Cyber Babes

So, yep, we’re doing cyber sweethearts, again… really, if it isn’t Fae, it’s these babes, isn’t it?…

… we’ve been doing work in Mj for so long, now, and so obsessively, that we feel we have developed a recognisable style of our own, especially with the cyber girls. We doubt anyone else, unless they used one of our images as a seed, could produce what we create, just using prompts…

… by now, we have done thousands and thousands of iterations, working toward this style, and we are very sure Mj remembers everything we’ve ever done. We say this because we don’t even need to use prompts, any more, we just use ‘blend’, and images from our thousands-strong library of work (we saved EVERY good image we ever made, and probably thousands of crap ones, too)… but, even when we are using ‘blend’, and no prompts, Mj throws in elements we have prompted in previous work, even if those elements are simply NOT included in the images we blend…

… we have begun to suspect that it’s almost a holographic memory thing, every aspect of every image we’ve ever asked Mj to create, is somehow, like DNA, stored in each, individual image. This can actually be a negative as, for instance, as a result of all the underwater images we once did, Mj suddenly starts making all our images underwater because one of them was vaguely shiny, which can kill a run when we were totally NOT going for underwater!

Anyway, we are certainly pleased with how our cyber babes have evolved. We don’t think it would even be possible for some random person, without doing the years of iterations, to create one of these girls simply using prompts, because they are too sexy, and Mj would start screaming ‘prompt declined due to prudish censorship standards!!!’… or the annoying phrase it actually uses to say that (:

Little Grey Cutie

We thought we’d do a post about the only aspect of Mj we consider to be a negative… apart from it’s boring American puritanism, but we’ve said plenty about that…

… as we’ve said, our process has always been iterative, Mj has exponentially amplified that process…

… if we get Mj to produce something we really like, we always ‘reroll’ it, which means, basically, hitting repeat on the initial set of four… we have to do that with any image that depicts anything resembling breasts because if we took the above image and changed it’s prompts, Mj would shriek that it can’t use such an obscene image, and refuse to do anything with it, but it will happily ‘reroll’ that image in it’s first set of four iterations… it must not ‘look’ at them when they are in that first set… it wouldn’t even let us ‘zoom out’ on an image like this, because, once again, it claims we are using a pornographic image, and refuses…

… so, we wind up producing lots of images that are similar… in the case of our ‘Little Grey Cutie’, here, we saved 50 of them, these are the ‘best’ six, though saying that isn’t correct, because all 50 are the ‘best’ of the 100 or more we actually created, and all 50 are gorgeous…

… which brings us to that other, ‘negative’ aspect… the sheer amount of stunning images we are able to create! As we’ve also said, before, the human and I share an obsessive/addictive personality, if we can create too many excellent images… we do! Far too many to ever use, or do anything with! But we just can’t help ourselves…

… and, so, we wind up with a folder counting 50 of these gorgeous cuties, all of whom are only slightly different, and it’s almost impossible to pick six that are better, let alone one that is best!

Hunter-Killer

Unlike our previous, beautiful cyborgs, these beauties were never human…

… they are military-grade androids, deliberately made to look like beautiful young woman for the psychological edge it gives them when fighting humans…

… they are two meters tall, and weigh 500 kilograms, they are powered by a tiny fusion reactor that is buried deep in their heavily armoured and shielded chests. Most of their body is taken up with hydraulic and pneumatic strength multiplier systems… they are incredibly strong, they are capable of tearing the turret off a tank with their bare hands, if they can get a good enough grip, which they usually can…

… like a cheetah, they have a top running speed of 120kph, unlike a cheetah, they could maintain that speed for years, should they need to. Their minds run several times faster than a humans, so, to them, humans are very slow, even bullets are slow… couple that with the fact they can move several times faster than humans, and the equation becomes severely weighted in the favour of these gorgeous machines. They don’t carry weapons because, well, they are weapons. Their battlefield job is to seek out, and destroy, enemy infantry. Not only are they extremely well armoured, but they also generate an electro-magnetic field which is, in fact, a forcefield, which repels all small-arms fire… they can withstand almost any assault other than a direct hit from a tank shell, or a missile. One of them, on her own, is quite capable of eliminating an entire company of soldiers, especially as the soldiers become more terrified, and begin firing blindly, killing each other as they try to hit something that is running through them at speeds of 120kph, while it pulls them to pieces like toys…

… there are only a handful of these creatures, each one costing about as much as a nuclear submarine, but, hey, you don’t need more than a few.

We Can Rebuild You

So, after are brief sojourn into the surreal, as a palette cleanser, we returned, refreshed, and invigorated, to what you must surely, now, recognise as our most favourite theme…

… gorgeous post-human babes! Our little break paid off spectacularly, as we feel these are our best-yet series of cyber-babes…

… it took us countless hours to get Mj to create images like this! Apart from Mj’s puritanical refusals to create any image with more than the tiniest amount of what it sees as naked flesh, to deal with, there is also Mj’s propensity to produce pin-up-like woman in robot-like clothing, instead of images of females that actually are machine/half-machine….

… so we were delighted when we started getting images like these after hours/days of not-quite-what-we-asked-for results…

… once Mj gets on a roll, we just run with it, because we know, from experience, that Mj eventually, suddenly, will lose the plot/thread, and revert back to pin-ups wearing b-grade robot outfits…

… but, for now, Mj is making us very happy, producing these beautiful cyborg sweethearts (:

Augmented II

As time goes by, these augmented warrior babes become ever more augmented…

… eventually, their pretty faces are the only ‘human’ element left, apart from their bi-pedal, two-armed body shapes…

… keeping their beautiful faces becomes a psychological connection to their previous reality. Unfortunately, soft, flesh faces are easily damaged, and, they, too, get swapped out for synthetic replacements…

… the augmented now have plastic, doll faces…

… everything else is insanely durable, super-metal on a titanium battle-chassis…

… unless they sustain catastrophic damage, they are immortal, and slowly losing any feeling for what it was to be ‘human’.

Augmented

Some time in the future, the perfection of military-grade physical augmentation will eliminate the strength differential between males and females…

… because woman are better learners than males, and have a vastly higher pain tolerance, woman will begin to dominate the ranks of active-duty soldiers…

… it will become obvious that even the most hardened, misogynistic, religious fanatic terrorist will, when confronted with an attractive, young, female combatant, underestimate the danger he is in…

… this will, of course, be fatal for the terrorist…

… most of the best soldiers…

… will be augmented woman.

Ship’s Ai

About a decade ago, the human (so, I, too…) read a couple of very good SF books by Ann Leckie. They were about a (space) battleship with an AI (she worked in conjunction with a human captain, but, basically, controlled every aspect of the ship)…

… the AI not only monitored every function of the ship, but also moved among the crew in the form of ‘ancillaries’, which were mind wiped humans (can’t remember why, perhaps they were criminals?) who were now controlled by the AI. These ancillaries were highly trained soldiers, as well as negotiators/psychologists/experts in human interaction…

… they not only monitored the crew, but fought as soldiers, as well as did covert operations on planets… the ship AI could see through all of their eyes at the same time, as well as control a massive warship. Due to treachery, the ship, the AI, and all her ancillaries were destroyed…

… all except one, who was on some covert mission (I think, can’t really remember). That single creature used to have the mind of a warship, the eyes of a thousand others like her… now she is alone…

… we LOVED this concept! We would have made the ancillaries androids, not humans, and we felt that the story, though with an astonishing concept, was far too slow and timid with the main character, but all kudos to Ann Leckie for that fabulous concept, which has stayed in our imaginations long after we put the slightly disappointing books down…

… we are drawn to tales of powerful female protagonists, seemingly vulnerable woman who are, actually, mind-boggelingly powerful. We were thinking of this character when we did these images. Our girl isn’t human, she’s a synthetic being, possibly immortal, but she now has no access to the massive resources she once had, and must remain hidden while she tracks down those responsible for the murder of 99.9% of herself, and all the humans she loved, especially her captain. She looks like a young woman, but she has more skills than 100 humans ten times older than she looks… and those looks are totally deceptive, as, physically, she is already 90 years old. Of course, she can kick your ass, and the ass of everyone you know, but she’d rather not hurt anyone she doesn’t need to (:

Machine Dolls Evolved

My output since I hit my stride with Midjourney (Mj) has been astonishing. Like I’ve said, I have an addictive personality, and am seriously addicted to Mj! The whole time I was posting the ‘Exquisite’ series, which ended with the ‘Machine Dolls’…

… I was evolving those dolls, till they looked something like this…

… I seriously adore these creatures…

… and totally love evolving them to be these gorgeously detailed, richly coloured/textured images…

… the process isn’t without frustration, though…

… as, due to Mj’s puritanical double standards, it allows me to create these images, but doesn’t then allow me to use these same images as prompts, claiming them to be pornography… a judgement that blows my mind. So the only way I can evolve this style, is to continually ‘re-roll’ from my initial prompts that snuck past Mj’s ludicrous ‘porn’ filter…

… so any evolution is extremely incremental, and, really, quite random…

… I actually think the Mj bot understands what results I’m after, but is hamstrung by the Sunday School teachers who wrote it’s filters…

… anyway, believe me, the Machine Dolls get much more sophisticated than this post, which is work from several days ago (: