A Regular Sunday
Sunday, January 11th, 2026 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio26F out there tonight.
Slept in until 4:30PM, then drove to Aldi in the dark. Now, i've been home for a couple hours.
Last night I did manage to finally get my final images for, Reavis, Tuesday Siren, and Closer to you. But I burned through a lot of credits to do it, carefully tweaking the prompts every two or three generations.
Reavis proved to be the most difficult of them all. A simple enough scene... an empty university classroom. On one side, a door opens to a busy hallway, and near that doorway stands the TA, with a tote bag around her shoulder.
On the opposite side of the room, leaning against the windows which offer a view of fall foliage, the young man with black (dyed) hair, a charcoal denim jacket covered with colorful patches, T-shirt, jeans, backpack on the floor.
They face one another, with desks in between them. He's being casual. She shows mild interest.
A calendar on the wall reads: SEP 1990.
But the AI kept making her look kinda frumpy?.. and kept making him look short?.. and I finally figured out that the language had labeled her as a, "teacher," and him as simply a "young man", so it was trying to make her look mom-like, and him like an 8th grader.
So I changed it to specify them both as being in their twenties, and both students, as in real life, that TA was only a year older than me. That, and lots of specifics about the clothing, jewelry, etc finally got me what I wanted.
But there were still many false runs where the desks would look weird, or their expressions were off... or it'd have him randomly looking at the camera.
Even in the final version that I upscaled, it showed the door handle on the hinge side, which is impossible, and the window in the open door, which should have shown only the wall behind it, instead showed more of the hallway outside.
But all the upscaled masters had issues like this... a cigarette in an ashtray pointing the wrong way... a door with two handles... a bass guitar with four tuning pegs, but only three tuning keys, etc.
So, once I had my 12 upscaled masters, I put them on a thumb drive and ported them over the the all-in-one PC which is optimized for digital painting, and spent the evening going in and manually fixing all the issues, one by one.
The only two that didn't need any touch ups were, Archeology, and Miss Fortune.
That touch-up process continued today after I got back from Aldi, but as of 8PM, it's all done and now the fixed masters are about to be brought back over to the Optiplex, where I do have an app that's great for just re-sizing.
In all descriptons below, when I say, "girl," I mean, a young woman in her twenties. And when I say, "guy" I mean a young man (me) in his twenties.
01 ARCHEOLOGY: Girl in a red hoodie, blond hair in a ponytail, and a large leather satchel over her shoulder. We see her from behind, with her head in profile looking to left of frame. She is on a brick pathway, at the rusty wrought iron gates of a cemetery, walking in, at night.
Lamps in the cemetery make it look similar to a city park, and spooky trees with crooked branches are blooming with pink spring blossoms. In the distance, an urban skyline.
This is based on the lyric, "the record shows you snakin' past the gate..." She represents the listener, and also the person in the crypt sequence prying open the mausoleum to get to the tape.
Her satchel is full of tools.
Her left ear is facing us, and represents her readiness to listen.
Her blonde hair, red hoody, and the pink blossoms & park-like lamps provide a contrast to the rusty gates, twisted branches, and old headstones. Youth and death... an evening stroll into a mystery... the beginning of one story, to investigate the end of another.
02 REAVIS 309: Already described above, but the teacher looks youthful and hip, yet educated, with her glasses and button down shirt over the T-shirt. She is the acacemic, looking at the young musician, still coming off his teenage punk phase.
They are the same age, but she's further along in life. He's old to be a freshman here. They are from two different worlds, but there is a spark of interest.
She is positioned before the open door, her egress not blocked, academia in the hall behind her. He is leaning on the window sill, a would-be outsider looking in, but he's managed to find his way over to her side the glass. Behind him is fall foliage, the real world, with it's chaotic wilderness.
She's here to start a career. He's just passing through, to get experience and material for art that will never be legitimized or certified by institutions.
03 NEVER RAINS: Our young guy is now back to his natural brown hair, with a short ponytail, and this is how we'll see him until Song 11.
He's downtown in the midst of a raging thunderstorm, with billowing black clouds and a bright bolt of lightning in the distance.
City Lights are lit, but the downtown is empty, no people or traffic as he stands in the middle of the rain slicked street holding an umbrella high against the oncoming rain, like both a sword and a shield.
His stance is comically confident, with the other hand on a hip, and feet wide apart. There's a slightly maniacle look in his eyes as he stands there, with open mouth in a smile.
The camera angle is a bit low, looking up at the umbrella and the tormented skies.
His umbrella, however, is a light purple, with a pastel flower print going around the perimeter of it... like something a school girl would carry.
This adds to the comedic tone, and also characterizes him as one who prizes function over form, and who is not afraid to go into battle under a purple, flowered banner.
04 MAGIC MONDAY: Close up of a diner booth, with icicles and snow outside the windows. Our guy is seated on the left, holidng a coffee cup, and with a cigarette in a nearby ashtray.
The waitress, with brown bangs, a short cut, and glasses, sits in the booth with him on the right, holding a notepad. Her delicate jewelry and stylish watch add some spice to her pedestrian uniform.
He offers a polite smile. She looks at him with guarded amusement. The mood is flirtatious. She's dared to sit with him for the order because he's the only person crazy enough to come out tonight, during this ice storm.
The maroon of her painted nails matches her nametag, which reads: Mandy.
05 TUESDAY SIREN: Another 50/50 shot with the same guy and girl, now both standing in a library, tall stacks of books to the left and right, with tall windows behind them letting in rays of sunlight, articulated by the dust in the air.
He wears a white T-shirt over a long-sleeved maroon thermal, and blue jeans. His shirt and hands are dirty and his hair is disheveled, as he's been frantically digging through the dusty tomes to find her the right book.
She wears a green padded winter coat, long, and open, revealing stylish, casual dress, again punctuated by delicate jewelry, and through her glasses we can see the blue of her eyes.
She holds a book with a large gargoyle carved into it's old leather cover, and scrutinizes it's pages with a veneer of indifference, tinged with genuine wonder.
He stands with guarded optimism, casually examining her expression, his hand still up, as if she's just taken the book out of it.
The difficult part of getting this take was just their expressions. The AI kept wanting to show her with wide-eyed shock and surprise, and him racked with anxiety.
06 OUR COLD FEET: This frame is split diagonally, from upper left to lower right. In the upper corner of the frame we see our girl from the last two songs. She is at home, sitting at a desk, by a lamp, reading a letter, with an open envelope nearby. She looks very concerned, or emotional about what she's reading.
The dominant tones in her corner are browns and golds.
IN the lower corner of the frame, our guy, in a blue hoodie, out on the street alone downtwon, sitting on a stoop, smoking a cigarette, looking a bit dejected. The streets are slicked with rain.
The dominant tones in his corner are blues.
He only knows he's been ghosted with no explanation. This image offers only a vague answer. Is the letter from a former lover? Or is this news from a friend or family member?
This was a hard image to obtain, because of the diagonal split. I ended up having to use the upper half of one version, and the lower half of another, to get the ideal graphic.
07 CLOSER TO YOU: It's dawn, and our guy, still in his blue hoody is on an abandoned block of downtown. WE see him from behind, hands in pockets, cigarette in mouth.
He stands before the ruins of the old terminal building. A red brick, victorian era building with grey concrete trim. Steps with rusing rails lead up to a grand arched entrance, it's ornate wooden doors sporting rusted iron hardware.
Above the arch, carved in stone, it reads, "Central City Terminal"
High arched windows to the left and right of the entrance feature broken and missing panes of glass. In one, can be seen an old 1940s era poster showing a happy red street car from the front, with the title above reading, "GREAT WAY TO GET AROUND!"
In other windows, faint ghostly figures can be seen haunting the dark interior.
The building is covered in dead ivy, and the pavement is overgrown with grass and littered with empty beer cans.
The sky above the building is pink and orange with sunrise.
The camera angle is low, looking up at the once grand structure.
The reason this image was so difficult was getting all the details of the building right. I had to specify a lot more than I originally thought.
08 BED IN THE SUBURBS: Here we see our guy in his modest bedroom recording a song late at night. This is a high camera angle looking down into the room.
We see a simple twin bed with blue sheets and blankets, a bit messy. Next to that is a night stand with a coffee cup, empty beer bottle, small lamp, and a micro-cassette recorder (remember those?).
Above the night stand is a small framed picture of a cricket.
On the adjacent wall is a window, open to the night air, with the scene of a suburban neighborhood outside, through it's screen.
Below the window, sitting cross-legged on the wood floor, is our guy, playing an electric bass guitar and wearing headphones. He is gazing down at a dual cassette tape recorder on the floor before him with wires coming out and going into a tangle on the floor nearby... bass, headphones, power plug, etc.
For each deck, one key is depressed... the play key on one, the record key on the other, and a red LED on the face is lit up.
Next to him on the floor, an ash tray with a lit cigarette, and a bottle of beer.
The mood is one of creative solitude.
While the song itself is a rousing summer party anthem, the image shows us it's creation, and also mirrors the lyrics about being a humble musician, singing late at night... and also, of course, shows us the literal bed in the suburbs.
This image also shows us what we're hearing in the opening lofi segment of Archeology... except for the Casio keyboard, which would've been extremely difficult to get the AI to include.
As it is, this was the most heavily touched-up of the images, with me having to manually draw all the detailing of the cassette machine and it's wires, as well as tweaks to the bass guitar.
The only reason there's a micro-cassette recorder on the night stand is that the AI put a vague rectangular object there, which was difficult to remove, so I turned it into a micro-cassette machine.
The next two songs, Clue Phone, and Other Friends, are now, visually, the commercial break in our story.
Unlike the rest of the songs on the album, these two are not narrative. They are not memoirs of specific scenes or situations. And they do not have much to do with the "story" that's being told on the album.
In the pulp sessions, the solution was to turn them both into propaganda style posters.
In the 1990s graphic novel sessions, they became television ads. Hence, the commercial break.
Both images show a 90's era cathode ray TV set, and the images are on the screens of those TVs.
09 CLUE PHONE: Close up of a blonde girl in a denim jacket with a low cut red shirt and lots of jewelry. She is out on the town, with a cityscape behind her, and her hair blows in the wind as she smiles a perfect smile.
To her ear, she's holding a ridiculously klunky brick phone, silver gray, with a huge antenna and lots of buttons and jacks on it... but seems absolutely thrilled to have it!
Above her, in rounded purple letters, bold font, "IT'S FOR YOU!"
At the bottom of the screen, in a smaller, cursive font of white, "Pick it up!"
When matched against the actual song, this is, of course, high satire!
10 OTHER FRIENDS:
In this ad, it's the same blonde, IT girl from the first, but here, she's wearing huge hollywood-style sunglasses, and looking straight to camera.
Behind her, a legion of male figures in identical blue suits, and they all have identical bird heads!.. mocking birds, specifically.
Above her, in a curved, gold font of all caps, "SAY HELLO"... below, in a white italic font, "...to your OTHER friends!"
More high satire, but this one's truly disturbing with the bird-headed suit men!
The blonde hair of our TV commercial starlet is meant to differentiate her from the brown haired, Mandy character. These roastly songs are not aimed at her or any specific person.
She merly represents commercialism and it's siren call to stay shallow and embrace disingenuous social climbing.
11 SPELL I'M UNDER: when we return from the commercial break, our young guy in his twenties, with the full head of brown hair and the short ponytail is now a grizzled older man with a white beard, short cropped, and a baseball hat to hide his baldness.
He sits in dark urban alleyway, on the stoop of a back door, under the harsh light of a single lamp above.
Near him, on the rain soaked pavement, two large cardboard boxes taped shut, and an old steamer trunk. On one carboard box, scrawled in black marker, "DESK SHIT," on the other, "COMPUTER SHIT."
He holds a single cassette tape, with both hands, centered before him, like how you'd hold a smart phone, and is peering into it just as one would a phone, with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
The tone is somewhat bleak, and his mood is a bit dejected, but there is hope in the way he examines the cassette.
In general, I love how jarring it is to see our youthful protagonist now having aged 30 years!
12 MISS FORTUNE: Our final image is of a woman, 30 to 40ish, with very long brown hair, and brown eyes.
She is standing outside at night, on a grassy hilltop, with nearby foliage still green, but tinged with the orange and golds of fall.
Beyond the foliage, the lights of a sprawling town in the valley below, with more hills in the distance.
Behind it all, a starry night sky, with a thin waxing-crescent moon.
She wears a gray, hooded sweatshirt under a long green trench coat, which is flowing a bit in the breeze.
We see her in profile, gazing off to the right, as if pondering a great mystery, or contemplating a past, or coming, adventure.
This woman is the counterpart to the one we saw entering the cemetery at the beginning. There, we saw her left ear, ready to listen, and it was spring. Here, we see this woman's right ear, perhaps having heard enough?
And it is now fall.
Unlike the first woman, who was delving into a mystery at street level, Miss Fortune stands high above it all... yet with sweater and trench coat, she is grounded, rather than glorified.
The waxing crescent moon, a few nights past new, portends a new start. A future yet to unfold.
Okay, the laundry is done and I'm in for the night!
That's the rundown of Archeology's song artwork, and I'm really happy with it!
The music and lyrics themselves create one dimension of the album's world, and the sound design sequences add a second dimension of world building.
But these images add a third dimension to the world.
And by, "dimensions," I mean, they are not all telling the exact same story.
For example, Our Cold Feet's music and lyrics, sung with a Morrissey affectation amount to a kind of self-aware, self-depricating approach to rejection, with the sound design at the end being fairly comedic... first with a distant screeching car... then the single songbird giving way to a huge chorus of dawn birds and trumpeted sunrise, to step all over the guy's moping negativity.
But the image is genuinely dramatic, and seems far more serious.
And in the image, it's our brown-haired girl with, "the biggest bluest eyes I've ever seen," from Tueday Siren, yet the lyrics for Cold Feet are all about "eyes of brown! A captive! SOS! 911!"
These are the little inconsistencies that crop up in all good album art, and lyrics which become the fodder for elaborate fan theories.
"clues," to some deeper meaning below the surface.
At the cost of $80.00, and one week's work, I'd say this was well worth the money and effort!
The resulting images, after touch ups, are now all pretty golden! No traces of AI mistakes, or klunky compositions.
The graphic novel style keeps it all well outside the arena of, "AI/CGI slop," which is associated with hyper photo-realistic shit with glaring color palettes and hyper-idealized lighting that screams, "AN ALGORITHM DID THIS FOR ME IN FIVE MINUTES! CALL ME AN ARTIST!"
And the style also matches well with the style of the album.
Okay! I'm gonna port the fixed masters back over to the Optiplex and spend the rest of the evening creating re-sized versions to see how they translate.
You can't see a 6K X 6K image all at once on a computer screen, after all!
Not sure what I'll be getting up to this next week, but i'm still on my break from hearing, or working on the music until next Saturday.
I'll talk to you then.
°¦}
