Tag: 1950s

AI Art Adventures: Using –sref for a Unique Style

As a Midjourney beginner trying to generate pictures with a certain “look” one of the most useful stylistic tricks is the –sref function. The reference pic can’t be any old image though. The more distinct and stylized it is, the better. The simpler and clearer it is, the better. This is where real art education …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 9/25/24: Elvis!

  When Elvis died in 1977, no one could dream that he’d become an American icon on the level of Mickey Mouse or Marilyn Monroe. See even a crudely drawn figure with a pompadour, a guitar, and a lopsided posture, it’s impossible NOT to think “Elvis.” Or one of his many impersonators, also an American …

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All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel [Review]

All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel by Lynn Johnson & Michael O’Leary Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999 If you were a graphic artist in the 1980s and 1990s Chronicle Books of San Francisco was your crack, publishing tons of art, art history, design and architecture books every. All were beautifully designed …

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Telepathic Humanoids

I’m pretty pleased with this series of images I generated in MJ lately. Even though “telepathic” apparently meant a concept more like “television” to the AI, they’re still timeless, ethereal and spooky.

1959 [Reading Challenge 2023]

1959 by Fred Kaplan John Wilwy & Sons, Inc., 2009 [ #14  — Article free in ’23: Read a book whose title doesn’t contain “a” “an” or “the.” ]   1959 by Fred Kaplan is a sociopolitical history book about various events of that year that “broke the barriers” and opened up new frontiers in …

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She Came from Planet Five

She came from Planet Five I knew it all the time She wore a metal miniskirt As she stood knee-deep in dirt

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/27/22: The Best of Twittersnips (Cocktails)

Cocktail parties still haven’t come back yet. But here’s some that have yet to be concocted, culled from my Twitter feed.   Cocktails Smashing Sheila (this originated in Sydney, Australia) Guinness Lemonade Golden Mickey Goose Sucker Glass Slipper Ballbuster Orange Slum Muddy John Juicy Jackson Vengeance from Hong Kong Rocky Surf Sleepy Cobra Pumpkin Nipple …

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The Drudgery of Ironing

The alien certainly thinks so.

Atompunk Reading

In the Atompunk Age, manly men read books like this one, accompanied by a dry martini.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/31/21: Atompunk Robots

Atompunk robots (those in media from 1945 – 1965) tend to have the same sort of names. Short ones like Gort, cutesy ones like Robbie or Tobor (“Robot” spelled backwards) or functional ones combining scientific terms with letters and numbers. That’s the sort I was after here with this randomly generated list. These names showed …

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