Fictional Images of Fictional People

Being a Graphic Designer by trade, my feelings towards AI-generated imagery have been ambivalent, to say the least. Over the past year, I’ve evolved from adamant hatred and condemnation of the use of any and all AI-generated artwork, (convinced it involved the most heinous levels of copyright infringement and outright theft, not to mention heralding the end of all human creativity), through reluctant interest and curiosity for what it could accomplish, ending up in a grey zone where I have to admit that it is just so damn cool and wow, what you can do with AI is mind blowing!

And while I still hold a lot of concern for how AI can be used ethically, responsibly, and with respect to the living, breathing humans who create original artwork and deserve credit, not to mention earning a living by doing so, I’ve decided that instead of rending my garments and pulling my hair in despair over the inevitable take-over-by-the-machines, I would learn how to use it, because it really is a great tool. Once upon a time Photoshop was cutting edge and a cheat, after all.

So… a fun thing to do with AI? Ask it to come up with images of fictional characters!! It’s a natural fit: fictional images of fictional people. And if the powers that be here at AAR are amenable, I thought I might offer up a series of posts that take on some of the most famous fictional couples we all love to imagine.

As always, I like to state my methods up front. I’m currently using Midjourney for any AI imagery, and I do make adjustments in Photoshop as necessary to better capture what I believe the writer has conveyed. I will always indicate if an image is AI-generated and give photo/image credit where appropriate. If you share any of these images, it is expected you will also indicate that AI was involved. Let’s do this right.

First up, I thought I might take on Edward “Sparkles” Cullen and his plain-Jane lady Bella Swan (from Twilight, first title in the series). I’ve used book descriptions and author Stephenie Meyer’s own words for my prompts to create the images, and the comparisons for what AI things Ed and Bella look like next to R-Patz and K-Stew are interesting, to say the least.

Let’s start with Bella. Because she is a first-person narrator, we never get a straight on description of Bella beyond her thinking of herself as average and that she has very pale skin, so clear it’s almost translucent-looking. So we have to go with Stephenie Meyer’s own words:

In my head, Bella is very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped—a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched.

I think it must be noted that, based on Meyer’s description, Bella Swan looks exactly like… Stephenie Meyer.

But for the sake of my post, I’ll go forward. I gave Midjourney the following prompt:

“Create a portrait of a 17 year old girl with fair skin and long, straight, dark brown hair with a widow’s peak. The girl has large chocolate brown eyes that are widely spaced. Her face is heart-shaped with prominent cheekbones and a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. The girl’s lips are a bit too full for her jaw line.”

And this is what AI thinks Bella Swan looks like:

Not too bad. It hits all the descriptor points: fair-skinned heart-shaped face with a slim jawline and pointed chin, wide-set brown eyes, long, dark brown hair with a widow’s peak, and a thin nose. How does AI Bella compare with Kristen Stewart’s movie Bella?

K-Stew is missing the widow’s peak, and I don’t think her lips are too full for her jawline, nor are her eyes overly-large or widely-spaced. But I think we are in the same neighborhood.

Now let’s try Edward Cullen. Mostly, he’s described (ad infinitum) as being beautiful. The word angelic has been applied. From Bella:

Time had not made me immune to the perfection of his face, and I was sure that I would never take any aspect of him for granted. My eyes traced over his pale white features: the hard square of his jaw, the softer curve of his full lips—twisted in a smile now, the straight line of his nose, the top of his forehead—partially obscured by the tangle of rain-darkened bronze hair…”

I boiled it all down to the following prompt:

Create a portrait of a seventeen year old boy who is impossibly beautiful. The boy’s angular face is very pale and has high cheekbones, a strong jawline, a straight nose and full lips. He has messy bronze and eyes that are topaz in color.

Again, I think AI did a pretty darned good job of translating the description into a visual. I had to use Photoshop to give AI Edward marble-white skin (and remove a lot of freckles) and eyes that were a true topaz, but in the end, AI Edward is far more angelic than Robert Pattinson, I would wager.

In doing this project, I learned that Stephenie Meyer had actually envisioned Henry Cavill as the perfect actor to play Edward, but he was too old to be cast. Still, here is an interesting comparison between Robert Pattinson, AI Edward, and Henry (who I gave a quick Photoshop treatment to give him cheezy bronze hair, topaz eyes, and pasty white skin):

TBH, I like AI Edward the best.

What about sparkly AI Edward? Actually, the sparkles were added in Photoshop:

And while we’re here, what does AI think Jacob Black should look like?

Here is the depiction of Jacob from Twilight:

[Jacob] looked fourteen, maybe fifteen, and had long, glossy black hair pulled back with a rubber band at the nape of his neck. His skin was beautiful, silky and russet-colored; his eyes were dark, set deep above the high planes of his cheekbones. He still had just a hint of childish roundness left around his chin. Altogether, a very pretty face.

I boiled that down to prompt Midjourney with:

A portrait of a fifteen year old boy with russet-colored skin. The boy has long, glossy black hair pulled back with a rubber band at the nape of his neck. His eyes are dark and deep set. The boy has high cheekbones and a round childish chin. Pretty.

And here’s where things in the AI world get interesting. The first image it produced was a Jacob who seemed far too young to be romancing Bella:

I can’t honestly say if AI is depicting an actual fifteen year old boy, or if my concept of how old a fifteen year old boy should look is pretty far off. This guy looks very young. So I asked Midjourney to try again.

This time, we get someone closer to what I imagined a Twilight Jacob might look like age-wise, but I’m guessing he’s far from fifteen years old. Note that in both cases, I did not specify Native American or Indigenous heritage yet the images Midjourney came up with seem to lead in that direction. (Too, one thing I’ve discovered about AI images is that the algorithm tends to give everyone lots of freckles.)

It was hard to find an image of Twilight Jacob in which Taylor Lautner wasn’t grinning from ear to ear, but here is a comparison with the two AI Jacobs:

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which version more closely fits with what you imagined in your head or what you think Stephenie Meyer intended. I’m guessing the older Jacob is more in line with the teen love triangle trope.

This was a lot of fun. I’m working on my all time favorite romance couple, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, and I’ll post my results next time. Meanwhile, what do you think of what AI thinks the Twilight lovebirds should look like? And do you have any favorite couples you’d like me to take on?