As the NightCafé site is used by people from all over the globe, the site itself is not necessarily an example of Australian culture; however, it is a good example of a successful Australian enterprise, which is why it is being promoted here.
Australian content
There are many Australians on the NightCafé site, so there are plenty of examples of artistic creations related to Australia. There are also overseas art creators who have made Australia-related artworks. Additionally, there was a competition with the theme of “Australia” (see the Gallery view), which encouraged a lot of AI art to be made regarding Australia; and it’s possible that there may be more competitions in the future with Australian topics (such as kangaroos, koalas, Ayers Rock, etc.) — at least, we hope so.
Daily competitions
The NightCafé crowd run a daily competition, wherein a broad theme is given, users enter their artworks into the competition, the NightCafé community vote upon the entries, and the top scorers win credits.
The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners get some great bonuses, whilst those ranking in the top 5%, 10%, and 20% get some nice extras too.
Models (both free and credit-driven)
There a number of different art-creating “Models” which can be used to make your creations.
There are some free ones (currently Stable Diffusion 1.5 and DreamShaper v8), as well as some more advanced ones, which cost credits to use (for the latter, it generally costs one credit to make one image, but there are also some which cost 0.5, and one which costs 3).
Credits (including free credits)
You can earn free credits every day, in several ways. You get 5 credits just for logging into the site every day, 2 credits for voting on competition entries, and extra credits for reaching a variety of achievements and earning various badges (related to your activity and interconnectivity on the site).
There’s also the extra credits you stand to win if you decide to try your luck (or skill) in the daily competitions (which cost nothing to enter). So you can get at least 7 free credits per day (plus any extras which you may pick up).
If you want more credits, then you can buy them — that is not some kind of trick, as you can get a usable number of credits just by getting your freebies every day (and you can use the free Models). However, if you are seriously into creating artworks, then you might just want to pay for some extra credits — it’s well worth it, as can be seen by the number of people on the site with the “Pro” notation on their profile. But you can have some great fun making nice art on the site without ever paying a cent.
Examples of great art on NightCafé
If you want to look at some of the best artworks on the site, then have a look at their “Explore AI Generated Art” section, or check out the daily competition winners (see the links below).
The “No-Theme Thursday” competitions can be really good, as it’s a free-for-all of great art, so the Thursday competitions can showcase a lot of talent.
It’s not a perfect world
You should be aware that the AI art process is not perfect (which applies to all AI art sites on the internet). Hands and eyes can often be a bit tricky for some reason, and if you add text (such as if you include a banner or sign in your creation) it may not come out quite right (hopefully all of this will be rectified as AI art programming develops in the future).
Sometimes the AI can be a loose cannon, and you might not always get what you wanted (mind you, sometimes it makes some amazing things, just by accident).
However, the more you learn about the process, the more you can control it. Creating AI art is a learning process, and it may be worthwhile to visit the forums, see tutorials on YouTube, and ask other creators a bunch of questions, so you can become more skilled at making AI art.
Join NightCafé and try it out for free
If you are new to AI art, don’t let your lack of knowledge of AI techniques stop you from creating art on NightCafé — just jump in and try making some random artistic creations. It’s easy to type in some test prompt words (e.g. “kangaroo in the bush with the sun shining”), and hit the “Create” button.
If you make any images that you think are good, hit the “Publish” button, and show the world; if you don’t like some of them, then you can delete them or leave them in your folder unpublished.
There’s so much you can do on NightCafé, so go and give it a try!
NightCafé competitions
For the latest competitions, see the “Daily Challenges” section on NightCafé, which shows “Today’s Challenge” (notifying creators of the current competition) and “Yesterday’s Challenge” (where members can vote for the previous day’s competition); it also gives links to the results of the previous daily competitions.
Check out the previous competition entries:
NightCafé competitions, 400-500
NightCafé competitions, 301-400
NightCafé competitions, 201-300
NightCafé competitions, 101-200
NightCafé competitions, 1-100
You can see just how much the AI art technology has improved if you compare the earlier creations with the latest creations.
Related resources
NightCafé Studio, NightCafé site
Blog, NightCafé blog
Knowledge Base, NightCafé site
Feedback and Support, NightCafé site
Social media
NightCafe AI Art Official, NightCafé on Facebook
NightCafe Studio, NightCafé on Linkin.bio (site: Later)
nightcafestudio, NightCafé on Instagram
r/nightcafe, NightCafé on Reddit
nightcafestudio, NightCafé on Tik Tok
NightCafe Studio, NightCafé on X (ex-Twitter)
NightCafe Studio, NightCafé on YouTube
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