As a developer, I usually hit a wall when it comes to the "visual" side of my projects. I can write the backend logic in my sleep, but asking me to design a mascot or a consistent set of header images? Nightmare.
I spent a few months messing around with Midjourney, but I kept running into the same issue: Randomness.
I would generate a great "hero" character for the landing page. But when I tried to generate the same character for the "About Us" page or a loading screen, it looked like a completely different person. The seed consistency just wasn't there for production-level assets.
The Fix: ControlNet & Reference Locking
I recently started experimenting with OpenArt, specifically because it exposes ControlNet parameters in the UI.
For those who haven't used Stable Diffusion locally, ControlNet allows you to:
- Pose Lock: Take a stock photo and force the AI to copy the skeleton/posture.
- Face ID: Upload a reference face and keep it consistent across different prompts.
It’s basically "Git for visual assets"—you can finally version control a character's look.
The Workflow
Instead of rolling the dice on prompts, my workflow now looks like this:
- Sketch a rough wireframe (literally stick figures).
- Use the "Sketch-to-Image" feature to render the layout.
- Apply a "Face Lock" to ensure the mascot matches my other pages.
I did a full breakdown of this workflow, including a look at the API limits and credit costs compared to other tools. If you are an indie hacker trying to ship faster, this might save you a few hundred bucks on design assets.
👉 Read the full technical breakdown and review here
It’s helped me ship my last two landing pages about 3x faster. Let me know if you guys are using any other tools for asset consistency!
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