My wife is writing a story about humanoid aliens that have black & white striped skin, but she was having trouble generating something that didn’t look like a zebra. So, I tried and came up with this. I think it’s a greyscale image though I didn’t ask for that, nor have I looked at a Photoshop histogram to verify.

The exoskeleton-like ridges are pretty cool. Maybe these creatures are like our spiders who have both exo- and endoskeletons.

Then asked Midjourney to zoom out. They look a bit too humanoid for me, but they would be right at home in a Star Wars cantina or Star Trek cafeteria.

Midjourney is perfect for mashing unlikely things together – like replacing T800 with a Squishmallow walking through a battlefield littered with human skulls. Unfortunately, I have a very difficult time convincing Midjourney to create dark scenes like the original:

Midjourney really prefers bright scenes like these. A few problems:

• None of them have a proper Squishmallow Terminator; they have no Squishmallow traits, especially #4.
• Why are they all pink?
• None of the “skulls” on the ground are Squishmallows, especially the fuzz balls in #3.

Back to cross-sections. Fairies are real but what if the source of their superpowers is cybernetic augmentation instead of magic?

Oddly, all four fairies have one thing in common – a lot of machinery in their wings, which are far too dainty to hide this much gear. The first one is quite pretty – I like the metal bodice and color palette. But I do not like the two antennae nor her melancholy expression.

The second has a bit too much exposed machinery in her torso. Also, her facial expression is too cold.

The third is similar to the second but with properly clothed.

The fourth is heavily mechanical and the wings are a bit small, but I like it the most for some reason. Possibly the 3/4 view and the page layout. Or it could just be her big eyes and innocent expression.

In a meeting today, everybody had a foresty/woody Zoom background, except me. I had my usual wall of my daughter’s Squishmallows behind me. I said okay, I’ll find a forest background but people said they liked my Squishmallows, so I thought… hey, Midjourney to the rescue! These are just a few of the generated images, as usual, there were many more attempts.

Pretty but a bit dark and the wrong aspect ratio.

A little too bright and oddly, too photorealistic.

Love the expression on the big Squishmallow on the right. And while anime Squishmallows are very cute, I kept going.

Ah, background is just the right brightness, Squishamallows are just the right anime-ish, and I fit right in the middle.

Don’t know why this popped into my head, but I wanted to create cut-away/cross-sectional drawings of Egyptian pyramids. I think they look great. Midjourney was probably trained on plenty of cut-away drawings and informational-style drawings of pyramids.

The lorem ipsum text is a nice touch. Somewhat easily replaceable with “real” text.