ICYMI: Chevy is feeding his original photos to an AI to create an NFT series (and documenting it all ​here​). Follow on ​IG​ and ​Twitter​ for first looks.

You know the ‘time warp’ you experience when you’re completely consumed by something?

(My earliest memories of this came from playing Pokemon).

But it can come from anything - a great conversation, a TV series, a creative project…

Whatever it is - once it's sucked you in, hours seem to pass in seconds.

I had one of those experiences yesterday, and it was all centered around two things:

1. A new approach to prompts

2. A new reference image that was producing some spooky-ass results

A new approach to prompts

With each photo I’ve been directing ​Billy Chadison​ to create, I’ve asked him to depict different scenes from the human experience.

(From the mundane/everyday to the broader cultural/societal happenings).

The photos never exactly depict what you’d expect to see. Instead, they skirt around the edges of familiarity - enough to produce some intriguing photos (and that’s what really matters here).

For example, I started throwing new keywords into the prompts like:

1. Airport

2. Funeral

3. Wedding

4. Congressional hearing

Which got results like this:

Which is cool! But why the time warping consumption?

Well, it went a little something like this:

By introducing these scene changes, I started to feel like I was building my own little world.

Instead of a spattering of standalone images, the series started to feel like a collection of interconnected photos, depicting life in some familiar-yet-fictional society - and I got to shape it!

It was like the photographic version of a ‘choose your own adventure’ book.

That’s how the time warp started. But what really tipped me over the edge was the introduction of…

A new reference image

Specifically, this photo I took at my neighborhood Halloween party last year:

Midjourney didn’t really know what to do with this reference - but one thing it latched onto was: the masks and the ‘​golden hour​’ lighting.

The results were…unnerving:

I don’t exactly know what I'm looking at here - but it’s freaking me out, and for that reason: I love it.

(It’s all very ‘​Gesaffelstein - PURSUIT​’ no?).

These discoveries led to an accident of sorts, and I don't know how to feel about it...

We’ll cover it all tomorrow, in Part 6.

Follow on ​Twitter​ and Instagram for first looks on each NFT release.

Want a chance to win a 1/1 NFT at release? ​Enter here​.

P.S. Want to try making your own AI images?

Sign up to our newsletter and invite a friend using the referral code in the welcome email.

You’ll then be invited to our Discord, where you’ll get free access to Midjourney (the AI tool we’re using for this project).