By Andrea Reider
I’ve been wondering how many authors are now using AI to illustrate or animate the characters in their books. I’ve been using the AI image generator site midjourney.com to create and animate characters and scenes from books—and a small menagerie of illustrations and animations of animals of every description. Aside from being lots of fun, I’m hoping to use some of these short videos in my book design work. There are other AI image generation programs and sites, such as Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT, and Gemini.
AI as a Visualization Tool for Writers
Not all AI artwork has to be published in a book to be useful to writers. You can use AI to visualize characters and scenes without ever making them public. I’m not suggesting that writers start directing their own short video animations, but using sites like Midjourney.com can make the process relatively fast, easy, and rewarding.
I’ve used some of my AI creations to promote my book design and formatting business. I post videos on my own website and on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I wouldn’t say people are breaking down the door to find me, but I do get a lot of likes and even have some regular fans.
Creating the Images
I’ve been designing and formatting books professionally for many years. I can’t count the number of major advances and changes in the ways books are produced since I began working for Addison-Wesley Publishers as a freelancer in 1988. We were using QuarkXPress back then when it proved to be so much better and easier to use than PageMaker. And then on to InDesign and e-books.
When I first discovered what I found to be the amazing capabilities of AI image generation, I spent way too much time working with Midjourney almost every day. As a freelancer, I find that I sometimes have gaps between book projects and working with AI gives me something productive and meaningful to work on while I wait for the next project to capture my attention.
I no longer spend hours every day working with AI images, but I use Midjourney all the time for work and play. I recently used it to create 10 different illustrations for the cover of an award-winning quarterly magazine where the use of AI for images is allowed.
I currently pay Midjourney $30/month for their Standard subscription, which includes 15 hours/month of Fast generation plus unlimited image generation in Relax Mode. There are lower-priced plans, but I kept exceeding my paid hours and having to buy extra time, which can add up quickly. Creating videos can quickly burn through a lot of those Fast generation hours.
When you enter a prompt in Midjourney, the site generates four different options for you to choose from, modify, or animate. There are a lot of other features on Midjourney, but I pretty much stick to the basic features.
The AI programs keep getting better. Some of the images that I thought were great a few years ago now look less great by comparison to the newer ones I’ve been making. I’ve also learned how to work more effectively with Midjourney to get better results.
I’ve experimented with many ways to create AI artwork. I usually start with the subject, and maybe some type of verb or movement if I’m thinking of animating the image. I also specify the type of colors I want in the image and the style of artwork. This can include giving a period (19th century) or style of art (Art Deco, Modern, Futuristic). I’ve gotten some interesting, fun, and sometimes usable results from trying out many different styles of art for my AI creations. If you do choose to create images in the style of a particular artist, there are copyright issues that I can’t advise on.
Animating Book Characters
Dracula
This is a short Dracula animation that I’ve posted on LinkedIn and Pinterest with some good results. It’s a fairly literal illustration, but I could have asked for an image of Dracula as a cat or anything else I wanted to try out. Authors can create illustrations of their characters in any form they can imagine.
When I first started working with AI image generators, I typed in very simple prompts. Something like, “Dracula with bats and a moon.” Then I began specifying other things, like colors, art style, illustration vs. photograph or drawing, and just about any other variables I could think up. I went through a list of famous artists that I found from a Google search and tried out different versions of Dracula in each style.
I’ve obtained great results from entering a sentence or two describing characters in a book, including a description of a scene with some type of action that can be animated. And keep trying! The first few images are hardly ever the best you can do.
As a book designer, I would want to try adding animations to title pages or chapter openers, maybe above or below the chapter number or title. I often add graphics and other design elements to books—especially on the chapter openers—and short animations would be a great addition to many e-books.
Authors can also use AI to create artwork to illustrate their books, whether that means hiring a professional or trying to do it themselves. Even if they’re not usable for the actual book, an author’s basic ideas can be used by an artist or designer to create professional-level artwork.
Moby-Dick
I chose this colorful AI illustration for my Moby-Dick animation because I liked the bright and contrasting colors and thought the style of the artwork suited the topic. I also like the relative sizing of ship to whale in this version. Among other things, I asked for metallic colors, and the AI already knew enough about the story of Moby-Dick to generate the image. Then it was up to me to modify or accept and then see how the animation worked out. Midjourney offers 4 versions of each animation. I try to pick out the best ones. Some of the options can be quite horrible, but some are surprisingly good.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
This image and animation of Dorian Gray is one of my most recent short videos. I worked through many different prompts and styles before arriving at this version, which I think illustrates the story in an engaging way.
AI Animals
Blue Rabbit
A lot of people liked Blue Rabbit from my animal series. Some people responded to the image itself, and others liked the walking motion and the blinking eye. One of the prompts I used for this was “metallic colors.” The blue isn’t overly shiny. Maybe that’s why people like it.
Orange Monkey
My LinkedIn audience responded to Orange Monkey when I posted to a creative artists group with 400,000+ members. I think people like the colors and the expressiveness of the eyes. It’s hard to tell from a number of likes if an image is really good or just okay, but the best ones do tend to get the most attention.
Using AI Images in Books
As a book designer for print books and e-books, I’m far from being a filmmaker or video expert.
I’ve only been able to use my AI-generated artwork in a few books that I’ve designed. KDP currently requires authors to indicate whether AI was used in books. If a book was written without any use of AI other than my design elements, I wouldn’t ask authors to click that box. There is currently no clear downside disclosing to KDP that AI was used in the artwork, but failure to do so might be a problem, and future policies and implications remain to be seen.
I’ve always done my best to work with new computer programs and capabilities throughout my long career in book publishing. There are serious issues involving proper and acceptable uses of AI, but I’ll be along for the ride!