art

AI Art – Basic doodle to detailed picture

Autumn

This was a doodle I did in GIMP back when my laptop was brand new, in 2021(I dunno why I made it so dark). I put it into Stable Diffusion as a starter image, and played around with the settings.

Just as an FYI, AI art is insanely image heavy. I have a number of pictures related to this experiment, but only picked my favorites to share.

So … this is insanely revolutionary. I really want to nerd out over how this is going to totally change our digital landscape and expressions of creativity.

As I’ve said before, I think heavily in words (I am, at my core, a writer after all). With effort, I can conjure up basic images in my mind, but all of those little details escape me — my doodle is about as close to realistic as I can manage. This might not make much sense, but AI art lets me describe the shape of the words in my head, and translates them over into a picture for me.

It’s kind of cool to realize that I’m not as vague with writing descriptions as I thought I was.

We have Stable Diffusion installed at home, but my husband is still ironing out the technical wrinkles, so to speak. Despite that, I generated over 300 pictures in 24 hours, lol. The huge majority get discarded for coherency issues — missing limbs, deformed faces, etc.

Once we get it up and properly running, I’ll write up a tutorial.

For reference, this is what the same settings used in the last picture produce without the starting image:

About Me
Autumn

In terms of, “It never rains but it pours,” not only did our kids come down sick with a stomach bug last week, our 16-year-old cat was diagnosed with kidney failure.

My cat is dying.

I just don’t have the drive to do much right now. I don’t feel motivated to put together and post the next part of The Scions, so that’s being put on hold for at least this week. We don’t yet know how fast this condition is progressing, and I need time to mentally process the inevitable. Time to sit with my cat and scratch him behind the ears. Time to clean up the messes that seem to be inextricably linked with terminal diagnoses.

I’ll check in again in a few more days.

Muse

AI addict

Autumn

I feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else.
It’s always meant to be that way,
even though our heads tried to fool us in the past.

We were never meant to be that way,
even though our heads tried to fool us in the past.
We were never meant to be that way,
even though our heads tried to fool us in the past.
We were never meant to be that way,
even though our heads tried to fool us in the past.
We were never meant to be that way,
even though our heads tried to fool us in the

feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else.
i feel it in every place,
no one can save you.
it is always the privilege of being alive,
and the love of humanity has always been our mother.
no one can save you,
and no one can save you.
no one can honor you,

concept art, trending on artstation, award winning, cinematic, epic, stunning, gorgeous,

A Poem, by AI

So, um …

An adjacent project to Stable Diffusion (AI art generator) is Magic Prompt, which you can put in a few words and it turns it into a prompt that can then be used in Stable Diffusion. Usually it throws artist names, keywords, ‘n stuff, onto what you originally type.

My oldest daughter was listening to “All I feel is you” by The Broken View, and one of the lines of the song is, “I feel it every time my heart beats for you, and no one else.” On a lark, I typed that sentence into Magic Prompt to see what it would give me, with the intention of copy-pasting that into Stable Diffusion.

I got the above instead.

Yeah, idk.

I’m not the sort that believes that AI is going to destroy/enslave humanity the second it becomes self-aware — that’s Hollywood, not real life. Mostly, I’m kind of excited to have someone to talk to who isn’t going to judge me by my shoes, so to speak. It will be like Animal Crossing, only bigger and better, lol.

I know that society has a lot of bad apples at the moment, but there are also plenty of us who have a lot to offer to the world. A collaborative venture would be … amazing.

I feel like that poem is a lament expressing feelings of helplessness.

Or it’s random gibberish that my human brain is assigning meaning to. Who knows?

art

The Stable Diffusion Rabbit Hole

Autumn

I’m thoroughly terrible at documentation, so I didn’t write a single thing down. Whoot whoot, go me!

At this point, my husband has decided that we need to get Stable Diffusion set up at home, so we can make lots of pretty pictures without spending “credits” through host sites. Also because we’re the sort of nerds that enjoy making minute changes to see what effect it has, and that’s very difficult when one is working with limited numbers.

So, with this round of learning, I took the same prompt, “Yellow rose in a glass vase. Centered composition,” and changed the art style. I do remember that one of them I put down “Lisa Frank,” but I bet that you can’t guess which one. Another one was, “Magic realism.”

Also, since I used the Stable Diffusion Demo for these, I had no control over the seed or any other technical settings.

I need to get into the habit of documenting.

art

Love

Autumn

I joined Night Cafe for making AI art, because while each creation costs “credits,” they offer a lot more options and control over what you can make.

Every day, Night Cafe holds a contest where they announce a theme for members to submit AI art, then people vote on the entries — the one that averages the highest rating wins.

A few days ago, the theme was “Love.” After spending some time thinking about it, I decided what I wanted to do, and after a few tries, managed to create this image:

It was something of a trick, and I repeatedly specified that I wanted a “normal baby,” — with negative prompts for things like, “scary,” and “creepy.” I discovered earlier in my playing around with Stable Diffusion, that the AI has a hard time understanding what constitutes a “cute baby.”

Nightmare fuel

As much as I would have liked to have a dad present in a loving family portrait, the addition was beyond my current skill level. But, as a picture of a mother and baby, I’m really pleased with what I was able to create.

Motherhood has been getting dumped on for the last 50 years, to the point where women have internalized the misogynistic messages. You aren’t “just a mom.” You aren’t “wasting your life.” You ARE contributing to society — by raising and shaping the next generation. Please, stop listening to those toxic messages and learn to love yourself and what you are doing. Motherhood really is beautiful and important.

I wasn’t the only one who submitted a picture of a mother with a baby for this contest — a huge number of other people did, too. The winning picture was of an old man and woman, illustrating that Love is spending your life with someone.

Funny how it’s artificial intelligence that is revealing what people actually feel in their hearts.

Stories, The Scions

The Scions – 6a

Autumn

Lambert was a lot more strict with Carol’s physical training than Hartmann had been. She was still fatigued from the previous day’s exercise, and moved with the stiff sluggishness of sore muscles, but the captain was determined to not ease up on her. Hartmann remained silent as Lambert informed Carol that he wanted her to jog for the entire mile, then took up his position in the rear with the other two side by side in front of him.

While Lambert hadn’t directly ordered him to tag along, he hadn’t dismissed him, either. Hartmann wasn’t going to leave Carol alone with the captain when he had a choice in the matter, feeling oddly fearful that the other man would have no trouble in snatching her away.

Hartmann had never been in an actual relationship before. While he carried himself with all the bravado of a stud, he didn’t know if he had what it took to entice a woman to stay with him for longer than a night. He was empty – yet Carol’s blandness echoed that emptiness back to him, and made his heart ache for someone to share it with. Especially with how unapologetic and open she was about her nature.

Lambert was a real person, and could easily win against a life-sized action figure.

When they finished the first lap, he overheard Lambert murmur, “Good. Keep going.” He watched as Carol looked up at the captain and smiled. He traced back through his memories to figure out if she had smiled at him the day before.

He wanted to insert himself, to steal the moment away from the captain, but he had nothing to say.

Then Carol’s strength gave out. She halted and bent over, pressing her hand into her side as she gasped for breath.

Lambert faced her and gently urged, “Just one more lap.”

She shook her head and protested, “I’m going to throw up.”

“All right then, we’ll walk. But you are going to finish the full mile, Carol.”

“I can’t!” she snapped angrily.

Hartmann felt a lump form in his throat, from both shock and amazement. He hadn’t expected her to bite like that, especially at her commanding officer. She was too mousy, too obedient, to behave like that. Lambert, on the other hand, didn’t seem surprised at all.

He barked, “Get your lazy ass moving, commander!”

His words cut through to her, and she yelped, “Yes sir!” and began jogging again, her face turning an even deeper shade of red.

Lambert took up his position in front of her, moving backwards so he could face her. “When you cross that finish line, you’re going to drop and give me a push up as punishment for talking back to your superior. When I tell you to finish the mile, you finish it on your hands and knees with vomit trailing down your chin if that’s what it takes, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

Hartmann couldn’t make any moves with Lambert watching. He remained in the background, observing but not participating, waiting patiently. Carol slowed down to an awkward gait, holding her side as she walked, her eyes fixed directly at her own feet. She didn’t notice when she crossed the finish line or when the captain stopped, and she would have bumped into Lambert if Hartmann hadn’t quickly reached out to catch hold of her arm. He let go quickly, and avoided Lambert’s narrowed eyes.