Michael Brookes's Blog, page 3

Ancient Rome Under Assault

Today's Midjourney prompt inspiration is courtesy of Modiphius and their successfully advertised me something that I didn't realise I wanted - Call of Cthulhu in Ancient Rome (well technically it's Achtung Cthulhu in Ancient Rome, but you get the idea) - find out more here -  https://www.modiphius.net/pages/cohors-cthulhu

I'm going to have to revisit this idea in the future. I managed a few nice mood pieces, but some up-close scenes eluded me this time.

A (Mid)Journey to a Self Portrait

A self portrait challenge seems to be doing the rounds and I decided that would be a good learning. As well as refining my skill at writing prompts, I thought it would be fun to follow the flow of generated images. But before we look at the Midjourney creations here's a few photos of the target (me).

For the start of the challenge I decided not to use image prompts and see how close I could get with text prompts only. I've included the prompts with each image.
And we start with an immediate spelling fail on the very first image, and likeness wise, not a good start at all with some very strange faces.
50 year old man with a medium cropped beard and long hair::
Blue eyes:: A noise broken many times.
Fixed my atrocious spelling for the second run. I kinda liked V3 as while he didn't look anything like me, I recognised him from somewhere.
50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long
slightly curly hair:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.
I added some more elements, but rather than bring the faces closer to what I wanted - it made things even stranger. Eventually I realised that using the hard breaks fragmented the instructions and so giving them their own focus and slightly abstracted from the main face construct.
portrait of a 50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long slightly curly dark blonde hair:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.:: Fat almost jolly cheeks :: Bushy blonde eyebrows
I doubled down on trying to describe elements of my face in isolation and created even more weirdness, although I had started to realise that the language I used didn't always have the expected results. I did appreciate the appearance of the slug across the bridge of my nose.
portrait of a 50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long slightly curly dark blonde hair above a smooth broew:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.:: Fat cheeks with deep lines from the nose  to the mouth :: Bushy blonde eyebrows :: A smile, but still straight lips
Inspiration struck me - if I added the term 'realistic' on the end, then that would surely fix the oddities. It didn't.
portrait of a 50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long slightly curly dark blonde hair above a smooth broew:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.:: Fat cheeks creased down and either  side of the nose  to the mouth :: Bushy blonde eyebrows :: A smile, but still straight lips:: Realistic
So maybe it wasn't the prompt, but a setting, so I added a stylise value. This clutching at straws didn't help either. And I still hadn't spotted the spelling mistake introduced two generations ago.
portrait of a 50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long slightly curly dark blonde hair above a smooth broew:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.:: Fat cheeks creased down and either  side of the nose  to the mouth :: Bushy blonde eyebrows :: A smile, but still straight lips:: Realistic --s 1000
Back to tweaking the prompt, again with little success.
portrait of a 50 year old man with a medium cropped dark blond beard and long slightly curly dark blonde hair above a smooth brow:: Tired blue eyes:: A nose broken many times.:: cheeks creased down and either  side of the nose  to the mouth :: Bushy blonde eyebrows :: A slight, subtle smile :: Moustache just covers the top lip:: In a photorealistic style --s 1000
A change in strategy resulted in some progress. Rather than trying to describe my face, I started simpler and with the archetype of a Heavy Metal fan. While the result wasn't a good likeness, it did look more human. I also picked a less suitable aspect ratio, because why not. And introduced a new spelling error,
a heavy metal fan with dirty blong long hair and trimmed beard, a broken nose, heavily built:: Mugshot --ar 3:2 --uplight --s 1200Next was further refinement of the prompt, and at this point I can see things heading in a useful direction - hope blossomed in my heart :-)
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair and trimmed beard, a broken nose the bends to the left, stocky built, slight smile:: Mugshot --ar 3:2 --uplight --s 1200
More prompt and stylise tweaks - it's not looking much more like me, but at least I'm getting some interesting faces now.
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair and full trimmed beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint, stocky built, slight smile:: Mugshot --ar 3:2 --uplight --s 1000
Naturally I then returned to my earlier mistake of layering on detail, but probably worse was separating it with hard breaks. Some investigation later on revealed that clauses within hard breaks don't necessarily get applied to the subject of the previous section. So I successfully created a quartet of sullen and jaundiced heroin addicts, on the positive side I picked a better aspect ratio, and added new spelling errors while doing so.
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair and full trimmed blond beard with touches of grey and gihnger beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint, stocky built, slight smile:: Tired lookig, with slight shadows under the eyes:: Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 1000
The heroin addicts cleaned their act up a bit with the next iteration and I fixed one of the typos.
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair and full trimmed blond beard with touches of grey and gihnger beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint, stocky built, slight smile:: Tired looking, with light shadows under his eyes:: A tall brow, with a ridge just above the bushy blonde eyebrows that are well seperated from each other Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 1000
I still hadn't learned to spell 'ginger' or spot the other typo. With that in mind it seemed quite natural that trying to add some cheek definition resulted in a band of weirdos with stretched necks and the worst neckbeards in the history of humanity.
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair and full trimmed blond beard with touches of grey and gihnger beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint, stocky built, slight smile:: Tired looking, with light shadows under his eyes:: A tall brow, with a ridge just above the bushy blonde eyebrows that are well seperated from each other:: Roundish face, with slightly prominent cheekbones:: Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 1000
I think I must have entered some form of delirium at this stage. I fixed errors, added mew ones to keep the cosmic balance in order, and upped the stylise option. New and even weirder abominations of the flesh  were spawned including another of the ultra long neck critters who had to be humanely destroyed for the good of us all.
a heavy metal fan with wavy dirty blonde long hair in a centered partition framing his face, and full blond beard covering cheeks and chinwith touches of grey and gihnger beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint:: Tired looking, with light shadows under his eyes:: A tall brow, with a ridge just above the bushy blonde eyebrows that are well seperated from each other:: Roundish face, with slightly prominent cheekbones, and a tight smile:: Heavily built with broad shoulders:: Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 1500
Dropping the styliser value back down stabilised the freakishness of the new brood, and one or two of them may have passed as human in the gloomy twilight before electricity.
a heavy metal fan with slightly curly dirty blonde long hair in a centered partition framing his face, and full blond beard covering cheeks and chin with touches of grey and gihnger beard, a nose that's been broken many times, clear blue eyes with a slight squint:: Tired looking, with light shadows under his eyes:: A flat brow, with a ridge just above the bushy blonde eyebrows that are well seperated from each other:: Roundish face, with slightly prominent cheekbones and soft cheeks, and a hint ofd a  smile:: Heavily built with broad shoulders:: Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 1000
The replication errors that had persisted for several generations were finally identified and removed. A rewrite of the descriptive code was initiated in the hope that we'd finally see something that could be allowed to survive to see its first dawn. Alas the structural problems remained and fresh horrors had to be reduced to ash lest they breed.
a heavy metal fan, a centered partition framing his face with dark long blonde curly hair, full faced long blond beard  with touches of grey and ginger, a broken nose, blue eyes with a slight squint:: Tired looking, with light shadows under his eyes:: A flat brow, with a ridge just above the wide  seperated bushy blonde eyebrows:: Fat oval face,  prominent cheekbones and soft cheeks:: a hint of a  smile:: Heavily built with broad shoulders:: Mugshot --ar 2:3 --uplight --s 900
For too many generations now we had abandoned hope, and seemed destined to only spawn monstrosities for the rest of our days. We heeded a puritan's calls for the simplicity of the old days, and we witnessed a miracle! 
Only one was deemed a risk to the fragile psyche of our species, and it's gurgled cries soon faded into memory. One was allowed to live, although its line never prospered. Another sacrificed its uniqueness for the possibility of further improved base prompts. And the last was simply magnificent.
a heavily built heavy metal fan with long dirty blonde hair and a scruffy beard
The experiment in variety raised slight evolutions, each potentially viable towards the ultimate goal, but the sheer wonder of the last of the previous generation captivated us. This rugged divinity enthralled our purpose and as its obedient servants we sought to lock its code into the final patterns. And we felt the call of his rugged divinity.
a heavily built heavy metal fan with long dirty blonde hair and a scruffy beard - Upscaled by @TechnoHippy 
For the true believers, our quest ended there. Sadly not all of us were pure in spirit and purpose. Those heretics contested that this wasn't a true and complete likeness. That it wasn't a truly reflective self portrait, oblivious to the arguments it was how others might see him, or even represent more a self portrait of what could, or might have been. And so while the majority celebrated the success of their quest, others continued.
Some found the aspect with the angelic voice.
https://s.mj.run/A00BJovqZQc a heavily built heavy metal fan with long dirty blonde hair and a scruffy beard --test --creative --upbeta - Upscaled (Beta)
Others resorted to forbidden technologies and used an already captured likeness as a prompt of picture, and not words.

The last of the heretics conceived of one final blasphemy - an unholy blending of the real and aspirational, and perhaps that revealed the final aspect. One hidden from the world, but visible all along.

Not a completely successful experiment in the end, but a worthwhile journey nonetheless a couple of valuable lessons were learned and some fraction more understanding gained, and most of all - a lot of fun was had 😎   

Nephew Kian's Endurance Charity Challenge

Sister Christine Brookes and my nephew Kian are generously fundraising For GSD welfare Fund, and to help pay for Brodie's surgery that has worked wonders to improve his quality of life. Young Kian has his work cut out for him with his endurance challenge so good luck ti him, and I hope everyone will be generous with their donations to show how we appreciate his support!

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/kiansendurancechallenge

As part of our fundraising to keep the German Shepherd D...

 

As part of our fundraising to keep the German Shepherd Dog Welfare Fund rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming vulnerable German Shepherds we are hosting a Halloween Horror Auction throughout the month of October, and of course including All Hallows Eve.

We're asking for items that we can auction - we've received an amazing response so far with original art, signed books, novelties and signed prints.There's an eclectic range from the spookily lighthearted all the way to stomach wrenching terror.

To let us know if you're donating something for the auction, please complete the short form via the link below, and thank you all for your amazing generosity!

https://gsdwelfare.blogspot.com/2022/09/calling-all-creators-of-horror.html

A Wise Shepherd

As the legendary Bob Ross would say, this was a happy accident :-) My journey with Midjourney is on  a bumpy patch at the moment. It can create some truly amazing pictures, and I can prompt something suitable as a general illustration, but I'm finding trying to construct a scene with detailed specifics challenging.

And sometimes it just throws up something unexpected like this lone German Shepherd sat in a hazy poppy field. I have no idea why he's wearing a shirt. It's the expression and the eyes that captivated me - this dog has seen things. Things far beyond our merely human comprehension.

Illustrated Drabbles - Face in the Mirror

 Face in the Mirror

I stare at my face in the mirror and I can’t be sure that it’s really me. My eyes are hunted and bruised from nights of disturbed sleep. A dread has stalked my dreams, twisting them into nightmares that linger even in dawn’s embrace.
In the mirror I glimpse a malformed shadow lurking behind me, its touch is cold upon my skin and fills me with terror. My will fails and I fall into the mirror, my final scream frozen in glass.
I gaze at my reflection and admire my new face, I think I’ll wear it for a while.

My old drabbles are providing a useful target for my experiments with Midjouney - an AI tool for generating images based upon image and text prompts. There's an art in its own right to creating the prompts - one that I haven't mastered yet, although I have managed some interesting pictures.
For this one I tried a simple experiment - what would the results be if I fed it just the drabble? I wasn't allowed to modify the prompt, all I could do is create variations based on what it generated. To be clear, it's not the optimal approach, mostly because of how it parses the text. It doesn't read the story, and draw all of the elements together. The most obvious example is the classic twist in the tail in the last line. If planning the illustration I would have wanted to capture the moment before the final transformation, but somehow convey its inevitability.
To be fair though I didn't provide direction (if needed) to it as I would a human artist, or if I was using the prompts to guide towards my design. That wasn't the purpose of the experiment, and I have to say that I was impressed by the variety and how well it captured some of the key concepts. It seemed obvious to me that it should be able to do so in a relatively literal fashion, and to an extent it did do so. However it did focus on different aspects and so created some variety, or even concepts that I wouldn't have necessarily thought of myself.
In the end the variation settled into a few suitable concepts and over many iterations I chose the above image. It wasn't the most faithful interpretation, but the facial expression, and slight disjointed appearance to the face, as if it didn't fit correctly sold it to me.
There were other close runners, which I've included below. Which one would you have picked?              

My Second Favorite Fans

I stopped writing during 2017 - maybe shaving my hair and beard off for charity not only took away my Samsom like powers ⾽ The blog has recently been resurrected with a slightly different focus. So I gave the old place a bit of a spruce - I hope you like. As I cleaned up various parts that were out of date I took a look at the stats and discovered that I'd still been visited fairly often, and that 'd well passed the million hits mark.

It didn't take much investigation to see why, and so I'd like to thank the various bot nets and spammers for keeping the place warm while I was away. I like to think that you look like the attached image. Clearing up the comments took some doing, so much so that I've enabled comment moderation for the time being. But I'm not angry, they were all polite, but they're not welcome to comment anymore. 

They can still visit though, after all bots deserve some amusement too 🤖

Jesus the Rebel

Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali
I think this post is mostly an excuse to include this magnificent painting - Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali. It's probably my favourite rendition of the crucifixion for  variety of reasons, but in almost every aspect it sets itself apart from the typical representations. 

The perspective across the world conveys his purpose for becoming human, and that his ministry is all encompassing. Please note that for this first section I'll reference the gospels as literal truths, and no this isn't meant to be a deep and meaningful theological insight - posting the image stirred some thoughts and I will get to my slightly irreverent point shortly, but for a short time more I hope you'll indulge me :-)

Another key difference is the lack of suffering portrayed beyond that intrinsic to the pose itself. Typically you stare up at the cross, Jesus contorted in pain from the wounds his suffered in the pre-match build up, as well as from the method of execution. A creature, like the rest of us, weak in our flesh, exposed to the vagaries of what the world can throw at us. And this seems a tad hypocritical to me, especially when considering who he was supposed to be. Perhaps becoming a being of matter from the state of something akin to energy, draws you into the flesh.

But on the face of it you'd expect a better showing - especially from the Son of God, and more than that, one third of the Holy Trinity. It seems odd that some mere mortals have faced their end with more grace, and without the absolute certainty that:

There is a HeavenWhat form it will takeAnd that he's definitely going there

And going back to the painting, we probably shouldn't draw too much from the fact that his back is turned against Heaven, his gaze completely focused away from the ephemeral, and towards the mundane.

And does this possibly reveal something of his true nature? Maybe not the Son of God, but just a demigod, a union of godhood and human - that depends on the method by which Jesus was actually conceived. Did Mary provide the egg and it was subsequently fertilized? Or was he placed in the womb as an already viable fetus? Not surprisingly the New Testament does not provide these details.;

I stated earlier that for this post we'll assume the literal truth of the text, and assume Jesus to be the Son of God. John Milton (yes I know that Paradise Lost isn't considered canonical work, but his concepts work for my purpose here well enough) uses the two terms with separate contexts. The Son  of God dwelt  in Heaven from the moment of creation, until he was born on Earth as Jesus. And now he must grow like the humans around him and yet containing this divine aspect.

Being human changed him. His eternal aspect had gazed down throughout history and seen how these humans lived, and progressed over time, but also how his Father had treated them. There was no pity or mercy in his Father, the genocide of peoples, the constant judgements, an eternal grudge against the descendants of Adam and Eve for a single offense. The Son of God would have known all of this, but from a purely intellectual, couldn't comprehend the reality of dwelling in a world under constant torment by its creator. On one such fit of temper he almost scoured the entire world of life, realised that he might have gone a bit too far, and so made a pretty rainbow and promised he wouldn't go to global extinction level of angry next time - although John the Revelator would likely express a differing opinion.

And so Jesus was indeed changed, tainted the the murky reality of a world grossly imperfect compared to Heaven. The concept of Jesus as a rebel is far from new, although it's usually against the Romans, but he had discovered a sense of empathy. As he aged he grew to understand the constant oppression and dread humans lived under. So he tried to teach them the ways that would stay God's hand.

As most of us know - empathy and understanding can often be double edged. The excesses of his Father's 'intervention' were clearly disproportionate, but having lived amongst them, he knew us in a visceral way that God never could. The cosmological scale of his Father's pettiness now meant little to the doomed denizens of our world. But made in his image, we too were capable of such rages, although limited by our miniscule power. Unable to challenge the one that had cast us from our original home - at that time at least - they turned on each other.

By the time the Roman soldiers crucified him, Jesus felt sick of the world, or more accurately the people within it. He would not return. and there would be no Second Coming, or Salvation. They would have fix the sins that locked them in their dreadful lives for themselves. 

Drabbles Illustrated: The Dreams of the Dead

Image created using Mindjourney
https://www.midjourney.com/app/users/882974693294997555/

The Dreams of the Dead

I dream the dreams of the dead. The constant hunger for the luminous vibrancy of life burns and subsumes all capacity for reason or feeling. We exist alongside the living world, but it’s shadowed by the veil of our passing.

Our grey existence is eternal, and our hope is singular.

An explosion of light shatters the gloom. A rainbow in human form cast into a glowing shockwave passes through those nearby. For that moment, we glory in the life of the newly departed. All too soon the sensation fades, and our existence is grey once more.

And it sustains me.

Eager for more? Then you can read some of my other drabbles here: http://thecultofme.blogspot.co.uk/p/100-word-stories.html

Lexi's Pups Depart For Their New Homes

Last Sunday the new owners joined us to collect their pups from Lexi's litter. It was an emotional day all round - we were sad to see them go of course, but also excited for their futures. And all of the adopters were equally thrilled as you can imagine! Discover the start of the journey for these pups here - https://gsdwelfare.blogspot.com/2022/01/a-surprise-ending-to-2021.html
You can also find our latest news as well as an expanding collection of useful behavioural and health articles for German Shepherd dogs.