#this is the first of a bunch of old art that i’ll gradually be uploading here

[starshadyy]

🤍🌌 d i s s o c i a t e 👁️💜

[citrus-cactus]

Teaching an AI to Recognize Haru Shinkai: either to Run the Long Con, or Give Up Their Life to Protect

Howdy all! I’ve spent a good few hours working on this portrait of everyone’s favorite Appmon protagonist, except. EXCEPT!!! I didn’t actually draw it. I collaborated with an AI to create it! Why? Well, why not (and to see if I could, of course!).

This drawing was made using a website called Artbreeder. You can generate faces, landscapes, furry, and even anime art with the help of AI. A bit more flexible than a dollmaker, though also quite a bit more unpredictable! For the anime portraits, you can tweak the features of an individual drawing (such as eye color, hair color, how open/smiling the mouth is, etc), ask the AI to generate a bunch of different variations on a single drawing, or even “breed” two portraits together to create a configurable combination of the two. In short, there are sliders and buttons galore, and soooo many decisions to make along the way. Wheee!

Unsurprisingly, the AI is overwhelmingly biased toward producing female-leaning faces, so making one that even slightly resembled a 14-year-old boy was a significant challenge! Obviously, the AI can only produce what it knows based off the dataset it was trained on, so getting it to develop accessories like goggles was right out XD I did sort of want to get his ahoge (that little bit of sticky-uppy hair) in there, but I wasn’t willing to iterate that much. I’m assuming it could be done... someday, maybe, by someone else ^^; 

Hit the cut for some process pics for how I gradually transformed a Cute Anime Girl into a Good Good Shounen Protagonist!

Oh, and one caveat if you decide give Artbreeder a try yourself: read the TOS carefully! Anything you upload to their website must be something you already own, and it automatically becomes part of the Creative Commons License once you do. For this experiment, I just used resources that were already available on the website. It would be interesting to upload a digital drawing or sketch and see what it would do with that, but I wouldn’t do that with a screenshot of an existing character or a drawing/OC I was really attached to, just in case. But enough of that! I’m not your mom.

I browsed existing images until I found one that was a decent starting point: namely, short green hair and blue eyes [01]. My first goal was to give her a haircut, which started looking reasonable by iteration [05], but it could still be a LOT shorter! You can see evidence of barrettes or other hair accessories in the top right corner of both of these images, which obviously I did not want either!

[07] was the first time I was able to generate a face that (to me) looked even remotely boyish. Interestingly, this was is achievable by turning up the “red eyes” slider (among others). So, goodbye blue eyes! I’ll figure out how to get you back later.

[08] and [12] are just more random experiments and playing with the extreme positions of a few sliders. I actually kind of like the character in [08], even though they have a weird wink and no nose-- then again, I’m a sucker for gradient hair! Fun fact about [12], if you turn the “look away from the viewer” dial alllll the way up, the character’s eyes close and the hair color shifts inexplicably to yellow! I guess any character making such a happy face is statistically more likely to be blonde??

I honestly have no idea how I ended up with [14], but it sure was a happy accident. Somehow it was an AI-generated variation of either [12] or [13] (both of which looked very similar). But I like it! Also looks rather boyish, even though there are little remnants of braids and ponytails interfering with the shoulder line. That area’s just destined to be a mess; I’m not worrying about it too much.

I will say, I really like [15] as well. Another AI-generated variation that took me by surprise! I tried to “breed” it with a ton of these other drawings, but the style was too different, so it never worked out. Ah well. That is just bishounen!Haru from an alternate universe or something (FYI: he happens to have an equally beautiful twin sister!).

[19] is interesting. To me, it’s very much a Haru face, but with those pesky barrettes and long eyelashes sneaking back in. So, I decided to combine [19] with [14] to try to get the best of both worlds and... hey, you know what, the result was not bad [20]! Definitely getting a Jedi Padawan vibe from him, minus whatever weird wrinkles are going on with his neck(??). I was able to smooth that out by iteration [26]. His hair is also starting to get properly short now. Still has a rather come-hither expression I would rather not inflict upon the world, so it’s time to bump up the red eye slider once again [28]. And now he looks too old and his ear is extra-lumpy, haha [29].

All in all, it took 34 iterations(!!) to get the final image up top. And even though it’s not perfect, I think it does manage to capture a certain wide-eyed innocence that is quite reminiscent of certain Haru expressions. So... mission accomplished?

Phew! Was it worth it? Well, probably not. I think this website is a really interesting tool to help spark creativity, but forcing it to recreate specific hair and facial features is not really what it’s best suited for (though it can be done if you’re determined!). Still, I’d be interested to see what others can produce with it, whether your focus is existing anime characters or OCs!

This has been a random Saturday art experiment, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood cactus. Until next time: keep groovin’, and please take care of yourselves!