Class of '23 (Or: 'The Book Lineup')

More about Class of '23 (Or: 'The Book Lineup')

So, I might have mentioned that I've got a book coming out later this year. Not only that, but my publisher, Culture Matters, is already talking about releasing a new book from yours truly once every three-four months (or 'quarterly' in publishing-speak), the idea being for each new collection of short stories to act like a literary equivalent to a regular comic book or magazine (think '2000AD but with text instead of pictures). With that frankly fantastic news in mind, I thought I'd assemble a lineup of some of the key players in my shared fictional cosmology... and you wouldn't believe how long it took!

Each of the characters pictured here started out as a rough, cartoony sketch showing their key features and. Each of these were then fed through DDG's style-filter to make them look sparkly and otherworldly. This image was then put back into the text-to-image generator as a base image accompanied by a more detailed physical description of the character. It usually took several attempts, but I eventually got A.I. generated versions of my heroes and superbeings that actually looked like them. After getting each individual character cropped and sized appropriately, I assembled them in a lineup, which I then copy-pasted onto a cosmic background that I'd created using the Text-to-Image generator. Finally, to get the finished product, I put this completed image through the style filter using the cosmic background AS the style, all just on 10% style effectiveness. This helped to subtly integrate the characters into the background and remove any residual artifacting. I'm really happy with the result and hopefully, by the time the first four volumes of my ongoing short story collection is out, you'll be able to put a name to every face shown here. Well, face, helmet and weird abstract pyramid thing.

Side note: yes, yes- I know both of the ladies featured here are rather rotund- one to a ridiculous extent. I haven't stopped being a Fat Admirer since I became a published writer. That's still a thing.