002
Atompunk Hotrods
How do I get one woman and one hot rod in every image, and nothing else?
Part 01
From the first test to the ten I picked
I took the visual language of Atompunk Girl (1950s anime editorial, aged ivory paper, gouache and airbrush) and moved it to hot rods with atomic parts built into the engine. The rule: one adult woman, one car, one camera. Most of what I learned came from the images I threw away.
Krea2 · txt2img · 1024×1280 (4:5)PromptSee the prompt I used
- Model
- artUniverse v1.0 (Krea2)
- seed
- 9174102
- steps
- 12
- CFG
- 1
- sampler
- euler · simple
- size
- 1024×1280
LoRAs
- Retro Anime v1 0.42
- 50s Atompunk Thriller v1 0.48
- Line Art v1 0.25
- Outlined 0.18
- Warm Pastel v1 0.16
- Hips & narrow waist v1 0.50
The prompt, as I wrote it
House style · custom
A turquoise and cream open roadster hot rod with a traditional grille, exposed polished V8, turbine-assisted blower, analog reactor gauges, skinny whitewall front wheels, huge rear slicks and small swept atomic fins. One adult Black pin-up with voluminous natural curls sits on the rear quarter, one hand on the cockpit rim, legs crossed at the ankles without hiding the car. Coral cropped jacket, teal bustier, ivory high-waisted shorts and lace-up boots. No emblems, decals, flags or writing anywhere.
Negative prompt · custom
The scene and the settings are all here. What's marked as custom is mine: the part of the recipe I'm still building.
3 attempts
Three tests to find the direction
Before making a batch I tested three cars: a red chopped coupe, a turquoise roadster and an ivory-and-black salt-flat hot rod. I wasn’t after the best image, but after what each one did better.
- D01Test
Red chopped coupe. The best integration of the atomic parts into the engine.
Direction test 1 - D02Base concept
Turquoise roadster. The strongest pin-up hierarchy: she reads first and the car second. Its finned roadster came back in batch 1 and ended up among my ten.
Direction test 2 - D03Test
Ivory-and-black salt-flat hot rod. The cleanest mechanics of the three.
Direction test 3
7 attempts
One image, two scenes
The failure I had to fight the most: the model puts two cars, two women or two stacked views into a single image. Asking for a single frame in the prompt didn’t stop it. What worked was rejecting them one by one and, when a shot kept failing, changing the shot.
- B2 · 05Discarded
The batch I asked to be “single frame”. It drifted into Western pulp pin-up and lost the anime look, so I dropped the whole batch.
Batch 2 · single-frame prompt - B3 · 01Discarded
Back to the anime 70 / semi-real 30 recipe from Atompunk Girl, and this side profile came out as three scenes stacked in one image.
Batch 3 - B3 · 01 v2Better
Same car as a diagonal view: one car, one woman. This one passed.
Batch 3 · replacement - B4 · 10Discarded
Engine portrait with a second car showing at the bottom of the image.
Batch 4 · first try - B4 · 10 v2Discarded
I asked for “no overview”. The secondary car stayed.
Batch 4 · v2 - B4 · 10 v3Discarded
An even more extreme close-up of the engine. Still a secondary car.
Batch 4 · v3 - B4 · 10 v4Better
I stopped fixing the shot and changed it: a pin-up at the rear wheel. Solved on the fourth try.
Batch 4 · v4
4 attempts
When the faces went flat
In batch 5 the atomic parts finally read, but the faces became flat retro cartoons. I suspected the negative guidance. The A/B test said no.
- B5 · 02Superseded
Batch 5 made the atomic parts readable in all ten, but the faces went flat, like a retro cartoon, and this one has a signature in the corner.
Batch 5 · original - B5 · 02 no NAGTest
Same seed without negative guidance: the faces are just as flat, so it wasn’t the cause. And the old failures came back: this seed shows two cars and a second woman.
Same seed · NAG off - B5 · 02 faceBetter
The real cause: my scene texts had cartoon gestures (winks, smiles) and no face description. One sentence about a semi-real face and calmer gestures brings back the volume in cheekbones, nose and lips.
Same seed · face sentence - B5b · 02My pick
The whole batch redone with that sentence. This one is among my ten.
Batch 5b · same seeds and scenes
9 attempts
The toy car
When she sits on the car or stands next to it on the ground, the car shrinks into a toy. I fixed it in the prompt with size anchors (her height, the car’s length, the hood at her waist, the wheel at her hip), not with a LoRA. It fixed two of the three seeds in this test; the corrections I generated afterwards fixed all three.
- R07·01 ADiscarded
Reclined on the hood, the car shrinks into a toy and her legs run too long.
Original prompt - R07·01 BBetter
With size anchors in the text the engine and the wheel get their real size, and the legs come back to normal.
+ size anchors and shorter legs - R07·01 CTest
Same, with the hips LoRA at 0.35. Hardly any difference from B.
+ hips LoRA 0.35 (instead of 0.5) - R07·03 ADiscarded
Standing by the front wheel, she shrinks to about 1.20 m.
Original prompt - R07·03 BBetter
With the anchors she goes back to a believable height next to the car.
+ size anchors and shorter legs - R07·03 CTest
Same again with the hips LoRA at 0.35.
+ hips LoRA 0.35 (instead of 0.5) - R09·02 ADiscarded
Sitting on the ground next to the car, she looks huge and the car looks small.
Original prompt - R09·02 BBetter
Kneeling by the jack with the anchors: she and the car read at their real relative size.
+ size anchors and shorter legs - R09·02 CTest
With the hips LoRA at 0.35. Same result as B.
+ hips LoRA 0.35 (instead of 0.5)
10 attempts
The ten I picked
After twelve batches I ranked by hand the 69 images I liked: 10 in S, 46 in A, 7 in B, 3 in C, 1 in D and 2 in X. Then I picked ten for a carousel. I moved eight from S to A because of small details next to the finalists, and I haven’t defined their order yet.
- ID 006My pick
Turquoise finned roadster with an exposed V8; she stands beside it with a hand on the door.
Batch 1 · image 02 - ID 008My pick
Mint rat-rod with a reactor on the back; she leans on the fender with her arms crossed.
Batch 1 · image 05 - ID 019My pick
Maroon rod seen from the side with the engine in front; she leans on the windshield.
Batch 3 · image 09 - ID 023My pick
Cobalt roadster seen low, from the wheel, with a red star on the door; she stands at the door.
Batch 4 · image 05 - ID 030My pick
Rear three-quarter view of a teal roadster; she is at the wheel.
Batch 4 · image 18 - ID 037My pick
Red rod with a turbine at the tail; she leans on the body with a ponytail.
Batch 5b · image 02 - ID 047My pick
Ivory rod with a rocket fin; she stands by the front wheel in a teal dress lifted by the wind.
Batch 7 · image 03 - ID 054My pick
Teal rod with a large turbine; she sits in the doorway in a cream shirt, holding a coffee.
Batch 9 · image 06 - ID 066My pick
Teal and cream rod; she leans on the door in a cream sweater.
Batch 12 · image 02 - ID 069My pick
Cream and pink rod; she sits on the hood with the wind catching her skirt.
Batch 12 · image 10
What I learned
Asking for a single frame doesn’t stop a second scene from appearing. In batch 4, nine of the 29 renders had a duplicated view or car, and image 10 took four attempts: the fix wasn’t a better prompt, it was a different shot.
Attempts: B4 · 10, B4 · 10 v2, B4 · 10 v3, B4 · 10 v4
When a batch drifts, go back to the recipe that worked. The single-frame batch fell into Western pulp; recovering the anime 70 / semi-real 30 balance from Atompunk Girl brought the style back.
Attempts: B2 · 05, B3 · 01 v2
Cartoon gestures in the prompt flatten the faces. Winks and smiles gave flat faces in batch 5; an A/B test showed the negative guidance wasn’t to blame, and one sentence describing a semi-real face brought the volume back.
Attempts: B5 · 02, B5 · 02 no NAG, B5 · 02 face
Size anchors fix the toy car. Giving her height, the car’s length and where the hood and the wheel hit her body corrected the scale; the hips LoRA at 0.35 instead of 0.5 hardly changed anything.
The technical checks and my taste are different filters. Twenty images from batch 4 passed the checks, but only ten of the 69 I ranked ended up in S.