Oh, hell, brotha, it’s the Teflon-coated cooking pans, with the wrist globes, the endless dress foofery and so on that slays me. The hat? HELL, the hat is the least of its sins.
Y’know, for about…5 seconds, I wondered if it were meant to be some mystic stone-BS, like…a lost opal or whatever.
I don’t know much about that type of jewelry, the moonstones, and stuff, but…I’m sorry if you gotta work THAT HARD on figuring out what that purportedly important object is meant to be…that cover is failing.
Syd
1 year ago
so I did some investigating of the author’s other covers in this series. While the earlier books seem to have used random models in assorted prom dresses, books 6 through to this one seem to be AI generated–one has a short train in the front of the dress, for example. And this one…well, it appears to be trying to invoke some sort of 1880s look, but apart from the very bizarre hat, it has lacing up the back. This is more 1080s than 1880s. The overskirt bustle has no coherency, and the red underskirt is doing a weird thing on the (viewer’s) right.
And is that supposed to be a shoe sticking out? Like…
I think the hat is part of the AI generated image just because none of her other cover models have pasted-on hats, so there’d be no reason to paste one on here. Unless the AI really messed up the hair/ear.
Someone on here once said that the advent of text generated images might mean fewer Lousy Book Covers, and I remember thinking the same thing. But–at least for now–all we seem to be getting are book covers that are lousy in new, sometimes more subtle ways. (I saw an abs romance cover on Twitter with the male model having two belly buttons, like…wouldn’t you have noticed that, designing the cover? Obviously not, but…yikes!)
FWIW, just segueing along here, I did an AI image yesterday in which I requested 2 horses and one pony in 3 diff. colors, at a High Desert railing/paddock, and I ended up with four horses, all the same color, two without heads and at least one with five legs.
Le sigh.
YUP, I fully anticipate the advent of the world’s most mediocre AI images. I mean..remember what we all thought, back in the earlies of Pseudohumans? And what happened there? A very very very few artists, and designers, rose ot the top and created human artworks that you couldn’t tell from the real thing–no kidding–but the rest all have Ken and Barbie.
SSDD…the least amount of effort, the greatest amount of laziness, will generate the greatest number of AI artwork results. Sad, but twoo.
heh, can I borrow one of those legs for my three-legged horse? (a horse was not mentioned in the prompt, btw, I just got a horse randomly. I’m thinking of a “I didn’t ask for this!” blog post on text generated images)
Is that MJ or one of the others? MJ is…I mean, it’s heads and shoulders above the rest, it truly is. I’ve tried Artphoria (the 4 horse, 3 missing legs, two missing heads, blind disaster), and I CANNOT recommend it.
I sent them an email, asking why I kept getting error messages, It would say it couldn’t generate, yadda. However, I bang along quite nicely in MJ and Discord, so…what’s the boggle?
…and wait for, they CANCELED my account!!! And nope, I was in no way rude or caustic or anything–I was ASKING.
This is Playground, which is free (I’m cheap) and seems to be the best of the free options. It uses Stable Diffusion (and the pay version lets you use DALLE) and can be quite good. But also quite terrible, depending on how close to your prompt you want and how many people have done the thousands of prompt tweaks for something similar (like “merman” not so popular as most of these programs are used by… folk more interested in the female form, shall we say)
Craiyon is another free-to-use that is likewise hit or miss, but I find if Craiyon can give you something close, you can use the image as a ref in Playground and get almost exactly what you want.
I’ve been underwhelmed with Dall-E, although one of my minions loves it. I tend to go back to MJ each time. It’s easier, faster, smarter, better trained and each person that joins makes that ever-more-so.
I like your Merman, actually. Sorta like…Mer-berace-man! LOL…all that glitters…(Where’s the piano and the candelabra?)
I don’t think that there’s any way to argue that fourth horse’s leg into existence, though, lol. I am happy to spare you mine!
I don’t think I’ve ever tried Dall-E directly though it might power some of the “try for free” sites I didn’t much care for.
The merman prompt included “holding a trident” which might explain the existence and position of the three arms.
I saw a youtube video on using Playground to purposely create nightmare fuel and…any given prompt can do that, do we really need a tutorial? LOL
Closer to the original subject, I found a vintage photo of an 1880s dress and ran it through the generator a few times. Some results were, inevitably, horrendous, but a few were eh, more or less okay, making me feel like my assessment of the author’s cover is correct.
I mistrust the suggestion that hat was present at any time.
Oh, hell, brotha, it’s the Teflon-coated cooking pans, with the wrist globes, the endless dress foofery and so on that slays me. The hat? HELL, the hat is the least of its sins.
I think the “cooking pan” is actually a floating moonstone. Its position and the edge of her foofy dress make it look like there’s a handle attached.
Y’know, for about…5 seconds, I wondered if it were meant to be some mystic stone-BS, like…a lost opal or whatever.
I don’t know much about that type of jewelry, the moonstones, and stuff, but…I’m sorry if you gotta work THAT HARD on figuring out what that purportedly important object is meant to be…that cover is failing.
so I did some investigating of the author’s other covers in this series. While the earlier books seem to have used random models in assorted prom dresses, books 6 through to this one seem to be AI generated–one has a short train in the front of the dress, for example. And this one…well, it appears to be trying to invoke some sort of 1880s look, but apart from the very bizarre hat, it has lacing up the back. This is more 1080s than 1880s. The overskirt bustle has no coherency, and the red underskirt is doing a weird thing on the (viewer’s) right.
And is that supposed to be a shoe sticking out? Like…
I think the hat is part of the AI generated image just because none of her other cover models have pasted-on hats, so there’d be no reason to paste one on here. Unless the AI really messed up the hair/ear.
Someone on here once said that the advent of text generated images might mean fewer Lousy Book Covers, and I remember thinking the same thing. But–at least for now–all we seem to be getting are book covers that are lousy in new, sometimes more subtle ways. (I saw an abs romance cover on Twitter with the male model having two belly buttons, like…wouldn’t you have noticed that, designing the cover? Obviously not, but…yikes!)
FWIW, just segueing along here, I did an AI image yesterday in which I requested 2 horses and one pony in 3 diff. colors, at a High Desert railing/paddock, and I ended up with four horses, all the same color, two without heads and at least one with five legs.
Le sigh.
YUP, I fully anticipate the advent of the world’s most mediocre AI images. I mean..remember what we all thought, back in the earlies of Pseudohumans? And what happened there? A very very very few artists, and designers, rose ot the top and created human artworks that you couldn’t tell from the real thing–no kidding–but the rest all have Ken and Barbie.
SSDD…the least amount of effort, the greatest amount of laziness, will generate the greatest number of AI artwork results. Sad, but twoo.
heh, can I borrow one of those legs for my three-legged horse? (a horse was not mentioned in the prompt, btw, I just got a horse randomly. I’m thinking of a “I didn’t ask for this!” blog post on text generated images)
Is that MJ or one of the others? MJ is…I mean, it’s heads and shoulders above the rest, it truly is. I’ve tried Artphoria (the 4 horse, 3 missing legs, two missing heads, blind disaster), and I CANNOT recommend it.
I sent them an email, asking why I kept getting error messages, It would say it couldn’t generate, yadda. However, I bang along quite nicely in MJ and Discord, so…what’s the boggle?
…and wait for, they CANCELED my account!!! And nope, I was in no way rude or caustic or anything–I was ASKING.
This is Playground, which is free (I’m cheap) and seems to be the best of the free options. It uses Stable Diffusion (and the pay version lets you use DALLE) and can be quite good. But also quite terrible, depending on how close to your prompt you want and how many people have done the thousands of prompt tweaks for something similar (like “merman” not so popular as most of these programs are used by… folk more interested in the female form, shall we say)
Craiyon is another free-to-use that is likewise hit or miss, but I find if Craiyon can give you something close, you can use the image as a ref in Playground and get almost exactly what you want.
Nice of Artphoria to cancel your account for you!
I’ve been underwhelmed with Dall-E, although one of my minions loves it. I tend to go back to MJ each time. It’s easier, faster, smarter, better trained and each person that joins makes that ever-more-so.
I like your Merman, actually. Sorta like…Mer-berace-man! LOL…all that glitters…(Where’s the piano and the candelabra?)
I don’t think that there’s any way to argue that fourth horse’s leg into existence, though, lol. I am happy to spare you mine!
I don’t think I’ve ever tried Dall-E directly though it might power some of the “try for free” sites I didn’t much care for.
The merman prompt included “holding a trident” which might explain the existence and position of the three arms.
I saw a youtube video on using Playground to purposely create nightmare fuel and…any given prompt can do that, do we really need a tutorial? LOL
Closer to the original subject, I found a vintage photo of an 1880s dress and ran it through the generator a few times. Some results were, inevitably, horrendous, but a few were eh, more or less okay, making me feel like my assessment of the author’s cover is correct.
All the artificial intelligence in the world isn’t going to compensate for natural stupidity.
Or artificially-enhanced stupidity and cupidity, either….
There’s an old saying about doing that with bricks. “Moonstones” must be a euphemism.
Expression & body language says “I am just slumming with this until I can land a good steampunk cover.”