Amandine Leblanc is a French AI designer working under the name Studio 13 Mai, with a practice built around Midjourney, Luma, and Flora. In the interview that follows, she speaks candidly about her artistic background, her sources of inspiration, and her own reservations about AI. Her work moves freely between photography, painting, and illustration, carrying a style that’s warm, at times intimate, shaped by a sensitivity to fashion, interior architecture, and emotion in general.

She thinks of her studio as an image factory, one that doesn’t replace artists. “We help make the beautiful and the impossible. To create where the camera stops. Between visual craft and AI, Studio 13 Mai builds sensitive, recognizable worlds.” Here, every image becomes a fragment of imagination.

Discover more of her creative world in the interview below.

Could you introduce yourself?
I’m Amandine Leblanc, AI creative artist under the name Studio 13 Mai. I spent 14 years as an interior architect, and in 2025 I pivoted toward AI image creation, art direction, and digital products.

At one point I watched my client base start eroding — like a lot of people’s did. I needed to find an alternative, and seeing AI advancing so fast, I told myself: better to catch the train than watch it go by — though without much conviction at first. It was when I learned Midjourney that something clicked: the way I see the world, and everything I’d had to sweep under the rug, could suddenly come to life as an image, right there, in one click. AI became the interpreter of my world.

It’s now been a year and a half that I’ve been working with imagery across fashion, luxury, architecture, and illustration.

I use it in a fully professional context, not as a hobby: brand partnerships, digital products, art direction for clients.

The tools I use most: Midjourney, Flora AI, Luma, and Runway.

My method / the habits that might surprise people: I build my images the way a painter builds a canvas. I managed to teach Midjourney exactly what I wanted, and it now knows what I want. A prompt like “woman, natural look” will typically come out in an art direction that’s entirely mine. Never any outside influence in my work — no inspiration boards, no reference photos…

Where do you get your inspiration from?
My inspirations are personal, most of the time — my own life, really, 45 years of it! My native Burgundy, the cities I’ve lived in, the 80s of my childhood, museums, nature, architecture, films. Everything inspires me.

I can spend hours scrolling, but I think cinema is what inspires me most. Most of the time I create in instinctive bursts… I get an idea, test it in Midjourney, and I keep testing until I feel something. No moodboard, no Pinterest board dedicated to inspiration… it’s really more like a hit of ideas to satisfy. (No, I’m not addicted at all, haha!)

What advice would you give to someone just starting out today?
The first piece of advice I’d give: don’t try to copy a style, try to transpose what you already know how to do. My edge was never technical mastery of the tool. It’s 14 years of visual culture and a sense of composition, simply plugged into a new medium.

If I had to start over: I would have started sooner!

A mistake I’ll admit to: I jumped into a training program that wasn’t right for me. I ended up learning more on my own than through any training center. When you don’t know what to expect, it’s not easy to know where to go.

An unexpected tip on tools/methods: once you understand how one AI works, you very quickly know how to use all of them!

On building a social media presence: I’m not sure I’m the right person to give advice — I don’t have a huge following, more on LinkedIn than on Instagram. But I’d say: post a lot. Five times a week, in my case.

Advice I wish I’d received sooner: nothing is impossible!

One more thought
I’ll admit I’m genuinely torn between this technological future and its impact on the jobs it’s making disappear, as well as on the environment. It’s a balance we need to find, and fast.

I do want to highlight that I’ve found a truly fantastic AI artist community. Kind, and full of sincerity. I’m deeply grateful for it.

Instagram: studio_13_mai
Linkedin: Amandine Leblanc-Hamel