As a long-time fan of Harry Potter, one character has always stood out for me—Hermione Granger. Her intelligence, bravery, and loyalty made her a favourite for many fans, and I’ve always admired her for those traits. Recently, I decided to see how modern AI tools could create portraits of Hermione, bringing her to life in a new way.
Using AI to Create Hermione’s Portrait:
I started experimenting with AI tools to see if they could generate portraits of Hermione Granger. At first, I used a very simple prompt: “Create a portrait of Hermione Granger in biblical painting style.” The result was fine, but it didn’t really capture her character. She looked like Hermione, but the expression and overall feel didn’t show what I wanted.
So, I changed my approach. I made the prompt more specific: “Create a dignified portrait of Hermione Granger, with an intelligent and determined expression, wearing Gryffindor robes and in an European castle background.” This improved the result significantly. The AI was able to create a better image, with her robes in the right colours and a look on her face that matched her personality more closely, however the background wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Moreover, the character in the image was quite different from how I image Hermione Granger, more specifically Emma Watson.
Next, I went even further by adding more detail. I asked for “a highly detailed and photorealistic portrait that looks like Emma Watson and has a backdrop in Dubrovnik, Croatia” and described things like her hair, robes, and expression in great detail. This resulted in the best image yet, with the AI producing a much sharper and lifelike portrait with the exact backdrop I wanted. While, it wasn’t exactly Emma Watson, the hairstyle and the looks were much closer to what I wanted.
Looking Critically at AI-Generated Art:
While I was happy with how the portraits improved, there were still some things the AI couldn’t quite get right. No matter how detailed my prompt was, the portraits sometimes missed certain aspects that make Hermione who she is. Some images made her look too serious or cold, not showing the warmth and spark that we know from the movies and books.
Another issue was that I didn’t have complete control over the results. When I added more details to one part of the portrait, other parts would sometimes change in unexpected ways. It made it harder to get everything exactly how I wanted it.
Conclusion:
Overall, AI tools like Leonardo and DALL-E can create amazing portraits and bring characters like Hermione Granger to life. They are capable of quickly generating various images based on our prompts, making it easy to explore different ideas and styles. Also, many of the results generated are visually stunning and can capture attention right away.
However, these tools aren’t perfect and often struggle to convey the subtle emotions and personality traits that make a character truly memorable. For instance, Hermione sometimes appears too serious or different from how I imagine her. Additionally, when trying to adjust one part of the image, other aspects can change unexpectedly, making it challenging to achieve the perfect result.
Thus, while AI-generated images are fun and impressive, they still can’t fully replace the human touch needed to create exactly what you want. After all, even the brightest spells can’t replace the magic of a human touch!
Appendix –
Other prompts I tried for fun:
