Creating Consistent Midjourney Dramatis Personae: Barton "Bart" Redtape and Xiaolei "Lee" Li

Would you be interested in creating a comic that explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and legacy IT bureaucracy? Look no further than Claude.AI and Midjourney! These two tools allow you to build consistent characters and bring them to life in various settings. In this blog post, we'll walk you through the mechanics of using Claude.AI and Midjourney to create two characters: an IT bureaucrat in higher education and an AI researcher in China. With these tools, you can easily create detailed, realistic characters and inject them into scenes. Follow along as we show you how to bring your story to life. 

This article provides a step-by-step walkthrough to get our characters consistent and even into the same scenes with one another, all within Midjourney.

Step by Step Instructions to replicate this output:

Step One: Generate your general narrative background.

Claude: I want to create some characters for a comic like Dilbert. One would be an IT bureaucrat in higher education, and the other would be an AI researcher in China. What would create a humorous foundation for each character?

Step Two:  Let's generate some names for our characters (aka Dramatis Personae)

Claude: what would be some good names for these two?

I picked names, so now I can get ready to do detailed character profiles. I chose Bart and Leo, but I changed Leo to Lee.

Step Three:  Now, let's generate some narrative character profiles and get a detailed description of each character. First, Bart.

Claude: what does Barton "Bart" red tape look like? Give a detailed description.

Step Four: Generate a Midjourney prompt for that character (Bart). 

Midjourney Prompt for Bart:

Step Five:  Now, let's generate some narrative character profiles and get a detailed description of each character. Next, Lee.

Claude: what does Xiaolei "Lee" Li look like? Could you give a detailed description?

Step Six: Generate a Midjourney prompt for that character (Lee). 

I keep PIXAR STYLE at the front of the prompt and HIGHLY DETAILED, REALISTIC, 8K RESOLUTION as the basis for consistency.

It's time to stitch these two characters together in a scene. Let's learn to use Midjourney's CREF command and the PREFER OPTION SET commands to streamline your workflow over time.

Step Seven: Create the shortcut for Bart

We must set some ease-of-use options to create consistent characters with the Midjourney CREF command.

First, let's use /prefer option set option Bart then Image Link [which is the URL you get when you right-click your MJ or other image reference and select COPY LINK). While typing, you first set the option to your Character's name. In this case, Mine is Bart.   Then, click +1 More, select Value in the drop-down, and paste the image link.

The final looks like this in Midjourney:

Step Eight: Create the shortcut for Lee

Do the same thing but for Lee. Same as for Bart above. Once done, we have the basis for our two characters to start interacting. Now, let's get them around a conference table for a chat.

Step Nine:  Create a prompt for two men in a conference room

Provide as much detail and camera direction as possible. I kept this short for the example here, but the more specific you are, the better your storytelling.

I like U3, so let's use that one for our first exchange between these two very different men.

So here's the problem to solve. How do we inject these two into this scene? I use the VARY REGION function. 

Step Ten:  Get Bart into the scene.

Use the very prompt with these prompt commands (--CREF and --Bart):

It's the same prompt, but I've selected the location where I want Bart to sit. I append --CREF and the --Bart to the end of the prompt. This yields another quad of photo tiles, and I liked U2, so I selected that.

This yields this photo of Bart in the conference room:

Step Eleven:  Get Lee into the scene.

So, how do you get Lee into the shot with Bart? We lather, rinse, and repeat our actions for Bart on the other interlocutor in the scene.

It produces another quad with a high verisimilitude Lee injected into the photo.

I like U1, so I selected it, and now we have Bart and Lee talking in the conference room!

Step Twelve:  Select your favorite or do a regeneration until you find one you like!

And there you have it. Bart and Lee are having a wee chat in a conference room, and they can be consistent characters for you over time.