Tag Archives: creepy

Deus Est Machina

I’m sure many would reject this AI render because the hands are all screwed up.  The machine has a hard time with hands because it’s learning from pictures and it doesn’t really understand what a hand is.  Hands look different depending on what they are holding in the training images so the machine gets confused.

For me the hands praying in this image is the point. I’m fascinated by the way AI can make something so creepy and wrong look relatively normal at first glance. She also has hair coming out of her eyes.  One piece looks like it’s a disconnected continuation of a shadow on her forehead.

Great art happens at the edge of the medium you are working with.  Finding those edges is the true work of the artist.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit – all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. — Brian Eno

#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI

Wesley Crusher riding a unicorn into battle

Wesley Crusher riding a unicorn into battleThis one is just for fun.

Last month actor and writer Wil Wheaton who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: the Next Generation, got a rare Dall-E invite, and used “Wesley Crusher riding a unicorn into battle” as his first prompt, “because OBVIOUSLY.”  You can see what he got here on his tumbler.

I decided to see if the Midjourney art machine was up to the same challenge.  After several tries with the Beta –test renderer that weren’t very good, I tried the good ol’ V3 engine and finally got this image.  It almost looks like a Star Trek uniform. It almost looks like Wesley Crusher.  …And he almost has legs.  It’s wonkey and creepy but we like that, ‘cuz that’s the way AI art should be.  A few years from now when AI art is perfectly realistic, artists will attempt to re-create this wonky style just like Instagram filters today try to make your digital pictures look like old fashioned faded film prints.  Because realism is nice but interesting is better…

Despair

 

DespairAfter George Floyd was killed and a week of protesting around the world, this was how I felt. I created a TikTok video where the camera cranes down from a fire escape and eventually tilts up on this character.  You can see the video here: Despair on TikTok

After a bit of re-adjusting in DAZ Studio I came up with this high rez still version of the final frame.  I rendered it at 10000 x 7500 pixels so I could print it out big and hang it on the wall.

Shadow areas take a long time to render in Iray, especially if the canvas is large.  With two Titan RTX graphic cards continuously screaming at 79 degrees Celsius, this image took fourteen hours to render.  Not the longest render I’ve ever done (that would be 48 hours) but still a good exercise for my new computer workstation.

0050 despair BTS daz render2Color correction in lightroom was relatively simple, essentially just brightening up everything so it pops and so all the shadow areas don’t print out too dark.

0050 despair BTS lightroomCreated in DAZ Studio 4.12
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom

I Reveal My Innermost Self

While I was working on a previous art piece called Quirky Girl, I stumbled through a wormhole and accidentally created this:

I Reveal My Innermost SelfI stopped everything and rendered it out immediately!  Enjoy!

I Reveal My Innermost Self

Created in DAZ Studio 4.11
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom

Figures used:
HPFK Lenora for Star 2.0 and Aiko 7
System 50 for G3F
Classic Bob Hair for G3+8F