At one point a group of users did their best to make high quality dragons. It was... a challenge.... and eventually we all decided to stop wasting our time. However that was months ago. Recently user Xaenerys (https://www.tumblr.com/xaenart) had some discussion with me which eventually led us to the right answer of how to get a good dragon.
Consider just asking for a dragon: prompt: A dragon, portrait shot, by Michael Whelan, fantasy, digital art
Now these dragons look nice...but they're too rough. There's not enough detail!! We want scales....
prompt: A dragon, portrait shot, scales, #scales, by Michael Whelan, fantasy, digital art
Much better. We say scales and then we emphasize again with #scales. Now this is better....we get some scales on #2. It's still noisy overall but we're getting closer. A trick to get better resolved detail is to use "close-up" but this might get TOO close. Full credit to Xaenerys for adding "piercing eyes". This ensures you focus on a part of the dragon that you will later work outwards from.
prompt: portrait of a fantasy dragon, piercing eyes, close-up shot, scales, #scales, by Michael Whelan, digital art, trending on artstation, highly detailed
Yes you can get some wild results, but it's quite consistent and when we shrink this down we're suddenly going to find that it gives very detailed results.
To generate a very detailed dragon you expand out from something like the above prompt. e.g.:
prompt: portrait of a fantasy dragon, piercing eyes, close-up shot, scales, #scales, acrylic painting by Michael Whelan, trending on artstation, highly detailed
Here we choose #3.
prompt: a fantasy dragon, scales, #scales, acrylic painting by Michael Whelan, trending on artstation, highly detailed (padding #3 by 60%)
From there you can choose your favorite. My favorite is #3. Let's take a closer look:
Protip for this process: do NOT pad too much. If you like a starter image go real slow. Dall-e will actually start to add too many details. Go with something like 50-60% padding. Also, remove all notions of camera directions. Just leave in some general art directions.
--------------------------------- Disclaimer:
My personal belief is that AI art should be primarily for enjoyment. Please support art and artists and furthermore write to your senators about protecting the arts through subsidies, tax breaks for working artists and for laws that protect the jobs of artists. It will not be so easy to change the pose of your characters through dall-e. Consider paying an artist for a commission of that character.