AI costume design, part two

In this post, i'll share the process and results of an AI-generated costume design exploration for the character of Elphaba in Wicked using my university's license for Microsoft Copilot. 

In the first post in this series, I shared how Copilot explained how to use itself for creating a costume design sketch. 

Basically, it needs a description of what you want it to generate. Here's the first prompt I entered:

create a costume design sketch of a glamorous green-skinned witch in a black dress and pointy black hat. The costume and sketch should be in the Art Nouveau style.

And here's what I got back:

 

OK. My prompt was pretty generic so it's no surprise what it generated is, too. Not bad but she's very elongated and exposed, not to mention her features are cartoon-sexy and she's quite youthful. 

But given the datasets this was likely trained on, it's no surprise the default femme character created is a slender objectified girl falling out of her clothes.

I probably undermined myself by including the word "glamorous." I didn't want it to generate a Disneyfied cartoon hag, and instead I got a cartoon WILF. 

At this stage, my general feeling is that it would be easier to start rendering my design by drawing, even if I suck at drawing. Trace a croquis, digital or old-school collage, anything that is less steeped in the hypersexualized visual paradigm of how our culture has depicted women for decades. I'd have to experiment with non-femme character design but I suspect a wizard wouldn't come out of Copilot looking like pinup calendar art.

I refined my prompt with further detailed description of what I envisioned...and here's what I got back:

Three image limit?

If this educational license only allows for the generation of three images a day, it's not going to be useful for production or academic design projects unless that limit can be raised. 

But because I'm just exploring, time isn't a constraint, so I'll try again tomorrow! And it gives me a whole day to revise my prompt.

To be continued...