The Road to Roth

 

For decades the best picture we had of Roth was this one, drawn in the early Eighties. When AI for everyone came along, we saw new opportunities. It was hard to get across our ideas. Here are new animations of our efforts along the way. It's been a long strange trip.

The last picture features the best Roth yet with the rest of the crew of The Wizard, The Prince, The Warrior and His Son, including a cameo of yours truly. I need a better title, one that's at least inclusive of the girl, Ketta.

I Go There Sometimes

M&Ns

I can hardly believe how sensible and compliant the AI was this morning (I use Grok for animations). That's not Merlin, that's Meteoras, and I must credit the AI for coming up the magically appearing text. The Musing Hobbit should in retrospect been on Tolkien Tuesday, but eh. We'll be seeing more of Nathaniel Horsehair, the villain from The Shadow Over Alben. The poor dragon has forgotten to pay his protection money, and must now undergo Negotiations.

Back to the ABC's

I feel I may be pressing things by posting so many animations in one go. I went back to the beginning and made more ABC films. Angel of Death comes from a story I considered writing about the Angel of Death wanting to get into Heaven to ask God a question. Aurelian is from Star Trek: The Animated Series; the Avery Girls are from Tex Avery's famous cartoons about 'red-hot' ladies. Barek is from my own Ortha tales. The last animation, Capricorn, is actually the first one I made today. The story behind the fish-goat is that the god Pan got caught mid-transformation as he was escaping between land and sea.

More M's

Not a whole lot of action in these animations, but I was going for subtlety. Monstrous Foe was supposed to show an Ogre Mage; I now don't think such a thing is possible, thanks to developments in the Lore of Ortha.The last frame of Mr. James and the Demon looks to me like they're about to kiss, but maybe that's just my suspicious imagination.

Happy Conjectural Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare

M is for Magic and Monsters

From Magic Fish to Monster in the Lake, we have monsters and mayhem and magic. The AI refused to reproduce the irregular pumpkin of the Man Who Lost His Head (I'm always struck by how many pumpkinheads I collect; that may be a post in itself someday). It also refused to reproduce the naked breasts of the 200-year-old picture of Melusine; I tried to edit it myself several ways (cover with scales or a wisp of hair) but no go. Finally I basically said, "Magic, do what you will,' and it came up with that armor-plating. Mim's Whims comes from those few seconds Madame Mim proves that she "can be beautiful, lovely and fair." Miramon Lluagor is from The Silver Stallion. Momots memorializes the fearsome critters of my youth.