Team Iron – Samurai Style!

Whew! Sorry for keeping this in reserve, readers, but a couple of things happened. One, I have been playing around with AI art for the chapters posted on my substack for the books on Arthurian archetypes and Marvel characters. This means I had not yet made any for Team Iron, only Team Cap, because believe it or not most of the characters on Team Iron correlate either to lesser-known Arthurian characters or to very big Medieval characters in other stories outside the legends.

(Trust Tony Stark to insist on an entire chapter to himself in the fifth book I’m planning, and trust him to insist that he be the first character discussed in that book. No matter how much I might like to keep him in with the rest of the Avengers, I figured out early on that I couldn’t. He has a foot in the Arthurian world but more ties outside it. Thanks for making my life harder, Tony!)

What this means is that the results of my early attempts at getting the AI to make Team Iron pictures were very hit or miss. I wasn’t satisfied with most of them and so built up more credits to try a second round. Previous practice meant the AI gave me more to work with, which is how I got many of the images below. 

Now for the second reason for the delay: I got tired. Lost my energy for all but a few sentences or longer articles. I blame this in part on research ahead of deadlines, and in part on life being crazy for about three months straight. The combination had me not wanting to do anything beyond a certain point.

So that is the saga behind these pictures; it is not lack of love for Team Iron. It is: “I was working on Arthur/Team Cap, so had to teach the AI on Team Iron, then ran out of steam to write anything beyond a certain minimum.” :flops: Yay….

Anyway, while it is late, I hope you enjoy these samurai-style images for Team Iron. After I got past the cringe-worthy results, most of them turned out well and were a lot of fun. They are not perfect, but then, nothing with AI ever is. You cannot replace humans no matter how hard you try.

I prefer not to try. I just thought I would have a little fun and make your day brighter, too. Enjoy, readers!

Samurai Iron Man – this is from my initial image run, which gave me some terrible responses. Of the eight or ten I initially had, this was one of the best two. I really like his armor here, as it fuses Japanese samurai armor with the Iron Man armor without making the latter take over the former. I thought I would get an Iron Man style helmet in one of these images, but unlike Scott Lang, the AI left Tony helmetless. I suppose he doffed it so much in the films that the AI just went with that instead of the scenes where he had the helmet on.

Samurai Tony Stark 2 – this one is more gold/blue than red, but if you look at the chest plate closely you can see the AI apparently tried to inscribe an image of the Iron Man helmet on the breastplate for the armor. I also really like the bracers in this one, though I do not know what to make of the chopstick hilts behind him. Those do not look like sword hilts, but then, as stated before, the AI cannot get everything right. Oh, this was the second best image from the initial image run.

Daimyo Tony Stark – thinking about it during my first run, I realized there was no way Tony Stark could ever be a simple samurai. He is a billionaire and runs an international company. That alone means he would have a higher rank in Japanese feudal society; add in genius and philanthropist, and that only helps enhance the fact that he would have been a feudal lord or daimyo. Some of the images I got for this prompt were ridiculous in the first run, but this is one of the ones that turned out well in the second run, if memory serves. I particularly like the armor on his breastplate, as it combines Japanese motifs with a sort of Renaissance style you might see in a chapel somewhere.

Daimyo samurai Tony Stark 2 – again, I do not know what to make of the stick in the neck of his shirt. But the rest of this image is just fantastic. There is no armor this time, just a medallion, and I love the lanterns in the background. The style and colors of his shirt are just gorgeous and the mountains in the background add to the effect.

Natasha Hime – thanks to David Breitenbeck‘s suggestion on the Team Cap post, I decided to try a few images of Natasha in hime (princess) attire. At some point, I plan to go back and run the prompts for Wanda Maximoff and Sharon Carter in the same outfits, because a lot of Natasha’s shots turned out well. This is from the first image run for her and if I seem to have a lot for her here, it is because I ran her through several models, as I will explain below.

Natasha Hime 2 – this is also from the first run. I have a feeling the AI pulled the general gist of this image from posters for the Black Widow movie, now that I am looking at it again. I like the background a lot for this one, and Natasha’s outfit looks really nice here.

Ninja Natasha – this is also from the first run. I ran “Natasha hime” as a prompt a few times but given her past in and out of comics, I also wanted to nod to her transformation from villainess to heroine. What is the equivalent in popular culture for an assassin in Japan? NINJA! Unfortunately the AI messed up her hands, but the rest of the shot turned out well indeed.

Ninja Natasha 2 – again, this is from the first image run. Uh, I think. I had done a few Natasha prompts just to try and teach the AI how to do a proper face, and I get the feeling she is a popular choice for some AI artists. Either way, her face almost always came out right for these images. Her hands, however…. Ugh. The extra sword didn’t help, either.

Natasha Samurai – I think this is from my second run. NightCafe tends to mess up hands more often than MidJourney does now, but a lot of Nat’s samurai images just didn’t look good. This one turned out reasonably well and might have been inspired by shots in Avengers: Age of Ultron or for promotional images from it, as this seems to be a pose she used a lot in that film. Almost any prompt that included “samurai” or “ninja” for Nat had her hair short, whereas “hime” had her hair long, like a princess’s ought to be. This was always the final prompt I ran, as it shows Natasha’s completion of her journey from assassin (ninja) to heroine (onna-bugeisha).

Vision just would NOT come out in his android form on NightCafe when I specified I wanted him as a samurai. I ran the prompt around twelve times and he ALWAYS came out looking human. No offense to Mr. Bettany but I was trying for the android appearance rather than the human hologram. He turned out really nice and you can see his skin is almost the same shade as the cherry blossoms behind him, but it is not what I was going for. Along with the messed up hands and swords, you can see from this that AI is not going to replace human artists any time soon.

This is from the second run I did for Vision, and again, I couldn’t get him to look like an android. Some of his look here might have been taken by the AI from Master and Commander, too. I like how his skin tone is still shading toward red, and that styling on his clothes is gorgeous. I’m not sure what to make of the aborted ponytail, though (and I’m blanking on what it is actually called in Japan, too, argh!).

All my attempts to get Vision to look more like an android more or less culminated in this shot here, where he has a magnificent and elaborate helmet that looks either really awkward, really heavy, or both. That said, the stylizing is beautiful and his suit is amazing. The shoulder armor is also something else. Though why it mixes pastel pinks and blues, I could not say, since I did not specify any colors in the prompt.

Samurai Panther – this is from the first run, and Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa proved to be difficult to render. That might have been due to the AI trying to blend Japanese and African styles, but the fact that I had not tried to render any images for him before didn’t help. Nevertheless, this one turned out pretty well all things considered.

Daimyo T’Challa – as with Tony, I realized I could not make T’Challa “just” a samurai. He is a king, which in Japanese feudal times would have meant he was a daimyo (provided his lands were in Japan proper, mind you) under the Emperor. This was still the initial run, so I only got one or two good images from it. This was one of the better and more dignified results.

Daimyo Samurai T’Challa – pretty sure this is the second image run, and the AI had a better handle on him by this point. To make sure I got what I wanted, I specified to the AI that he should be a daimyo samurai, as otherwise, I just got images of him in formal wear at what looked like portrait paintings or official functions. T’Challa can handle those, but I didn’t want the poor guy to be bored. So I did my best to make sure he got some action shots or at least to be armed, like he is here (perhaps too well, even if the swords are wonky).

Daimyo Samurai T’Challa 2 – definitely the second run, and the AI was certainly attempting to blend African and Japanese styles here. You have the mountains in the background and T’Challa is armed and dressed for combat, with some seriously nice armor. His hands are mostly okay, too, though the weapons he is carrying got short shrift for certain. The AI didn’t blend styles perfectly here but it sure did give the attempt the old college try!

First run for Peter Parker, and I like how his uniform’s colors made it into the AI image. He looks A LOT like a Jedi padawan here and in the first image run I did for him, but all things considered, this is one of the better shots. I had not tried Tom Holland in a prompt before but he is probably a popular choice for AI artists, which may be why his face typically came out just fine. His weapons, on the other hand….

This is from the second run, which is why it is brighter than the first; I left the settings tuned to a different sampling method than the one I had used before. It wasn’t entirely an accident, since I was trying to encourage the AI to do better with his hands and position than it had been up to this point. The attempt mostly succeeded, since he looks less unnaturally positioned here than he did before. His attire also incorporates the spider motif better here than in the previous image run.

Same “new” sampling method, and it is even better than the last one in regard to his hands and crouched position. The AI might do well with Holland’s face but it is REALLY BAD at positioning him, probably because Spidey’s movements and poses are so acrobatic. You have to thoroughly train an AI to get it to give you a shot like this casually and I don’t play with it that much for poses like Spidey’s. So this was, in many ways, a lucky shot despite the absurd brightness and other flaws.

James “Rhodey” Rhodes was fun and embarrassing to prompt for. This is from the first run and might be the only one for him that wasn’t absolutely awful. Word of advice? Do not add Rhodes’ nickname to a prompt. It will get you a nice action sequence of him on a horse in full armor but you will not like the horse or most of his position on it, either. I nearly burst out laughing at how bad that image was!

Now this one was from the second prompt run, and although it makes him look a lot like Heimdal, this was one of the better images. I really like his armor and dreadlocks in this shot, as the armor looks thick and mean enough to dish out or take a vicious pounding. The image also mostly gets Rhodey’s hand and sword right, too, which is ALWAYS a plus, in my opinion. This image couldn’t embarrass me if it tried.

Rhodey was surprisingly hard for the AI to get right, even in the second run, which is where this image is from. I do not like it as much as the above picture, but this shot still has a lot to recommend it. The armor is spectacular, for one, and I love the tree in the background. He looks like he is actually in the middle of a fight, and because his hands are cut off, the AI doesn’t get to mess them up as much as it might otherwise. All in all, if you sit back and ignore the flaws, you can almost here the clash of battle in the background for this image.

Well, there you have it, readers! Team Iron, samurai style! Next on the list are Hulk and Thor, and the early attempts there are rather promising. (Though some of the Hulk’s are also downright hilarious!) I will be adding a few other MCU characters to that list as well, so stay tuned for those. Until then, I hope you enjoyed viewing these images as much as I did generating them!