AI Art Adventures: Using –sref for a Unique Style

As a Midjourney beginner trying to generate pictures with a certain “look” one of the most useful stylistic tricks is the –sref function. The reference pic can’t be any old image though. The more distinct and stylized it is, the better. The simpler and clearer it is, the better. This is where real art education has value for the user, and a very broad schooling in graphic design.

In my post on creating imaginary Velazquez paintings I touched on this, as well as in my beginning post of the series, Fiddler on the Ref. In that latter I used one image to riff on a series of six different subjects. In this post I’m going to hone in on choosing and altering a suitable style reference image.

As an example I’ll use this one.

It was most likely a throwaway illustration from the 1950s or early 1960s, created and printed in haste. The artist hadn’t bothered to refine it. But that’s what gives it is charm, IMO. It’s cheap and looks cheap. It’s also of a medium that is not being used today — the quick two-color printing press job, one of the two colors being that sickly Pthalo green. Using that image, I will generate a series of pics that looks like they came from the interior pages of one of those cheap, pulpy hardback books that used to be sold at mass market stores in 1960. The ones that are yellowing today because of all the wood pulp they used.

But my pic has that pesky lettering in it, so I’ll just Photoshop it away.

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Two by Tolkien — Foreign Editions of The Hobbit

I recently came across two foreign editions of The Hobbit  I haven’t seen before.

First, The Little Gnome.

Cover art by Antonio Quadros

I guess the translator didn’t think the made-up word “hobbit” was understandable to Portuguese audiences?

That said, I like the cover design. It’s whimsical if misleading — hobbits had nothing to do with mushrooms, except for eating them — but it does correctly show the hairy feet, pipe-smoking, and curly hair. The overall design reminds me of the 1960s graphic artist Saul Bass.

This French edition, in contrast, shows a very grown-up looking Bilbo, a hirsute Gallic one by his hairy feet and movie-star face with its Brylcreem ‘do. I have the feeling that if he took his striped shirt off, he’d reveal a very hairy chest as well. He squats before his hobbit hole which is undersized for his height while Gandalf gives him, or perhaps that dragon, some side-eye. Gandalf too is different from the usual depiction. His pointed hat has a truncated top and his robe is more of a  cape worn over boots and trousers.  His staff appears as a walking stick.

Smaug and Rivertown are depicted accurately as in the book.

If you’re interested, here’s another French edition here and a German one.

Dragonfeast

H A P P Y    T H A N K S G I V I N G

 

Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/27/24: Haughty, Horrible, and Hilarious Hs

H, to me, is a letter with an old-fashioned vibe similar to E — a Victorian feel, honorable as well as haughty, but with touch of horror, like Charles Addams’ old New Yorker series of Addams family cartoons, the creepy family of which obviously came from old money. But H can also be hip and high, as well as hilarious and hefty. H can also have a happy, comforting feel: house, home, happiness.

Names beginning with H, however, tend to be fusty, archaic. Harold, Hortense, Herman, Hilary, Hazel, Henry, Hayley, Hilda, Helga — have Germanic or Medieval English connotations. Needless to say, many are currently back in the style. Some parents are intent on their kids sticking out.

Below, some H character names. As with the rest of this series, these are for fantasy..

 

Character names beginning with H

Male

Habtur

Hanbolt

Halnant

Hanyas

Harach

Hardua

Hejiah

Hirgam

Hithras

Hotham

Hverus

Hyden

 Female

Halverina

Hamraia

Hanafle

Harysne

Hassla

Hazyra

Hesper

Hilfleida

Hiltra

Hilvina

Hrysha

Hylekka

 Surnames

Haach

Hallanocht

Hangemoon

Hasloom

Hatchleest

Hauphilter

Heldenzar

Hessfields

Hogenbraise

Houndwhess

Huskaskype

Husulram

Passing Obsessions 11-24

Former Korean actor now lives inside an amusement park he built himself. Sounds like an ideal life, myself!

The Rhunic language created for The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime (it’s a lot like Hungarian).

Author Diana Paxson pulled into the child sexual abuse reckoning taking place in the SCA, Berkeley, and Marion Zimmer Bradley writing circle.

How to make pita breads that are puffed up n’ proud.

3 cups flour
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

The flour can be regular flour or bread flour. It can also be a mix of 1 cup whole wheat flour to two cups white flour. Bread flour gives a more elastic dough.

First, you make the “starter.” Put the warm water in a bowl with the yeast and sugar and stir around until mixed. Add 1/2 cup of the flour and mix again. Let sit until it is foamy and bubbly, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile in a larger bowl, mix the rest of the flour with the salt (at this point you can also add some herb mix or other add-ins if you want.) Pour the foamy, yeasty mixture in and blend and knead with your hands. The ideal texture of the bread should be moist and firm like a baby’s bottom. If too dry, add a little water. If too wet, sprinkle some flour in. When the texture is ideal, cover with a towel or a pot lid and let rise in a warm place until double in size.

Meanwhile heat the oven to 400 degrees.  On the bottom rack put in some metal baking pans or cast iron pans that the breads will cook on. It’s important that they be the same temperature as the oven.

When dough is doubled, pinch off little pieces that are the size of a bath bomb (about large enough to fit in your palm.)  Roll out on a silicon baking sheet on which flour has been sprinkled. You want to get a roughly circular shape that is thin as possible. It doesn’t need to be perfect — I try for a diameter of 6 or 7 inches. Put the bread in the oven right on the hot baking pan. When it has solidified (a minute or two) use tongs to place it on the top rack where it will continue to bake and puff up. The more it cooks here, the crispier it gets. Before it gets too brown, remove it with tongs and let it cool on a towel.

You will be opening and closing the oven all the time to put in new breads, move them, and take them out. That’s OK. You will wind up with 16 – 20 breads depending on how much you pinch at the beginning.

These are guaranteed to puff.

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon [Review]

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland
Castalia House, 2018

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter Breen’s pedophiliac activities. If you were reading SFF in the 1970s and 1980s it was a helluva blow. (Bradley, in case you don’t know, was also the author of the best-selling book The Mists of Avalon, a popular retelling of Arthurian myth from the viewpoint of its female characters, who were pagans as opposed to Arthur’s Christianity. In this post, I’ll call her MZB as she has been called in the SFF field.)

The book is an account from MZB’s daughter Moira Greyland of how she overcame her parents’ crimes and abuse; it also functions, in a rough way, as a biography of MZB, of whom no other published bios have been written. It’s also an indictment of the hippy-dippy atmosphere of Berkeley, California, where MZB came to eventually live and prosper. It also serves also as a larger indictment of SFF and Ren Fair culture and a much larger one of Baby Boomer sexual attitudes in general, though I think the last was unintended.

Greyland’s account is casually told and probably could have benefitted from more discipline and structure, though that was likely beyond her or her editor. It reads like an adapted set of transcriptions between Greyland and her therapist. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t readable, but it does lead to the question of Is this really true? from its readers, especially if they were fans during the decades in question. Greyland anticipates this with a set of transcripts from a civil lawsuit of MZB included at the end of the book – a lawsuit from the mother of one of the boys Walter Breen molested —  and it’s chilling in how it illustrates MZB’s unconcern about her then-husband’s activities. Personally, I feel that all the evidence is pretty damning.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/20/24: Dog Magic

A page from The Book of Imaginary Canines

Since I’ve been doing dog breeds for the past two weeks, how about Dog Magic?

The first dog magic, of course, was the human domestication of dogs. From what I’ve read, the first dog was a now-extinct subspecies of wolf similar to the present-day Arabian Wolf, which roams the Middle East. In other words, a smallish wolf that, while still carnivorous, ate a more varied diet than its brethren and was prone to scavenging. The hypothesis was it hung around early humans to get at their discarded hunting scraps. As the story goes, it feared man less and less and “domesticated” itself.

I’ll also note here that wolves are one of the most adaptable of species, like humans. Over time they’ve differentiated into dozens and dozens of different subspecies and are still differentiating today. The Sea Wolves of Victoria Island, anyone?

There’s a Hollywood movie called Alpha that gives a romanticized and male-dominated view of wolf domestication. In prehistoric times, a young man bonds with an injured wolf he encounters while hunting; he nurses it back to health and they become partners. When he returns to his tribe, the wolf drops a litter of puppies – she was a lady wolf! Domestication proceeds from there.

I say, bunk. It’s far more likely the women of the tribe domesticated the scavenging wolves, raising the puppies alongside their own children to ensure loyalty. Perhaps they nursed the cubs, and the mama wolf, the infants. Such so the legend of Romulus and Remus was born. The bond was mystic, familial. These first dogs protected the tribe and their young ones and kept them warm at night. Their hunting function was perhaps secondary.

I’ll say, too, that perhaps wolf domestication was the reason Homo sapiens prevailed over Homo neanderthalis and denisova. The latter species just couldn’t get the hang of taming the wolf.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of canine-oriented spells and magic items.

 

Dog Magic

Spells
 Canine Landscape: Makes an area especially attractive to canines of all types. They will stray from their business or regular path just to check it out.

Dispel Barrowdog: Many ancient kings were buried with their beloved hunting hounds, and over the ages, the dogs became wights along with them. But unlike their masters, the dogs gave into their wild instincts and became free-roaming pack animals with others of their ghostly kind. This necromantic spell dispels the ghost dogs so they won’t attack.

Face of the Wolf:  Creates a subliminal image of the visage of a snarling wolf over the recipient’s own face. Instills respect and fear in anyone they have dealings with.

Frisky Husky: Makes the lead dog of a dogsled team start to caper and prance, sending the entire sled off on a wild goose chase.

Gerhnhardt’s Dog Water: This dastardly spell changes drinking water from tasting fresh to tasting like it came from a big dog bowl in a kennel that has been slobbered over for days. The amount transformed depends on the level of the mage.

Stazure’s Mutable Hound: Cast only on dogs. It lets the mage change their breed, as many times as the caster wants, for the length of the spell.

Wolfsteen’s Canine Commentary: When cast on a person giving a speech, all the local dogs will bay, bark, and howl as long as the person is talking. The spell must be cast in an area where there are dogs around, like a village or town, or it won’t work.
Magic Items
 Amber Dog Bone: Prized by royalty, this chew toy is not only indestructible, but entertains a royal pet for hours. It also magically maintains the dog’s teeth and gums.

Book of Imaginary Canines: Treatise detailing many different dog breeds, dog species, and dog/canine monsters… but none of them are real. The reader will be convinced they are, however.

Chain of Flying Dogs: Made of a light, silvery metal and used by a sled dog team, this harness makes a pack of running dogs literally fly over snowy and icy terrain so their feet barely touch the ground. Astonishing speeds can be thus generated. In addition, the dogs will use only 1/4 of the energy they normally would.

Mead of the Mastiff: An enchanted drink beloved by berserkers of some indigenous Northern cultures. It makes them fierce and brave as mastiff dogs and even gives them a biting attack at close quarters which can be extremely unpleasant.

Vision of the Goddess

AI Art

Very Maxfield Parrish, no?