Many modern artwork kinds have come and gone, however only a few survived, and even fewer thrived with age. Anime is an anomaly. It has been an enormous a part of Japan’s tradition for the final century and has since develop into one in every of its largest industries.

AI picture turbines might have been wonderful, however they could not mimic the intricacy and keenness behind gifted animators. Midjourney goals to seize that magic with its Niji mannequin, and it is potential that they’ve already performed it with Niji 6.

The one query is: how good are we speaking?

All through this text, I will be placing Niji by its paces with quite a lot of prompts based mostly on completely different genres of anime. We’ll discover its strengths and weaknesses, share a few suggestions for getting essentially the most out of the mannequin, examine it with its earlier mannequin and base V6, and showcase among the wonderful creations that solely Niji can produce.

What’s the Niji Mannequin?

Niji is an AI artwork era mannequin made by Midjourney in collaboration with Spellbrush, an AI generative studio that makes a speciality of anime artwork. This latest mannequin borrows closely from Midjourney V6’s newest options, permitting it to know prompts higher and create comprehensible (however imperfect) textual content.

How Can You Use the Midjourney Niji V6 Mannequin?

When you’ve used Midjourney previously, then utilizing Niji shall be a stroll within the park. You simply want to connect the “–niji 6” parameter on the finish of every immediate. Because it’s a powerful mannequin, you may additionally want to show down the stylization to 250 or decrease. For instance, right here’s a picture of Luffy from One Piece at “–s 250” and you’ll already see that it has a stronger type even at 250.

Some Examples of Midjourney Niji V6

I’m not going to tease you any longer.

Listed here are some examples of Midjourney Niji V6, together with the prompts that created them:

Sci-Fi Anime

Base Immediate: an astronaut touchdown on a sophisticated moon base

Base Immediate: lush alien forest at evening, bioluminescent crops, floating jellyfish within the sky

Base Immediate: a technologically superior metropolis constructed on the underside of an enormous asteroid, impressed by cowboy bepop

Fantasy Anime

Base Immediate: eren from assault on titan

Base Immediate: a pleasant ghost in the midst of a discipline, impressed by spirited away, studio ghibli, hayao miyazaki

Base Immediate: a lady protagonist who can management monsters based mostly on the 4 fundamental parts, preparing for a battle, epic anime scene

Horror Anime

Base Immediate: a creepy dimly-lit hallway, impressed by corpse occasion 2013

Base Immediate: a person watching an unknown spiral within the sky, unfathomable, junji ito

Base Immediate: a lady with blood on her face, impressed by excellent blue 1997, satoshi kon aesthetic, analog

Mecha

Base Immediate: A colossal and battle-scarred mecha emerges from the depths of a volcano, mappa animation

Base Immediate: Two modern and futuristic mechas interact in a high-speed aerial dogfight, laser beams, interfacing

Base Immediate: A mecha and kaiju hybrid with electrical energy powers, mappa, rain, atmospheric, night

With Textual content

Base Immediate: exterior, a espresso store named “Kohi”

Base Immediate: yui hirasawa holding an indication that claims “Good Morning”, within the type of Okay-On!

Character Design

Base Immediate: a mage casting a rune, fantasy

Base Immediate: a phenomenal blonde woman with one inexperienced eye and one brown eye, heterochromia, slice of life

Base Immediate: a lady along with her basilisk, combating stance, character design

Ideas So Far

These are completely unbelievable. The prompts are extra correct, it has a deeper anime database so it is aware of who I am speaking about after I specify a personality, you are able to do textual content, and it is expressive.

Nevertheless, if I have been to be nitpicky, I’d say that Midjourney actually understated the power of this new mannequin. Even at –s 100, which ought to solely be a tenth of its stylization energy, it’s nonetheless actually opinionated. My solely hope is that they’d recalibrate the mannequin sooner or later for a extra correct era. 

Direct Comparisons With The Niji 5 and the Base Mannequin

On this part, I’m not going to generate the bottom mannequin photos with the identical immediate. As a substitute, I’ll connect an “anime artwork” or one thing related on the finish of every base mannequin for a greater 1:1 comparability.

Sci-Fi Anime

Midjourney Niji V6

Midjourney Niji V5

Midjourney Base V6

Fantasy Anime

Midjourney Niji V6

Midjourney Niji V5

Midjourney Base V6

Horror Anime

Midjourney Niji V6

Midjourney Niji V5

Midjourney Base V6

Mecha

Midjourney Niji V6

Midjourney Niji V5

Midjourney Base V6

With Textual content

Midjourney Niji V6

Midjourney Niji V5

Midjourney Base V6

Ideas So Far

High quality-wise, I’d say that Midjourney V6 and Niji 6 are fairly shut. Nevertheless, Niji 6 is extra trustworthy to creating anime artwork, whereas V6 is broader and extra versatile with artwork (correctly). Then again, Niji 5 was nice for its time, however after seeing them aspect by aspect, it’s fairly clear how large of a distinction there may be between these two Niji fashions.

The Verdict

This latest Niji 6 mannequin is one other welcome addition to Midjourney’s already succesful arsenal. Whereas not excellent, Midjourney confirmed a capability to create anime characters, backgrounds, and scenes when prompted with the suitable inputs. The photographs are extremely wealthy, trustworthy to the supply materials, and imaginative.

They do, nonetheless, have to enhance their stylized parameters to be extra correct. However as soon as they’ve that sorted, I wrestle to see different areas of enchancment for this mannequin apart from getting higher at imitating sure kinds.

Midjourney’s Niji 6 mannequin is wonderful for anime artists, creators, and even simply followers of anime basically. When you’re not glad, I extremely counsel studying our different articles on Midjourney. Have enjoyable!