Drawing games and visual wandering with image generation feedback loops
Running stable diffusion img2img back over itself with new prompts
Drawing games are great for creative collaboration, surprises, and just giggling. What it would be like to play a drawing game with AI?
Telephone pictionary is an example of a drawing game. It’s like the game telephone except you alternate between a drawing and a description of a drawing. So with a group of people, given a drawing, the next person describes it, and then the following person draws that description without looking at the original drawing and so on. It’s interesting to note how the drawing shifts and diverges over time. I like the quality of dialogue in the game too.
I made an app using stable diffusion img2img that automatically takes the output and allows you to run it again as the input image. For more on working with stable diffusion img2img, check out my post getting started with it.
For this game, I look at the resulting image and describe it in a new prompt, and then run SD again with the image and the new prompt. It’s like telephone pictionary except it includes a hint of the previous image through the img2img input image. Rather than starting from scratch, the input image gives the AI a sense of memory. The process feels more like a conversation thread.
The result is a gradual morphing of the image, a labyrinth like wander, where some of the elements are similar between successive images because the output image is the following input image.
Here’s a series of images I generated with this technique. Scroll down to see each alternating image and prompt.
Here’s the image I started with (look familiar?):
I wondered, what does this look like? That’ll be my new prompt. This yellow square surrounded by blue makes me think of a pixel island from above. Like maybe a desert island of sand surrounded my water. New prompt: island on an ocean
a treasure map
a fantasy land from above
a cozy neighborhood with mountains and a festival
a quiet town with trees
several towers in the middle of a forest
three boats dry docked in a field
rainbow insects surrounding and crawling on a chunk of land
several colorful beetles on a leaf with an aurora above
light up beetles floating on a leaf on top of a planet with a purple horizon
a green glowing blob with beetles that have windows on their backs
a futuristic vehicle that looks like a beetle with a green glowing shell around it
a green bicycle helmet with purple lights
a green shiny aerodynamic crown
a shoulder piece for some fancy green outfit
green mandalas surrounding a green mandala of leaves
looking into the tooth lined mouth of a green snake
a snake curving into itself and branching
a green snake spiral that is smiling
a thick vine curved like a spiral
a green fractal spiral of leaves cocoon like
a giant green and purple rose
lettuce
lettuce and a carrot
lettuce and two carrots
lettuce and three carrots
two carrots under a plate of lettuce
a bug head that looks like two carrots under a plate of lettuce
weird lettuce creatures
hand holding lettuce
lettuce fan
lettuce growing from hands
a blooming plant from a hand
a creature with hair made of leaves
a face looking up from a pile of leaves
a green owl on a pile of leaves
duolingo owl rolling on some leaves
an owl with an egg for an eye in a forest
bird friends on a windy day
twin birds in the window
birds talking to each other in a farmhouse
a bird perched on a nice day
a bird giving side eye
a bird that looks like a small penguin with a lizard head
a cute penguin dancing
