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Julien Durand

AI artist · ComfyUI In-House Creative · Demon Road

Julien Durand aka Julien | MJM

The Los Angeles AI artist formerly known as MidJourney Man: a mechanical engineer by trade who builds ComfyUI workflows and animates Demon Road, a 90s-anime yokai saga whose episodes regularly pass a million views[1][3][5].

“Don't be afraid to challenge yourself and push through the difficulty at first. It's totally worth it.”[3]

Julien Durand, on learning ComfyUI
Also on AI LIVEPaul TrilloPaul Trillo, beside him on the panel at the first San Francisco ComfyUI meetup

julienai.artInstagram @julienaiartTikTok @midjourney.manYouTube @julienaiartX @JulienAIArtComfyUI workflowsMJM ArchiveFacebookThreadsLinkedIn

Live stats

views across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, rounded down
58M+[5][8][9]
Instagram followers
389K[4]
views across the works on this page
13M[5][8][9]
YouTube subscribers
1.32K[9]

As of 1 November 2026 · Instagram and TikTok read on 1 November 2026; YouTube refreshed weekly

01The short answer

Who is Julien Durand?

Julien Durand, who posts as Julien | MJM and was previously known as MidJourney Man, is a Los Angeles AI artist and digital creator and one of the In-House Creatives at ComfyUI[1][2]. A mechanical engineer by trade, he builds ComfyUI workflows for image and video and makes Demon Road, an AI anime series of yokai shorts whose reels have drawn more than 46 million Instagram views in 18 months[3][14][5]. He has 389,000 followers on Instagram and more than 670,000 across seven platforms[4][10][8].

Posts as
Julien | MJM (@julienaiart); TikTok @midjourney.man. Previously MidJourney Man[4][8][2]
Based in
Los Angeles[1]
Role
In-House Creative at ComfyUI, building and demonstrating workflows[1][29]
Background
Mechanical engineer by trade, and a photographer[3]
Known for
Demon Road, a 90s-anime yokai series; AnimateDiff restyles; 15 public ComfyUI workflows[14][43][1]
First render
His archive starts on 26 May 2023; his first YouTube Shorts, made with Deforum, date from February 2023[13][46]
Partners
Dell Pro Precision Ambassador and Adobe Firefly Ambassador, by his own site[2]

Page updated 1 November 2026 · 73 sources

02By the numbers

Julien in numbers

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads and X figures were read on 1 November 2026. YouTube figures refresh weekly. Every "+" figure is rounded down.

58M+ views across Instagram (latest 300 reels), TikTok and YouTube Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, November 2026[5][8][9]
46M+ views on his latest 300 Instagram reels, May 2025 to October 2026 Instagram, read with Sort Feed[5]
2.13M views on The Demon Queen 2, his most watched reel Instagram, 19 September 2026[6]
10 Instagram reels past a million views each among his latest 300, all from 2026 Instagram, November 2026[5]
389K Instagram followers, his most active platform by his own account Instagram, November 2026[4][3]
670K+ followers across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, X, YouTube and DeviantArt Seven platforms, November 2026[4][10][8][11][12][9][65]
12M+ TikTok views across the videos on @midjourney.man, with 501.8K likes TikTok, November 2026[8]
184K followers on his Facebook page, Julien AI Art Facebook, November 2026[10]
958 pieces in his public archive, from 26 May 2023 to October 2026 MJM Archive[13]
15 public ComfyUI workflows under his name on comfy.org Comfy Org[1]
15 Demon Road episodes in two arcs: The Lost Samurai (7) and The Battle of the Exorcist (8) YouTube and MJM Archive[15][69][13]
274K views on YouTube across his long videos and Shorts YouTube, refreshed weekly[9]

03Biography

The Julien Durand story

From engineer to MidJourney Man

Julien Durand describes himself as "a mechanical engineer by trade" who is "also a photographer": a tinkerer with an eye for what looks good, which he says is why he is "wired" for ComfyUI[3]. Comfy's own creator page puts it the same way: he approaches generative art "with a systems mindset", experimenting with nodes, pipelines and automation[1]. Alongside the art he works in engineering software, and his LinkedIn headline today is Dell Pro Max Ambassador[60].

He started with Midjourney. It was fun, he told Dell's Logan Lawler, but "too simple", and he went looking for the strange videos he was seeing online: first Disco Diffusion, then WarpFusion style transfer, then Deforum in Automatic1111, where he learned ControlNets[3]. His earliest YouTube Shorts, from February and March 2023, are Deforum pieces such as "Forest to city" and a set of robots[46][47]. The account on X dates from October 2022, and the first piece in his own archive is a WarpFusion test called "Neon Getaway", made on 26 May 2023[12][13].

The early handle stuck: for years he posted as MidJourney Man, and his TikTok is still @midjourney.man[8]. He has since moved to his own name. "I just go by Julien AI Art," he said in December 2025, adding that he has "never been affiliated with Midjourney"[3]. He now signs his work Julien | MJM[2].

Restyles and the AnimateDiff years

His breakthrough format was the restyle: someone else's action footage, run through WarpFusion and later AnimateDiff and given a new world. A downhill ride by @raha became a flight through an orange canyon; a GoPro clip of Jason Paul balancing on posts became a descent into a glowing city; a dub-plate session by the reggae artist Lutan Fyah turned slowly into painting[43][44][45]. Each credits the original filmer in the title.

ComfyUI took over when AnimateDiff arrived. "When I did fall in love in Comfy is when I started to see and hear about AnimateDiff," he said; the interface overwhelmed him on day one, then taught him how diffusion actually works, because "the complexity of Comfy... is its strength"[3]. AnimateDiff is the second most used tool in his archive, on 355 of 958 pieces, and his July 2024 short film DREAMS was his attempt to show what living in the latent space feels like[13][35].

I literally fell in love with the UI.

Julien Durand, on discovering ComfyUI[3]

Inside ComfyUI

He started sharing his graphs early. In March 2024 he and SuperBeastsAI released BeautifAI, an upscale-and-enhance workflow with a "Freedom" setting that controls how much new detail it invents[33]. He spoke on the panel at the first San Francisco ComfyUI meetup in January 2025 alongside Claire Xue and Paul Trillo, and was named as a speaker, as Midjourney Man, at the first official ComfyUI meetup in Los Angeles on 6 March 2025, with ComfyAnonymous joining remotely[27][28].

Comfy describes him as one of its In-House Creatives, and LinkedIn dates the role from March 2025[1][60]. He appears on Comfy's livestreams: he led the September 2025 session on ByteDance's USO model with Purz and Machine Delusions, and ran MiniMax H3 locally on the August 2026 Comfy Creatives Model Jam[29][30][31]. Fifteen workflows now carry his name on comfy.org, from AIrt MAchIne, which turns one image into a seamless loop from five LLM-written prompts, to a product-placement pipeline and an image-to-3D graph[1][22][24][25].

For AI on the Lot 2026, the Culver City conference run by FBRC.AI from 27 to 29 May, he built the workflows for its ComfyUI 101 workshop: six that build from Z-Image Turbo text-to-image up to a complete text-to-video graph, plus two bonus workflows, released for attendees to open and follow along[21][19][18][20].

Demon Road

In July 2026 the style changed again. The Lost Samurai, a ronin wandering a cursed Japan, opened what became Demon Road, "an AI anime series by Julien AI Art | MJM", drawn in the look of late 1980s and 1990s cel animation with Japanese dialogue and English subtitles[13][14]. The Battle of the Exorcist followed in August: Akane, an exorcist armed with paper ofuda, against a different demon each episode[14][66]. The Demon Queen, the Toll Master and the One-Eyed Samurai round out the cast[16][67][68].

It is the most watched work of his career. The Demon Queen 2 has 2.14 million views on Instagram, The One-Eyed Samurai 1.91 million, and eight Demon Road reels have passed a million[6][7][5]. His archive tags the episodes with Seedance for the animation and Topaz for the upscale, with OpenArt and Magnific on some[13]. On a Comfy livestream he called it "my samurai world that I love to do"[31].

I just pick one, try it, fall in love with it, stick with it, train some LoRAs, and then something else comes out.

Julien Durand, on new models[31]

The long-form room

YouTube is where he puts the long pieces: four-minute music videos such as Shadows in Stereo, made with Runway Gen-4, and Dark World, a liquid drum and bass visual with horned figures in neon clubs[37][40]. In 2026 they grew into albums. Liquid Soul Vol. 1 is 18 minutes of liquid drum and bass that he wrote and produced, with vocals generated in Suno; Drift - Bloom is 15 minutes of ambient he played on a Teenage Engineering OP-XY, "no AI music on this one". Both use visuals from an upcoming realtime Stable Diffusion tool by cerspense[41][42].

His most watched YouTube video is a tutorial: "Revive Images with Topaz Gigapixel 8", with more than 47,000 views[34]. He also builds small free tools, an aspect ratio calculator and a training-settings helper for ai-toolkit LoRAs, that run in the browser[59].

Partners and kit

His site lists him as a Dell Pro Precision Ambassador and an Adobe Firefly Ambassador and AI VIP, with creator-partner programmes at Topaz Labs, Kling AI, Runway, Magnific, Krea, Luma AI, Dreamina, CapCut, ArtCraft and Mago; his prints sell through The GOAT Wall Art[2]. Those are his own listings. Hardware has always been the limit: he built a PC "purely" to run Comfy, going from 30 seconds a frame on a Mac to a second or two, and in 2025 was rendering on a 24 GB RTX 4090 while waiting for a 96 GB Dell Pro Max[3].

04Career timeline

From Deforum robots to a demon saga

  1. 28 October 2022

    On X as MidJourney Man

    Opens the X account now called @JulienAIArt[12].[12]

  2. 26 February 2023

    First Deforum Shorts

    First Deforum Shorts

    "Forest to city" and a run of robots, made with Deforum in Stable Diffusion[46][47].

  3. 26 May 2023

    The archive begins

    "Neon Getaway", a WarpFusion test, is the first of 958 pieces in his archive[13].

  4. 2 December 2023

    Balancing Act

    Balancing Act

    A GoPro parkour clip restyled into a city of towers, one of his most watched restyles[44].

  5. 25 March 2024

    BeautifAI

    BeautifAI

    An upscale-and-enhance ComfyUI workflow made with SuperBeastsAI, shared on Civitai[33].

  6. 13 July 2024

    DREAMS

    DREAMS

    A short film about the waking dream of the latent space, made with AnimateDiff and Luma[35][13].

  7. Jan 2025

    First SF ComfyUI meetup

    On the panel with Claire Xue, Paul Trillo and the ComfyUI team[27].

  8. Mar 2025

    In-House Creative at ComfyUI

    Joins Comfy's creative team, by his LinkedIn[1][60].

  9. 6 March 2025

    First ComfyUI LA meetup

    Speaker, as Midjourney Man, at BLANKSPACES in Venice[28].

  10. 5 September 2025

    USO livestream

    USO livestream

    Walks Comfy's audience through ByteDance's USO model live[29].

  11. 4 December 2025

    Dell podcast

    42 minutes on ComfyUI with Logan Lawler on Reshaping Workflows[3].

  12. 2 April 2026

    Liquid Soul Vol. 1

    Liquid Soul Vol. 1

    An 18-minute liquid drum and bass album he wrote, with AI visuals in 4K[41].

  13. 27 May 2026

    AI on the Lot 2026

    Builds the eight workflows for the ComfyUI 101 workshop in Culver City[18][21].

  14. 15 July 2026

    The Lost Samurai

    The Lost Samurai

    Episode 1 opens Demon Road, his anime-style yokai saga[13][71].

  15. 17 August 2026

    The Battle of the Exorcist

    The Battle of the Exorcist

    Akane takes on her first demon, the Warrior Monk; eight episodes follow[13][14].

  16. 19 September 2026

    The Demon Queen 2

    The Demon Queen 2

    2.14 million views on Instagram, his most watched reel[6].

05Body of work

Body of work

Demon Road lives mainly on Instagram and TikTok, where its counts are added to the YouTube figure; the long-form pieces and tutorials live on YouTube. YouTube counts refresh weekly.

Views, ranked

Most watched, all platforms

Demon Queen 22.7M
One-Eyed Samurai1.91M
Exorcist 61.76M
Toll Master1.56M
Lost Samurai 71.39M
Exorcist 21.09M
Exorcist 71.01M
Queen's Court970K
Exorcist 8309K
Exorcist 3229K
Gigapixel 8 tutorial47.9K
What Flying Feels Like8.34K
BeautifAI6.74K
His Legs Got Away6.07K
Lutan Fyah5.33K
Balancing Act4.3K
Exorcist 12.54K
DREAMS722
All Alone539
Lost Samurai 1444
Velvet Sky289
Dark World267
Drift - Bloom180
Liquid Soul150
Shadows in Stereo137

View counts combine YouTube (as of 1 November 2026) with Instagram and TikTok (as of 1 November 2026).

06The work, frame by frame

Three years, one archive, a whole demon road

Every frame below is taken from Julien's own public videos, with the timestamp it comes from. Palettes are sampled from those frames.

Scroll through three years

From Deforum robots to Demon Road

Five turns in Julien's work, each with the pieces that mark it. Stills are frames from his YouTube uploads; palettes are sampled from them. Tool counts come from the tags on the 958 pieces in his archive.

  1. Deforum and WarpFusion

    Robots and restylesFeb to Dec 2023

    Stable Diffusion, frame by frame

    Deforum robots and droids first, then WarpFusion restyles of other people's footage[47][44].

    Archive
    123 pieces; WarpFusion on 47[13]

    Sampled palette

    See a restyle
    Robots and restyles, 2023

  2. AnimateDiff in ComfyUI

    DREAMSJul to Oct 2024

    The waking dream of the latent space

    His busiest year of animation: AnimateDiff on 238 of 312 pieces, a short film called DREAMS and a music video for Ampersand[13][35][36].

    Archive
    312 pieces in 2024[13]

    Sampled palette

    DREAMS, 2024

  3. Kling, Runway, Hailuo, Topaz

    Music videos in 4KApr to Dec 2025

    Ambient worlds, upscaled

    Video models replace frame-by-frame diffusion: Kling on 127 pieces, Topaz Astra on 72, and four-minute music videos such as Shadows in Stereo[13][37].

    Archive
    344 pieces, his biggest year[13]

    Sampled palette

    Music videos in 4K, 2025

  4. Realtime diffusion

    Visual albumsFeb to Apr 2026

    Liquid drum and bass, bioluminescent ambient

    Dark World, then two long albums: Liquid Soul Vol. 1, which he wrote, and Drift - Bloom, played on an OP-XY[40][41][42].

    Longest piece
    18 minutes, Liquid Soul Vol. 1[41]

    Sampled palette

    Visual albums, Early 2026

  5. Seedance and Topaz

    Demon RoadFrom 15 Jul 2026

    90s cel anime, yokai, ofuda

    A ronin, an exorcist and a demon queen on one cursed road. Eight episodes have passed a million views on Instagram[14][5].

    Made with
    Seedance, Topaz, OpenArt, Magnific[13]

    Sampled palette

    Frame by frame
    Demon Road, Now

Demon Road

The cast of the Demon Road

Eight faces from the series, each a frame from its YouTube episode. Tap a card to turn it over.

  • Akane The exorcistAkanePaper against demons The exorcist Akane Lead of The Battle of the Exorcist. She fights with ofuda, paper talismans, and seals a different demon in each of eight episodes[14][69]. Started asNamed in the Demon Road trailer, where eight new yokai "have not met the exorcist Akane yet"[66]. First seenEpisode 1, 17 August 2026Seen inThe Battle of the Exorcist 1 to 8
  • The ronin The Lost SamuraiThe roninToo thirsty to ask why The Lost Samurai The ronin A wandering swordsman who keeps drinking from the wrong well. In episode 7 he answers the Snow Witch "with a mouthful of sake and a spark"[15]. Started asThe first Demon Road arc, from 15 July 2026[13][71]. First seenThe Mirage WellSeen inThe Lost Samurai 1 to 7
  • The Demon Queen The antagonistThe Demon QueenWhere is the exorcist? The antagonist The Demon Queen Freed when the last binding talisman burns in her fingers, she walks a post town asking one question and snaps her fingers after every answer[73][16]. Started asHer second episode is his most watched reel, 2.14M views[6]. First seenThe Demon QueenSeen inThe Demon Queen 1 to 3, The Demon Queen's Court
  • The Warrior Monk Exorcist 1The Warrior MonkA kanabo and red eyes Exorcist 1 The Warrior Monk Akane's first opponent, at noon in a wasteland. "The last ofuda lands on his forehead"[14]. Seen inThe Battle of the Exorcist 1
  • The Kabuki Champion Exorcist 6The Kabuki ChampionNever where the paper lands Exorcist 6 The Kabuki Champion Every ofuda leaves an empty costume on the clay. He breathes fire from the gate roof; she answers with hundreds[17]. Subtitles are part of the frame, as in every episode.Seen inThe Battle of the Exorcist 6
  • The Snow Witch Lost Samurai 7The Snow WitchOne of the Queen's court Lost Samurai 7 The Snow Witch Keeper of a mountain spring who rises out of the snow when the ronin drinks from it[15]. Started asThe episode tag names the yuki-onna of Japanese folklore[15]. Seen inThe Lost Samurai 7
  • The War Oni Exorcist 8The War OniFour times her height Exorcist 8 The War Oni Every swing of his club cracks the road, and every crack gets a paper, until the ground he broke becomes his seal[69]. Seen inThe Battle of the Exorcist 8
  • The Toll Master StandaloneThe Toll MasterThe bridge takes no coin Standalone The Toll Master Keeper of a fog-drowned bridge hung with katanas, sandals and hair. A young swordsman refuses the toll and leaves an old man[67]. Started as1.21M views on Instagram[54]. Seen inThe Toll Master
Sake and a spark EP 71:03.000.00sSpark to steam

Frames from The Lost Samurai 7: The Snow Witch at the times shown[15].

  1. Sake and a spark, frame 1 of 801
  2. Sake and a spark, frame 3 of 803
  3. Sake and a spark, frame 5 of 805
  4. Sake and a spark, frame 6 of 806
  5. Sake and a spark, frame 8 of 808

Demon Road · The Lost Samurai 7

The Snow WitchSake and a spark

Twelve seconds from ice to steam

Answered byThe ronin

Caught drinking from her spring, the ronin takes a mouthful of sake and lights it. The witch goes up in flame and comes down as steam[15]. The episode has 1.38M views on Instagram[53].

If I could go into my samurai world that I love to do.
Julien DurandComfy Creatives Model Jam, August 2026[31]
On screen
0:56 to 1:08 of the YouTube episode[15]
Made with
Seedance, upscaled with Topaz[13]
The last talisman EP 10:38.20Purifying000%

Frames from The Battle of the Exorcist 1 at the times shown[14].

  1. The last talisman, frame 1 of 801
  2. The last talisman, frame 3 of 803
  3. The last talisman, frame 5 of 805
  4. The last talisman, frame 6 of 806
  5. The last talisman, frame 8 of 808

Demon Road · The Battle of the Exorcist 1

The ofudaThe last talisman

A red eye, purified

Thrown byAkane

Akane's final ofuda lands on the Warrior Monk's forehead. The camera pushes into his eye as the red drains out of it[14].

On screen
0:34 to 0:40[14]
Episode
The first of eight, 17 August 2026[13]

Where it started

Someone else's footage, a new world

His restyles open on the raw clip, then cut to the AI version. Drag the line to compare a frame from each half of the same Short; the vertical frames sit on a blurred fill of themselves.

Motorbike POV on a concrete ramp
The same POV restyled as an orange canyon
RawThe ride in0:00.75, the original clip by @raha[43].
AnimateDiffThe flight0:05.25, the same ride restyled[43].

What Flying Feels Like, September 2024: two moments of one clip, both with the bike nose at the bottom of frame, not a pixel-matched pair[43].

Looking down from a post between two rows of posts
The same view as a glowing city
GoProOn the posts0:07.75, footage of Jason Paul for GoPro[44].
RestyledAbove the towers0:08.75, the restyled cut[44].

Balancing Act, December 2023: frames one second apart, from the raw and restyled halves[44].

AI on the Lot 2026 · ComfyUI 101

Six workflows, from one prompt to a film clip

The pack he built for the ComfyUI 101 workshop at AI on the Lot in Culver City, released on comfy.org so attendees could open each step and follow along[19][18][21].

  1. 01 Text to image Workflow 1: a compact text-to-image graph built on Z-Image Turbo[19]. Z-Image Turbo
  2. 02 Upscale and compare The same model with an upscale pass on top[1]. Z-Image Turbo
  3. 03 Image to text Turns any image into a descriptive prompt[1]. QwenVL
  4. 04 Enhance the prompt Expands a short idea into a detailed prompt[1]. QwenVL Prompt Enhancer
  5. 05 Image to video Animates a still into a short clip[1]. LTX-2.3
  6. 06 Text to video The sixth and final workflow chains everything: prompt, keyframes, clip, export[18]. QwenVL + LTX-2.3

Two bonus workflows came with it: Qwen-Image-Edit-2511 for quick edits, and an LTX-2.3 IC LoRA graph that spreads one edited frame across a whole clip[20][1].

On comfy.org

The rest of the workflow shelf

Fifteen workflows carry his name on comfy.org. Beyond the AI on the Lot pack, these are the ones anyone can download[1].

  • Image to loop

    AIrt MAchIne

    Upload any image; an LLM writes five prompts, the graph makes stills and clips and stitches them into a seamless loop. An API version runs on Kling 3.0[22][1].

    Seen inWan2.2, Z-Image-Turbo

  • Looping video

    Looped Restyler

    A start image and its prompt become a video that loops from the first frame back to the last[23].

    Seen inNano Banana, Gemini, Wan2.2

  • Commercial

    Product Placement

    Swaps a product into a reference scene while keeping its composition and light, then writes a Kling-ready video prompt for the motion teaser[24].

    Seen inNano Banana 2, Gemini-3.1-Pro, Kling 3.0; also a Flux.2 Klein version

  • 3D

    Generate 3D Model From Single Image

    One image becomes three orthographic views, and the views become a textured 3D model[25].

    Seen inNano Banana 2, Meshy

  • Video

    Noise Injected VideoGen

    A still, a mask video and a noise video: the noise is injected into the masked area to animate it, with AI-written prompts[26].

    Seen inSD1.5, AnimateDiff Evolved

  • Upscale

    BeautifAI

    His 2024 upscaler with SuperBeastsAI. A "Freedom" value from 1 to 10 sets how much new detail it may invent[33].

    Seen inCivitai, March 2024

958 pieces

The tools behind three years of work

Every piece in his archive carries tool tags. These are the most used across all 958, from May 2023 to October 2026[13].

Topaz (upscaling)On every kind of work, every year367
AnimateDiff238 of them in 2024355
KlingPeaked in 2025204
SeedanceAll in 2026, Demon Road105
Topaz Astra2025 and 202698
Luma53
Veo50
WarpFusionAll in 202347
OpenArtDemon Road, 202640
Magnific37
ComfyUI (tagged)Tagged on finished pieces; most of his graph work is behind the other tags30

Counts are pieces tagged with each tool in the public archive manifest, read on 1 November 2026[13].

On YouTube

The long-form room

His music videos and visual albums, oldest to newest.

2026

1 Feb 2026267 views

Dark World

Liquid drum and bass inspired by Massive Attack, in neon clubs[40].

2026

16 Apr 2026180 views

Drift - Bloom

15 minutes of ambient played on an OP-XY, with bioluminescent visuals[42].

07Toolkit

What Julien makes with

  • ComfyUIcore

    "The open-source tool I create with every day." His job, his workflows and most of his pipelines.[2][1]

  • The animation model on every Demon Road episode, 105 archive pieces in 2026.[13]

  • Upscaling on 367 of 958 archive pieces; Astra on 98 more. A partner, by his site.[13][2]

  • AnimateDiffcore

    The motion model that made him fall for ComfyUI; 355 archive pieces and still inside his video upscaler.[3][13]

  • Klinguses

    204 archive pieces, most in 2025; Kling 3.0 drives his Product Placement and AIrt MAchIne API workflows.[13][24]

  • Wan 2.2uses

    Four steps with a LightX2V LoRA, rendered at 16 fps and interpolated twice to 32.[3]

  • Image-to-video and the IC LoRA video edit in the AI on the Lot pack.[18][20]

  • Z-Image Turbouses

    The first step of the AI on the Lot pack and of AIrt MAchIne.[19][22]

  • Product Placement and the image-to-3D workflow.[24][25]

  • On 40 pieces, all Demon Road era.[13]

  • On 37 pieces, including The Toll Master; a partner, by his site.[13][2]

  • Runwayuses

    Gen-4 for Shadows in Stereo; a partner, by his site.[37][2]

  • Sunouses

    Vocals and music generation on Liquid Soul Vol. 1, which he wrote and produced.[41]

  • Where he started, and where the old name came from. He says he still uses it.[3]

  • WarpFusionthen

    Style transfer restyles in 2023, 47 archive pieces.[13][3]

  • Deforumthen

    His first Shorts, early 2023, in Automatic1111.[46][3]

Core: in most of his work. Uses: regularly. Then: his 2023 stack. Partner programmes are as listed on his own site.

08In their own words

Julien, on the record

I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, and I'm also a photographer.
Julien DurandReshaping Workflows, Dell, December 2025[3]
The complexity of Comfy actually made... it is its strength.
Julien DurandOn learning how diffusion works, Dell podcast[3]
I literally fell in love with the UI.
Julien DurandOn finding ComfyUI through AnimateDiff[3]
I just go by Julien AI Art. So Julien, I just go as myself now.
Julien DurandOn dropping the MidJourney Man name[3]
The reward is greater than the effort you put in.
Julien DurandHis advice to ComfyUI beginners[3]
I just pick one, try it, fall in love with it, stick with it, train some LoRAs, and then something else comes out.
Julien DurandComfy Creatives Model Jam, August 2026[31]
You have a prompt, you have a style image, and you have a subject image, and you mash those things together.
Julien DurandExplaining ByteDance USO on the ComfyUI stream[29]
The latent space has often felt like living in a waking dream.
Julien DurandIntroducing DREAMS, July 2024[35]

09Press and awards

Julien in the press

10Collaborators

Who Julien works with

11Questions

Questions about Julien

Who is Julien Durand?

A Los Angeles AI artist and digital creator who posts as Julien | MJM, previously MidJourney Man, and one of the In-House Creatives at ComfyUI. He makes Demon Road, an AI anime series, and publishes ComfyUI workflows[1][14].

Is Julien | MJM the same person as MidJourney Man?

Yes. His site and X bio say he was previously named MidJourney Man, and his TikTok is still @midjourney.man[2][12][8].

Does Julien Durand work for Midjourney?

No. He says he has "never been affiliated with Midjourney"; the old name came from the tool he started with[3].

What does MJM stand for?

MidJourney Man, his former handle. He now signs as Julien | MJM and goes by his own name[2][3].

What is Demon Road?

His AI anime series of yokai shorts, started in July 2026: The Lost Samurai, The Battle of the Exorcist with Akane, and The Demon Queen[14][13].

How is Demon Road made?

His archive tags the episodes with Seedance for animation and Topaz for upscaling, with OpenArt and Magnific on some[13].

What is Julien Durand's most viewed video?

The Demon Queen 2, with 2.14 million views on Instagram as of November 2026[6].

How many followers does Julien | MJM have?

389K on Instagram, 184K on Facebook, 49.2K on TikTok and 48.3K on Threads, more than 670,000 across seven platforms in November 2026[4][10][8][11].

What does Julien do at ComfyUI?

He is one of its In-House Creatives: he builds and shares workflows and appears on its livestreams[1][29][31].

Where can I download Julien Durand's ComfyUI workflows?

On his creator page at comfy.org/workflows/julienaiart, which lists 15, including AIrt MAchIne, Looped Restyler and Product Placement[1].

What did Julien do at AI on the Lot 2026?

He built the workflows for its ComfyUI 101 workshop, six steps from text-to-image to text-to-video plus two bonus graphs[18][20].

What is Julien Durand's background?

He is a mechanical engineer by trade and a photographer, and came to ComfyUI through Midjourney, WarpFusion, Deforum and AnimateDiff[3].

Does Julien make music?

Yes. He wrote and produced Liquid Soul Vol. 1, using Suno for vocals, and played Drift - Bloom on a Teenage Engineering OP-XY[41][42].

Where is Julien Durand based?

Los Angeles[1].

12Sources

Sources

Every fact on this page links to one of these. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, X and archive figures were read on 1 November 2026; YouTube figures refresh weekly.

  1. 1Julien Durand | MJM (@julienaiart): ComfyUI workflows and creator bioComfy Org · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  2. 2Julien | MJM (julienaiart): official sitejulienai.art · 1 November 2026 · julienai.art
  3. 3Mastering Comfy UI: Next-Level AI Video & Image Creation (Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Max and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs)Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, via Simplecast · 4 December 2025 · reshaping-workflows.simplecast.com
  4. 4Julien Durand | MJM (@julienaiart) on Instagram: 389K followers, 810 postsInstagram · 1 November 2026 · instagram.com
  5. 5@julienaiart reels: views on the latest 300 reels, 11 May 2025 to 30 October 2026, read with Sort FeedInstagram · 1 November 2026 · instagram.com
  6. 6The Demon Queen 2 (reel, 19 September 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 19 September 2026 · instagram.com
  7. 7The One-Eyed Samurai (reel, 2 October 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 2 October 2026 · instagram.com
  8. 8Julien | MJM (@midjourney.man) on TikTok: 49.2K followers, 501.8K likes, 605 videosTikTok · 1 November 2026 · tiktok.com
  9. 9Julien AI Art | MJM (@julienaiart) on YouTube: videos and ShortsYouTube · 1 November 2026 · youtube.com
  10. 10Julien AI Art on Facebook: 184,290 followersFacebook · 1 November 2026 · facebook.com
  11. 11Julien Durand | MJM (@julienaiart) on Threads: 48.3K followersThreads · 1 November 2026 · threads.com
  12. 12Julien | MJM (@JulienAIArt) on X: profile, bio and follower countX, read via the fxtwitter API · 1 November 2026 · x.com
  13. 13MJM Archive: every piece from his first render in 2023 (public manifest of 958 pieces with tool tags)archive.julienai.art · 1 November 2026 · archive.julienai.art
  14. 14The Battle of the Exorcist 1: The Warrior MonkYouTube, @julienaiart · 22 September 2026 · youtube.com
  15. 15The Lost Samurai 7: The Snow WitchYouTube, @julienaiart · 26 October 2026 · youtube.com
  16. 16The Demon Queen 2YouTube, @julienaiart · 7 October 2026 · youtube.com
  17. 17The Battle of the Exorcist 6: The Kabuki ChampionYouTube, @julienaiart · 2 October 2026 · youtube.com
  18. 18AI on the Lot 2026 - Final WF - t2v (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  19. 19AI on the Lot 2026 - Z-Image Turbo - t2i (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  20. 20AI on the Lot 2026_LTX-2.3_IC LoRA (Union Control) (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  21. 21AI on the Lot LA Early Bird On Sale (27 to 29 May 2026, Culver City)Common Thread, the FBRC.AI newsletter · 19 March 2026 · commonthread.beehiiv.com
  22. 22AIrt MAchIne (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  23. 23Looped Restyler (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  24. 24Product Placement (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  25. 25Generate 3D Model From Single Image (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  26. 26Noise Injected VideoGen (workflow)Comfy Org hub · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  27. 27Our Take on LetzAI, Cool, but Not Quite There Yet (ComfyUI panel takeaways, SF meetup edition)Claire Xue, The AI Stuff Creators and Artists Should Know · 5 February 2025 · moodelier-newsletter-59a624.beehiiv.com
  28. 28ComfyUI Official AI LA March Meet-Up (6 March 2025, BLANKSPACES Venice)Curious Refuge events · 6 March 2025 · curiousrefuge.com
  29. 29ByteDance USO in ComfyUI (livestream; hosts Purz, Machine Delusions, Julien)ComfyUI on YouTube · 5 September 2025 · youtube.com
  30. 30Made during the @ComfyUI stream today using the USO model trained by ByteDanceX, @JulienAIArt · 5 September 2025 · x.com
  31. 31Comfy Creatives Model Jam: MiniMax H3, Seedance 2.5, Wan Animate 2 & More (livestream)ComfyUI on YouTube · 10 August 2026 · youtube.com
  32. 32Model Jam: Latest Video & Image Model Releases ("Comfy Creatives Rob, Chris, Julien, and Paul")Comfy Org events · 1 November 2026 · comfy.org
  33. 33BeautifAI - Image Upscaler & Enhancer - How-toYouTube, @julienaiart · 25 March 2024 · youtube.com
  34. 34Revive Images with Topaz Gigapixel 8YouTube, @julienaiart · 12 November 2024 · youtube.com
  35. 35DREAMSYouTube, @julienaiart · 13 July 2024 · youtube.com
  36. 36Ampersand - All AloneYouTube, @julienaiart · 25 October 2024 · youtube.com
  37. 37Shadows in StereoYouTube, @julienaiart · 4 April 2025 · youtube.com
  38. 38Under the Velvet SkyYouTube, @julienaiart · 5 December 2025 · youtube.com
  39. 39Floating AboveYouTube, @julienaiart · 22 December 2025 · youtube.com
  40. 40Dark WorldYouTube, @julienaiart · 1 February 2026 · youtube.com
  41. 41Liquid Soul Vol. 1: Full Liquid Drum and Bass AlbumYouTube, @julienaiart · 2 April 2026 · youtube.com
  42. 42Drift - Bloom: 15 Minutes of Cinematic AmbientYouTube, @julienaiart · 16 April 2026 · youtube.com
  43. 43What Flying Feels Like - Ft. @raha (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 30 September 2024 · youtube.com
  44. 44Balancing Act ft. @TheJasonPaul and @GoPro (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 2 December 2023 · youtube.com
  45. 45Lutan Fyah recording for @Littlelionsound (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 6 September 2023 · youtube.com
  46. 46Forest to city - Stable Diffusion - Deforum (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 26 February 2023 · youtube.com
  47. 47Robots - Stable Diffusion - Deforum (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 1 March 2023 · youtube.com
  48. 48Walking with the DevilTikTok, @midjourney.man · 5 July 2025 · tiktok.com
  49. 49The Battle of the Exorcist 6TikTok, @midjourney.man · 15 September 2026 · tiktok.com
  50. 50The Demon Queen 2TikTok, @midjourney.man · 19 September 2026 · tiktok.com
  51. 51Moonlit Training (reel, 6 March 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 6 March 2026 · instagram.com
  52. 52The Demon Queen 3 (reel, 28 October 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 28 October 2026 · instagram.com
  53. 53The Lost Samurai 7 (reel, 4 October 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 4 October 2026 · instagram.com
  54. 54The Toll Master (reel, 31 August 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 31 August 2026 · instagram.com
  55. 55The Battle of the Exorcist 6 (reel, 15 September 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 15 September 2026 · instagram.com
  56. 56The Battle of the Exorcist 2 (reel, 20 August 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 20 August 2026 · instagram.com
  57. 57The Battle of the Exorcist 7 (reel, 24 September 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 24 September 2026 · instagram.com
  58. 58The Red Moon III (reel, 1 April 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 1 April 2026 · instagram.com
  59. 59Tools by Julien | MJM: free browser utilitiestools.julienai.art · 1 November 2026 · tools.julienai.art
  60. 60Julien Durand on LinkedInLinkedIn · 1 November 2026 · linkedin.com
  61. 61ComfyUI Community Summit Tokyo (post naming @midjourney.man)Threads, @pxl.pshr · 20 November 2024 · threads.com
  62. 62Upscale conference: agenda and past speakersUpscale Conf · 1 November 2026 · upscaleconf.com
  63. 63His Legs Got Away From Him (Short)YouTube, @julienaiart · 23 October 2023 · youtube.com
  64. 64The Toll MasterTikTok, @midjourney.man · 31 August 2026 · tiktok.com
  65. 65JulienAIArt on DeviantArtDeviantArt · 1 November 2026 · deviantart.com
  66. 66A Demon Road TrailerYouTube, @julienaiart · 5 October 2026 · youtube.com
  67. 67The Toll MasterYouTube, @julienaiart · 27 September 2026 · youtube.com
  68. 68The One-Eyed SamuraiYouTube, @julienaiart · 23 October 2026 · youtube.com
  69. 69The Battle of the Exorcist 8: The War OniYouTube, @julienaiart · 19 October 2026 · youtube.com
  70. 70Ol' Dirty Bastard, Shimmy Shimmy Ya (collab reel with Nasty Jeffers)Instagram · 25 August 2026 · instagram.com
  71. 71The Lost Samurai 1: The Mirage WellYouTube, @julienaiart · 16 September 2026 · youtube.com
  72. 72The Demon Queen's Court (reel, 22 September 2026)Instagram, @julienaiart · 22 September 2026 · instagram.com
  73. 73The Demon QueenYouTube, @julienaiart · 25 September 2026 · youtube.com