Photographer Recreates Simpsons Characters Using Latest AI Technology

A photographer and graphic designer created a set of mind-blowing AI images of The Simpsons using the very latest text-to-image technology.

Milie, known as Princess Prompt online, tells PetaPixel that she used the latest artificial intelligence technology — including Midjourney v6 and an upscaler — to create AI versions of The Simpsons characters

“I wanted to test the new features of the latest version of Midjourney,” Milie explains. “I decided to start with The Simpsons’ characters because I’m a fan and especially because they all have a very defined look with very light colors and accessories that are their own.”

Methodology

Milie looked for a screenshot for each of the characters she wanted to recreate, she would then use that image as a prompt using the “image weight” parameters. Afterward, she described the screenshot to Midjourney as “precisely and concisely” as possible.

“The challenge of this exercise was to give a human look to The Simpsons‘ characters: I didn’t want them to have yellow skin, I wanted us to be able to see them as people we could meet in everyday life,” Milie says.

After Milie had the overall aesthetic defined, she used the same basic prompt for each character and modified the specific details.

“Once all the characters were generated, I sent them to the Magnific.ai artificial intelligence to add detail such as skin texture, hair, wrinkles, etc,” she says.

“I generated all the characters in a week, mainly at night and I didn’t really put any pressure on myself because it was above all an exercise to have fun. Midjourney has this addictive aspect which means that you can spend a lot of time there just for the pleasure of seeing the images that are generated. ”

“Some characters were very easy to generate and others took me a lot more time. For example, the character of Smithers: the difficulty was to find the word that exactly defines his haircut so that it would look similar,” she adds.

Milie notes that if she used “Marge Simpson” in a prompt to Midjourney, it would give her “cartoonish” results. So, she wrote around it and instead described the Simpsons’ matriarch as “a mature woman with a curly blue beehive-style haircut” to better obtain an image that looked more like a human.

“In my opinion, what takes the most time is the choice of the final images, you have to sort things out, and it’s sometimes complicated because artificial intelligence offers us hundreds of images in just a few minutes,” she adds.

“In these cases, you have to show discipline to stick to the aesthetic and the idea that you initially set out to achieve.”

Incredible Results

Milie’s eye-catching AI images provoked a huge response on Facebook where they garnered almost 100,000 reactions.

“The reactions reveal the curiosity, disbelief, disdain, and sometimes fear that generative artificial intelligence arouses,” Milie notes. “The figures also confirm the deep attachment that people have for The Simpsons.”

Milie is also thoroughly impressed with the newest Midjourney: telling PetaPixel that the results are “much more precise and faithful to the initial prompt.”

Milie says she has been practicing “artistic photography” for nearly 20 years and enjoys shooting costumed studio portraiture which she retouches and gets creative with on the computer.

“New tools and new forms of creation in whatever form have always attracted me and aroused my curiosity. So, last summer when generative artificial intelligence emerged among the general public, I was immediately captivated and amazed by the possibilities that opened up to me,” she says.

“I started by using Disco Diffusion, then Stable Diffusion. I also tested Dall-E, but my preference and my favorite remains Midjourney for its ability to produce ultra-rich and detailed images.”

“Ultimately my goal is to succeed in mixing my personal creation with artificial intelligence, or even to train my own artificial intelligence for example with the local version of Stable Diffusion,” she adds.

To see Milie’s photography work, head to her website and Instagram. For her experiments in AI, check out her Facebook Page.

Image credits: Princess Prompt