Illustration Instructions

It's common to want to influence the illustrations that IW provides. Though these are taken care of by a separate image-generation AI, the prompts to that AI are written by the storytelling AI. Therefore we can provide instructions to guide the storytelling AI in providing these prompts.

Illustration Prompt Control

The AI outputs certain variables for the different parts of the illustration prompt. You can however give the AI additional instructions on how to write these variables, in order to control your images. Note that best results are achieved using the correct variable names (especially for the different prompt variables) though the AI does understand that "the illustration subject" is the same as "illustrSubject".

Illustrating the Player Character

By default, IW tells the AI not to illustrate the player character to prevent it from doing so all the time. However, this means that it is very rare, even when it would be appropriate - for example, taking an action to "look in the mirror" often results in an illustration of a mirror, rather than the character themselves.

Thankfully, influencing this can be as simple as

Always set the illustration subject to be my character.

This is not usually desirable, since the AI will now never (or rarely) illustrate anything else. However, it is easy enough to specify situations under which the illustration subject should be changed - for example:

Set the illustration subject to be my character whenever I change my appearance significantly, examine my own appearance, or look in the mirror.

This can also be used in Storyteller mode if you wish to see your character just for one turn (though this can influence the written output too, often causing it to focus more on a description of the character's appearance).

Further Prompt Control

We can achieve finer control over images by giving the AI specific instructions about one or more of the illustration prompt variables.

For example:

Whenever Bob is the illustration subject, always append "bright purple fedora hat" to illustrClothes

This is unlikely to be a practical prompt as it will now always cause Bob to be illustrated wearing a purple hat even if, in the story, he takes it off. However, you can also give guidance rather than strict rules to the AI, such as:

Whenever Bob is the illustration subject, always include detailed descriptions of any hat or headgear he is wearing in illustrClothes

Understanding Character Images

For some advanced uses of illustration instructions, it is necessary to understand how IW handles character illustrations.

The storyteller AI is not aware of prior prompts for any characters. Whilst it is likely to be aware of their appearance from the story, IW does not know which character it may wish to illustrate in advance of any given turn, and therefore would only be able to provide past prompts if it provides illustration details for all characters, which would greatly increase cost.

Instead, IW separately keeps track of illustration details and the storyteller AI merely chooses the subject. In addition, it writes a variable "illustrAppearanceChanges" which details any changes to the character's appearance this turn. Then, a secondary AI merges these changes into illustrAppearance (if this is the first time a character has been illustrated, the storyteller AI will write illustrAppearance from scratch). Clothes are handled similarly but differently: instead, the main AI sets illustrClothesChanged to be true when the clothes are changed, and then rewrites the entirety of illustrClothes. This is to prevent "drift", where the AI might write different prompts each turn, causing in much greater image variance. This way, the AI only changes the prompt if something has actually changed.

However, this has several implications:

• If the AI fails to set illustrClothes, clothes will conversely not update when they should
• Because prompts are stored by character, and characters are organised by name, if the AI uses a different name as illustrSubject it can result in a different appearance for that character
• The AI is generally poor at capturing changes that didn't happen this turn (or, at best, very recently). Therefore a character who leaves and re-enters the story may get stuck with an old appearance even if changes have happened in the interim.
• IW can be poor at handling temporary transformations; changes will be applied, but it has no good way to reverse them (and generally the main AI is poor at filling out illustrAppearanceChanges when someone "changes back" as this is less obvious to it).

Consequently, some worlds may want to pay special attention to this process and give the AI extra guidance or support. The most notable example would be worlds in which one or more characters frequently flip between multiple appearances (where this applies to illustrAppearance rather than just illustrClothes) - for example, superhero games, or anything where a character has some kind of alter-ego or shapeshifting. In this case there are two main options:

• Tell the AI to use different illustrSubject names for different forms. This works best when the appearances are very different.
• Tell the AI always to use the same name but give it additional guidance on how and when to fill out illustrAppearanceChanges.

In extreme situations, you may need to track appearance details yourself with one or more dedicated tracked items.

This system can be bypassed by using a unique name for the illustration subject each turn (for example, by prepending the turn number). This allows illustrAppearance to be regenerated every single turn, which prevents "sticky" appearances but risks drift. If doing this, you may need to give more explicit instructions about building image prompts, and/or track appearances yourself.

Multiple Characters

By default, IW will illustrate single characters, or scenes. With Flux and earlier models, multi-character images were possible but less reliable. The introduction of newer image models have made more complex and detailed images more possible.

By default, the IW storyteller AI will attempt to include secondary characters in images, but doesn't do a very good job. Unfortunately, the IW storyteller AIs do not seem to understand writing prompts for image AIs, and one specific case of this is that they will often refer to story elements such as additional characters in ways that require additional context, for example by name with no further description. This may also be exaccerbated by a desire for conciseness.

For example, it is not uncommon to see prompts in expressionposition or setting of the form

Standing next to Alice

Unsurprisingly, however, the image AIs do not know who "Alice" is in this situation and will either ignore this or draw a generic additional figure but without knowing their actual appearance. This commonly results in "clones" (where the secondary character has the same appearance as the primary) or mangled images.

In order to achieve better multi-character images it is necessary to instruct the AI to provide full descriptions for additional characters, instead of brief references. This is usually a more complex endeavour and the exact approach may vary based upon any other illustration instructions you may be using, but incorporating a set of instructions such as the following will encourage more thorough illustrations:

Include details of any additional characters present in the image:
* If primary subject is a character: Put extra character details in illustrSetting or illustrExpressionPosition, NEVER illustrAppearance
* Write full descriptions as normal for characters (including age, hair colour, clothes, etc - omit ONLY what cannot be seen)
* Do NOT use names, pronouns, meta references
* Do NOT refer to any additional characters (e.g. "the prisoner", "a figure") without providing full descriptions
* Include details of relative positions and poses
* This supersedes any desire for conciseness

Note that doing so risks drift - any secondary characters will have their descriptions written on the fly by the storyteller AI, and will not be based on the cached appearances tracked by IW (see above). However as secondary characters have less focus and are only included sometimes, this tends not to be a problem often.