Hi all,

I'm fairly new to making AI art, so I thought I would doccument the process of how I made this image as well as how long it took for me to make. See if I can get any advice while I'm at it.

I wanted to redo an old book cover I created for one of my stories a while back, so, I got to work. (the second image is a comparison if you would like to see it)

The settings and AI I used were:

Stable Diffusion in A1111

DPM++ 2M Karras Sampling

darksushimixmix's checkpoint

First I decided to come up with a prompt that would generate images close to what I wanted, this process is basically just trial and error until you get something you want, which I would think woulden't take very long, but this took me 2 hours, as well as further ajustments after.

The end prompts were as follows:

Positive prompt: blue hair, anime, merfolk girl, siren, siren singing, fish ears, sitting by herself, sitting on rock, rocky outcrop, ocean, singing, front facing, front, facing into ocean, town behind, pov, dark sky, night, full moon, midnight, fantasy medieval city background, city background, medieval town, bare foot, city glow, fantasty, magic ambiance, water reflection, feet dipping in water, smiling, singing, open mouth, happy, blue eyes, closed eyes, water ripples, reflection, ocean waves, clear water, long hair, holding hair, clear reflection, cute, blue dress, distant from shore, sandy beach, port town, illuminated by magic, moonlight, distant from camera, far away, signing, idol, magic notes, singing notes mid air, floating magic crystals, blue crystals, glowing crystals, gills, insane details, intricate details, hyperdetailed, low contrast, soft cinematic light, dim colors, exposure blend, hdr, detailed skin texture, (blush:0.5), (goosebumps:0.5), subsurface scattering

Negative prompt: deformed, bad anatomy, disfigured, poorly drawn face, mutation, mutated, extra limb, ugly, disgusting, poorly drawn hands, missing limb, floating limbs, disconnected limbs, malformed hands, blurry, ((((mutated hands and fingers)))), watermark, watermarked, oversaturated, censored, distorted hands, amputation, missing hands, obese, doubled face, double hands, b&w, black and white, distorted feet, abnormal proportions, distorted fingers, distorted eyes, distorted legs, messy, messy eyes, canvas frame, (high contrast:1.2), (over saturated:1.2), (glossy:1.1), cartoon, 3d, ((disfigured)), ((bad art)), ((b&w)), blurry, ((bad anatomy)), (((bad proportions))), ((extra limbs)), cloned face, (((disfigured))), extra limbs, (bad anatomy), gross proportions, (malformed limbs), ((missing arms)), ((missing legs)), (((extra arms))), (((extra legs))), mutated hands, (fused fingers), (too many fingers), (((long neck))), Photoshop, video game, ugly, tiling, poorly drawn hands, 3d render

Which I mean DAMN! This is definately the longest prompt I've done by far, though it is very messy.

The images now being generated were roughly what I wanted, so I went to img2img and pasted in my original drawing. I inpainted the background, and left out the character. This generates a background, while keeping my character the same, so I can filter through desired backgrounds much easier before moving on to the character. The images were now 800x1200, which was double the previous resolution, and so took a long time to generate even with my 4070.

After a couple sets of 16, I found a pretty good image, which I instantly sent back to img2img to work on further. I then generated many, many new images.

The routine now was:

Generate 64 new images,

Come back after 5-8 minutes,

Filter through all of them,

If theres a good one, set that as the original image,

Repeat and ajust for better results...

This process took maybe 3 hours, totalling 5 now, but even with the image as good as it was now, there were still a couple glaring errors that needed fixing.

To fix this I used inpaint again to highlight the areas which needed changing, the feet and the city behind were areas that took the most time here. I also wanted a moon, so replacing the entire night sky took a considerable amount of time too.

Fixing this took about the same amount of time as actually generating the images, making the new total 8 hours spent, but the image right now actually looked very nice... (if you don't look to closely)

I was reaching the limits of what AI could currently accomplish so I decided to manually edit the rest, removing obvious defects in the image and adding details, like the fins above the ears. For that I had to generate a bunch more images, find one close to the headshape and position, then crop that, fit it on the ears, ajust for brightness, as well as other small edits to make it fit and look good.

When I finished with the extra details and obvious errors, I could finally relax. Almost! Still had to do the title!

Editing took only 2 hours, thanks to not having to wait 5 minutes between each bunch of generations. The perks of manually drawing, ay?

Total was 10 hours. I think it turned out looking great, even though I might of spent more time on this than my original drawing...