Selling My Soul to the Soulless AI
Sooo Everybody seems to be Talking About teh AI, and obviously people have strong feelings about it one way or another. I understand and appreciate the arguments--or, more to the point, the emotional responses--on both sides, and sympathize with most if not all of them across the board. All I can tell you is that for me personally, it's been a tool that's finally afforded me the chance to produce images approximating to some extent what I see in my dreams and imaginings, and that for the first time in decades I feel something like a sense of creative satisfaction rather than chronic frustration and disappointment.
To illustrate, this screenshot of thumbnail images from my art tumblr archive page represents only a tiny fraction of what I've done with Midjourney over the course of the past month:
If you like what you see and would like to see more, please follow me on tumblr at
And if you hate me for selling my soul to AI, that's cool too, though it probably won't change what I'm doing in the short term.
Losfer Words
In the first take I tried to depict such a scene the way I've always been told one "should" handle it--employing shifts in perspective and POV, dramatic "camera" angles, etc. to make even the "boring" dialogue bit dynamic, compelling, and engaging to the reader. I'm not saying I succeeded, 'cuz come on, there isn't even any dialogue, but obviously the effort mirrors the philosophy that comics should take their cue from cinema and read more like film storyboards. How to Draw Marvel Comics, amirite?
Next I attempted to illustrate this trend I've been seeing more and more in contemporary "independent" comics especially--where not every scene, but more than a few scenes, are handled in almost diametric opposition to the "DYNAMIC COMIX" approach; a long dialogue exchange, for i.e., across one or more pages, consisting of essentially the same static scene from the same camera angle and involving only minor changes to the posing and expressiveness of the characters from panel to panel.
So I guess what I'm asking is, Has anybody else noticed this trend in comics? What do you make of it? Is there a discernible reason for this apparent "paradigm shift"? Do you like it or dislike it or are you indifferent to it? Does it reflect a shift in storytelling style unique to comics, or does it reflect some broader trend in films and other media? Does it feel more or less "natural" or "authentic"? Is it the result of comics becoming more like books, or less like movies, or just a rejection of the slam-bang superhero storytelling approach? Does it represent a return to theatre's origin in stage plays...??
SPOILER ALERT
My personal opinion is that though unorthodox by the traditional conventions of (at least stereotypical Western comic-book-y) visual storytelling, the latter approach is appropriate and effective in situations where the creator wants the reader to "slow down" and really register the import of the dialogue or text exposition or even the action; watching a gutshot hero slowly dragging himself down a corridor for multiple identical panels, for i.e., certainly creates an excruciating atmosphere of agonizing drama, tension, pathos, and suspense.
JAWS
Northern Right Whale skull:
Southern Right Whale skull:
Reticulated Python jaws:
Everted mouth flaps of the agamid lizard Phrynocephalus mystaceus:
Sarcastic Fringehead threat display:
Pharyngeal jaws (moray eel):
Stoplight Loosejaw:
The protrusible jaws of teleosts generally are informative and inspiring, though I'm having trouble finding a diagram at decent image size.
s3.amazonaws.com/classconnecti…
Not to mention "slingshot feeding" in goblin sharks:
images.earthtouchnews.com/medi…
Plus leatherback and penguin tongues always give me ideas for how to keep the food in when the lower jaw splits:
www.cracked.com/article_19871_…
The Birth of Venus
Attempt to recall and update an adolescent premise for a terraformed Venus scenario circa 1990:
The basic cliché of using comets to introduce water vapor and algae to convert the atmosphere would remain the same, as would the initial process of using microbes and simple plants to seed a rudimentary biosphere. The point of divergence would be in the use of something like GMO organisms employing a delayed, "time bomb"-style self-activating gene library or a recombinant virus (or successive waves/generations of viruses) of the type I posit for my panspermic worlds, resulting in automatic, regularly scheduled "evolutionary upgrades" to build on the established ecological scaffolding of the initial terraforming. But then, of course, something goes wrong: the virus(es) (or the organisms themselves) begin(s) to mutate and don’t function the way they’re supposed to; the evolutionary upgrades become combined and conflated, or the lateral gene-transmission agents start transposing genes between organisms in an uncontrolled fashion ("natural" evolution, or sabotage…?). Hilarity ensues.
Another approach is to invoke some sort of gene-editing nanotech that acts as a kind of "smart virus" upgrading or mutating organisms via selection algorithms in response to changing environmental and ecological conditions (as the terraforming and biosphere seeding continues), working from an initial "starter pack" gene library of terrestrial seed organisms (generic gymnosperms, arthropods, tetrapods, etc.) and resulting in a vastly accelerated "guided evolutionary" process mimicking the Paleozoic colonization and diversification of land flora and fauna. And then, again, you have the heat, humidity, lower gravity and higher oxygen levels pumping up the life forms to an unsettling scale (giant snakes, dragonflies, and land crabs, for i.e.).
And THEN the mutation or corruption of the nanotech "viral code" occurs, or maybe it even becomes too smart—it exceeds, modifies, or distorts its original functional parameters, switching off or re-writing restrictions or safeguards and turning Venus into a kind of Deathworld or TMNT-style Wild Planet, a biospheric battleground of rapidly transforming and competing species. It’s at this point that you end up with trans-phyletic gene transmission resulting in chimerical monstrosities ("scorpion snakes," for i.e.) in addition to the already large-and-in-charge (exotic and imposing?) "alt Carboniferous" flora and fauna. HILARITY AGAIN ENSUES
Clearly, TAITO's Solar Warrior was a huge influence on me in this regard:
I just realized I alluded to this idea circa 2013, under
Tangentially, that other terraforming concept I was considering a while back, where the surface of Venus is turned into something like a dry-land hydrothermal vent ecosystem employing symbiotic GMO tube worms and crabs to take advantage of the environment’s native volcanism and sulfur chemistry. It would result in something resembling hell in the short term, but would lay the groundwork for future terraforming into a more habitable terrestrial-style biosphere.
Profloundly Unexpected
OMG YOU ARE CORRECT IT IS A STARRY FLOUNDER!!
The Starry Flounder Platichthys stellatus is from a "right-eyed" family, meaning both eyes tend to migrate to the right side of the body
Isn't that crazy? I never envisioned flatfish in freshwater, outside of a spec bio context, but apparently the juveniles of this species do sometimes make their way upstream:
www.oregonlive.com/sports/oreg…
Brief conversation with a haggard woman collecting scrap metal on the beach:
"Are you actually touching that dead fish?"
"I am."
"Gross."