Interview with AI Artist Mariana ‘PinkWritigLife’

Can you tell us about your background and when did you start generating images with AI?

My academic background is in Advertising, Public Relations, and Communications, and I’ve spent the last twelve years leading Latin America teams in those responsibilities.

Currently, besides running my own consulting business, I’m a horror story writer. I have one novelette published and have contributed to three horror story anthologies alongside other authors. My first complete novel is going to be published very soon.

I also host a podcast where I discuss spirituality and identity topics.

About Midjourney, I began creating my designs on September 2022. It started as a hobby initially intended to complement my writing. Took a while to find my personal style but the results are evident now. It’s not directly related to writing but focuses on creating iconic and unique characters.

How difficult is it to develop a personal style in today’s AI image generation landscape?

Trial and error. There are incredibly talented people designing fantastic things. If you want to stand out, in my opinion, you must do the following:

1. Create a concept in which you can include: textures, colors, define the object (for example, if you prefer landscapes or portraits)
2. Understand how the AI app you are going to use works.
3. Decide if you are going to keep it simple or you wanna learn more tools to refine the images.
4. Define your target audience.

Can you walk us through your creative process when you begin to generate a new character?

Mixing different, opposite or related ideas.

For example, if I’m going to create a woman, she can be beautiful and sexy, but I need to find something that breaks that essence.

Then I add horror, weird or absurd details to the image, contrasting colors, and lighting.

So, at the end, I create delicate pieces that can be horrific or impressive, causing the viewers to feel something when they look at it.

I love the contrast of how human nature is a mix of light and darkness.

Your characters are very distinctive and iconic; do you envision a narrative for each of them?

Sometimes, but a narrative is not quite what I envision. What I really pour into my characters is based on emotion.

How do they feel? Are they having fun? Are they in pain? Waiting for something or someone? That helps me to give them more depth.

I would love to create a video game, a book, or a movie with all of them.

Can you share a story or a concept from one of your written works that has directly inspired one of your designs?

Hey, who am I to reveal their secrets to the world? All jokes aside, maybe not a particular one, but I can tell you a bit about features.

For example, a lot of them have elaborate, beautiful horns. Some of my characters in my tales or stories also share this feature. Horns are one of the links that can connect my fantasy and magical worlds with my horror stories.

If you want to find out why or how, well, you’ll have to read my stories!

What are some key elements that you usually include in your prompts to ensure a high-quality output?

First of all, I choose textures and materials, then colors, finally the concept or character. Sometimes I add technical words to refine the final result.

Elegance and subtle details are very important for my creations.

You recently have made collabs with several other artists. Can you describe what exactly a collab between AI artists entails?

Collabs are great to connect and learn from others.

There are many ways to make a collab. You can share the same prompt and adapt it to your style; both artists can decide to create their own prompt and then share the final results; or maybe someone just creates the prompt inspired on your style.

The most important thing in a collab is that both people (or the entire group) can agree on a particular concept and size of the images (ratio).

How do you manage to balance the demands of running a consulting business with your prolific creative output?

Hunger for creativity will thrust you forward when you have the will to execute it.

While the business takes up all of my working hours, as the night approaches, a new world of creation opens up, and my mind flies.

Instead of looking at this as a job or a responsibility, it frees me from the shackles of the day-to-day life and helps me relax and inspire myself.

The community I have the joy and luck of participating in helps a lot, as everyone is supportive, so I can enjoy like and comment posts from other artists, share their creations on my stories, or prepare the next collab.

Have you used your images for any specific purpose, like illustrating a horror book? Are there any plans to do so in the future?

My own book!

I made the image of the cover with one of the oldest versions of MidJourney. Would love to illustrate more books, but first, I need to find more time!

Since beginning your journey in AI art, how has your perception of art and creativity evolved?

If we link the word ART with EXPRESSION, a lot of things can be creative.

We, as human beings, have the need to communicate with others. AI apps and programs gave a lot of people the tools to share their ideas, to inspire others, and to have a new income source through it.

Art, in its traditional form, will never disappear. Both just coexist.

As a writer, for example, I am not afraid of an AI writing and replacing my books.

My writing style could be imitated by AI, but my ideas are unique.

I jump and dance playfully through grammar rules and freely dispose of them when they’re not useful to me, I can create a link to the reader’s mind where I show him/her pathways of communication they had never experienced before, all while throwing in deep concepts worth their time in carefully evaluating for their own lives.

Can AI do that?

As someone deeply involved in storytelling, do you think AI will ever be able to replicate the depth and nuance of human-created narratives?

Not sure about it. When you write, you just flow with your soul, mind, consciousness, feelings, emotions, and experiences.

A machine/artificial intelligence can replicate a lot of things, but without really understanding the human experience, how could it really produce something that comes out from the depths of it?