After seeing Dave over at Dave’s Gaming experimenting with GPT Styles, I thought I’d do the same. The Raccoons will be adventuring in the Fey Realm, and I wanted to experiment with art styles appropriate for that world.
So I gave the chat AI a basic outline of what I was trying to do, and asked it to suggest some art styles for me to try out. The basic request was just “Winny in the world of the Fey”, with various styles emphasizing mystery, whimsy, and danger.
Psychedelic Stained-Glass
ART STYLE
Psychedelic Stained-Glass Art Nouveau style mixed with 1970s pulp fantasy cover art. The entire scene features elegant, bold black ink outlines enclosing swirling, liquid-like gradients of color.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A medium shot focusing entirely on Winny standing in the wild outskirts of the Fey Wild. The background is a dense thicket of surreal flora where the tree roots, vines, and air currents loop and curve in hypnotically beautiful, whip-lash lines. The lighting is bright and high-contrast, casting a luminous, multi-colored display across the canvas as if daylight is filtering through a massive cathedral stained-glass window panel made of living emerald, magenta, and gold leaves.
This may be a winner right out of the gate. I really dig that look for a Fey adventure!
Luminous Scratchboard
ART STYLE
Luminous Scratchboard style mixed with 1980s dark pulp fantasy airbrush art. The medium relies on deep, heavy, velvet-black ink fields shattered by brilliant, self-radiant light sources.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A medium shot of Winny isolated in the deep, dangerous woods of the Fey Wild. The composition is cast in total midnight-black shadow work. The only illumination in the entire frame is intense, high-contrast bioluminescence emanating from the background: pulsing violet fungi, glowing neon-turquoise moss, and strands of amber light bleeding from cracks in ancient tree bark. This environment casts a sharp, vibrant neon rim-lighting along the edges of Winny’s black cloak, pointed hat, and thin profile, making her silhouette pop dramatically off the canvas.
Definitely a different and provocative style, but not quite what I wanted for this.
Impressionistic Palette-Knife
ART STYLE
Impressionistic Palette-Knife style inspired by the stylized background design work of Eyvind Earle. The environment is built out of thick, heavy, blocky paint strokes and sharp, geometric, faceted shapes.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A medium-wide shot of Winny stepping through a surreal, geometric grove in the Fey Wild. The background features perfectly vertical, flat, angular trees, while the bushes and forest canopy are rendered as sharp clusters of diamond-shaped color fragments resembling shattered crystal or fractured glass. The lighting is crisp and crystalline, with sharp, blocky sunbeams cutting down through the geometric canopy, casting angular teal and amber highlights onto the ground.
Not what I was going for here… but one to hold onto. That’s got some potential. Very sharp look.
Psychedelic Stained-Glass 2
ART STYLE
Psychedelic Stained-Glass Art Nouveau fantasy illustration inspired by Alphonse Mucha. The entire scene is defined by elegant, sweeping black ink outlines enclosing vibrant, smooth color gradients.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LAYING
A vertical medium shot of Winny standing inside a surreal fey forest. The environment is composed of hypnotic, whip-lash curves where tree roots and air currents loop dynamically like liquid vines. The lighting is high-contrast and graphic, filtering through the looping canopy in distinct panels of color like a medieval window cathedral, casting beautiful, patterned highlights across the ground.
This one has a lot of potential too. Similar to the first one, but I like the “storybook illustration” style it has going.
Ethereal Watercolor
ART STYLE
Ethereal Luminous Watercolor fantasy illustration. The environment features soft, bleeding pigment washes, wet-on-wet watercolor textures, and delicate ink splatters with no rigid hard edges.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny navigating a dreamlike, shifting fey realm. The background architecture and enchanted trees have soft, dissolved boundaries that seamlessly bleed into fluid mist clouds of lavender, soft rose, and pale gold. The lighting is an otherworldly, self-radiant ambient haze that emanates directly from the watercolor washes, creating a soft-focus, translucent glow that bathes the scene.
That’s a fun look too. Its what I wanted when I was doing the fey realm in Kingmaker, but the AI renderer wasn’t quite up to pulling it off consistently then.
Pop-Surrealism
ART STYLE
High-whimsy gothic pop-surrealism. Features ultra-smooth, porcelain-like airbrush shading, crisp pristine lines, and a deceptively sweet, pristine aesthetic overlaying an eerie, unsettling atmosphere.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny entering a deceptively perfect fey meadow. The lighting is soft, flawless, and pastel, resembling a pristine morning mist with a subtle, pearlescent shimmer coating the entire frame. The color palette relies on soft lavender, candy pink, and pale mint greens.
Something about that has a very strong “Dragon Magazine Cover Art” feel to it for me. Too sharp and “realistic” for this purpose, and the animals are too Disney. But fun.
Charcoal Filigree
ART STYLE
Dark fairytale fantasy illustration using heavy, smudged charcoal blocks contrasted by razor-sharp, fine-line silver-lead pencil work on heavy, dark-grained gray paper.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny isolated against an atmospheric fey thicket. The background is dominated by deep, velvety charcoal voids and soft, smoky smudged shadows that mimic a dense forest fog. The lighting is driven by impossibly bright, metallic silver lines that outline the environment, acting as a sharp, high-contrast rim-light reflecting off characters and objects.
That one really sells the “dark and dangerous” side of the fey. I hadn’t thought much about charcoal before, but its a really distinct look!
Wispy Pencil Wash
ART STYLE
Delicate ethereal pencil and watercolor wash fantasy illustration. Features very light, wispy, elegant pencil contours on rough, cold-press watercolor paper, layered under translucent, bleeding paint tints.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny moving through a dreamlike fey clearing. The lighting is an otherworldly, self-radiant ambient haze that washes over the scene, softening all hard edges. The color palette relies on translucent, bleeding washes of soft lavender, pale rose, and watery mint green that effortlessly blend into one another.
Man. That’s one’s an even better rendition of what I wanted for Kingmaker. That’s awesome!
Watercolor Splatter
ART STYLE
Dynamic watercolor expressionism. The environment features heavy pigment blooming, kinetic paint splatters, and organic watercolor drips traveling vertically down the canvas to show magical movement.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny caught in a volatile, shifting fey clearing. The lighting is intense and erratic, driven by vibrant, bleeding washes of electric magenta, teal, and gold that explode outward from the flora, casting brilliant, scattered highlights across the scene.
That’s another really striking one! Those vibrant colors are fantastic.
Wet-on-Wet
ART STYLE
Gothic fairytale watercolor painting using an extensive wet-on-wet technique on heavy, water-logged paper. Features soft, dissolved boundaries, bleeding pigments, and heavy pooling water-stains in the shadows.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny isolated inside a dense, foggy fey grove. The color palette is deeply saturated and moody, dominated by bleeding washes of midnight indigo, deep plum, and oxidized copper green. The ambient light is low and translucent, emanating softly from the wet washes to silhouette the characters.
That’s another good “dark fey” look. I may just have to vary the style a bit in different parts of the fey realm.
Granulating Pastel
ART STYLE
Ethereal luminous watercolor illustration utilizing high-granulation pigments that leave a fine, shimmering mineral texture on rough, cold-press paper. Features soft, clean pastel gradients and layered translucent washes.
COMPOSITION & ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING
A vertical medium shot of Winny entering a deceptively perfect fey meadow. The lighting is an otherworldly, self-radiant ambient haze that coats the entire frame in a pearlescent shimmer. The color palette relies on soft, luminous washes of lavender, pale rose, and watery mint green.
And another “soft, ethereal” look. Kinda like that one too.
So. I went in to this trying to settle on a style for the Fey Wild…. but not sure which one I’ll end up going with. A lot of good choices! And I still have several more to come up with as the Raccoons begin chasing across the multiverse!
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