MidJourney: can you illustrate it?

So can you make MidJourney / AI art generators illustrate your stories for you? Yes and no–not yet. Will you be able to? Yes, soon. Did it draw me a picture of a caracal in a trench coat? Yes. Lots. (“Oh, that’s nice, that’s a lynx.” “That’s a caracal.” “Oh.” “That one’s a lynx.” “Ok, ok, ok, I see, I see, so, now, just for my benefit, Riders?” “Yes?” “In the future, how do I know which one’s a lynx and which one is a caracal?”) Did it also put eyepatches on them? No, for some reason it completely refused to put eyepatches on them, weird.Can I describe an isolated scene or mental image and have it 100% fulfilled?

No, not yet–and also YES TOTALLY.

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  Prompt: “a man looks down at his injured chest and arm, which are emitting black smoke, smooth, ultra-detailed digital art” Note that the word “bleeding,” much like the word “cleavage” is not allowed.
  
  This was done three months ago, with Version 3 or a very early beta of Version 4. It took about five upgrades to get it this far.
  Prompt: “a man looks down at his injured chest and arm, which are emitting black smoke, smooth, ultra-detailed digital art” Note that the word “bleeding,” much like the word “cleavage” is not allowed.
  
  This was done three months ago, with Version 3 or a very early beta of Version 4. It took about five upgrades to get it this far.

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  ‘Prompt: “a man looks down at his wounded arms, which are emitting black smoke”
  
  This was done three days ago with the current version of V4.’Prompt: “a man looks down at his wounded arms, which are emitting black smoke” (I didn’t specify “ultra-smooth digital art” because I forgot the exact prompt and I didn’t think it would be necessary. It wasn’t. Anyhoo.)
  
  This was done three days ago with the current version of V4.

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  This is really, really close to my mental image of the character/scene, but _not quite there yet._
  
  (Although, *one* hand is completely good, give it that!)

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  This one is also _oh so close._ I went with this one because the pose is less difficult for the AI to screw up.
  
  So, MidJourney v4 has a remaster mode that will allow you to modify your base prompt when generating variants of an image.

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  Reworked prompt: “<https://s.mj.run/TrNSc6lspwE&gt;, a man looks down at his wounded arms, which are emitting black smoke, red hair, historical costume”
  (I tried a couple variants with “young man,” but then it kept spitting back, like, figurative babies, so.)
  
  On the principle that simpler is better, I didn’t specify which historical era costume.

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  This is not bad. This is not bad at all. We have emotion. We have the clutching. We have the red hair. We have smokiness and a suggestion of fire. If this was the only one, I’d have gone with this one.

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  O.M.G.