A. I. Al

VW

About the last post: I thought I was done with it when Maggie asked me why all those johnnie-come-latelies were at the First Supper and she wasn't? I had to seat her before she allowed me to sleep again.

Falada is the odd horse out here, being out of alphabetical order. Vigil 1 and Vigil 2 are variations from one old drawing. Vlad watches from his fortress wall; I asked for howling wolves and got that peculiar cough. The Vodnyoy is a Slavic water spirit, invoked to keep chidren from playing in the water. Wainemoinen pulls out a monstrous fish. The Wall Guard is another Morg from Ortha (yay!). The old man can only Watch in Wonder as the spirit of his child self appreciates all the stuff he is still buying for him. The old hobbit takes a Wee Snooze; despite all my instructions (repeated several times) the AI insisted on giving him facial hair, which hobbits don't grow. >Sigh< And it had been doing so well.

Life Is Just A Fan-ta-sy

To TU

Sometimes the AI will throw up a pleasing variation; sometimes it's just inexplicable. Like the Trapped Unicorn losing its horn. Treebeard seemed willfully perverse in its interpretation; it's like the hexum was on itand it kept doing weird perspctives. Trumpkin is from the book Prince Caspian. I always found Peter Dinklage's decision to play him as a grumpy a--hole ... interesting. The AI kept wanting to split the Two-Headed Dog into two animals; it still added a tail that wasn't there. Perhaps Nature trying to repair Art's mistakes. Two Ogres are from Ortha. All I have to say is not gangly enough. The first effort at Unicorn interpreted my request for a whinny as some sort of woman's scream. Ur-Viles are creatures from the Thomas Covenant books; the beast is my own.

The Many Moods of General Roth

John sent me this early this morning and I squealed with delight. All these years I've had to visualize things in my brain like a chump. Now we have tools that help actualize our concepts! It inspired me so much I finished my daily script (for a proposed show in which Roth is a character) much earlier than usual. And I post it here to make it easier to find. My files are vast and shifting.

 

Pics and More T

It is fitting that we begin today with Thorsday. The Thoughtful Wizard is developed from one of my earliest drawings. I doubt if I would draw Tidy Smial in a forest setting these days, though I suppose it could kind of be Crickhollow. Father Time Teaches Youth the songs of yesterday; does he look a little too affectionate to you? The Tin Man has some odd-looking lappets on his face, but those were in the original illustration. Mr. Tinker climbs to the moon in some unusual perspective. The Tired King did not start out that way, but he could very well be Arthur after his last battle. Tom Tit Tot and Tom Tit Tot Two (by two different artists) illustrate the beginning and end of that English fairy tale, a variation of Rumplestiltskin.

The Roth of John

My brother John produced a couple of refinements to the image of Roth as part of our never-ending quest to make the perfect embodiment of our favorite character in all of Ortha. Of course I had to run it through Grok to animate it. We've come a long way from the AI deeming our efforts as somehow racially offensive. That they would judge it so makes me think that they are racially insensitive. How could we get it across that the Morgs were an original fantasy race, and that they were in fact heroic, humorous, and lovable? I wouldn't mind being compared to a Morg. The AI still has a tendency, despite all our developments, to rewrite Morgs into merely gorillas in armor. But we shall overcome some day, and, as the computer knows what you mean when you say Orc, so shall it be with Morgs. I may not be there to see it, but it is a dream I have.