I intend to post draft copies of my work here for my fans to comment, and will remove all but the first chapter when I publish. All rights reserved, no copying of any portion of my writing without permission. Copyright Sarah J Waldock.
I intend to post draft copies of my work here for my fans to comment, and will remove all but the first chapter when I publish. All rights reserved, no copying of any portion of my writing without permission. Copyright Sarah J Waldock.
Very nice but what happened to Victoria's eyes and do they all have to have cookie cutter perfect bodies? Sorry for carping but it does rather make them seem like clones rather than individual characters. The astronauts on the space station and the recent Artemis moon mission displayed a much greater variation of body types and if you look around you in the street when you go shopping you can see a huge variation there too.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what you mean by what happened to Victoria's eyes? they are blue as specified.
DeleteI defined Victoria as 5'7" with curly red hair and blue eyes, and Jurij as a handsome slav with messy dark hair, green eyes, 6' tall with a soft moustache. the others were just 'students' and I was more interested in getting them positioned right than in their looks, to be honest. I managed to knock back the muscles when we later see them in the gymnasium as it wanted to make both Jurij and Vicky into muscle-bound gorillas. They are still more overdone than I would have liked, but again, I was more interested in advancing the story. this is the down side of using AI. It isn't very good at individual characteristics when doing a group; I had to specify ethnicity and sex in the first group met and it didn't take a lot of notice. I thought I'd share the experiment of using AI for story-telling, it isn't perfect but it's what there is for now. If it spoils the story, then please don't feel obliged to continue looking.
It might be my screen but Victoria's eyes look as though they are lights shining out of her face rather than eyes because the blue is so bright.
DeleteI hadn't realised that using AI this way meant you weren't able to specify individual appearances and assumed, wrongly, that you'd chosen to have them all look so perfect. I don't think it spoils the story but think having more variation would enrich the experience for readers if you see what I mean. I'm a big fan of Tintin, Asterix & Obelix, Doonesbury and Posy Simmonds among others and I really enjoy the level of detail in the drawings.
I didn't mean to upset you so I'm sorry if I've hit a nerve.
I only have a 14 inch screen so I can scarcely see her eyes. I have my machine set so the colour and brightness is about how things come out printed on front covers.
DeleteI can set up to 3 reliable characters on the program I pay for at the moment; I am thinking of upgrading. Everyone else, I can describe, but the more you write, the more likely the whole picture goes pear shaped, so I haven't been concerned other than 'several other cadets in the background, young men and women age about 20 wearing high necked cream tunics, brown trousers and boots' and yes, it torques the hell out of me that they are clones, but with the current limitations, I don't want the main action to be loused up. It's improved beyond all recognition over the last two and a quarter years since I've been using it, so hopefully it will learn the word 'disparate' instead of making them aggressive with weapons and 'desparate' which is how it interpreted that. Believe me, this bunch are disparate compared to some of the lines of students later on. I was fighting over Jurij being shorter than Jan and I got 3' high Jurij looking like a child but with a moustache; I had Vicky hugging Vicky; two Jans; a protagonist who as a 'big, chunky young man' was about 8' tall, and I learned to go with 'this at least shows what's going on.' Some of the pictures are my eight, ninth, or tenth attempt. I was using the style of Spanish artist Jesus Blasco, and it kept giving me Jurij as Jesus. when I've posted it all, I shall have to put up some of the worst travesties of what it did. Like one and a half Jurijs hugging his father, and so on. I confess, I was pleased with myself in wrestling some kind of continuity out of it as these early pics were done before the use of 'reliable characters' were introduced, and half the time Jurij looked like supermario. Well, I'll post the rest, but at least I know now that it isn't good enough to proceed other than as a hobby.
I picked Jesus Blasco, whose illustrations in Treasure magazine I liked, because it hadn't heard of Frank Hampson from 'Eagle' or Don Lawrence, who did Trigan Empire, or CL Doughty, who did so much work for Look and Learn.
DeleteWell, this cartoon is several magnitudes above what I expected, please don't be discouraged! I love it!
DeleteThank you! you will laugh at the bloopers when I post them I am sure
DeleteI hadn't realised it was so fiddly and difficult to get a good result. Because I haven't used this sort of programme myself I'd believed the hype that anyone could do anything with it which, of course, I should have known wouldn't be true! That being the case, and given that you're almost all the way there anyway, is it worth persevering and becoming an expert? I do think the story is good and my small niggles shouldn't make you give up so ignore me and go ahead and publish.
ReplyDeleteThe glitches you mentioned did make me laugh so I think we'd all enjoy seeing some of those when you post them. I'll see if I can send you a screenshot of the way Vicky's eyes appear on my screen so that you can see what I meant.
it isn't always, and with a standalone picture, of course, it's much easier because you can concentrate on getting that right. I did the draft on Night Cafe, and then went back to improve things. I could try to get more disparate people and maybe splice two images. And having looked on the view, not on my upload screen, I can see that the image degrades significantly. I suspect that it shows it at 72dpi not 300dpi.
DeleteI will be persevering, and I am wondering whether it's worth coughing up an extra 4 australian dollars a month for 2 extra characters or 14 extra canadian dollars a month for 7 extra characters; I did ask, and they said they were considering, selling use of characters as an extra without upgrading the general program, and I am waiting to see if they roll that out. Meantime, I used Vicky for Mira on the revamped book covers for broody! Jurij and it happily let me make them realistic and give her short hair.
it isn't always, and with a standalone picture, of course, it's much easier because you can concentrate on getting that right. I did the draft on Night Cafe, and then went back to improve things. I could try to get more disparate people and maybe splice two images. And having looked on the view, not on my upload screen, I can see that the image degrades significantly. I suspect that it shows it at 72dpi not 300dpi.
DeleteI will be persevering, and I am wondering whether it's worth coughing up an extra 4 australian dollars a month for 2 extra characters or 14 extra canadian dollars a month for 7 extra characters; I did ask, and they said they were considering, selling use of characters as an extra without upgrading the general program, and I am waiting to see if they roll that out. Meantime, I used Vicky for Mira on the revamped book covers for broody! Jurij and it happily let me make them realistic and give her short hair.
I'm not sure I can follow what happened between the last pic where Jurij was running with Tomasz on his back away from the fire and this one where they climbed up the ladder to the ship. Did Jan follow them until there was a safe place to land with his ship to pick them up? What "new ship" is mentioned in the narrative? I also don't quite understand what Tomasz did to save them. Did he swap ships with them for this flight (i. e. he crashed instead of Jan and Jurko?)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, could you give us a background to describe what alternative universe is this?
this is where I am having to learn the art of what to put in and what to leave to inference. Yes, Jurij ran to a place where Jan could come safely close enough to drop a ladder. they were both testing a new antigrav drive and Tomasz took the sabotaged one on purpose because he could not risk his friends even to save his family and so he decided if anyone was going to die, it was him.
DeleteI shall amend the first post with the forward which is about the universe; essentially it's a future of the happy! Jurij universe
right, I have added that, and changed - but not here, sorry, to add a thought bubble for Jurij outrunning the fire that Jan would pick them up when they had gone a safe distance.
DeleteI think it's OK, only when Jurij thought he could see only one way out, I supposed there was some specific thing he planned to do rather than run fast. It took a bit of thinking to figure out that they were supposed to be in the ship Tomasz used, perhaps either Jurij could realize it, or Tomasz could explicitly say, or, er, Remi could be more explicit.
DeleteHe had a radio on him - which he used when parachuting - so Jan can follow him easily; I might be able to put in about the ship he was in being the one they were supposed to be in right at the beginning
Deletefirst panel, Jurij is saying: He took the ship we were to take... and alone
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