For a week that's been so quiet, it's also been "eventful" -- if that's a word you'd choose for "social media hijinks." This was the week when my Facebook account was cloned, and people I've known for years have received anything up to FIVE friend requests from me. Naturally, they've been reporting the nonsense left and right, and what does FB do? Assigns an AI to check whatever criteria it uses to make up its dense cybernetic mind, and then calmly tells me, via email, that the cloned about is me. That, in fact, it's me out there, pestering my friends and then complaining about myself to admin, with requests to have myself deleted. Oh ... suuuuure. Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Meh.

So the week turned into a puddle of anxiety which in no way endears me to the whole rat circus of social media. I'm a hair away from dropping the whole thing and walking away. I have a bunch of blogs (which precious few people look at), but Facebook isn't doing much for me lately: it's more of an aggravation than a pleasure. Harrumph.

Anyway -- I did get some painting done. The big project was The Dragon and His Boy, in comic art style. Plus a nice landscape or two, plus a portrait of an elven warrior woman, which derives from AI but was massively painted. Hey, I do that much painting on an image, I sign it. I wouldn't sign something that was right of the AI engine, but the one I use mostly -- Playground -- doesn't often produce images that are good enough to fly solo without a lot of painting. So I get lots of images, but the AI hands me a whale of a lot of work...

Mind you, there's a new AI just debuting at the moment: Imagine.art ... and this one has potential. It's producing images that are not too bad at all, without any work from the prompter. Now, these, below, I would not sign off on, because all I did was dodge and burn, balance, resize and crop...

... those were just too easy to generate. They're simply not my work. So... 

I might look at using Imagine in the future, when/if I have a cash flow. I do need to generate AI elements to be recomposited into complex paintings, and Imagine is certainly doing a decent job of providing them. Right now, 80% of the icons on the site flash up a "coming soon" message when clicked, so ... not yet. I'm not laying down cash before they have it fully functional!

That's all from me, for this post. More soon.

Space Pirate! Also a fantasy city, and landscapes...

Playing with comic art again today ... also a bit of "fine art" in Photoshop, and a bundle of landscapes. I would love to tell you I rendered the landscapes in Terragen, but it would be a barefaced lie, and you know me better than that! The truth is, Terragen is dandy, till you want to put plants, flowers and trees into the frame, and at that point it rockets out of reach: too expensive. No can do. Truth: it would have been a stretch for me when I still had a cashflow, but right now -- I haven't seen money in a loooong time, and am not likely to see it for many years to come. So when I do landscapes, it'll be photography, AI, or nada. These are AI. But they have that Terragen look about them, no? I like the comic art, to a point ... I prefer the "concept art" style, if I tell the truth, and of course, if you can achieve something like an Iray render, great. I'm not finding a way to do that at the moment, but I keep trying. 

Note to self: start up Studio, dangitall, and git rendering! 

Yes, but not today. Pain levels are too high today. Whose big idea was it to go hiking on Monday, and go so far, and climb such hills, that my left hip is still shrieking, even while I sit down?! Nobody to blame but myself ... which doesn't make it hurt one bit less, lol.   

Night duty at the spaceport, fall colors, poetry and comics!

It's another episode in the "Dirty Night at the Spaceport" series! The last you saw of this cop, he was summoning Amadeus to come and retrieve his android (and pay fines and fees associated with damage done by a run amok drone). Here we are again ... still raining! Possibly the same night. And the guy we saw on the street in the city has arrived at the port, with a ship waiting...

Looks to me like the young guy might be an informant ... or possibly an agent. A street agent who's been tracking someone through the city, and he's arrived out at the port with the news that the quarry is about to escape. Hmm. That's not bad. These look like stills from a movie that doesn't exist ... and that's what I was after! Very pleased with the lighting in these shots -- and the wet concrete, puddles, reflections of light in the puddles. Wet is not the easiest thing to achieve in 3D, but here, it works. Lots and lots of post production painting, of course ... you might actually be dismayed by how "plastic" the raw renders look! It's digital trickery that makes them appear compelling. These are merely raytraces in the old, old software...

Speaking of movies -- you couldn't have missed the news that the Avatar series is picking up again at Christmas 2020; but I wonder if you know about the Dark Horse graphic novel being issued in five parts at this time. Normally I'm not a huge fan of comics; the art is kind of "on again, off again," and if it isn't what I was expecting, the whole thing tends to fall apart. But this is great, well worth a look, if you can track it down:

The best art, obviously, is on the cover. Duh. Those are full-on paintings, over which the artist(s) would have labored for hours, possibly a day or more on a single image. Usually, the cover of a comic will be startling and then the interior art ... leaves one somewhat underwhelmed, but this continues good throughout:

As I said, well worth a look ... bit expensive, but then again, everything is expensive these days, so -- what the hey? It's only money.

Speaking of money, I put some hard numbers to the computer rebuild. With even the slightest bit of luck, we're "on" for next week!!! The hard drive should be under $100, and the new USB Front Hub, about half of that. Plus a wifi adapter, the cloning of the original hard drive, update (from disks) of Win 7 to the absolute most up to date version ... after this, it should fly. 😎

Finishing off the "fall colors in the forest" images I promised ... again, they're wallpaper sized, and they do look terrific as wallpapers. Help yourself:

We were so lucky with the weather, the day ... everything. Winter is right around the corner -- as I write this, I'm thinking how cold it is! Need to get the heating on. And dinner. Yes.

So with autumn on my mind I'll leave you with this for today:

More soon!

Barbarians rock! (In fiction and art, at least...)

Couldn't resist taking the "Desperado" character from the other day and casting him in the part of the brooding barbarian --

That's actually a very versatile character. Wonder what he'd look like in a space suit, with a ray gun?! Why don't we try that next? Put him on the cover of "Screamin' Science Fiction," for instance -- remember this:

I know, I know, I've been looking at too many barbarians lately. Blame Mike. He treated himself to one of the biggest books I have ever seen in my entire life. A$250 (yep, you read that right!) for the new Marvel Savage Sword of Conan collection:

It's the size of a brick, 1250 pages, on clay-coated paper, so heavy, you need muscles like the barbarian to hold it! Lift the cover, and...

Is anybody out there old enough (or crazy enough...) to remember these comics when they were new? Ahem. Guilty. Every page is faithfully reproduced -- articles, color covers, the whole deal. It really is an amazing job they've done. The only legendary Conan artist not represented in these pages is Frank Frazetta himself ... turns out, Marvel didn't actually publish his concept of Conan. I thought they did, but ... ah, well.

Speaking of Conan, has anybody been keeping track of the mooted King Conan movie? Oooh, how I wish they would just get this done:

If they wait much bleeding longer, they'll have to do it digitally! We're burning through time here. It'll be 2020 before you know it. Conan the Barbarian was made in something like 1980 ... and yeees, I saw it at the cinema (repeatedly).

Looking at all the monochrome artwork made me remember 8x10 movie stills. Does anybody remember 8x10 movie stills? I used to collect them. I have a huge collection of movie memorabilia ... packed, like so much of my, of course. Need a bigger house. Haven't seen my stuff in six or seven years (sob). And remembering movie stills got me to wondering ...

Yep, that's what they used to look like! That's not half bad, if I do say so myself.

More soon, but right now I have a virus that is ripping through my whole body, from my sinuses to every extremity. 'Scuse me whilst I make away, get a cup of tea, and pick up the last volume in the NARC: Endgame trilogy. I'm enjoying it immensely -- third time I've read it, too. I utterly adore Jarrat and Stone ... must render/paint them again, very soon. New images, new visualizations, using current skills and techniques.

Last note for today: have just posted to the travel blog: Halls Gap: "Under the Mountain" ... well worth a look.

CG comic art concepts ... oooooh, now that's interesting!

Long time, no post here ... sorry! Work didn't just go ballistic, it went mega-supernova, and that, on a weekend! It's going to be 2-3 days before I have time to even think about art for me, and posting here for the pleasure of posting here, but --

I do want to get these pieces posted. You see, I had an idea for a graphic novel ... as usual, I had a flash of a story concept, I saw a blaze of artwork, graphics, characterization. Not that I'm likely to have time to do the art, write/illustrate the graphic novel, y'understand! So I did some concept art featuring the character who popped into my mind, and I'd hoped to have the opportunity, today, to tell you the framework of the story...

Alas, that part of it will have to wait till next time! Actually, it's quite a good story, so join me tomorrow (or maybe the next day), and I'll, uh, tell you a story!

Jade, 7 August

***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap.