Tag Archives: shadow

Mysterious Stranger

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Looking back at some of my earliest AI renders and scrounging thru the thousands of rejected varriations, I’ve been finding several interesting pieces.  This was a test image created when Midjourney was developing a “remaster” feature two years ago.  It’s a variation on the second image I ever created, re-rendered using a later Midjourney model… maybe version 3 or 4, I’m not sure.  Of course that newer version is now old and instead of seeing the improvement in the technology I’m looking at this render with new eyes and seeing it for what it is.  I love the texture and contrast of the whole thing so I fixed up the composition and re-did the color correction.

Personally I’m getting less excited by the newest versions of Midjourney.  The development seems to be barreling toward pure photographic realism, losing all the interesting artistic textures.  I’m going to have to try to find ways to add additional prompts to get some of the abstract goodness back in current version 6.1.

#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI

The Horror

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I finished two versions of this piece because I wasn’t sure which one was better.  This is the closer version:

The closer version would probably work better on social media, but I really like the wider version a lot better, especially since I’m trying to design my artwork to be printed big (poster size and larger.)

Part of me resents feeling like I have to constantly cater to people looking at stuff on the internet aka on their phones.  It really messes with my head when I’m trying to make creative decisions.  I think I have to actively resist the temptation to reduce everything to the least common denominator of what will get the most likes when viewed on a small screen.  It’s extremely limiting, not just because of the composition but also the subject matter.  What will get an immediate reaction so you get the most likes?  Subtly is lost and everything starts to look the same.

Social media really messes with your head.

#Art I made with #Midjourney #AI

Despair

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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