James Cunliffe

Stable Diffusion Tutorials

Anime Character Design and Animation, Stable Diffusion, Photoshop and After Effects

In this 2 part tutorial I walk you through my process of generating characters using Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111. In Part 1 we use the A.I tools along with Photoshop and Inpainting to tweak the design and prep the character for animation. In Part 2 we take those elements into After Effects to rig, animate and finalise the composition. I’ve taken advantage of the ProtoThing 200 model which I sourced from Hugging Face. Hugging Face is a great website with hundereds of models created by the A.I Art community. Just a heads up, if you’re considering using a local installation of Automatic1111 you’ll need a graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM, the more you have the better as it can be quite taxing on your machine. Unforunately Mac users will have to wait as well as it is currently not supported. I’ve had no issues running the software but have a fairly decent system due to the nature of my work. I’m running it on Windows 11, i9-12900K 3200 Mhz 16 Core Processor, 64GB RAM with a RTX 3090TI GPU. There are a couple of things I need to iron out with the workflow. I still don’t like a lot of the A.I masking tools I’ve tried, just doesn’t seem to grab the fine details all that well which is why I’m still more likely to use the pen tool unless the rotowork can be slightly scrappy. I’m really happy with how this one turned out, very nearly feels like a splash screen you could find in a videogame. If you’ve found it useful or have your own workflow ideas be sure to get in touch in the comments!

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How to Create and Animate a Landscape with Parallax: A Tutorial

The advancement in technology has made it possible to create visually stunning landscapes with ease. With Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111, you can quickly generate a digitally illustrated background image, like a castle, using models from websites like Hugging Face. In this tutorial, I will use Anything V3 to create our landscape. Step 01: Generate the Image in Automatic1111 It’s as simple as downloading the software from Github, grabbing a model from Hugging Face and then typing in a prompt. I’ve found that ‘quality’ keywords work better at the start with the more descriptive elements about the scene falling towards the end. Step 2: Creating the Depth Map Once you have generated the landscape in Automatic1111, import it into Photoshop and create a Depth Map. The Depth Map will be used in After Effects to animate the landscape. Step 3: Animate the Landscape in After Effects Import the Depth Map and the landscape into After Effects and use it to animate the image. You may need to do some roto work to polish up the final result. Step 4: Upscale the Video with DaVinci Resolve If you want to take the animation to the next level, consider using DaVinci Resolve’s generative tools to upscale the video. This will help increases the overall quality of the asset. Bonus Step: Use Mobile Apps for Automation Mobile apps like CapCut are now automating the process of creating a parallax effect. Although the results may not be as high-quality as those created in After Effects, it demonstrates that the technology is constantly improving and becoming more accessible. To conclude, creating and animating a landscape with parallax is easier than ever before. With the use of Stable Diffusion, Automatic1111, Photoshop, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve and mobile apps like CapCut, you can bring your landscape to life in a matter of seconds.

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Create Art From Your Face With AI For Free | Dreambooth Tutorial | Stable Diffusion Guide

I’ve been making content for over a decade and a half and have never really had eyes on my personal work. On retrospect I have had over 500,000 ears my music but also didn’t know until the audience around it had already moved on, you can read more about that here if you’re interested. So instead of working on my own content I’ve spent the last couple of years creating for some of the biggest tech and gaming influencers/ brands with already established audiences. After watching an episode of Corridor Crew where they’d turned their friends into illustrated characters, I just got a feeling that I could figure out how they’d done it, which lead to the creation of this video. And although I’d worked on content for clients that had reached the millions in terms of viewership, it was still amazing to see something that I’d made off my own back had netted over 200K views in a couple of days and had taken me from 120 subscribers to over 4000. The tech evolves so quickly that I’m told the first video is a little dated now. This one focuses around the use of Google Collab (if you don’t have a decent PC), but I quickly realised my 3090TI could handle Automatic1111 so I quickly moved over to a new workflow for training which I showcased in Part 2. If you are struggling with the changes on the Collab doc since this tutorial, I recommend following my ‘Part 3’ Part 2 does a recap on the intial setup, how to take images and also information about resizing. It also covers the installation of Automatic1111 and then this time, instead of Dreambooth, I show you how to utilise Hypernetwork. It’s another form of ML training. Although I’d argue it isn’t as good as Dreambooth. Still definitely one to check out if you’re looking to experiement with alternativer methods of image training. In my Part 3, I showcase another Google Colab method of Dreambooth training by TheLastBen, I’ve been told people have had a lot more luck getting this method to work compared to the methods in Part 1. I also share a little bit of an inpainting trick to paste faces onto the genrated characters if you’re struggling to get an image spot on straight away.   These tools really are incredible, it’s a little bit full circle for me going back to alternative reality faces. My first job in the gaming industry was motion tracking at a video game animation studio that eventually got bought by Epic Games. Some of my manual laboring is likely still part of the dataset that is now used for the Metahuman creator. It’s definiely something I intend to explore further and as these 3 videos head towards half a million total views, I suspect it’s something a lot of people are interested in too. If there’s anything you’d like me to explore in terms of A.I faces or animation, be sure to leave a comment in one of the YouTube videos!

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Is This The Death Of VFX? | DeepDive Into A.I. Art Like Corridor Crew | Ultimate Dreambooth Guide

What a journey this last couple of months was. What started out as a genuine curiosity around a Corridor Crew video has lead to nearly half a million views across my Dreambooth focused videos. I never expected such a positive response and for the videos to have the impact they have had. It’s pushed my channel from 120 subs to over 5000 and with that has encouraged me to get an even greater grasp on A.I tools and how we can apply them creatively. In this video I summarise the best way I currently know of doing Dreambooth training, hopefully it’ll stay relevant for longer than my previous ones that quickly went out of date not even a month after their release. Just want to say a huge thanks to anyone whose watched my videos, commented, liked, all that social media jazz. I’ve spent most of my career making content for brands and influencers that dwarf my own channel and to finally get such a positive response on my own videos has been really cool to see.

Is This The Death Of VFX? | DeepDive Into A.I. Art Like Corridor Crew | Ultimate Dreambooth Guide Read More »

The Automatic1111 Lazy Tutorials Playlist

In a bit of a homage to Ian Huberts Lazy Blender Tutorial playlist, I wanted to do something in a similar vein but with Automatic1111. Sharing what I’ve mananged to figure out in a quick under 1 minute format. I’ll be honest, since I started putting these out… Although the comments have been massively positive, It hasn’t helped my channel in the algorithm. I’ve actually learned since that YouTube promotes channels that put out content that’s around the 9-13 minute mark more than short form content (unless you’re making content specifically using their shorts format). This is just because it has more spots for advertising and your typical viewer is usually okay sticking around for this amount of time but not much longer. Even though it’s tanked my viewership, if there’s enough interest in these short form tutorials, I’ll try and adapt them for the YouTube short format so it can still help everyone, hopefully without damaging my channel. Fingers crossed  

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How To Make Animations Using Stable Diffusion and After Effects | AI Art To Animation

As an aspiring animator, I recently watched Bee and Puppycat with my fiance and was blown away by its hilarious aesthetic and art style. Inspired, I decided to challenge myself and try to create something similar. I spent three long days building the scene, sourcing the brushes, doing the linework, and creating the poses for the characters. But then, throguh one of Corridor Digitals videos, I stumbled upon a game-changing technology that would revolutionize the animation industry: Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111. If you’re a creative professional, you know that generating concept art and storyboards can be time-consuming. But with Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111, you can generate stunning background images in seconds. After downloading and installing the necessary software, I was able to get started on generating images. While the software can also be used to generate characters, it does require a bit of tweaking. Once I had all the relevant images, I used Automatic1111’s inbuilt upscaling tool to enhance their quality. Then, I took those images into After Effects to mask, rig, and create basic tween-based animations. I was really impressed with what this tool could do, and I believe it has the potential to change the game in the creative field. It’s especially useful for agency workers who want to flesh out basic concepts in a more visual way, potentially replacing traditional storyboarding altogether. Despite the fear surrounding AI in the creative industry, I believe that those who refuse to embrace these tools will only be hurting themselves in the long run. As the industry at large moves to adopt these technologies, it’s essential to get familiar with them and recognize their potential. It might seem like the enemy, but Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111 are here to stay – and they’re only going to get better. So why not get ahead of the curve and learn how to use them today?

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