JEFFJAG.eth

@jeffjag ∙ Published February 24, 2023

[AI Art Weekly] Jeff, what’s your background and how did you get into AI art?

As a life-long traditional and digital artist, I have extensive experience in realism and have been trained in various mediums such as pencil, pen, chalk, watercolor, pastel, and acrylic. In 2001, I completed my BA in Media Arts and Animation and pursued a career in graphic design, motion design, and 3D animation.

Recently, in 2021, I ventured into AI Art through vqclip + gan on colab and later explored tools like Wombo, MJ, and SD. My current artistic process involves integrating various mediums and tools to create unique pieces.

[AI Art Weekly] Do you have a specific project you’re currently working on? What is it?

I currently have four ongoing projects, each at different stages of development, with new releases soon to come. These projects are FiatHedz Paper & Gold, Paint Drop, RentHedz Renovations, Nightmare Fuel X, and my latest project, Builders of Titania. BoT is a narrative digital collection that will be released through a mint button via NiftyKit’s DropKit. I’m super excited to say that I’m working on a couple projects that will have custom contracts from my partners at @NiftyKitApp and @manifoldxyz.

[AI Art Weekly] What does your workflow look like?

While I’m highly experimental with this technology, there isn’t a hard rule for my creative process. Typically, I begin by imagining in MJ or Niji, then heavily edit in Photoshop or Procreate, and finally use Img2Img in Stable Diffusion. For my early projects, I relied heavily on generated text prompts, which I composited and edited in Photoshop and Procreate, or combined multiple generations and illustrated over them. As this tech changes and progresses at a rapid pace, my creative process continues to evolve along with it.

Currently, I use Midjourney, Nijijourney, and Stable Diffusion (using multiple models based on 1.5) across various implementations and web-apps, including Automatic1111 and InvokeAI. I also employ tools such as Photoshop, Procreate, Gigapixel, Adobe Bridge, Google Sheets, NiftyKit, Manifold, OBJKT, and Rarible.

[AI Art Weekly] What is your favourite prompt when creating art?

I’m pretty sure that for the past 9 months, every prompt I’ve received has had the phrase ultrarealistic detail included in it at some point, lol. However, I’m a big fan of weighted prompts for text2img generations. My approach involves starting with a broad stroke, which I weigh at 4 or 3, then I add context with two phrases that are weighed at 2. After that, I fill out the rest of the prompt with 6-8 words or phrases that are weighed at 1. I also include tags for aspect, model, quality, and style in MJ, and settings in SD. For my negative prompts, I use standard phrases like painting, drawing, nets, dots, webs, bokeh, signature, watermarked, specks, blur, warping, fuzzy etc.

Editorial note: Prompts in Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weighted to instruct the models to pay more attention to those parts during image generation. Syntax differs from model to model, in Midjourney prompts can be weighted like this: main subject::4 additional context::2 more details. Automatic1111 has a slightly different syntax: (main subject:1.4), (additional context:1.2), more details.

[AI Art Weekly] How do you imagine AI (art) will be impacting society in the near future?

AI Art is us dipping our toes in the water and is just the beginning of a technological revolution. Much like Blockchain, AI has the potential to revolutionize every aspect of our lives, from the way we interact to how we conduct business. It’s a sea change of a scale so big we can’t even begin to comprehend it. However, when these two technologies converge, their impact will surpass even that of the internet. In the near future, more and more open-minded artists will experiment with AI, unlocking its true potential. Although public opinion may be negative at present, this will inevitably change as the tools continue to evolve, enabling us to accomplish things that were previously impossible. Eventually, people won’t be able to ignore it or push it aside.

[AI Art Weekly] Who is your favourite artist?

My kids :)

[AI Art Weekly] Anything else you would like to share?

I’m involved with NFTs because I strongly believe in the concept of owning and selling original digital collectibles. This tech has been a long-awaited dream for me for 20+ years and I am here to stay. AI Art tools are an incredible advancement in image creation, allowing artists to explore new realms of creativity beyond what traditional tools can offer. I find them ethical to use, because I believe they’re transformative in a fair-use context. Furthermore, their presence in the industry is only going to grow stronger. Let’s embrace the weird. The future is unknown but fear doesn’t have a place in it for me.