1st Place: u/arglide
2nd Place TIE: u/Norenia and u/Eltrion
This was a very difficult contest to judge because all the submissions had good things going for them in different areas. Norenia and Eltrion's pieces had strong kinetic posing, and arglide's piece used the chocobo and the blocking to set up a starting beat to an action scene. In my opinion everybody had an argument, but a winner must be called, so I went with the piece that was most intriguing to me. Congrats everyone!
Welcome to AikiA I, an art contest on KiA2 using only AI images! AI capabilities have made it possible to translate ideas into art simply by directing a model. Contrary to complaints about AI slop, I think this could substantially widen the band of human creativity, as many more visions can be realized in much less time. This contest is an attempt to help make that happen.
- Prompt
This contest's prompt is an action scene with Tifa Lockhart. Any version (FF7 original, Advent Children, etc) and any art style (anime, realism, Ghibli, Disney, etc) works. *Any other character or setting can be included. Don't think you're limited to motion shots either. Poses that would happen on key beats are also part of the prompt, like this or this. (I don't think these are amazing shots by themselves, but you get the point.)
Comment below with your suggestions for future prompts!
- Rules
- Upload and link images using catbox.moe in the comments on this post
- *Limit 1 entry per person, but you can replace your entry until submissions close if you want to revise.
- 1300 pixels is the max of the longest side of the image. This is easy to game (i.e. generating HD and resizing), so it's on the honor system.
- All secondary techniques are allowed, such as LoRAs, inpainting, refinement passes, etc, EXCEPT ControlNet or reference images. This is so people won't just draw the art and color it with an AI, and also to encourage freshness. Also on the honor system.
- No overt erotic imagery, such as cameltoe etc. I reserve the right to use the Miller test.
- Submitters should provide their model, prompts, LoRAs, and other parameters upon request.
- Judging criteria
The judgment criteria is based on two factors: fidelity (technical quality of art) and expression (the depth, originality, and effectiveness of sentiment expressed).
I'll be the judge for this contest. Everyone's biased, including me, but let me know if you see a problem. I reserve the right to change anything if needed.
- Scheduling
Submissions will be open today and Friday or until u/DomitiusofMassilia stickies this thread, whichever comes last. So if Dom doesn't sticky until Sunday, submissions will be open until then.
- Winning
Contest winners *and their winning submissions will be recorded on future AikiA threads as a hall of fame. (Sorry, no prizes right now, not sure if Scored supports flairs etc. If we do get prizes up and running, they'll be retroactively given to winners)
That should be everything. Good luck everyone, hope you have fun!
- Future contests
Comment with ideas for the next prompts!
Submission
I really don't like that 1300 pixel edge limit. I'm usually generating at 1000 x 1600 these days (on my own PC at that); the higher I can go, the better the quality of faces and the like, which is already taking a hit the moment I do a standing full body shot. But whatever. Just because she's making herself look like an "escort" in Wall Market, you still shouldn't screw with her.
Thanks for the submission, looks cool. I don't think Dom is going to get to this anytime soon so if everyone else is cool with it, we could probably raise to 1600.
Consider for next time, if there is one. I'll stick with the current submission with the current rules.
This is my current submission. I think it has some good implied action to it.
I was also inspired to do the setup for video output. A video is not an image, but I was impressed with the tools working at all with relatively little extra installation effort and no tweaking of settings at all. It does less well with the chocobo image, though.
Some unexpected challenges: First, gloves undo some of the progress that's been made towards AI knowing how many fingers are on a hand. Second, models which know who Tifa Lockhart is have a tendency to break the "No overt erotic imagery" rule. Also, the chocobo LoRA struggled to make the chocobo reasonably large, and basically failed to generate acceptable images of Tifa riding it.
That's pretty sick considering no adjustment. Thanks for the submission, I like the abs
https://files.catbox.moe/cuwwzo.png
Sorry I'm late. Been swamped at work lately.
Seconding encouraging slightly larger image sizes, even though it's to my disadvantage, would encourage use of refinement passes, and make fidelity slightly trickier.
The theme is a little basic. I think additional requirements would have made this more interesting. AI is very good at solo portraits of girls, even if they are doing something.
Thanks for the submission! Yeah, it sounds like we should increase the max image size.
u/Norenia u/arglide u/Eltrion
Contest judging has been announced at the top of the post! As far as feedback for the next contest, it seems like everyone likes a 1600 px long side limit. Maybe there should be more details on the prompt as well.
If anyone has a suggestion for the next prompt or ruleset, let me know.
Also tagging u/MrHeretic
Could you perhaps go into more detail about the judging? Is it just you at the moment?
I guess I'd just like some targets to aim at and the judging seems pretty subjective unless I've got a list of categories that each piece is classified as strong or weak in.
Like, if I were judging, I'd point out the simplicity of the art style I selected and criticize myself for being unambitious, the AI artifacting and muddy face in Norenia's piece, and the slightly strange framing in arglide's piece.
Basically I want you to rip into me a little more, while also getting a sense for which aspects you care about the most, so that I can cover my weak points and better know my audience for next time.
Definitely, I can do a more detailed breakdown. Just give me some time.
I'm the sole judge at the moment, to maintain consistency, but more judges may be added in the future.
Just to ask, is manual digital art on top of AI (or just manual digital art in general) allowed for this competition?
No, sorry, for the same reason that reference images aren't allowed
Limit to number of entries?
Oh, good point. Limit is 1 entry per person to keep it simple this time, but you can replace with revisions of that entry before submissions close.
So I'm not a part of this contest, but this isn't enough of a question for a topic either, so...
I just built a new computer, significantly stronger than my old one.
What AI art program do you recommend for running locally?
SwarmUI. It's a wrapper for ComfyUI which is the best one, but rather complicated for beginners. Swarm gives you an easy interface, but also has a tab for editing comfy workflows once you're ready to dive into that.
Avoid a1111, or any of its variants these days. A lot of guides recommend it, but it's rather dated at this point and not being updated.
Server keeps crashing. Won't let me make pics.
Video card? Do you have enough VRAM?
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. 8GB VRAM.
You're going to tell me to upgrade, aren't you? I just got this thing last month.
No, that will work, but 8GB is a little tight so you'll have to be choosy about your model. What model are you trying to run?
The only one available, Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 Base. I don't know how to add new models.
I've heard 2.0 got out into the wild somewhere...
Yeah that's ancient, not very good by today's standards, but it should run.
Grab an Illustrious fine-tune off Civitai if you want to do Anime.
As for why the server is crashing I'm not sure. Since VRAM is tight, maybe too much is being taken up by other stuff running on your computer?
An error log would help me point you in the right direction.