basically make a mood board out of that I can go to here and just like create and everything is going to become like super tight like there's you know everything looks exactly the same right I'm not I'm not adding much here very simple prompt like all these look exactly how I need them to from the aesthetic purposes some of them you know again you get a little color which is weird but a lot of them look exactly like this super harsh saturated grainy aesthetic so I it's a dope look and okay so a couple things that you just said that really stood out to me one you're talking about keeping it tight so I think this is um this is an area for

Play from 0:19:19 8:88:88 0:19:19 exploration because I'm not sure I would like to know when it's when it's acceptable to not be so tight and how good it is without it being tight also love the idea of it being tight and using maybe one or two methods to get there which is style reference or style code right so you went about that style reference used that to create additional images then created the mood board versus like sourcing you know um high contrast black and white images from different places right maybe some are ones that you created in Midjourney maybe some are something from Pinterest or you know whatever it is like so that that keeps it much tighter right which I would

Play from 0:20:05 8:88:88 0:20:05 think is going to give you more consistent results I would think that would be my speculation also the point about style codes is you could essentially achieve that same tight or consistency using a style code as long as you're not changing too much of you know same with style reference too much of the style weight um you know things like that I don't know how aspect ratios if how much they factor into this fold I'm not sure probably not too much but um like that to me is maybe a good takeaway for listeners is if you want to keep it really tight right out of the gate probably start with a style reference or a style code yeah and I think like the style like this is you can create your own style code right like I basically like I didn't have that

Play from 0:20:51 8:88:88 0:20:51 black and white high contrast grainy sort of look that I you know I just didn't feel like mining it so I created it right same thing here's now here's the other example of it where like this is way more broad where I put a lot of different things in here but I was really focusing on like this primer this like primer gray look and like a neon pop but also I wanted like some Intergalactic stuff I wanted like some really some really like saturated neon colors here so I was prompting you know I was creating things like like this one I don't know if it's going to show me the prompt probably not but you know it's like was using random colors I was like you know neon tangerine orange like purple heat radical teal um sa Crystal

Play from 0:21:38 8:88:88 0:21:38 sapphire blue right like so all this stuff kind of has different elements to it right where it's not all the same but you know I had some some 80s like sort of these colors are awesome yeah so I was that's what I wanted was this like crazy sort of contrast between this primer gray look and then I run it and you get some really crazy and it kind of is you know wanted some smooth and gritty textures but you know you run it you start to get some really excellent stuff like there's one in here that's probably one of my favorite images I've created in a long time it's like this little astronaut in a terrarium wherever the F it is maybe this is it something like that like I was just like this is I love this stuff you know like there's really cool and actually let me just pull this up because I have these upscaled so you can

Play from 0:22:25 8:88:88 0:22:25 look at it here these right like I mean you're getting like this whole gray with a pop of color you know some some heavy blacks you have like these gritty and soft textures that I was like you know smooth textures on the mushroom like gritty textures here right like this one these are great right like it's just super cool to like blend this stuff and then go with it like I love the way the mushrooms came out the smooth and the grit at the same time you know a little digital snake here I don't even know robot you know what just thought about this too like yeah you know if you don't have this to to begin with too like you could Blend images together then find something that you really like and then build that into an srf that you could put into the mood board right like there

0:22:30Moodboards for Clients and Teams

Play from 0:23:10 8:88:88 0:23:10 there are a couple different ways that you could think about doing this I think like if you don't like if you didn't have anything to start with or you're just creating a New Concept blending could be an interesting option too with image rough yeah look I think you have to go about it like I think if you want like a mood board like you want to go about it like you're putting together a mood board like textures colors like things that you like things that you don't like compositions lighting things like that and it'll blend it together very nicely like those are all fairly consistent from a you know from what I gave it in terms of like the aesthetic in the mood board right so it it has the ability to do that which I really like that's been my favorite so far okay a couple other interesting things that you that you mentioned or got me thinking about was the collaboration piece of it

Play from 0:23:57 8:88:88 0:23:57 is is definitely interesting right because previous to this all you had was rooms yeah right and rooms you know were underutilized since the day they launched right we we talked about that but like this gives you another way to interact with team member client whatever it is in a in a much more practical yeah way like real life use case way because you know with especially with agencies you're looking at storyboarding or putting together some sort of mood board or you know if I'm doing a custom brand imagery library for a brand like this would be a great place to throw in images that we're trying to achieve or reference so there's that part of it also like I think what this does is you C you can return to previous themes themes that

Play from 0:24:44 8:88:88 0:24:44 you actually care about without having to dig up all the hard work again now I don't I don't know if unless you've gone through this maybe you don't know what I'm talking about but like let's just say um what's something that I do every once in a while okay so like you know maybe with my human bouquets where I have the person walking and their face is covered and they're carrying like a pile of something like I could use that as a way to to shortcut going about creating image reference and style reference and things like that to get it back to where I want it because I have to achieve that every time yeah right I think maybe even a better use case than that is where the colors than the Aesthetics are the same right so similar to the style reference in the sense of

Play from 0:25:29 8:88:88 0:25:29 like what you just provided it's like you don't have to do all that extra work again with the lighting the composition you're building the brand of an image with a yeah like it's it's really just about and and so maybe it's really just about like what's your what's the prompt approach with this and I think it's just is it just subject and action and maybe the camera angle yeah I'd say it's pretty much that's what I've been doing is like kind of or I've just been letting it ride with some chaos cuz I'm like you know okay I have this like general idea of what I want but maybe I want to add a little bit of chaos to see what that's interesting like chaos built within your moodboard and I wonder how that operates you know like yeah I've been doing it a lot like chaos 10 I'm running chaos 10 on the mood board images a lot because I feel like it's just giving me great stuff like left and

Play from 0:26:16 8:88:88 0:26:16 right and I'm like okay cuz you know if I'm giving a general prompt again right because now that I have this mood board profile that's attached to it and if I'm just saying like robot dragon right and then it's like you know that's going to already be sort of broad to begin with yeah but if I drop some chaos 10 in there maybe I can get some really cool stuff so chaos 10 chaos 20 I try to run it up to like a 100 to see what would happen it wasn't I didn't find it to be that great um you know weird with a little bit of it I don't think you can it doesn't like really provide much like difference but there's there's one thing like I think about this like this is a good point you made about working with the teams like first thing like rethinking like overhauling how we work internally I think of this as like maybe like a creative director like this is your role like number one like you put

0:27:00Chaos Settings: Creative or Crazy?

Play from 0:27:02 8:88:88 0:27:02 together like all the information from the brief you create the aesthetic you put the mood board in there you create that profile code then you go give it to everybody and everyone plays off of it you know what I mean like you're like if you craft the aesthetic the look The feel yeah then it's like bang give that to everyone everyone just goes and prompts and gets what they want um because it feels like that I was doing this with someone the other day for a clation project and you know they dropped this mood board thing the night of do after we were doing it for like 5 hours like trying to get it like all tight and I'm like guys I don't want to tell you this but really I could have just I could have made this one time and we would have been done in 20 minutes it's like damn could have used that Midjourney like I don't know six hours ago but now it's here so I'm not going to complain about it but it's great for things like that cuz now now that also

Play from 0:27:49 8:88:88 0:27:49 like to me that can enhance the collaborative team experience cuz now not everyone has to figure out oh send me that prompt and let me play with it it's like here the aesthetic go play with it you know like you don't have to like worry about building the aesthetic into the prompt it's like it's there now go do what you need to do with it so one step further I also have a feeling I don't know if you got this feeling but I I I'm starting to think this is like their Laura training like the one thing that's personally I feel the other Laura trainers unless you're doing it you know locally on your own computer and you're really effing good at it like if you're going to Korea you're going to free pick whatever the style lauras are good they're never never great they never can hit Midjourney's aesthetic like perfectly you you're just going to get something that's very it'll be good but

Play from 0:28:35 8:88:88 0:28:35 like not wow factor yeah this now now we have like a little mini Laura here for Styles I have a feeling they're going to roll this into characters like the same sort of theory and like build your mood board with your character use here's your profile code for that character I have a feeling that's how that's how I would do it if I rolled out this Fe yeah yeah it's definitely it's definitely a novel approach compared to how everybody else is thinking about it which is which is always interesting it's a it's a different way yeah the Laura component you know like you won't find the word Laura anywhere on Midjourney or in their documentation right but it is kind of just that right like and and so I also thought it was fascinating with you know personalization and you know like thinking about how much of a benefit it

Play from 0:29:20 8:88:88 0:29:20 was for Midjourney for you to rank images by aesthetic or preference and now they turned it into a personalization thing which means that people are only going to rate more and more images right and now you've got multiple personalization profiles so people are going to rate even more images right so how does that affect their training data and Quality Moving Forward too right like it's a selfish thing but it's also a thing that's really good for us you know and so it's just a different approach altogether and I'd be fascinating to see how that works with like you said some of the things that are going to come including you know video and then maybe you know sort of like this next jump with Patchwork you could see you could connect the dots you can connect the dots a little bit there I think it's the

Play from 0:30:07 8:88:88 0:30:07 the interesting thing with what you just said about that is like it's they're they're basically giving us personalization while telling them exactly how they want the next models to work exactly yeah yeah yeah they found that they found that spot yeah pretty sweet in terms of like they gamified it for us it also is hugely beneficial to them it's it's not it's a two-way street which is you know that's that's a sign of a good product good idea srf codes too they know which ones get utiliz the most they know how to like build that you know take that into the aesthetic training data things like that you know at a certain point it feels like it's just going to feed itself speaking of speaking of like not to get off to I mean maybe maybe we pivot over here but you know they talked about style code exploration and them bubbling that up to the site that's going to be something

Play from 0:30:54 8:88:88 0:30:54 you know right now right it's just the third party sites that maybe collect them it's people sharing these things but you know imagine having like a catalog at your disposal with filters that's fully comprehensive not just something that some one person has put together so that'll be interesting as well I I still want to return to that idea too with like active tokens being used like trending tokens being used I think that could be a real fun and gamified way to create as well that that keep people engaged do you have you noticed that the ex has the explore page gotten better for you like in what way I've opened it up the last few days and like I typically go on the explore page like when I first sign in maybe I'll give it one or two Scrolls down and just move on the last like two

Play from 0:31:40 8:88:88 0:31:40 or three days I've been like I like this stuff like I'm like like like like like I don't know if that's if that's changed like I'm curious if they started personalizing that because it's way more typically like I'm not a I'm not like a fine art or like a you know abstract kind of art person that's always what's been on there um and this time I'm opening it up and like okay I like this this is like tailored for me well okay let me ask you this have you ever gone through and did any of the curate the Community Front Page stuff yeah I did it I've done I haven't done it recently but I have done it so I wonder if you've if you've done any of that are there preferences that then roll into the

Play from 0:32:25 8:88:88 0:32:25 explore page for you because I know like in the past they've talked about personalizing the explore page in some way as well is that maybe a first step that you know they really haven't talked about yet is if you have curated Community Front Page stuff does that factor in and so for for people that may not know what we're talking about under tasks there is an option I'm just going to show you guys very quickly click click tasks here you can click curate Community Front Page and it's going to show you a grid of IM and these typically are grouped by aspect ratio there's no there's nothing here other than which do you think you would like to see on the front page you know like of explore it's like okay kind of like this one cool um what about this

Play from 0:33:12 8:88:88 0:33:12 one right it's like uh well this is pretty dope you know and like you can skip these two just like if you're rating so it's like okay maybe I don't like any of these let me skip but maybe that is starting to play in let's a little experiment go to your explore page real quick okay let's see so let's go so that that image in the top left that was on mine which I was the first time I was like oh I really like now this is now this is top day right so maybe this is a little bit more of an aggregate like Global thing what I wonder if we click on like hot if we get different all right see mine's the same as yours now but it looks different than it did it looks different than it did yesterday cuz I I went through and liked eight of the first photos that I saw I was like these are all sick and

0:33:30Exploring Unique Styles with Midjourney

Play from 0:33:58 8:88:88 0:33:58 interesting and now it's back to being a little bit more like all over the place like here's here's like I wonder yeah that's hey man I don't know like could be the case you you know the these stay up typically for 24 hours like scroll scroll down real quick on this page yeah can you tell them like this is what I don't understand as to how these things get ranked and on here if you keep going down there's an image of like the fruit right there in the middle the stock for if you go back up yeah I'm not like on anyone but why is that on the very basic yeah you know like the one above it cool the one to the right cool all the other ones cool like why does this one hit the the explore page I don't I don't get it

Play from 0:34:44 8:88:88 0:34:44 yeah that's interesting right like it's that's like there's nothing unique to it that's pictures been Tak 50,000 times this one like that that's you can find that anywhere with the red pagota is a little to me a little bit more interesting than the you know some of this other stuff like these little crab Moon things about is how about this Rory that's a big prompt for that for that [Laughter] that I don't want to on anyone it's just like you know what let me let me I found something very interesting the other day maybe you know this maybe you don't let me let me go into okay so first of all you need to have stealth off for this to be the case

Play from 0:35:29 8:88:88 0:35:29 okay and I don't know how often this refreshes but if I click more options uh okay maybe they took it off what could you do there was an option here under more that said submit for Community Front Page really and you could submit up to three huh and I think it was daily I I don't know because typically I don't run off stealth like it's just that's my fault I rarely touch it but I noticed that and now it's now it's gone but I did it a couple times but yeah I mean that was just I saw that and it was interesting because like a little Easter egg that I never noticed before and now it looks like it's it's gone unless you're seeing it let's

Play from 0:36:15 8:88:88 0:36:15 switch the switch the share here let's check it out because I don't run I don't run anything in stuff yeah let's give it give it a go all right let's see oh wait no it has to be in this way yeah oh submit to rankings three left all right there it is so maybe I'm going to have to do this stuff now so I you know like that to me feels like the first way you could really control that other than that I I I have no idea how it would just take random to get you into the image rankings in the first place right let alone get you voted on enough to get into you know new or hot or trending or you know post of the day or whatever all right well now I know that now I'm doing

Play from 0:37:01 8:88:88 0:37:01 it okay well at least you guys know I'm not making up you know Drew is not crazy he is not making this up that is actually a thing did not even know you could right click on those images there and something even came up so so you you should submit those and then I'd be curious to know when you're able to submit again I didn't really pay attention to that I'm I'm imagining it's 24 hours but I don't know cuz I'm wondering I wonder every once in a while I'm like where who submits these images do they just yeah that's what I'm saying and they did that for a while so I don't know sometimes they look like they were done in like 5.2 I'm like are they just recycling old images like I don't know because I you know ranking can get boring I just I like to do it to update my code every once in a while yeah I haven't maxed it out still like level

Play from 0:37:46 8:88:88 0:37:46 five really yeah yeah get going it takes I'm gonna get I'm GNA go through and do a couple of these personalization like that are maybe more specific but yeah you know when you're looking for something specific it it only takes longer so it's not like you can really sit down in one session and do it you probably got to you know come back to it a few times cuz I skip a lot on when I was doing oh skip a ton yeah I was just like Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip and then I and then I get in my head I'm like I wonder why they're showing me these two images yeah you know like wonder if I you know even though this is an image I wouldn't create I do like this style more than any other style should should I select it you know like the classic run is when you go like Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip and then it's two images that you really like and

Play from 0:38:31 8:88:88 0:38:31 you're like yeah and you're like me come on you know maybe I'll like you know maybe I'll like both so I can come back to it and see the prompt you know like the odd thing is it works like I do I do like my personalization codes I do use them all the time and it does make a big difference and I don't know how but you know maybe it was part of those those psychographic tests also who knows I don't know they have you know Midjourney should be be able to map my imagination now at this point with how much data they have on that was something that should be on the horizon 2 cuz I remember they were talking about putting out you know their findings along with more insights from what they gathered along with that from just like a community at large and maybe even how they implemented stuff with that but I

Play from 0:39:18 8:88:88 0:39:18 haven't heard anything about it since maybe three office hours ago so okay interesting it's just like I'm I'm just for let me let me pull this back up for the mood boards here there's a few things that I've also been trying and failing and I think it's good to show everyone some fails right absolutely like this is when I tried to blend these two sort of looks together to see if you get like a blend effect kind of thing yeah it wasn't I don't think it worked overly well like I think it had some I think there was some cool stuff but not necessarily like what I was really into wasn't really like producing the way I wanted it to maybe that wasn't like the best aesthetic Choice typically I found when I blend those SRS it works a little

0:40:00AI Tools: Too Many Choices?

Play from 0:40:03 8:88:88 0:40:03 bit better so maybe a little bit too crazy on the uh on the mood boards might not work to like the desired effect um but then like you know for the contrasting example of that is when you do something that is like extremely tight maybe like 12 images right this isn't a lot but it's like a very specific link I wonder how much of the image it pulls in versus the color aesthetic right is it a similar model to what we see with SRS in the standpoint of you know if you style weight it too far you're going to start to get the subject involved but like let's just say I didn't want that marble or that ball and I wanted a something that you don't have in here right like how does that affect it you know like I

Play from 0:40:49 8:88:88 0:40:49 I think that's that's also an interesting thing is you know is there a way to wait these things like currently there's not maybe this tightens up too with uh with seven you know in terms of like alleviating some of the volatility that could be in place on the mood board yeah I feel like a stylize has like an effect on it um yeah how so let's talk about it I feel like it's the same way personalization works that's just me how I've how I've been sort of the more style I put into it it's not as necessarily super crazy it's more like to that style um which is why too also been playing under the default in like 75 to 90 like sty 75 to 90 with the mood boards and it's like this really cool

Play from 0:41:35 8:88:88 0:41:35 sort of like not overdone aesthetic you still get some of mid Journeys baked in if you want to add your personalization code there like you have a mixture of personalization mid Journeys default style plus your mood board I found good success there then maybe like a little subtle chaos too so it's like a little you know it's like a total mish mash of an experiment but I think that's that one's been you know maybe sty 90 like like we need to we need to hire like an intern that just sits over our shoulder you know and like documents what we do the experiments that we run because I have too much ADHD to really like do this but yeah you know that exact thing and what we're talking about with the differences in running personalization on or off the corresponding effect to

Play from 0:42:21 8:88:88 0:42:21 stylization now we're talking about mood boards on top of that right like playing around with that you know like it would be great if there were some scientific or objective things that just need to be captured you know and and I think there are at the same time there are other times where I'm just like nah like Midjourney is just maybe too inconsistent on some things like style is a great example you you know you could run some things on like a 300 and some things on a 600 yeah and that's kind of like a big jump in terms of the threshold how far is that going to Veer away from the prompt you know sometimes I like 300 way better sometimes I like 600 way you know like sometimes I can't even tell which is the three and which is the six right so it's just you know are we just kind of like splitting hairs here or is there an

Play from 0:43:08 8:88:88 0:43:08 actual like objective piece to it it's funny we did like a I was working with someone the other day we did like a hackathon and it was like we were trying to figure out this this one project that we were going to do and it was they're like hey can we do it like this this this and this and like we're sharing screens and they're just like watching me go to work on it and like they're like silent at certain points and I'm like what what's wrong they're like this is just like so you just do it so differently like the way you're way you're testing things and like thinking about it I'm like what do you like how would you guys do it and then like they're telling me and I'm like oh that's you know it's always interesting to hear what other people are doing yeah yeah like that thought process too cuz you know I'm dropping I'm dropping the style weights dropping the quality weights like for something like clation right like they were like what why are you dropping the quality to 05 I'm like cuz it's going to take away a lot of

Play from 0:43:54 8:88:88 0:43:54 this detail it's going to make it like softer they're like really we've been trying to text prompt for that I'm like well it's one of those old parameters that we still you know that's that's what I'm saying man like even though it may seem like there aren't you know you don't have this large arsenal of things yeah you actually do you do you have you have too much to even go into at depth anymore right because like we I know we've talked about this a few times on here but it's like if you were to calculate all the different micro decisions that you could make I mean it's it's a number that I'm not even sure as a number that anybody could comprehend right there are so many different directions that you could take this and you add one tool and that adds like a whole another hundred different things that you can do right based on

Play from 0:44:39 8:88:88 0:44:39 the weight or the threshold or the number of references or you know or whatever it is right there are just so many different variables that come into play so that's another like little tip for anyone who's trying to do you know something like clation like the the directive there for the clamation look which is why we ended up with that coup point you know that that lower quality weight and lower style weight was that it didn't want it to look like super detailed and Polished they wanted it to look like Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer from like you know the the 1950s where it's obviously like jumbled there's not a lot of perfection it's like kind of so you know when you run it with just stylize 100 like the clamation looks really good like it looks like animated clamation not like someone actually hand did clamation with imperfection so

Play from 0:45:24 8:88:88 0:45:24 dropping the quality weight hey I think that's a good a good point too just in general is I think if you understand how to manipulate something like quality you know you're probably using the tool pretty good you know what I mean because maybe your default is that you just want to ramp the quality up obviously I want the best quality possible well there's a there's a reason to scale back you know there are situations and scenarios where you would want to scale it back so I do think that's I do think that's smart yeah like minimalism drop it you know like something like I remember doing this a while back like calligraphy someone wanted calligraphy but they needed to be 2D flat and like not crazy it's like let's drop the quality drop the styliz and it's like Bang there it is you know instead of like text prompting a million different ways minimalism white background only this only that you know it's like okay like

Play from 0:46:11 8:88:88 0:46:11 there sometimes it's just something like that like Midjourney wants to be creative just know that like always it always wants to push it which I like that's my aesthetic but sometimes you know you need to bring it back to reality a little bit which is where you know like quality yeah yeah yeah I my favorite well hey we talked about we we talked about showing some of our favorite images from 2024 as we wrap up the new year you want to do that all right let's do it let's okay we'll wrap this one up with a bang couple of our favorites let's see cuz this is It's good to go back if anyone hasn't done this by the way just go back to January and look at what you were doing cuz stuff looks so different now like took me so long to get back to January I

0:46:30Faces That Tell Unique Stories

Play from 0:46:57 8:88:88 0:46:57 don't actually to be honest I don't I don't know that I did I scrolled it back down and then just let it load and walked away like it had took forever there you go I like I'm pretty sure I didn't go back to January but um okay so so some this was a folder I already had together there are some images that are definitely my favorites and some I'm going to skip through here but like just going through and looking at some of the human bouquet stuff like obviously something that uh I spent a lot of time creating in 2024 love these different you know outputs different things that are kind of captured in those this was a recent one with Christmas liked that one a lot yeah little carols carols and cartridges know s like a will Wayne song that

Play from 0:47:45 8:88:88 0:47:45 hasn't been made yet I had to throw this one in there because like there was a week where I just enjoyed doing these little Lego guys MH uh Midjourney is great at these like the training data on Legos is fantastic so if you haven't played with Legos that's a that's a fun one uh a lot of surreal stuff in here um oh I remember that one yeah I had a moment with this Sr code or style code for a while you know like this kind of like cold blue tone with like this red neon glow to it another human bouquet stuff this one was a an edit after the fact with the the tie bottle um and then you know just my nuns you know my nuns my Nuns with guns my nuns just doing crazy

Play from 0:48:31 8:88:88 0:48:31 ride motorcycles this was a fun one I did like this there was a point in time where I was doing a lot of these like um aerial views of like these cool compositions of just like a bunch of people doing different things like there was one where I had like it was like a lake and people doing different activities in the lake you know or like there were just a lot of things going on so I had to include that in here I like it's like retro futuristic yeah I love this it's not even like something I would normally create and I just I can't this was like a style code I believe and I was just like damn like these are these are cool um this was going back to that one codeina there yeah I was going to say it feels a little Illuminati esque you know I'll take it so like how come this stuff doesn't show up on my when I'm ranking

Play from 0:49:16 8:88:88 0:49:16 images that's what I mean like I get like you know food with a white background not this stock yeah um this was one that I did in comparison with this this was like something that I actually did in 2023 and then ran it again you know so like this was one of those things that we were talking about doing is like go back to Old images that you ran in V4 V5 5.2 5.1 run them again in six or 6.1 and by the way like in doing that there is a big difference in six and 6.1 big some I really like six better than 6.1 you know what I mean yeah okay yeah and so like there was a I went through a little period of time where I was just running permutations on just the the six vers 6.1 with a lot of this stuff and there was a bit pretty big difference

0:50:00The Future of Character Generation

Play from 0:50:01 8:88:88 0:50:01 there um interesting let's let me see that Soldier that's running with the running with the dust in the silhouette where you got this one there we go yeah yeah I dig that kind of stuff you know you know what and I think this was a very easy prompt now I'm thinking about it I think this is like cinematic still action or tension driven scene or something like that like just very simple and um yeah you usually get some really good stuff with guns Travis Scott over the shoulder kind of feels like it right yeah that was like who's I forget whose post I was the other day we were both like that's Justin Jefferson Justin Jefferson our boyr I think yeah yeah like not even proportionally there but it's like okay I love the mess you know

Play from 0:50:49 8:88:88 0:50:49 what I had another mess up you'll enjoy there's something actually really dope about this it's just the it's just the nun head on the skateboard if I could find it right now I would love it do you do you know Stephanie Stephanie Jane red hair on uh on LinkedIn she's she always has like the craziest post like the craziest stuff I don't think so I don't think I know who that is she's she's hilarious but she she posted a picture one time of her like wrapped in a blanket and you know said I'm just going to be a burrito for the day so I mid journeyed a picture of her and like and like said like you know face in a burrito or something like that it just like this whole popped it in there it was dis it was like the most the weirdest most disgusting thing composition yeah so hilarious dude that's what I was getting back I you

Play from 0:51:35 8:88:88 0:51:35 know like I never prompt people on skateboards but it it was having a really tough time you know with the aspect ratios of fitting that in and so like I got some weird like that um I have to find it now these ones I never really posted but they're super cool um I like that I like this one this one's dope the retainer days yeah like this one kind of similar style similar style uh what else do I have in here oh this was like a dude this was a style code I found recently that is just like banging wow I like that that looks like something that go on my wall you know what I mean like just stuff that I wouldn't create but like super dope you know of course got like some cinematic

Play from 0:52:21 8:88:88 0:52:21 got you know more nun stuff Nuns with the grills nice Nuns with the grills and the teeth so good do you edit those a bunch of times no whenever I grill this isn't edited but all right they are inconsistent yeah whenever I tried grills like that never it's always jacked so so grills I just put like gold teeth okay instead and it does a little bit better but yeah it's definitely a problem um I let dude that face is so good I know there's some faces where it's just like the face makes a picture and then of course like this this series you know with the Stitch stuff I mean I love that so I think like those are really those are really like my main images I think that like I'm really

Play from 0:53:07 8:88:88 0:53:07 digging I mean I'm sure there's a lot but it's just like I also didn't want to spend forever on it oh love this one yeah that's solid I dig that love this one um so yeah man I mean those are a few like obviously all over the place and some ways and then in the sub you know other ways it's like very very much my style you know like and I think that's the beauty of something like Midjourney is you you can create anything you want so of course there's the lane of this is the typical stuff I like to create and then there's also this Lane of I never knew I like this yeah but it's good yeah you know and so that's that's the magic right with with Midjourney is I don't think these other tools can really capture that that part of it where you like created this whole

Play from 0:53:52 8:88:88 0:53:52 other style you're just like I like this I didn't know I was you know I didn't know I was into this but I but I am did you know you were into dangerous nuns is that like is that like a Catholic School sort of like Trauma from back in the day know I don't I have no idea how I how I got into that I think it was just like an evolution because I did one none with the gun in the grills a while back and then just people liked it and then I liked it and like I just kind of kept going back to it and then again I just went through another period where I started going back to it again and I think my next step is like I would like to make it into more of a thematic series you know with like Nuns with a gun nuns and priest and alter boys just doing crazy like yes cler clergy

Play from 0:54:37 8:88:88 0:54:37 chaos you know and like if I have and shout out to G cordin for the name I think he was the one that gave me the name but like I I think what I would like to do also is turn that into some sort of like you know video component speaking to what you just said before about going back and running some of the stuff I found I went back to a V4 image that I found cuz I wanted to I was like I know I did this at some point it was a BMW racing a uh an F-16 jet and it was like I used it in a because I found it in a post that I did like comparing when everyone was like why do I feel like I why do I feel like I know that maybe cuz I feel like everyone was sweating Deli so much at one point I was like what is this Midjourney 4 or DOI which one is better and it was everyone chose that one I'm like yeah this is from mid

0:55:00Video Tools and Visual Storytelling

Play from 0:55:22 8:88:88 0:55:22 Journeys like three versions ago was like it was like it's that much better absolutely and uh I redid it in 6.1 and now I'm doing like a whole I'm doing like a whole ultimate driving machine a lot of it I was like wait can I take one image and turn it into a you know this whole thing and I'm loving it that's where trying to show you the uh sound effects thing before you know okay so you know one thing that's stuck with me too is I I think about this from time to time I can't remember where I heard this but it was just along the lines of you know this quality over quantity thing and the same being with images right like we can create thousands hundreds of thousands of images and there's a there's a cool aspect about that there's also a cool aspect of

Play from 0:56:07 8:88:88 0:56:07 taking a very select few images and focusing hard and tight on that and building that out right and letting that manifest and focusing on the quality versus the quantity stuff yeah and so you know like it's just an interesting perspective because I think even I revisit that thought from time to time because I'm just creating all this random sometimes and I'm just like man I just need to like focus in on something and just go hard there for you know couple weeks right and then then create something really awesome with it so like if you're struggling with that in this attention deficit era that we're in like let that sink in you know like I I just come back to that every once in a while anyway I digress I would like to see your images sir all right so I I

Play from 0:56:56 8:88:88 0:56:56 looked at I tried to do a bunch of these and I look at them after the fact and I was like I don't do I really like these I picked them on first go and then I'm like you know what maybe I listen man I think it's all subjective and look like I even just looking at mine I'm like I don't know if I would have picked that again but like there are just certain things that I personally just really like and I don't care what anybody else thinks and I think that's what it is right look I remember this one in 5.2 when I got that would have been something that you would have never seen before with like that sparkle of red in there you know yeah like I like I like the eyes the eyes were good the teeth were good like those eyes in 5.2 are insane yeah that's it was like certain things like when I remember like I saw that one I had like a visceral reaction cuz it got like the it got like the the

Play from 0:57:41 8:88:88 0:57:41 crispness the teeth because you remember before six like six was that point where it was like you could get real close up and you start you all of the sudden got all this extra texture the skin you know like but you you rarely got that crispness in the eyes right even like these little wrinkles like the teeth like the definition in the teeth like they were all sort of like uniform they straight yeah they're uniform it was very like oh that I just remember that being like a moment and I was like cool then this one still just yeah love my Missy Elliott blending yeah blending this pattern with this texture right and then getting this little close-up facial like situation here I was like that's I dig it which I

Play from 0:58:27 8:88:88 0:58:27 was see like dude I mean that's that's the beauty of Midjourney too just smashing those things together yeah then there was then there was like these that I was running like this girl with a cigarette when I was trying to control every aspect of an image and I was realizing that with V6 it was working I was like oh sick like it actually works like I can control every little piece of it if I want to like as long of a prompt as I could po possibly go but like breaking it out like I did in V4 with like subject this you know position this subject Focus midr slightly out of focus like you know subject wearing this like doing that like super technical breakdown so then realize that it all is controllable and I was like oh hell yeah there was these I went on a run with like the opium den oh the Opium Den

Play from 0:59:14 8:88:88 0:59:14 that's a great idea I was having a lot of fun with this one I remember back back then just like of course everything you know half the things you'll see here I've smok in them um this yeah dude yeah that's great I was again simple ones you just love Vick Iceland right there right when you just want I just wanted Footprints disappearing into the ocean like I just love when it just did it for me I just remember that being first shot I was like thank you like that's exactly what I wanted this one realizing we could get like more Dynamic like poses and like composition I remember like being like Oh sick okay it's not just stupid model face like just what did you what did you put in for that one dramatic pose uh there was something in kissy face hand

Play from 1:00:01 8:88:88 1:00:01 hand or I had the gesture here facial expressions blowing kiss hand gestures Hands Extended forward let me see what else I have in here Bangles and bracelets round frame Shades B kiss symbols Mark letting Stark direct yeah so this one was just like again it was like a dramatic pose but I was just like oh we can do more cool things like it's not just it's not just the standard model pose this one I remember specifically just getting banger just like Flamingo macro shot and it was just like curled up I'm like okay I see you Midjourney this one when I was that one me post my logo let me put my logo in here and then post it on put on a face you know every presentation I've ever done since then that's had I think this image so how did you what when you did

1:00:30Creative Growth: What We’ve Learned

Play from 1:00:47 8:88:88 1:00:47 that one CU this was a while ago wasn't it this is six yeah this is so was this like an image weight I can't see is this an image weight or this was I think this was just this is just just an image right yeah stream closeup young s yeah that was a that was fun cuz I started doing that with everyone I was like let me put my logo on everything and I just digging the hell out of that the let's see of course you know I have to have my my you know Stark dark Native American or you know Mayan jungle sort of aesthetic here this one I was I felt like this one actually gave like some Spirit here like really hard to try and get that as like a like a spiritual type situation um I

Play from 1:01:33 8:88:88 1:01:33 remember I had to blend a bunch of these things to get there which was fun this one I still remember this one as just being like damn like you know when they throw out one of those ones that's just like all right I see you Midjourney like that was the one that was like holy well cuz cuz you know like that that's that's sort of the tricky part is like when you got a really good image and just like the eyes are off yeah it kind of sucks right because like you could paint to get the eyes or you know but like they they come like a little bit wonky then you know like it's just and so you almost you know it it becomes like this mission to save the image because the rest of it is so damn good so if you get eyes that are actually great you know and you don't have to with any of that it's amazing cuz

Play from 1:02:19 8:88:88 1:02:19 the pupils always end up like not symmetrical like like one will be big one will be like super tiny you know never never makes like the the resolution and you know there's something weird about it just yeah I just remember all these being like Oh fire like exactly what I'm looking for these like super dark sort of like diagonal composition or the diagonal lines compositions which I was obsessed with for a while BR that one that one's fire your little little Yakuza I actually have I've never seen you dude you got to share that one that's great I I did a whole I have a whole thing with the uh with like the Japanese mob in black and white with like all this sort of like Smoky exterior sort of thing sick or interior which I love this is one of my favorites of all time I love

Play from 1:03:05 8:88:88 1:03:05 this dude just like the yeah Shaman super multi- prompt um spiritual healer yeah just like got all the textures that I ever wanted all the little like extra detail everything have my smoke somewhere you hey you know what that just reminds me like small little tip like if if you're focused on portraits that you're really wanting to di in on the face something higher than the 35 mil is going to be your best bet something like a 50 to an 85 works really good you had a 70 on this yeah but I've tested 85 a ton 85 works really good especially like again we're just talking you know subject isolation where you've got that huge depth of field blurred background

Play from 1:03:51 8:88:88 1:03:51 perfect you know like those that 50 to 85 millimeter range focal length is killer with Midjourney and if you're trying like we we both use 35 a lot that that that's more of like the storytelling aspect of a person in it right so that's just like a slight difference to be aware of uh so you know if you're trying to capture more of a scene like that image for example would work really well I think in both but the fact that you used a 70 I think dials into more of those details in in the face dud it's it's such a good point because I've been using it way more since you started since you told me about the 85 like try that with this and I I love it but like there's some of these that I just get like these are back like okay so here's a great exam awesome picture but it's more or less capturing the entire scene yes versus just you know almost that real heavy

Play from 1:04:38 8:88:88 1:04:38 depth of focus on the face yeah which is what I which is what I want a lot of the times because I'm you know I love my my maximalism with everything that I could possibly get yeah you do this one I like I loved the like wispy things the little wispy mushroom astral sort of projection there it was other worldly dude some of the stuff I you know these always blow my mind too like just the the Ombre and the beard here like just the the vibrancy the eyes were good in this one this is the UN unup sccal version which I was just trying to pull but the same thing here I was just like details everything as as Extreme as I could possibly get you know with this stuff I just I can never get enough of when they just go nuts on the face paint look at look at this one with

Play from 1:05:23 8:88:88 1:05:23 all the all the style that's what I'm saying like we we go back to all these different ways to manipulate the tool not enough people do that you know like I you know you could I don't do that enough where you could just take five to eight photos and smash them all together you know what I mean and then Pro text prompt on top of that not only you're going to get what you're probably looking for you're going to get something a little bit unexpected and something totally unique in that that sense too dude 100% And then even like when it's like you know when it's not perfect like I just love I think you said this called this the shutter drag right like perfect just wanted candid you know panning shot and it got the pan correct cuz she's in focus in the environments in the background right like that's what we're looking for this one I don't know

1:05:30Our Favorite Images from 2024

Play from 1:06:09 8:88:88 1:06:09 why I like this one so much because it just looked maybe because it looked like a real '90s person like haircuts haircuts unorthodox nice nice camera angle different got a little bit got a little beauty mark there y I was like all right I dig that one if you want to play with something cool play with the checkered floor it does it really well it gives like a a really sick Dynamic yeah play with the play with the floors like that's a that's a fun thing to to kind of go ahead and and rip with I wanted to put that in there just as like a as like an aesthetic thing we've gone through we've we've done a few of these during our I like that you know what yeah play with the floors play with the floors no one's thinking about the floors are they no I was like wait once I once I hit that and it nailed the checkered floor I was like I'm going to go down a rabbit hole with floors you

Play from 1:06:56 8:88:88 1:06:56 know it's a cuz it gives a it gives everything like a total different Dynamic absolutely I love my DJ scenes my underground I do like that yeah that's insane grungy feel it feels very viby like you're there yeah this is this nailed it perfectly with like the ambient like hazy lighting um you his green Mohawk which I prompted for which I'm glad they did it did you really oh yeah this was all in it amazing C3PO and dud taking a bath yeah well okay Mine mine's way older than a year ago but I had like one of my first ones was doing like Darth I had Darth Vader in a bathtub holding like a rubber ducky and it looked just it looked pretty similar to that so good it's so much fun this one I just like some Rand

Play from 1:07:42 8:88:88 1:07:42 totally random like you know I don't want to say bondage but like it kind of feels like that eyes wide Shu kind of um there this is my favorite this is my favorite image of the year I think we probably showed this one on on one of the other podcast just I don't know why love this one compition simple clean like just perfectly nailed it this feels like a Drew photo where I tried to get the where I tried to get the gun over the eye which is exactly what I wanted also going for city of God here which I I feel like that's that's exactly what I was thinking and feel like I kind of got that yeah that one and I got some of these these more portraits where there's go up to you got something crazy there what is this this one uh right below it

Play from 1:08:27 8:88:88 1:08:27 this one yeah what is that what whoa like that one might be up your alley damn that's wild again not my style typically but I all right I I I I roll with it yeah there's you know these are ones that I'm just when I'm like I'm asking for something that I think is going to be hard and it and it gets it like this one I remember being on the first shot binary code reflection on her face yeah I was like okay Reflections underused like that one this one I feel like was up your alley also yeah this was this was one of those like random when I I don't go this direction but I do every once I loved this one I felt like that just got like got some emotion out of it storytelling yeah got some emotion out of the girl in the mud like

Play from 1:09:13 8:88:88 1:09:13 with her flowers with her fort in the background there's always these little things right like this one I remember having like one piece of it yeah the reflections on his face like just nailing it through the chain link fence it's awesome Midjourney this one again reflection having guy with the helicop in the background y there's always like these little these little things like all right you're see playing with the floors here these little vertical lines on the floors yeah yeah I think you're on to something with the floors there did they like this this guy with my little hip-hop my little hip-hop uh tribesman all these like fun sort of like facial features with a black and white with the pop of color this one we did together I remember this one I like yeah they boxing yeah the boxing ones that was

Play from 1:10:01 8:88:88 1:10:01 good then there's just you know there's these were some style codes just like pulling out Banger style codes yep those you might like this one you might want to play around with this one with this style code I I'll send you these for the for the priests or the nuns like it comes out super clean and sharp this one just like I feel like that got the grit of like what goes on so good that totally looks like a someone who is up you've seen that face if you've been out at a club before you know exactly what that looks like it's awesome yeah just like total you know real human human type stuff this one killed me I remember when I got this I was like whoa MH yeah they all the wrinkles in the nose just like the the Blurred teeth like focusing it on the snow and the front angle I mean like heads forward

1:10:30Wrapping Up with New Year Goals

Play from 1:10:48 8:88:88 1:10:48 tilted down looks aggressive you know so cool that one this loved it don't know why oh look at that right in the eye don't know why it was just like all right clean clean reflection in the eye man dig that this one we've used on a on a uh use that one yeah a thumbnail love that see that's you know the little little bit of the style there got some fun ones is that Raiden yeah or uh something along those lines Raiden this little I don't know why I think this was a mistake but like it looks funny it's like an elephant trunk coming out in the background dude wearing a Shir shark head I don't know it's like she's she's like about to get eaten by a shark but it's like a goofy like perspective of it little like you know total 80s looks

Play from 1:11:35 8:88:88 1:11:35 like this is like a movie cover from like you know you walking through Blockbuster or some DD screen grab the horror section um some random ones that I never create stuff like this yeah it's this the world's smallest laughing tiny human amazing that's awesome going through the going through the random On's you know comedy film that was never made one we never needed I know we've talked about that one yes yes all these weird this one I think was a good prompt to to share that I like to call the you know the eyes tell the story like that one I was digging just playing with that prompt specifically it was really fun got a lot of crazy stuff you know this is some other stuff that just running like documentary style photos here that

Play from 1:12:21 8:88:88 1:12:21 I can't get enough of yeah these look great these when they come through they they feel very Documentary National Geographic yeah this one was the one that got me where it was like it was just like bang you know like yeah don't know why just like the I think it's like the the triangle of the face basically is just the only thing that you see like everything else is sort of like and that's like the warm part of the image everything else is cold yeah this one I remember that one getting me like damn all right that's one of those once a month when you get one where it's like that's really good same thing here with the eyes like a lot of intensity a lot of grit a lot of you know stuff going on here Mr T hey clamation Mr T yeah then these were these were ones finish this thing up

Play from 1:13:07 8:88:88 1:13:07 there were these ones that I I was playing around with this promptu innocence meets reality Dynamic human emotion captured an intimate composition like I thought this prompt like just crushed like it was this one I was like all right cool like you know this one great yeah this just like it's awesome the I mean this this is these are high quality emotion narrative driven visuals you know that's what I was and I was hoping that's what it would come for you know that's what it would come through this one looked like a British Al this look like a Beatles album cover or something yeah or like yeah you or like the Narnia Narnia prequel you know um awesome for everyone for fun for everyone you know couple

Play from 1:13:54 8:88:88 1:13:54 people screaming in a tube in a lake so stupid uh this one again just like the detailing where it just like you can't how do you this a nuzzle is that a nuzzle that is a nuzzle that's a nuzzle that's the human animal codependence then you have some you know you have some fun ones yo I'm really I'm really digging that uh yeah I'm really into that look you got going with the the white and black and gray mixed in with the neon I think he got something there that's interesting dude these are so fun like yeah this one is everything that comes out of it is a is I'm just like I keep pushing it's awesome that's awesome enter enter yeah there's so many you know what and I go back it's good to go back because you

Play from 1:14:41 8:88:88 1:14:41 find stuff and you're like that was a cool Direction I didn't chase that I should chase that again I saved I saved so many photos which I had totally been forgotten and you realize like all you know what's funny is going through all the projects that you've done like oh I remember this Carousel cuz I'm at this point where it's just all for this Carousel you know like just like here's my run of that right and then it's like oh here's my creative piece here's you want to know something else when when we're going to need to go back and whoever's listening to this you're going to need to go back when they drop V7 in character reference becomes a good again because now you go back to faces that you really like and if it's going to be consistent you don't need to keep generating all these crazy faces maybe you have

Play from 1:15:26 8:88:88 1:15:26 a pool of couple dozen faces that you really like and can use across different styles of images or for certain themes like I'm just thinking about that because I would use character reference a lot more if it weren't so much work and inconsistent yeah you know like for example like the nun you know I'd love to take that same nun through different scenes you know riding the motorcycle arm wrestling a dude in the biker bar you know like like that the same one right that though when we get yeah when we get this character reference consistency with V7 that they're talking about I think that's just another reason that I would recommend going back for because think about some of those great faces and sometimes it's hard to get a great face yeah you know one that you want to use

Play from 1:16:11 8:88:88 1:16:11 more than once meaning there's something unique about it it's not just this pretty face you're not probably not going to use a pretty face over and over because it's easy to generate you're going to want to generate an interesting face yeah right so like what are those most interesting faces you have and where could you use them definitely because there's you know the faces we've talked about this a lot there A lot of times generic when you when you start I feel like every one that I just selected there of my favorites were ones that like aren't normal like not the standard face so it's like that's why I liked it because it just wasn't what I've gotten over and over and over again it's a great point and you know going into going into this new year with the prompting sort of ideation around like I found myself relinquishing a lot of

Play from 1:16:57 8:88:88 1:16:57 control because we have so many different things now to like kind of like let it go and let my imagination run here's the thing I was think about this the other day like why if there this should just be like a character generator like you know like if you're just like focusing in on a character and like maybe you could do like something like Korea right it's like a real-time editor it's like oh let's you know wide in the face let's you know make it a little bit chubbi yeah it doesn't seem like why great Point yeah cuz you think about you know there are apps like face tune I don't know man it's been so long since I've used one of these things but like you know you know like one of those apps where you can like manipulate and you can even do this in Photoshop right but like manipulate the cheek size the jaw size the nose length you know like the lip size the eye height you know like why yeah why wouldn't you be be able to do that I think it's is that not already Incorporated yeah yeah let's

Play from 1:17:43 8:88:88 1:17:43 like change the you know change the skin tone change the size of the nose you know make the ears bigger make someone heavier skinnier whatever like I'm just surprised there's not a tool that does that like you want to talk about a perfect tool here's idea for who's listening yeah who wants to make a lot of money make a character generator that you can do that and then like you know it pops out get Imes and you can just download the Laura and then go use it there's a there's a quick sell for you guys whoever that'll be that'll be here in six months three six months let's go I think so and and okay so wrapping this up too 2025 what are you looking forward to the most is there anything specific I mean I I think it's probably pretty obvious but go ahead and yeah well this might be a different sort of perspective

Play from 1:18:29 8:88:88 1:18:29 I'm hoping for some consolidation cuz like right now it seems like everything is just getting wider and wider and wider we have to use all these different things yeah it's not sust for a little bit yeah I'm hoping for a little bit of like either someone just goes and really knocks it out of the park and sticks ahead or like because I'm getting tired of testing everything and then like you know totally everything is good at something else it is personally like a selfish request not request just like desire cuz you know I I can do awesome things on Midjourney that I can't do on flux I can do great things on flux that I can't do on Midjourney I can do awesome things on Minimax that I can't do on Sora I can do you know it's like I would love you know Runway to do this specific thing that cing is doing whatever just

Play from 1:19:15 8:88:88 1:19:15 some sort of consolidation would be awesome I think this whole idea of World building is going to come into existence somehow I don't know how it's going to look what it's going to look like but we're going to be talking about it next year at this point love the consolidation yeah I love that I love that I I agree totally like how is that even sustainable at this point I mean the only people that are really testing these tools all of them are people that are like us where this is like pretty much all we're doing and even you and I have plenty of calls and projects that we're on that we don't even get to test everything so who is nobody Patchwork we haven't even had it's not possible you know so so yeah the consolidation for sure I keep going back to that idea of like dragging the camera manually and having ultimate control manipulation

Play from 1:20:02 8:88:88 1:20:02 over that image and I actually couple times this week even as I was going into an image and really going in an editor and trying to figure out how I want to like drag this composition around and zoom in or zoom out like just thinking about man what if I could just like rotate just a little bit you know or just like just a little bit up here and it would be perfect so like that to me is probably what I'm most excited about one of the things that I think like I would just love to just get an improvement on I think we're ready for is like just the physic component of the way people move you know like people talk a lot about the hands sure but like let's get more Dynamic with motion the people you know how they could pose you know like not having to try so hard to

Play from 1:20:47 8:88:88 1:20:47 get you know different things that feel just much more unique and creative you know I think like to me that's part of it you know that I would like to see I hope to see improved you know in 2025 because you know go on any platform and try to get a man riding a bull not going to happen haven't tried that you know like dancing like freeze motion somebody dancing and it looking right or running you know like just all those all those things come on there's there's certain things like the even the Stills have problems with it like man like riding a bull you might get it try try doing without an image prompt it's really hard it's like there's a lot of physics going on there from you know the bull the composition of the body the contouring of the body to where the human's place to where it looks like it's normal like that it's actually like oh if the Bull's you know angled down

Play from 1:21:34 8:88:88 1:21:34 with his feet back up in the air the person's like angled back like they would be not like you know totally like facing down or two hands up in the air you know it's so even if you prompted for some of that stuff it's really hard okay but yeah likeing it's whatever that's what we're talking about yeah you know it's like that that intermediate part between the still and AI video m you know like that that movement to get started maybe Runway frames maybe that's maybe that's the place when is that coming come on I have a feeling it's probably they'll probably at this point they'll drop it on whatever the first Monday is of everyone being back at work so if you're if you want to guess I would say probably the first Monday still I'm still super hyped about seeing that like let's see like maybe I'd

Play from 1:22:20 8:88:88 1:22:20 expect that one to be a big release date for a lot of people come back from a come back swinging Jack come back swinging here we go get people back in the swing of things get the you know vestors fired up last question if we were having this conversation one year ago would you have thought video would be where it is right now yeah I don't know like God it's hard to say probably not you know but like it's hard to remember I feel like we've been talking about video for a while with Midjourney specifically I can't remember when that started like to really heat up it's a great question I think like in terms of like the quality of the imagery has come a long way in a year yeah we saw we definitely saw the Sora stuff earlier last year I think and it was like it's

Play from 1:23:05 8:88:88 1:23:05 like March or something it's like that's real that can be a thing and then it was like Runway bang gen 3 and then it was like cing minia Max Sora Veo Pika whatever it's like everyone just out of nowhere yeah they and this I think maybe this year you're right though maybe it's I think we're going to continue to see the velocity with video mhm but then somebody's going to get eaten up here I don't howain I don't know how you can compete with with Google at this point like I just don't know like how can anyone compete with the training data set of YouTube like how does that work God I can't wait can't wait to try that out I know and the other part of that right is they built that off their own image training and the images look great so it's like damn they have Google

Play from 1:23:52 8:88:88 1:23:52 Images they have everything on YouTube I mean YouTube is more more training data than anyone could ever have access to in and you have the gamut YouTube has everything from animation sketch art like the most amateur of amateur to the most professional of professional runs the gamut of aesthetic and quality and you know length and duration and you have music and you have whatever there's like they have everything they could ever need and we've all opted into it so it's you know they they I don't know how anyone in the long term can keep up with that CU they don't have to you know it's not like they have to aggregate as much as anyone else does unless people just start buying stuff I didn't think we'd be sitting here though waiting for

Play from 1:24:37 8:88:88 1:24:37 version 7 right now I I thought that would be out it sounds like late January so it's not even I don't think maybe February maybe March right you know right it they're just moving on their own timeline it's okay I have mood boards now that'll keep me happy for another month yeah that's that's what I'm saying I and hey look based on the conversation I think there's still some clarification some digging we'll get we'll try to get some answers too I'm I'm curious they don't really tell us a whole lot in terms of like the minutia of what happens within the features yeah by the way I think this is episode 24 guys so we've been doing this about a half a year now 24 episodes deep thanks for joining us we are super grateful this is like the highlight of our week

Play from 1:25:23 8:88:88 1:25:23 every week that we get to just nerd out and talk a bunch of Midjourney garbage thanks guys for joining us Rory anything you want to say before we dip just the traditional you know very on brand like And subscribe please just we you know need some help every once in a while yeah we do takes about2 seconds to hit the like button that's all maybe maybe even a comment you know like maybe hey we'll respond we're here drop some links to your favorite images do something there you go you guys tell us what you think on the guests so far tell us if you like those in the comments comments and whatnot um you I think we've got some really cool people lined up hopefully we're going to get more you know the bigger we get the bigger the people that want to come on we got some surprises some few few new things Drew and I are trying to roll out you you guys are awesome thanks for you know being funny too in the comments and

Play from 1:26:09 8:88:88 1:26:09 keeping us uh giving us entertained roast us yeah we talk about it all the time it's it's awesome it's hilarious love it keep it going don't stop all right guys we'll catch you in the next one happy New Year happy New Year later dude goodbye