Midjourney Styles Exploration

I want to see how the stylize parameter changes the output of images that use a style. I'll need to pick a style and a test prompt that are dramatically different so that we can see the influence of stylize. My settings for all generations in this post are: model 5.2, stylize med, high variation.

I made a Midjourney style using a tuning prompt of marble statue, extreme close up 3bzOLbxi8zRh7er. To get a feel for the style, let's imagine something using the style.

Starting with a prompt for spaceship --style 1i2vlBNjS9jHhi

Spaceship

Okay, that's pretty neat. The style made spaceships that are toy-like and could be product photos. Colors are mostly muted earth tones or blues, with classic orange space suits.

To keep the same process from here on out, I'm going to add a seed to the prompts. That should mean consistent images if these prompts are rerun, even by someone else. Prompt spaceship --seed 3525904919 --style 1i2vlBNjS9jHhi

Seeded

Now onto the test. We need this dramatically different from the style's prompt so that we can see shifts in the output. Let's start with a prompt for gnome carrying fruit, comic style illustration, pen and ink watercolor --seed 3525904919

gnome

Okay, so we have some examples of a bearded humanoid with other distinctly fuit and veggie like items, in a medium that's definitely similar to an illustration using pen, paper, and watercolor. It seems to like to include a basket, use red fruit, and generally dress the figure in blue clothes and a red hat.

Let's apply the style with gradually increasing stylize parameters. Each of the following image's titles are stylization <number> parameter in the prompt gnomes carrying fruit, comic style illustration, pen and ink watercolor --seed 3525904919 --style 1i2vlBNjS9jHhi --stylize <number>. Based on the spaceship prompt with this style, I'd expect this trend towards action figure as the stylize parameter increases.

20

Right off the bat, we're losing some of the depth and backgrounds of the original, but we're gaining mushrooms and pumpkins?

160

It's starting to generate character pose references for our clearly sour subject. And we lost the blue clothes and quite a bit of pen detail. None of these strike me as fitting the "watercolor" medium.

300

Red fruit and mushrooms are out. Green fruit is in.

440

This is the first batch that resemble, to my eye, 3d models. The bottom right quandrant really has that feel, like a modeler is posing a couple character designs and exporting an art board.

580

720

We're getting a lot more variation in the figure at this point. I could vaguely see an argument that these are more character-based figures than the previous iterations.

860

1000

It kept the illustration theme throughout this journey but lost the watercolor traits. It didn't get to the point of making action figures with the invoked art styles. I would say that it applied the muted earth-tone colors with higher stylize numbers. Althrough I'm disappointed that this didn't get the stylization I was hoping for, the prioritization of the prompt details does make sense.

Midjourney doesn't need the --stylize parameter, so maybe we can roughly place the default amount of stylization.

Gnome prompt with unknown stylize level

That's surely between 20 and 160. I'd guess it would be about 100, and the Tune docs confirm it in the examples: --stylize 100 (default).

Let's explore some other prompts very lightly, and see what sorts of themes come through. All of the following use the same seed and style with --stylize 1000.

Spaceship

warlock extraterrestrial alien doing magic

anger

house on the hill

haunted

clock

festival

Rembrandt style oil painting

Lilypad, close up

Dice, ultra-detailed illustration

Futuristic house, hyperrealistic

Wow. Okay. So these all, pretty much without exception, kept the toy or model vibe. Clearly some modifiers work better with this style than others. "Close up" applied to the crafted work, not a "lilypad". "Ultra-detailed illustration" kept the detail but lost the illustration. "Hyperrealistic" applied to the idea of a toy. I've noticed this trend with modifiers in some other exploration, where some modifiers feel stronger than others and carry more influence. "Watercolor", "colorful", and "detailed" have always seemed to influence prompts more heavily than others.

How do the modifiers on the gnome prompt change the output?

gnome carrying fruit

gnome carrying fruit comic style illustration

gnome carrying fruit pen and ink watercolor

Without modifiers, we got what could be images of plastic models. A bit of the toy-look came through with the "comic style illustration" modifier, but none of it came through with "pen and ink watercolor". Overall, this was a neat little look into Midjourney's styles, when they work, and how to change their influence on prompts.