Taking the bus to the roller rink
I picked the roller rink prompt because it prompted me to think of the roller rinks from the 80s, when they were all the rave – I can’t personally testify to this of course, but they had one in Stranger Things and I think that’s a reliable source of the retelling of life in the 80s (minus the gooey monsters and nose bleeds – well, telekinesis-power-overload-induced nose bleeds that is)
I used Runway as my software and I was glad to see it gave a reasonable amount of free prompts, over 100 I think. You can also generate videos there too which could be a cool feature!
Pros would be that is was simple to use, had a reasonable amount of free prompts, and had many options on how to generate images, letting you choose what style you’d like from a menu, like cartoon or ultra realism.
Cons would be that I couldn’t choose an image for it to generate more versions of, I would instead have to write a new prompt entirely. It also was really, really, bad at generating images from other images, and would take you on an instant trip with indecipherable colors and shapes. For example, when I tried to get it to make versions of my sketch for this prompt, it turned this drawing into that…… that, basically.
I do kinda dig the Dr Who/Delak guy on the right though. XD
Now, on with the show!
I didn’t do 3 prompts. I did 5 and then 9 and then did a new set and did all sorts of mismatching and on and on haha. Reading back on my prompts, it’s kinda a wonder ai was able to make what it did because my wording was pretty interesting. XD Almost like ai wrote it in fact which is very meta.
Before I get any further though, this was my vision. I kinda gave a spoiler by showing it earlier, but I won’t tell if you won’t. : )
My vision was to have actual roller skates going to the rink, because why not and I wanted ai to show what it had – as you’ll see, it really didn’t have much, but that’s another spoiler.
Prompt 1: Rollar skates on a bus going to a rollar rink, colorful 80s themed
As you can see, not like my drawing at all. There weren’t any shoes inside the bus, and maybe too much color? I also made sure to specify for it to only show the inside of the bus which leads us to prompt #twooo:
Prompt 2: Interior of a bus showing Rollar skate shoes on the route to a rollar rink, 1980s themed
I copied these prompts word for word from what I typed in the ai and as you can see, I definitely misspelled roller skate. I think that confused the ai and when I fixed the spelling it gave me closer results, as you’ll see later (that wasn’t a spoiler, that was foreshadowing). Again, not what I wanted, the bottom left looked a little more hopeful but my excellent english skills confused ai enough to just forget the rollAr skates and do just shoes instead.
It was getting closer with the 3rd image but I wanted them to stand up this time, like in my sketch so I added “The shoes stand like people” in an attempt to get it right which leads to my “final” prompt (“final” for the bounds of this assignment, but trust me I kept going XD)
Also, those top images give me the creeps, if you’ve seen the Backrooms before, it gives that same uncanny vibe and it’s an instant no for me. XD
Prompt 3: Interior of a bus showing Rollar skate shoes on the route to a rollar rink, 1980s themed (the shoes stand like people)
And yes, I did write that last prompt XD. As I said, reading back on the prompts was interesting.
This didn’t match my vision either so I decided to simplify things and ended up with this picture from this prompt (with roller skates spelt correctly this time XD)
Roller skates standing in a bus, on a bus ride to the roller rink
I think that did the trick! I guess in this case, less was more. And that golden hour light was just *chefs kiss*, so well done AI!
This was from the same prompt, but I much prefer the other one, this one was becoming pretty uncanny-valley.
In one last attempt at reaching my vision, I tried one more prompt (with very interesting phrasing once again) and ended up with this nightmare of knee caps which I’ll share for your viewing pleasure : )
Prompt: roller skates standing in a bus, on a bus ride to the roller rink, 80s themed – one skate standing close to us (sounds so ominous omg)
No thank you, thank you very much!
So The End?
I guess so! I didn’t end up with exactly what I wanted, but I got as close as I think I could’ve.
So there you have it! What I tried to make vs what I got – it honestly made a pretty pretty (hehe) picture in the end, and it seems like the skates are just chilling in that golden hour, looking forward to some fun on the rink (no knee caps in sight thank god)!
