I have been playing with what it is possible to create with the AI tools I paid for. I am using the various features of both AI Mirror and Picsart AI Photo Editor. It is a blast. I have been doing way more artwork of the cheap and easy AI kind than is even close to reasonable.
It is possible to take a photo of a Barbie Doll (or let’s call it a Skipper doll) and use an AI Mirror to turn the picture into a realistic anime girl on a Picsart background.
And then I can turn that picture back into a plastic doll again, though much more realistic than the stiff-jointed plastic doll I started with.
I can take a goofy-looking picture of a girl’s face and turn that into a plastic doll.
And then do a number of goofy-looking variations of that doll face.
Or edit together a picture of me as a nudist on a Florida beach.
Or goofy-looking variations of that face.
And you should thank your lucky stars that I am not showing you all of the variations I did. It does indeed get worse… much… much worse.
This self-portrait of me is made from several of my old selfies fed through the Picsart AI Photo Editor app.
It is my way of getting to Florida in spite of my health problem and ill fortune. Picsart synthesized a picture of me in front of an AI-Generated background. Picsart is not really intelligent. The app creates an image based on what you put into it. It can generate images in the same way that other infamous AI art apps do it, scraping images from the internet, mixing it all up,, and rawlfing out a picture based on a sentence or phrase. But it also works as a very good Photoshop program, allowing you to remove backgrounds, isolate images, paste them in new surroundings, and adjust colors… far better than the cheap-o little Photoshop clone I was using before.
I can take a colored pencil drawing (which is increasingly hard for me to do) and put it on computer to use digital tools.
I can draw and color more easily on a touch screen with a stylus, once I learn all the computer controls.
I can finish the drawing by hand and put in a background that matches the style of my drawing using Picsart Smart Backgrounds. But you can see the creeping crudity of my hand-drawn work. So, I can also go back and put it together again with even more AI help.
I can use AI Mirror to put the original drawing through a realistic anime style format that redraws my drawing, including all the flubs that AI is heir to. Crooked fingers, changing the gender of the subject, shrinking the nose, crossing the eyes, and a total misunderstanding of clown paint.
Using Picsart again to put in the Martin Bar and Grill background.
And then I make final corrections with the digital pen and paintbrush to turn Francois back into a boy wearing clown paint while he sings sad songs.
And so, as I get more and more familiar with the things I can do with Picsart, I let it turn me into a Jimmy Buffett clone again, sending me back to Florida where my heart is this weekend.
You can control who lives in a doll house pretty easily. The behavior of Trolls and Wishniks and My Pretty Ponies is rather placid and easy to manage. They are all mere lumps of cold plastic given shape by Mattel, Hasbro, Marx, or some other toy factory corporation.
Jade, the family dog, originally supposed to write this post for me, has passed away. Of course, she would’ve pressed the keys with her tongue, so the laptop is grateful that I am doing this post tonight. The dog left me alone in the house on a weekend when I should’ve been able to go with the rest of the family to Florida to see my son’s graduation ceremony from his Air Force special training course. I can’t tell you what he trained in because he is not allowed to tell his family. Probably secrets about aliens and spies from outer space and some junk.
It is possible that Rarity Pony murdered that fallen Troll as baby Cookie Monster and Claypants Troll looked on. Well, it could happen… if somebody had been playing with them.
The fact remains, however, that I had to stay home alone like some kind of over-aged Macaulay Culkin to be near the hospital I want to be admitted to if the no-peeing problem I had earlier this week in the middle of the night suddenly gets worse. It is painful to have a full bladder you can’t empty for some unknown reason. And it is potentially life-threatening. Something similar killed Jim Henson. And Florida hospitals are not the place to be when we have a perfectly good ER that we’ve used before when I feared I might be dying only a few blocks up the street.
So, the only badness I had to deal with turned out to be a bit of loneliness… the blues. The no-peeing problem did not haunt me again on either of the last two nights. I usually like being alone, but not when I am missing out on an important family moment.
Cissy had changed the name of the family starship. Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck was now Heart Moon’s Happy Luck. Of course, it was only changed on the log book. On the ship’s hull outside, the ship’s name still read Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck FT-645-00-X5015-A606. But in creepy Imperium-style letters. She carefully copied Crocodile Guy’s heading coordinates into the log book of the Happy Luck.
“Captain Cissy, scanners are picking up a large group of objects just coming into scanner range.” The glowing holographic form of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Guy, stood beside the Captain’s Chair with a concerned look on his face. He was basically an AI education program, but his AI addiction to absorbing new knowledge had changed him into the far-trader starship’s science officer, engineer, translator, and all-around indispensible right-hand man for Captain Cissy. He even stood in for the ship’s computer, David, who became deceased in the escape from the Stardog pirates.
“Are they hostile? Do you think?” Cissy looked up at the viewing screen. Little red blips were swarming in the upper right corner of the screen.
“Dey maybee bee Pie-rats! Maybee dem Stardogs again!” said the terrified voice of little Friday, the Lupin child that had become more like a little sister to twelve-year-old Cissy than the family dog she distinctly resembled. Friday was out of sight at that moment, hiding behind Cissy’s Captain’s Chair.
“What course do I set, Captain?” asked Suki, the blue-skinned Nebulon pilot.
“They are currently in a position where, if they are indeed starships, they can scan us just as clearly as we can scan them. If they are are space buccaneers, they will make for us any moment now.” Crocodile Guy sounded more calm than any of the rest of the crew. Of course, being a hologram AI program, he was also not as easily killed as the rest of the crew.
“Well, if they are coming to get us, we are way outnumbered. We might as well meet them head on and see for ourselves what they are going to do.” Cissy’s expression was one of stiff-lipped defiance.
“Well, they could be space debris or a group of deep-space asteroids going nowhere,” said Suki. setting the controls on an intercept-course heading. Cissy marveled again at how fast Suki had picked up Galactic English from Crocodile Guy’s tutorials. She sounded like a spacer from the Imperium now. No trace of a Nebulonin accent remained.
The Happy Luck closed the distance rapidly. The red dots did seem to be headed towards them as well.
“I can put the image on screen now,” said Suki. “Do you want to see them now, Captain?”
“Yes, please.”
Friday peered out at the screen from behind Cissy. “Wowz! They iz space fishes! Reelie big space fishes,” said Friday.
“Yes, they are big. In fact, five hundred to a thousand meters in length each. Those are space whales.” Suki was grinning as if she were immensely pleased. “And not just any space whales. Clan Vorannac space whales. My clan.”
“Those are what your people use as starships?” Cissy gasped. They were easily as immense as Imperial dreadnoughts.
“Yes. Those big space fish are hollow and contain entire ecosystems inside them… entire worlds.”
“So, they are friendly?” Cissy hoped aloud.
“If we are lucky and have found a good warlord… rather than a bad one.”
“We iz aboutta fine out,” declared Friday. Her canine eyes grew larger as the looming space whales came towards them, swimming stately and regally amongst the stars.
Life is full of crazy characters with silly sounding names.
Pumblechook and Magwitch, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher, Sydney Carton. Little Nell and Dick Swiveller. Uriah Heep and Mr. Murdstone. Bill Sykes. Little Dorrit, Pip, and Tiny Tim. Bob Cratchit, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, Peggotty, and Oliver Twist. Wilkins Micawber.
Sydney Carton quote; “I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it.” …Said to Lucy Manet before he takes the place of her beloved in the line to the guillotine.
Wilkins Micawber quotes; “I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be more beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if—in short, anything turns up.” …Said to David Copperfield to explain his current poverty and difficulties.
The world, in so many words, is a complex and difficult world to understand. But with comedy and tragedy and irony and sweet understanding, Charles Dickens always made sense of it for me.
Did you ever read a Dickens’ book? I know they are long and wordy and more than a hundred years old. But anywhere you start, I guarantee it is worth it. It will pull you in. Oliver Twist, Great Expectation, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, a Christmas Carol… You have to read at least one. Start anywhere. Like me, you may never get enough.
The Starfighter is in her cockpit, ready for the enemy.
A friendly game of tennis in the nude.
Meeting the new girlfriend at the beach.
In the forests of the future
These images were made with a combination of colored pencil drawings (mostly just the human figures,) Picsart AI Photo Editor (to add backgrounds,) and AI Mirror (to make the photo parts seamlessly blend with the hand-drawn parts.)
Dogs can’t live forever. Not even as long as a people can. And believe me, she believed with all her might that she was a people. She ate enough people food, mostly stolen, that she convinced herself she was turning into a human girl. But one people year is seven years of dog-year aging. And she was 98 by that measure. And she had doggy breast cancer, complete with a big nasty tumor.
Yesterday, in the veterinarian’s office, she laid down and went to sleep, leaving me and my daughter and my two sons and my wife behind. My fur baby passed away as I stroked her precious head for the last time ever.
She will be writing no more blog posts for me when I am not feeling well. She will no longer be thinking about running over neighborhood cats as she is driving the car. The local rats will fear her no more. And I will never be able to prove to anyone now that she was a talking dog.
We picked her up off the street as a lost puppy fourteen years ago. She apparently escaped from the local pet store and was written off on an insurance claim before the vet could even suggest that that is where she came from. A free Cardigan corgi puppy. She was a priceless part of our lives. She loved us as only a dog can, with ferocity, throwing tantrums and tearing up the trash can when we left her alone in the house.
I shall miss her until the day I die. Sleep well, Jade. You have earned your rest.
Catch a Falling Star 