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In our former editions, we have mainly been dealing with Chat-GPT and have shared different experiments that we have been conducting. Today, I want to share a wild, exciting, frustrating session I had with Midjourney trying to make a tractor jump…
This week: I will make you jump!
It all started with a message I received on Slack from our Creative Director Chris at my company DRIVE beta one evening. He shared this gallery of images:
Afterward, we had a phone conversation during which he shared with me his attempt to make a tractor leap through a flaming hoop. Despite capturing some extraordinary visuals, he encountered a persistent challenge—the tractor simply refused to leave the ground.
To myself, I thought - ha! I will just quickly make this picture and send it to him just to prove how good I am at the Midjourney game. And so it began:
Initially, I thought I would accomplish the hoop jump first and then proceed to ignite the hoop. However, as you can observe, the tractor remained firmly grounded!
Next, I attempted the stunt with a motorcycle, and as evident, there were no issues—I successfully accomplished it on my first attempt. This experience highlights an important observation: although Midjourney often seems capable of creating anything, its abilities are strongly influenced by the availability (or lack thereof) of training data for specific concepts. While the concept of a jumping motorcycle is included in the training set, the concept of a jumping tractor is not.
I kept going:
As you can see here I added the word “ramp” to my prompt and got at least one wheel off the ground. I started to think about how I could help Midjourney in visualizing this unknown concept. My next attempt involved this amazing sketch I created:
You can conclude two things from this: It is very difficult for me as a human to create a photorealistic drawing of a tractor, but very easy to visualize a new concept without ever having seen an example of it.
I used my sketch as an image prompt combining it with my original prompt. As you can see: I managed to “teach” Midjourney that a tractor can indeed be airborne. I would log this as a partial success. Of course, these images did not fulfill my aesthetic requirements for a final picture, as now there was no burning hoop… I tried this route for a bit longer but realized this would not be my solution.
New idea! I will try switching back to Version 4 of Midjourney, an older version that is not as good when it comes to photorealism, but really good at creating imaginary stuff. And boom:
A tractor jumping through a burning hoop! Of course, I ran it again:
And now I suddenly remembered my thought about the ramp:
Amazing! What seemed impossible before is now happening - a tractor defying gravity and making a jump. Achieved by combining switching the version of Midjourney and introducing the concept of a ramp. And then I reintroduced the burning hoop. And I have to say I was quite happy with the results.
So happy, that I sent them to Chris at 0:35.
He obviously didn't respond before the next day, but then I got the satisfaction I had been waiting for: Praise from the most talented graphic designer I know for an image I had created (with a little help from Midourney)!
The End
I hope you enjoyed being on this crazy hunt for a jumping tractor with me! I would love to hear about your (mis)adventures with Midjourney!
A thing I loved
Today I want to share this video with you - let me just say as a teaser: He is having ChatGPT talk to itself:
TV Show Idea Generator!
And now - as every week: Ideas for free!
Today we give you “Magical Police Station”:
Who are we?
The founding members of the /promptcollective are Jes Brandhøj (Denmark) and Hannes Jakobsen (Germany). But we are looking for others to join! So if you are interested in discussing all things AI in the creative industries, send us an email to join@promptcollective.xyz now.
Thanks!
Hannes & Jes