Wow, Alexander! You put in so much work and time on this -- excellent results! But, OMG-- Theodore Thorn is the exact image of my ex-husband. How can that be?? It is uncanny. (He was not an adventurer, and never killed anybody that I know of, but he definitely was a "treasure hunter, a collector of shiny things, and the harbinger of bad luck." ) And as for gorgeous Nadine, I am very interested in her job description, "massage therapist by day, ritual tattooist and assassin". Especially that last thing. Have her give me a call, I have a little job for her.
Thanks, Sharron. Yeah, it took me a minute or two, but then again I was under the weather these past couple of days, so not much writing or recording, getting there though. Will resume all projects at full speed tomorrow, unless the upstairs neighbours start drilling again all day... Nadine! I wager she'd be veeeery busy, she changed her number ;) And Thorne? It's him? How? What? 😅 AI knows what AI knows...
" AI knows what AI knows." Yes. That's what I fear. VERY soon, every photo, every video, every piece of music and writing will be presumed fake. Nothing will be believed any more. Everything will be suspect when nothing can be proved real, then what?
Yeah, the longer I spent with this tool, the more I thought... uh-oh... we're in trouble. But when you look closer, the quality isn't there, wonky stuff is happening, but give it a couple of years... what then? We switch off the electricity! Living off the grid somewhere in the Highlands sounds nice, too.
I hear the Old Man of Stoer Lighthouse can now be rented (or bought if you have the $$$), wouldn't mind moving there for a while and continue with Bee's Journey to Brae ;) https://alexanderipfelkofer.substack.com/p/die-to-live
Phew, glad to hear. Wasn't sure if I should do it, but it was interesting to see what the quality is like right now, which is still nowhere near the real deal but for conceptualisation, it is decent enough, isn't it? On the other hand, casting models and organising a studio photoshoot with costume and makeup and lighting crew... yeah, cool, I'd love to do that if someone wants to finance it. 😅
I love these! You really kept them on brand and in the same style. That’s not easy to do. It takes some effort to manipulate AI that well and you nailed it. Dall E was terrible at rendering faces when I wrote my first Substack story, but it has improved exponentially since then. I’m now doing something similar for my novel, and sending out character illustrations as a premium for free subscribers in a monthly post. I call them NFTs, which stands for Near Future Tokens.
NFTs! 😂 Thanks, my friend. Yes, Dall-E 2 was unusable. Total garbage. I was surprised at the scale of improvement from V2 to V3. Imagine five years from now... crazy. It was very difficult to get consistent results, you may guess how many images I had to create. Too many! I am not sure I am going to do it again, though. Maybe from time to time to keep up with the changes in tech.
These are great, Alexander. Really brilliantly imagined, and breath even more life into the stories. Fantastic 👍🏼
Also, your man, George Beaumont III is the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan’s character, Doctor Fate in that movie with The Rock, Black Adam. Terrible film but Brosnan wasn’t too bad 😁
Thanks, Dan. As I said in chat, I was a bit apprehensive about using so many AI-generated images but curiosity won and the results compared to what I got a year ago are much improved, imagine where this tech will be a year from now...
I saw Black Adam, ahem, I don't remember much but now that you mention it, yes of course!
Thanks, Ryan. I was curious to see how far I could push it with text prompts, maybe there's a way to get better results with a different tool, but if you look closely there's plenty "wrong" with the images, texture errors on clothing, anatomy wonkiness and the eyes... the eyes are almost always a mess, for now. I am sure Dall-E 15 (or any of its cousins) will create them more real than the real thing.
Ha, I bet Dall-E 15 will 3D print live character actors that disintegrate after completing their scenes. But, I imagine a Carter feature film using Sora or whatever isn't far away.
It's crazy, isn't it? Assemble a crew of AI assistants, actors, editors, animators... scary. I read they are doing full body scans of Extras and if you sign off on it, you're essentially being carbon copied into any scene wherever whenever without seeing a cent. I hope this never comes to pass. I would like to make a movie, sure, but not with AI, a concept reel, OK, maybe, but yeah, if it saves studios money, I can take a wild guess what's going to happen...
Thanks, Nathan. I was hoping for more consistency with the background, but style-wise, yes, the trick was to reuse the same prompt and only change the gender, expression and pose attributes. It also helps to generate them in succession without doing other prompts in between.
I had many Carters none came out exactly as I wanted them, so this one is "as good as it gets" for now! 😅 But you are right, the reader's imagination can differ.
As for the Lore, I tried to keep it light, to avoid spoilers but it was fun to think about the characters more, even if they don't have any lines or appear only briefly.
Excellent work. I've often wondered whether doing different prompts in between affects results when looking for consistency, but never systematically tested things. Good to know.
Wow, Alexander! You put in so much work and time on this -- excellent results! But, OMG-- Theodore Thorn is the exact image of my ex-husband. How can that be?? It is uncanny. (He was not an adventurer, and never killed anybody that I know of, but he definitely was a "treasure hunter, a collector of shiny things, and the harbinger of bad luck." ) And as for gorgeous Nadine, I am very interested in her job description, "massage therapist by day, ritual tattooist and assassin". Especially that last thing. Have her give me a call, I have a little job for her.
Thanks, Sharron. Yeah, it took me a minute or two, but then again I was under the weather these past couple of days, so not much writing or recording, getting there though. Will resume all projects at full speed tomorrow, unless the upstairs neighbours start drilling again all day... Nadine! I wager she'd be veeeery busy, she changed her number ;) And Thorne? It's him? How? What? 😅 AI knows what AI knows...
" AI knows what AI knows." Yes. That's what I fear. VERY soon, every photo, every video, every piece of music and writing will be presumed fake. Nothing will be believed any more. Everything will be suspect when nothing can be proved real, then what?
Yeah, the longer I spent with this tool, the more I thought... uh-oh... we're in trouble. But when you look closer, the quality isn't there, wonky stuff is happening, but give it a couple of years... what then? We switch off the electricity! Living off the grid somewhere in the Highlands sounds nice, too.
1. The highlands where?
2. A one-minute story about breaking free https://sharronbassano.substack.com/p/copy-breaking-free
I hear the Old Man of Stoer Lighthouse can now be rented (or bought if you have the $$$), wouldn't mind moving there for a while and continue with Bee's Journey to Brae ;) https://alexanderipfelkofer.substack.com/p/die-to-live
2: Yes, I remember that one. Time to detox! ;)
The nosy neighbour - how awesome is she? This is great.
Mrs Saganaki! She's by far my favourite of the bunch. 😅
I love her. It’s fun to see how you visualise all of them.
Phew, glad to hear. Wasn't sure if I should do it, but it was interesting to see what the quality is like right now, which is still nowhere near the real deal but for conceptualisation, it is decent enough, isn't it? On the other hand, casting models and organising a studio photoshoot with costume and makeup and lighting crew... yeah, cool, I'd love to do that if someone wants to finance it. 😅
It’s good!! I wouldn’t overthink it. But then, I overthink most things 😆
Now finding a big donor...wouldn’t that be lovely?
Indeed. Calling all donors. Casting call soon! 😅
These are stunning! I think Madame Saganaki needs her own spin off. Hah!
She’s coming back in part 3 ;)
I can't wait!
I love these! You really kept them on brand and in the same style. That’s not easy to do. It takes some effort to manipulate AI that well and you nailed it. Dall E was terrible at rendering faces when I wrote my first Substack story, but it has improved exponentially since then. I’m now doing something similar for my novel, and sending out character illustrations as a premium for free subscribers in a monthly post. I call them NFTs, which stands for Near Future Tokens.
NFTs! 😂 Thanks, my friend. Yes, Dall-E 2 was unusable. Total garbage. I was surprised at the scale of improvement from V2 to V3. Imagine five years from now... crazy. It was very difficult to get consistent results, you may guess how many images I had to create. Too many! I am not sure I am going to do it again, though. Maybe from time to time to keep up with the changes in tech.
These are great, Alexander. Really brilliantly imagined, and breath even more life into the stories. Fantastic 👍🏼
Also, your man, George Beaumont III is the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan’s character, Doctor Fate in that movie with The Rock, Black Adam. Terrible film but Brosnan wasn’t too bad 😁
Thanks, Dan. As I said in chat, I was a bit apprehensive about using so many AI-generated images but curiosity won and the results compared to what I got a year ago are much improved, imagine where this tech will be a year from now...
I saw Black Adam, ahem, I don't remember much but now that you mention it, yes of course!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FU0fK6SVEAIS3TY?format=jpg&name=large
Obviously, Pierce Brosnan is going to play George Beaumont III, I mean, no question! Pierce? You in? It's going to be better than Black Adam, promise!
I look forward to being credited as casting director when the film is released 😁
I have no doubt, you'd do a fantastic job! For a Credit, you'd need to cast the whole gang, though! 😅 Brad Pitt as Theo Thorne?
Ah, now you’ve got me thinking 🤔
I shall come back to this later
Of course all the cast must be willing to work for the same salary, which I’m guessing would be about 10 shillings and half a pickled egg each 😁
I was thinking when I did the images... who would play this one, a fun exercise, too! 10 shillings?? Isn't that a bit much? 😂
Right, here’s what I’ve got so far :-
Von Traunstein - Christoph Waltz
Von Gorlichen - Bryan Cranston
Thorne - Brad Pitt
Mr Bates - Kelsey Grammer
Working on the rest 😁
Wow, nice job creating this aesthetic Alexander. Impressive use of the technology.
Thanks, Ryan. I was curious to see how far I could push it with text prompts, maybe there's a way to get better results with a different tool, but if you look closely there's plenty "wrong" with the images, texture errors on clothing, anatomy wonkiness and the eyes... the eyes are almost always a mess, for now. I am sure Dall-E 15 (or any of its cousins) will create them more real than the real thing.
Ha, I bet Dall-E 15 will 3D print live character actors that disintegrate after completing their scenes. But, I imagine a Carter feature film using Sora or whatever isn't far away.
It's crazy, isn't it? Assemble a crew of AI assistants, actors, editors, animators... scary. I read they are doing full body scans of Extras and if you sign off on it, you're essentially being carbon copied into any scene wherever whenever without seeing a cent. I hope this never comes to pass. I would like to make a movie, sure, but not with AI, a concept reel, OK, maybe, but yeah, if it saves studios money, I can take a wild guess what's going to happen...
Wild stuff! On one hand it empowers creators, on the other, destroys tons of creative jobs. Yep, sadly, $ will prob win.
We'll adapt. We will win! 😬
This is fantastic work, Alexander! I love it!
Thanks, Claudia. Was fun to do. Glad you like them!
These are great! Impressive consistency in the style. I certainly imagined some this way, especially Mrs Saganaki 😆
I think in my head Carter is a little older, a little less well trimmed, hehe, but everyone imagines things differently.
A very good reference to keep to hand, especially with the extra bits of character lore.
Thanks, Nathan. I was hoping for more consistency with the background, but style-wise, yes, the trick was to reuse the same prompt and only change the gender, expression and pose attributes. It also helps to generate them in succession without doing other prompts in between.
I had many Carters none came out exactly as I wanted them, so this one is "as good as it gets" for now! 😅 But you are right, the reader's imagination can differ.
As for the Lore, I tried to keep it light, to avoid spoilers but it was fun to think about the characters more, even if they don't have any lines or appear only briefly.
Excellent work. I've often wondered whether doing different prompts in between affects results when looking for consistency, but never systematically tested things. Good to know.