Playing around, I decided to see what I could create using imagination, known characters, and pushing the reality level as far as I could. My subject: The Fantastic Four.
I started with Sue Storm. Why? She's the heart, commited, powerful, and a very sexy female hero, which, let's face it -- creating sultry women is generally 80% of what image generators are used for. It only made sense that Sue Storm would be the easiest of the four since she was probably the most normal-looking "person" of the group - I'll explain as each character is presented.
In the classic plastic/aura/ghost style often seen in comics/animation, Sue Storm was a challenge to make invisible. So I opted to show her more impressive power: forces fields.
Overall, I loved the dynamic power in this image. The suit, though unique, still fits the current trends of astro/space modern outerwear the characters usually wear today.
Next was the Thing. No doubt he is the fan favorite of the group. But what a task to generate an orange rock man with super strength.
First, it could not understand the rocky pattern of Ben's skin. Often, it looked like waffled crosshatch lines. I finally got to the closest I could with a very dynamic, powerful background:
One disappointment, I couldn't create his iconic brow. AI fights against making items it considers not "normal" (aka "popular" or "beautiful.")
The next challenge was The Human Torch, a man on fire, Johny Storm. He had to be engulfed in flames yet seen as a healthy, powerful young man. He also had to be flying. Most test images had the person on fire screaming because they were on fire.
Finally, the boss and the hardest one to create via AI: Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards. The challenge here was, again, forcing the AI to do something it is often dictated not to do: stretch and elongate body parts. Anyone who has tried generating images knows you push the prompt too much or confuse your meaning -- you get really deformed bodies, duped clone heads, and bizarre extremities. This has been corrected so often that now when I want deformed and oblong details, it is not easy to achieve. (At least at the time of this writing.)
And that-- that was my attempt at doing AI Fantastic Four.
Quite the challenge, as you can see several other users' examples below attempting to do the famous team. It's funny how so many of these images have The Thing on fire, two females, or one missing member. The last image is my favorite. It looks like a low-budget BBC sitcom from the '70s. Co-starring a "Jenny" Storm and what looks to be an overly-mutated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
