Midjourney Fast Hours

In this final episode of 2025, Drew Brucker and Rory Flynn zoom out to dissect what actually mattered this year across Midjourney, Nano Banana Pro, ChatGPT Image 1.5, Weavy, video models, workflows, and the uncomfortable truth about how fast all of this is moving.They unpack the real inflection points no one labeled at the time. Why March quietly changed everything. Why Nano Banana Pro rewired image editing expectations. Why Veo 3 reset video. Why Midjourney still feels magicalWhy workflows (not models) are becoming the real creative advantage.Along the way, they spiral into mood boards, personalization hacks, node-based systems, AI video limitations, why Hollywood feels creatively bankrupt, how Grok quietly became a research weapon, and why Midjourney’s next move might determine whether it stays an artist’s playground or becomes a professional tool.It’s opinionated. It’s nerdy. It’s honest. It’s occasionally unhinged.And it’s the clearest snapshot of where AI creativity actually stands heading into 2026.If you’re trying to keep up, slow down, or figure out where to place your bets next year, this episode is your unfair advantage.---⏱️ Midjourney Fast Hour00:00 – Episode 60 kickoff and end-of-year reflections01:50 – From niche experiment to mainstream behavior04:00 – AI finally reaches non-technical families06:18 – Why working solo in AI can feel isolating09:03 – Music, creativity, and early signs of AI music adoption11:02 – How fast AI actually shipped in 202512:14 – 100+ major releases and why that number matters13:01 – The real start of image editing workflows14:46 – March 2025 was the quiet inflection point16:06 – Multi-modal chat changed prompting forever19:20 – Veo 3 and why video suddenly jumped ahead21:41 – Why Google quietly dominated 202523:00 – Why hype cycles now last 48 hours23:51 – Nano Banana Pro and precision image control26:02 – Grok as a real-time research engine27:49 – Why physics in AI video finally started working29:12 – Nodes, workflows, and why visualization matters30:26 – Why Nano Banana Pro felt like “AGI for images”31:26 – Will 2026 move even faster?32:25 – Release cadence, VC pressure, and reality checks34:03 – Images vs video: who’s actually ahead36:18 – Why Grok might be the sleeper winner38:36 – Data, platforms, and why distribution matters41:28 – Consolidation and acquisitions are coming44:14 – What Midjourney must do next45:23 – Image editing as the make-or-break feature48:43 – Workflow fatigue and creative burnout52:50 – Personalization, mood boards, and creative joy56:44 – Why mood boards drove the best work of 202559:12 – Personalization profiles vs mood boards01:00:43 – Why Midjourney still feels different01:02:27 – Scale, permutations, and professional use cases01:06:36 – Resolution, editing, and real production constraints01:10:22 – Why small failures still matter01:13:00 – Hollywood, creativity, and AI backlash01:17:17 – Why creators beat platforms01:22:25 – Audio and voice as the next bottleneck01:23:55 – Constraint-driven prompting in 202601:30:14 – Looking back at January vs now01:38:23 – Final predictions and advice for 202601:42:34 – Season two wrap and sign-off

Drew and Rory stumble back from the holiday chaos—one fresh off vacation, the other barely resurrected from a mystery NYC illness.Between fever dreams and booger fingers, they somehow manage to tear into ChatGPT's Image 1.5 disappointment, expose why Nano Banana Pro is quietly dominating their workflows, and reveal the Weavy automation setup that's actually working (while FreePik continues its reign of mediocre terror). The duo gets brutally honest about why OpenAI feels like it's slipping, why negative prompting might be more important than what you actually want to create, and how to build your own custom AI tools in Google AI Studio without selling your soul to another subscription. Plus: vintage Kodak rally cars, the art of perfect thumbnails, coconut water in cocktails, and why their illness prevention protocols involve more vitamin C than common sense. If you survived their holiday absence and made it through the mandatory 20-minute ramble tax, you'll be rewarded with legitimate workflow gold that actually ships.---⏱️ Midjourney Fast Hour00:01 A Mr. Sniffles cold open05:18 Prompting while sick, then getting cooked on X07:35 An “Am I an AI artist?” reality check15:08 Moodboards, unsettling styles, and “what counts as art”27:39 Blade, Pluribus, and movie still inspiration sites31:42 Midjourney V8 quiet, Style Creator alpha changes37:45 The pace of releases and tool fatigue40:37 World models, Veo 3, and the next leap43:28 ChatGPT Image 1.5 talk and why it’s still behind46:12 Nano Banana Pro flex, Freepik waits, and why it matters49:17 Weavy workflow walkthrough: from ref to shot list55:26 Contact sheets, “mini LoRA” vibes, and system rules59:14 Kling o1 keyframes: why 3–10 seconds is a cheat code01:03:32 Real text and brand risks in outputs01:06:52 Build your own Nano tool in Google AI Studio01:08:01 Writing models: ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude01:09:23 Negative prompting becomes the main event01:11:25 Wrap, thumbnails, and holiday chaos

Rory and Drew celebrate crawling their way to 30k subs, then immediately prove they are barely qualified to handle it by turning a Stranger Things binge into a full-blown lecture on composition, lighting, and how to reverse-engineer blockbuster shots into Midjourney and Nano Banana Pro prompts. They talk like film school dropouts who discovered prompts instead of lenses. From there, they unpack fresh Midjourney office hours: the upcoming UI/UX overhaul with continuous scrolling, better color control, a reworked style system, and the big one: parallel edit models that finally keep you inside Midjourney instead of forcing you into five other tools. They break down what “better text handling” could realistically mean for real-world client work, what to expect from Midjourney V8 training in January, and why business use cases will decide who actually wins this model war. Then it’s a long, dangerous slide into Nano Banana Pro obsession. They show how they are using it for real campaigns: ingredient flat-lay diagrams with perfect labels, knolling that actually respects object counts, thumbnail iterations in minutes, hyper-real food tweaks (“make the cheese more brown and bubbly”) and product work where text on bottles and labels actually holds up. Think: turning moodboards into branded cars, movie-poster typography onto existing art, and multi-shot car sequences that are clean enough to use as video keyframes. In the back half, they zoom out into systems: building custom Nano tools in Google AI Studio, using JSON prompts, if-then logic, and style libraries to create reusable pipelines for teams that are not prompt nerds. They rant about broken N8N workflows, fake Instagram “AI automation” grifts, and share where affiliate tools actually see conversions today across YouTube, X, and LinkedIn. It is part Midjourney V8 rumor mill, part Nano Banana Pro clinic, part therapy session for creatives trying to stay sane in an algorithm that clearly prefers trolls and evolving Pokémon. --⏱️ Midjourney Fast Hour00:00 Midjourney Fast Hours hits 30k subs01:28 Stranger Things S5, film craft & AI framing05:39 Turning cinematic shots into AI prompts07:33 Pop culture prompts, memes & brand tie-ins08:38 Nano Banana branding tricks & model hype cycle09:38 Midjourney swag, “non-sponsored sponsors”10:12 Midjourney UI overhaul & scrolling-style feed15:46 Midjourney edit models and in-app image editing20:16 Midjourney V8 timing, text handling & business use24:41 Midjourney vs other models for real client work26:47 Free image tools, casual users & competition30:57 Nano Banana Pro: real-world client use cases36:31 Micro edits, product shots & text stress tests42:33 Product versioning, depth tests & asset variants44:25 Car branding, moodboards & Nano video keyframes46:20 Polaroid race car branding & design details50:09 Building custom Nano tools in Google AI Studio55:21 Style libraries, handoff workflows & reverse prompts59:17 If-then logic for prompts, GPTs & image systems01:03:01 From tokens to full-blown image systems01:04:21 Instagram grifts, empty funnels & manychat rage01:05:15 Platforms that actually convert for AI tools01:06:38 Algorithm chaos, Pokémon and death threats01:06:58 Midjourney swag, the Faye cameo & water bottle talk01:07:58 Future video model hype, skepticism & sign-off

Drew and Rory pull up to Episode 57 running on fumes and caffeine, only to get smacked in the face by one of the wildest AI weeks of the year. Midjourney drops two new features back-to-back like it’s nothing, Google drops Nano Banana Pro into the world like a nuke, and both guys are out here pretending they’re emotionally prepared (they’re not).They clown themselves for completely misusing Style Creator on day one, break down how user profiles actually work, and speculate on whether v8 is hiding the surgical editing tools everyone’s been begging for.Then the Nano Banana Pro segment hits and things get unhinged: micro-edits that used to take an hour now take a second, text layouts that look like a designer touched them, coherence hacks, refraction tricks, split-stack continuity workflows, and some examples from the community that genuinely feel illegal.If you’re trying to stay ahead in Midjourney, Gemini, or AI creative workflows in general, this episode is basically the “don’t-get-left-behind” starter pack.---⏱️ Midjourney Fast Hour 00:00 – Cold open + Thanksgiving chaos01:16 – Stream kickoff + why this week exploded01:47 – Midjourney drops two features in two days02:23 – First reactions to Style Creator04:52 – How Style Creator confuses everyone at first06:18 – Refining styles + the 5–15 refinement rule07:40 – Style history, safety nets, and code tracking08:36 – Eliminating style-drift anxiety09:25 – What Style Creator still gets wrong10:21 – Smart Search wish-list + missing features11:29 – Does refinement actually improve downstream results?12:15 – Style Creator verdict: fun, but who needs it?13:26 – Ending sessions + saving yourself from randomness14:38 – Style Creator wrap-up15:08 – Midjourney user profiles deep dive17:34 – Spotlight, archive, and profile curation18:43 – Private vs stealth vs public image management20:47 – Social linking + hopping across profiles22:52 – Portfolio potential + what’s still missing27:22 – The V8 conversation: what MJ still owes creators29:50 – The editing limitations everyone wants fixed30:24 – Nano Banana Pro enters the chat31:57 – Google’s naming chaos (again)32:53 – Nano Banana Pro’s first real test: auto-summarizing video35:30 – Split-stacks, keyframes, micro-sequences41:34 – Refraction, distortion, and text-on-glass tricks45:35 – Micro-editing breakthrough examples48:33 – Best platforms for running Nano Banana Pro50:13 – Gemini Studio vs Weavy workflows52:13 – Multi-step layouts: text + objects + composition55:18 – Design briefs, ingestion, and real client examples57:57 – Why every team now needs a Nano Pro person01:01:02 – The “segment anything” Meta update + VFX workflow talk01:03:00 – Minority Report future of editing01:04:20 – Feeling behind while the internet shows off01:05:40 – Lighting setup extraction examples01:06:04 – Thanksgiving scheduling + next week’s plan01:06:35 – The “full sprint” AI moment01:07:19 – Outro

Drew and Rory start with eyeball horror, Stranger Things hype, and the idea of AI-powered contact lenses before stumbling straight into the real mind-melt: Midjourney, Grok Imagine, Mystic 3, and Flux all colliding in one episode. They roast their own prompts, trigger an accidental NSF-DoubleU moment live inside Grok, argue about “flux face,” and still somehow manage to pull out real, practical tips for people trying to make better AI images without losing their minds.Across an hour of chaos, they unpack Midjourney v8’s subtle shifts, hidden personalization signals, Style Explorer tricks, Smart Search shortcuts, Grok’s Sora-style infinite feed, Mystic 3’s scary-good skin detail, and why Midjourney still owns lo-fi, lived-in, “shot-on-a-phone” energy. If you care about composition, cinematic ratios, editorial portraits, food realism, or just want to hear two people dunk on Flux and node editors while actually teaching you something, this one hits.Listeners will come away knowing how to use stills archive for composition, when to skip upscales for more analog realism, how Grok Imagine’s image + video workflow really behaves, and where Mystic 3 can replace Midjourney in a serious portrait or product stack.--⏱️ Midjourney Fast Hour0:00 Intro, eyeballs, and a Friday brain check2:05 Contact lens horror stories, Mission Impossible, Black Mirror eyes3:07 Stranger Things Season 5 hype and binge vs weekly TV4:51 Movies, biopics, sports docs, and couch season setting in6:23 Cowboys documentary, sports pipelines, and TV as passive story feed7:00 AI overload, nobody keeping up, and why this pod exists8:30 Midjourney profiles, Style Creator, and new personalization talk9:29 Like/dislike buttons as hidden training data and 7:3 aspect ratio love10:35 Stills Archive, cinematic framing, and cleaner compositions12:00 Style Explorer vs old-school SREF and what quietly vanished13:16 Three under-the-radar Midjourney Smart Search + right-click + Option-upscale tweaks15:35 V8, fewer wall-of-text prompts, and a move toward visual controls18:12 First look at Grok Imagine’s interface and infinite scroll feel19:35 Sora-style endless bottom feed, variants, and “make video” in Grok22:51 Cinematic looks, color grading, and Grok as “idea and curate” engine24:19 Live NSFW surprise inside Grok Imagine and instant rating change25:23 Finding Grok history, stills, and video exports with sound26:31 Who actually gets Grok video and Drew’s first real reaction to using it27:38 Mystic 3 enters the chat and upscaling less for analog vibes29:02 Why “too sharp” screams AI and how grain + smart detail saves realism30:18 Outpainting, editing, and why Midjourney still wins surgical compositing35:01 Mystic 3 V3 screen-share and first impressions35:45 Editorial portraits, skin detail, eyelashes, and hands that finally look human37:26 Mystic 3 model comparisons: Zen, State-of-the-Art, and weird description blur39:16 Zooming all the way into pores, fingerprints, and micro skin texture43:44 Cocktail and food prompts where Mystic falls behind Midjourney50:05 Nano Banana 2 rumors, native 4K wishes, and how Midjourney might respond50:58 Why Midjourney still rules lo-fi, disposable camera, and Polaroid-style shots52:16 Grok Imagine vs Flux vs Midjourney for lived-in Y2K flash photos53:39 Flux face, direct flash tests, and “go flux yourself” is born55:30 Nodes, Grok workflows, and why scrolling is faster than wiring graphs56:01 Why Midjourney is avoiding node-based interfaces on purpose57:05 Final sendoff: go flux yourself and get out of here