Portland family brings magical creatures to life in Oregon forests

PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) - Beautiful images of fantastical woodland creatures deep in the forests of Oregon are captivating a lot of people, and a local family is behind the magic.

Rob Brooks, with help from his twins Asher and Julian, creates the magical creatures by just a simple click of a camera and a dash of artificial intelligence.

The twins have a desire to explore all things outside, and seeing the world through the eyes of his kids is helping Rob unlock a childhood passion of his own.

“I’ve been documenting these little dudes as long as they’ve existed. Always been into making thing, woodland creature sculptures, illustrations things like that,” he said. “I always wanted to create critters and creatures for movies.”

Rob’s creations are so real-looking people are coming out to the woods and searching for them, themselves.

“Ultimately what people respond to is this endearing quality of the kids in nature, experiencing nature through their eyes, but then this sort of whimsical ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ touch of the storyline,” said Rob.

Rob uses artificial intelligence to create the creatures. He says the new technology gets a bad reputation but he’s finding inspiring ways to merge AI with art.

“There’s been a lot of anxiety and doom and gloom about what AI will do to the creative industry,” he said. “I started getting the idea, ‘How can I combine this thing that AI makes with the art I can make? How can I bring the two worlds together?’”

To do that, Rob tells Midjourney, the AI program on his computer, exactly what kind of bizarre brutes he wants to see.

“You talk to a bot and it spits out an image,” he said. “When I was first using it, I was having really crummy results. As I got better, I started to blend sasquatches with elks and things like that, and I got better results.”

After countless hours of trial and error, Rob figured out his own unique AI equation that generates these one-of-a-kind fantastical friends. Then, he brings his AI innovations to our world.

With tremendous attention to detail, Rob edits the monsters into his photos, manipulating and matching their textures and colors. The end result looks incredibly real.

To view more of the photos by Rob, check out his Instagram page here.

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