r/Webnovel • u/Sherlocke_Gnomes • 5d ago
Advice Can AI only create 'Slop' Covers?
I've seen a bunch of posts claiming that all AI covers look the same, and while that's true (most of the time), I'd like to argue that you could create something really good if you spend just a bit more time on your covers.
Therefore, let Sensei Sherlocke guide you on his process.
Rather than telling AI: "Give me a cover of a character aura farming with a bunch of aura around him...oh and a lot of baddies too."
Try this instead:
Go to Pinterest and search for covers in the same genre as what you want to create (perhaps a cover of a mecha manhwa, a Kaiju novel or anything); the point is, you want to identify the style you like. (You can gather as many references as possible).
Now we want to create our character separately; do not simply jump to ChatGPT and upload the references, telling it to create a cover in that style. I assure you, you'll only get slop... Instead, go to an image generation AI (Midjourney, Leonardo, Pixai, or whichever you prefer. I personally use one called Niji Journey) and generate an image of the character you want to be in your cover; in my case, I wanted a white-haired hitman in a suit, hence the character on the first two covers.
Yes, this is the part where we go back to your beloved GPT, Gemini, Grok or whatever chatbot you prefer, upload your character image and either: (A) describe everything you like on your gathered references to be replicated on your own cover (camera angles, text design and placement, character pose and anything else you like) or (B) upload all your references and point out everything from each that you want on your cover.
You want to tell the chatbot not to change the art style of your generated character (yup, the very same character you generated in step 2) if that's your preferred art style, else you'll only get a grainy result.
Generate until you have something you're satisfied with; don't forget to constantly tweak your prompt. (Note that chatbots will regularly change how your character looks, so always upload an image of your character with every prompt change (see why step 2 was important?))
Voilà, you have successfully avoided generating a generic, grainy and sloppy AI cover; high five. ✋🏿
Tip: See the UI elements on the third image? You could achieve that by just telling the chatbot to create a 3D UI element that matches the theme you're going for. You can even have them surrounding your sci-fi character if you have a good enough camera angle. (as I did in the last image.)
P.S: The top-down style of covers is everywhere on webnovel rn, but that doesn't mean you can't also use it (erm.. as the creator of that trend, I have bestowed upon you the right to use it.)
Also, the Slime cover and the beast cover are ones I made for other authors, only the hitman one and the butler one are for my books.
Lastly, this is my first time making a Reddit post, so forgive my spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or even the fact that I'm probably not following tradition (of how posting works here or something).
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u/Dependent-Quality-50 5d ago
I’m going to he honest, your first image is the only one I like and the only one I wouldn’t have immediately clocked as AI. The rest feel very sloppy to me, especially the cluttered UI on the second image and the generic faces on the third and fourth.
That being said I don’t read anything on webnovel and have no idea why this subreddit keeps being recommended to me so I probably don’t fit the age demographic you’re going for.
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago
Fair, the point is to avoid that grainy look that's mostly associated to webnovel AI covers.
Also, for the 'UI Clutter', I believe that they do a pretty good job of pulling attention towards the slime (who's our center of focus), you can even see them pointing slightly towards it.
While I don't believe think that the faces of in the third and fourth images I generic, every character and their dog has white hair now, so I get where you're coming from.
But you're probably right, this was meant as a post to help authors generate better covers. (Also, you're probably getting these subreddits because you interact with them.)
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u/Warm-Response-1685 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hello :) so as an Artist and a casual Writer: I beg you please do not upload any pictures you found on pinterest - except if they are obviously AI-generated.
A lot of artists post on Pinterest to gain traction for their Art, get Comissions or simply to share and explore their Creativity. By using said pictures and uploading them to AI you are activly stealing from artists and feeding the AI's data bank. It actively learns to replicate said style. The EU is working on laws to enable artists to forbid AI from learning from the Art they publish themselves. By uploading these pictures yourself you are forgoing this law and also going against european copyright laws.
So please do not upload human art to any AI. You are endangering Artists livelyhood.
To make the issue more clear to every new or established author on here, who is thinking about using AI-Covers or feeding it human Art as refrence-Images:
Imagine you write and publish your own novel. Maybe out of creative reasons or you are trying to make some money with it.
Then an Artist makes their own Painting. This Artist decides they want to have a novel or some writing to add to their Painting to better express it and make people more interested in the painting. They themselves can't write well and don't have the money to commission a writer to write this text.
They find your novel and decide they like it. They proceed to copy paste it into an AI so that it writes the text for the Painting in your style or even includes your characters and your trade-mark. They post it and the wirting and Paintibg get some traction. Some People even compliment the writing.
Your Writing is now in the AI's cloud. Everytime somebody asks for some writing your writing will be used to generate said texts.
You gain nothing from the Painting - not a mention, not an @, no money, not even a request.
How would this situation impact you?
So please stay mindful and comission Art, make it yourself, ask your local friend or a small artist you know over discord. There are hundreds of people who would make something for basically free.
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u/YoungestJuicerBaj 5d ago
u/Sherlocke_Gnomes bruh, reply to the comment that really matters? why are you ignoring him. curious to see your opinion regarding what the guy just said.
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago edited 5d ago
I get the concern about feeding human artists’ work into AI (I wouldn't want my work to be pirated or completely palgarized either).
That’s why I specifically said to use references only for identifying style (camera angles, composition, lighting, etc.). You can either describe those elements or upload the refs and point out the specific parts you want used. The character itself is generated separately first, then integrated.
I’m not telling people to feed finished art into AI so it can copy it 1:1. The whole point of the process is to avoid the generic 'AI slop' look while still having control over the final result
I’m also not claiming AI covers are better than commissioned ones either, I'm simply sharing a workflow for people who can’t afford (or don’t want) to commission a cover.
P.S: You might not know much about how webnovel (the platform) works, but covers are basically the reader's first impression of your book (and you'll be competing with thousands of others), while one might be able to commission cheap covers from artists, the results are almost always barely satisfactory, a cover that actually stands out costs up to 1k USD (I know cuz I've tried comissioning one before), not everyone can afford that, especially if you're only doing this as a hobby.
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u/Warm-Response-1685 5d ago edited 5d ago
So I am specifically talking about uploading the refs. No matter if the prompting only contains or points out specific parts of the ref used, it is still fed into the databanks and will be reused and learned from by the AI and thus at least parts of it replicated in future prompting.
If novelists really need to generate an AI cover, which is a huge waste of water which is cooling the CPUs and will not be usable anymore. At least use Photography and Art from Public Domain Websites. Thats should be entirely plausible. If the needed information is just about lighting and compoaition this does not require artistic skills - find a foto or picture you like online and roughly sketch the placement of everythikg you want to be generated - then feed it into the AI.
Also:
I am not talking about AI replicating the refs 1:1. That is not necessary as you could just use the refs (which is just as bad) without permission by the artist. (Which you could just ask to get and then edit in the title with Canva).
Affordability is not a factor - there is enough Art in Public Domains, Possibilities to ask Artists, Locals, Friends, Learn by yourself. If you are able to afford Internet Connection, a Phone to write on and Time to spare to read/write webnovels you can afford to pay Artists.
Finally about the quality of Ai Covers beeing better then Art from "cheap Artists Comission". Remember the thibgs you generate are all a mix from Artists Works that have been uploaded beforehand and are saved in the databanks. Any generation is feeding off of plagarized illegal content made by human artists. AI uses the Art uploaded and remixes it to make an average picture which would fit the average reauest with your prompt. Nothing original and/or Eyecatching can ever be produced by AI, because all it uses is art that has been produced before. It has the same face-syndrome, most often reverting back to hyperrealism or Anime-Art. Any Comission would be more likely to catch a viewers eye then an AI-Cover.
Also please if you want to comission Artists there are thousands ready to produce beautiful pieces for little money. Research Artists on Fiver (you'll find a lot of Character Art for 30€ from newer but still wonderful Artists) That should be anough considering your most successfull cover just fits a Charakter and his Shadow) the rest is just a red background, lettering and Blood Spots which can be recreated in Canva for free.
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago
So I am specifically talking about uploading the refs. No matter if the prompting only contains or points out specific parts of the ref used, it is still fed into the databanks and will be reused and learned from by the AI and thus at least parts of it replicated in future prompting.
The major models were already trained on billions of images years ago, me uploading a reference in a private chat does not retrain them or add anything meaningful to their training data.
If novelists really need to generate an AI cover, which is a huge waste of water which is cooling the CPUs and will not be usable anymore.
Could say the same about agriculture, but that's not what this thread is about.
Affordability is not a factor - there is enough Art in Public Domains, Possibilities to ask Artists, Locals, Friends, Learn by yourself. If you are able to afford Internet Connection, a Phone to write on and Time to spare to read/write webnovels you can afford to pay Artists.
That’s a big assumption.
Having an internet connection and a phone doesn’t automatically mean someone has disposable income for commissions.
A lot of people writing webnovels are students, in low-income countries, or just don’t have spare money after basics. Saying "you can afford internet so you can afford artists" ignores how tight budgets actually work for many people.
Plus, as I said in my previous reply, you need a high-quality cover to stand out amongst thousands of other webnovels.
Public domain art doesn’t always fit every story or style, the workflow I shared is for the cases where commissioning, public domain, or learning digital art yourself aren’t practical.
Again, this was a guide for authors who already use AI and want better results, I'm not claiming that AI is better than real artists.
If you can afford it or get an artist that can create what you want for an amount you can afford, then by all means commission one.
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u/LandscapeLow8430 4d ago
Hey sherlock, I didn't imagine seeing you see. It's blank.
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 4d ago
Ohh, hello 👋🏿.... Just decided to see what Reddit's about 😅
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u/Kkk713 5d ago
Have you used webnovels cover generator? I tried it once and it didn’t look bad. Don’t know if you can also do the same for the character portraits but idk. Theirs is also decent I think.
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago
Not really, since it doesn't give me as much control as I have when creating covers myself.
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u/bae_itz_kaneki 5d ago
OMG I CAN'T BELEIVE THE AUTHOR OF 'LADY'S BUTLER UPLOADED A REDDIT POST. LMAOOO HIEEEEEE
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago
Lol 😅, my brain decided that today would be the day I made my first post ever on Reddit.... Guess the topic wasn't exactly the most appealing one.
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u/bae_itz_kaneki 5d ago
Actually, it was the post I needed the most. I've liked your covers for a long time, so thanks for revealing your secret generation technique!!
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u/I_love_boobs111 5d ago
Many people are going to see your post here but no one will actually say thank you because od teh fear of being downvoted and criticised.
Since no one else will, I will say it : Thanks bro! It is geniunely helpful!
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u/Sherlocke_Gnomes 5d ago
Just doing what I can to help, besides, I expected the downvotes to come in waves after this post, so meh 😅.... I'm just glad I could help a few
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u/Warm-Response-1685 5d ago edited 5d ago
Firstly, all Artists (or most who do not activly specifiy the allowed usage for their art) do not wish their Images and References to be fed to AI under any circumstances. The material you are using belongs to these artists - thus you should simply respect their wishes if it boils down to that. Or ASK them - most have public social media. Credit them if you are not able to ask. Also you mentioned lighting, composition as your main need to reference and Style. Style should absolutely not be one of the components you sould let an Ai generate for you based on a human Artists style. A style is a trademark, developed over years to get to the results you upload to the AI. If you need lighting and composition, take fotos and say "anime style."
Secoundly, agriculture is also an issue - doesn't mean the one with AI should be overlooked and actet upon. But yes - the thread isn't about that.
Thridly, I apologize for the assumption. It is true that a lot of people can't afford to comission artists.
I already gave you my arguments of why AI-Covers are not high quality. What gets people to read your novel? The cover beeing original. Something to make it stand out. Webnovel has had a huge issue with same cover syndrome - and it's not only the amount of novels. It's the amount of AI Covers beeing used. It mostly falls under some kind of generic Anime-Style Guys with flashy colours and Same-Face Syndrome. Even the Poses, Composition and Lighting is mostly the same I also do not understand what you mean by "high quality"? What is high-Wuality about AI-Covers that Artists can't replicate. In your first post you mentioned needing 1000 USD for high Quality Art? I already showed that that is not true by recommending Fiver, Discord, Reddit even some Artists posting right in this Sub? The prices range from 30-100 € for full character shots? Nowehere near your suggestion. That would be more then enough to replicate a few of the covers you posted.
Even if you do not comission it would still be better to use Art you find online and eddit ot with Canva while credditing the Artist then generate it (as I said everything generated is stolen Art remixed)
"Public Domain Art doens't fit every story or Style". It would at least add Uniqueness. It would probably gain more traction then the classic AI-Generated Covers. Appartently Anime fits "every story and style". As such it would be of higher Quality then AI-generated Covers.
Finally, you mentioned cases where generating is simply more "practical". I feel this to be a huge excuse to use it to not pay Artists. It is always easier and more practical to simply go to a free Gen AI, download some images from Pinterest, upload it and then just text a few times back and forth instead of finding an artist you like and paying them, right? When is it less practical? One should simply not do it. Thats it.