This post was first published on our Patreon.
A lot has happened since June 2021 when we started this adventure together. The team wants to sincerely thank you for your support, and we look forward to continue working hard to make AI storytelling the best it can be.
Due to a little breather in our schedule right now we decided to give the Patreon some much needed attention to give you some insight for the artwork you see in and around NovelAI. Some of you may remember that shortly after the Beta launch we added our GPT-J 6B AI Model Sigurd, and hosted a fanart contest in celebration of his addition:
The “Sigurd NovelAI Art Contest.”
Create a piece of art inspired by our model, “Sigurd.” Whether that be your own visualization of such a legendary hero and how he assists you during your adventures in NovelAI, an artistic rendition of his likeness, or whatever else comes to mind! You may also use whichever medium you see fit to create your own masterpiece. Everyone had about a weeks time to create their masterpieces. We’ve had many unique and fun entries, and we loved the many faces of Sigurd. It definitely was a difficult choice to select a winner!
One submission stood out the most and Klein’s rendition of Sigurd won the contest. His vision has been Sigurd’s face ever since.
You may have seen or conversed with our SigurdBot in the previous #talk-to-sigurd (now #talk-to-nai) Discord channel of our official NovelAI Discord. The icon we use for him there is the same as the AI Model image we’ve added in the UI overhaul back in the NovelAI’s Six Month Anniversary Update.
There are so many neat little details in Klein’s vision of Sigurd: The Jax arms representing the GPT-J model “Jax” nickname, the old NovelAI logo adorning on the belt that started many an argument and last not but least a dragon skull evoking the legend of the heroic Sigurd the dragon killer.
When we created the model names we hadn’t planned on giving them visual representations, however once we saw the amazing work created by our community pop up we thought it would make a fantastic way to involve our users in shaping a part of NovelAI. Around the same time as the contest we saw a few absolutely stunning model renditions by TarmIllustrates pop up on social media as well as our Discord #art channel. The team instantly fell head over heels with TarmIllustrate’s work and we sought permission to use his absolutely gorgeous Calliope artwork for our AI model soon after.
Tarm created amazing fanart of Sigurd and Calliope despite the fact that our CalliopeBot never got out of her containment to join the official Discord. If you’ve never visited the #talk-to-nai channel before we highly recommend it, the chatbots can be wildly entertaining.
You can find Tarmillustrates work on Twitter, ArtStation, Instagram and Tumblr. He’s created a whole flurry of NovelAI inspired works, of both the models, NAIchan and even a few pieces based upon our starter scenarios! To finish off this artsy blog post we’ll leave you with a funny rendition of the brainblast command that resets the chat bots in our Discord — We really hope it’s not as jarring for them when we do that…
Once again, thank you so much for your support.
We can’t wait to see you in part two of “The faces of NovelAI’s AI Models: Part 2”
