Books Worth Reading
My AI image prompting strategy is often guided by a willingness to let the machine do its thing.
In this case, I gave ChatGPT a reference image, a chapter from the novel, and told it to make a comic book cover with Devanagari titles.
The headline title is Urdu (Hindi). It says, “The secret history of Dori Fila.”
Pretty cool, huh?
Here’s the reference image, cover art from The Illusion of Gravity.
Read the book at https://marolitango.substack.com/s/read-the-book
ChatGPT is an amazing image development tool.
And a lot of effort to use, particularly if the concept is original.
In this and other projects, I’ve had to draw, photo-edit, juggle reference images, refine page after page of prompts, try and try again, ad infinitum.
And learn what the reasoning engine can do, what it cannot do, what it will not do, and when to give up.
The robot did the above illustration on the basis of months of training, using a description straight out of a chapter.
This usually works. The robot KNOWS what my characters are supposed to look like.
But look at Francine’s hands.
The featured image didn’t happen until I scrapped a whole day’s worth of neck strain, and came at it from a different angle.
Read the chapter at https://marolitango.substack.com/p/160-day-trip
Don't say I didn't do this. I did.
I have been using ChatGPT almost exclusively for chapter illustrations. The machine almost always gets it right within two tries, but sometimes it doesn’t.
See the featured image. What a great composition, with the wrong actors.
Getting that straightened out consumed half of yesterday and most of this morning.
Finally, I asked for a style sheet.
The male figure has a tail. This is not canonical.
Not to complain. The chapter illustrations look great. See for yourself at https://marolitango.substack.com/s/read-the-book
Let us create a series of canonical images for a space yacht, inspired by the first image.
Ranger is 19 meters long, 6 meters wide, 6 meters tall, with 2 internal decks. The pilothouse is a cylindrical elevator, 7 meters tall, 4 meters diameter, glass wrapped, with opaque caps top and bottom, 0.5 meters each, with a 0.5 meter structural band separating 2 levels. The top deck is a pilot station. The bottom deck is a vista lounge. In spaceflight, the elevator pilothouse is centered flush with the hull, top and bottom. In atmospheric flight, the pilothouse may be raised as seen in the concept art, so the pilot can see where he is going through glass instead of display screens, or lowered below the bottom hull surface, exposing the vista lounge, for sightseeing.
So far, four AI engines have choked on it. Any ideas? Comments welcome.
Create image for chapter illustration. Carmen and Marie having a heart to heart talk in the galley section of a motor-home-size spaceship.
can you make the ladies seem more cheerful
that's too cheerful. try to strike a balance
Close enough! Read the chapter here!
Our first import to Unreal Engine 5.4 from Blender 4.1.
Small steps. You get that, right?
John Dyer Writes 
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