Siobhan Naught Character Card
Added 2023-12-27 21:50:33 +0000 UTCEdit: Made her look slightly younger.
Bio: Siobhan found herself at the top of the coppers' most wanted list for stealing Myrddin's journal and skillfully evading all attempts to retrieve it. Rumors suggest her peculiar powers come from shadows, nightmares, and blood magic. They say she is a shapeshifter using ancient powers, or an Aberrant. Perhaps she is only a girl in over her head... or, perhaps, some of the rumors are true.
This is a bonus card as thanks for helping me name our new community space, Azalea's Arcane Alcove (coming soon.)
I'm sorry it's late! I created this card, didn't schedule it ahead of time, and then repeatedly remembered that I had failed to post it...while away from my computer. It's like this card was cursed with some kind of anti-memetic effect. Even though I usually keep extensive task lists and calendars.
Every time I remembered it was late, somehow I forgot about it before being in a position to post it. Yesterday, while at my computer, I literally wrote to Stefanie (one of my wonderful assistants, who you'll recognize) that I was going to post it, and somehow still forgot to do it.
So here it is! More of these will be coming in a few weeks. Maybe they could take the Monday release spot once The Catastrophe Collector goes on hiatus? I've got almost 20 characters left.
Comments
I also thought she looked a little old for 20. I'm sorry, due to certain hobbies I spend alot of time looking at and studying faces so it jumped up at me a out why she looked a little older. But it's all technical stuff like reduced buccal fat even with somebody with high zygomatic mass. There's more that I could imagine could be done to maintain her appearance but also decrease her apparent age. But again, language is too bogged up in jargon to be succinct. But then again, I think it depends on your region and culture I guess. I've noticed that Americans/Western and northern Europeans generally look older for their age Vs east and central Asians for example; or in my case, my country of origin. So it could be cultural ideas of what we consider age appropriate.
Emma Mass
2023-12-28 06:49:13 +0000 UTCAsymmety is actual a very normal and common feature of a face. Tho too much and too extreme is jarring and is usually an indication of health problems. High symmetry is usually a sign of beauty so an average amount of asymmetry is required to make faces look normal, canny and realisable.
Emma Mass
2023-12-28 06:40:28 +0000 UTCWith artbreeder images, pay special attention also to the symmetry between the lips and the jawline. Both of these things are off most of the time. One side of the jaw will be lower and one will be narrower. Likewise the lips. I see you already caught the nose and eyes. 😁
Raivshard
2023-12-28 05:53:32 +0000 UTCIt would be really cool if artbreeder ever got a proper upgrade to the quality of their model, but I doubt they could afford to run that with the same performance without charging an arm and a leg for the service.
Raivshard
2023-12-28 05:50:43 +0000 UTCI definitely agree about the ability to control the details and features. Being able to see those changes happen in real time was always tremendously useful when I was using the tool. It was never really enough for me, though, since almost every face comes out just wonky enough to need image editing after the fact. So eventually I figured I may as well just use stable diffusion and MidJourney, etc to make much more photoreal images and then use the liquefy tool in Photoshop (with its built-in easy face restructuring) to match them to the outlines of the original. In terms of keeping people from being too pretty, that's mostly just a matter of prompting correctly these days. The best stable diffusion models can do this no problem, and MidJourney especially does this out of the box now, with the ability to use natural language to generate very fine control over the output. Stable diffusion has less prompt control, but has tools like controlnet, which can input depth maps or outlines generated by any image you supply and then fit the prompt around that. I use that very method when redoing old artbreeder character images for other novels, although I first use Photoshop to manually correct the deformities in the artbreeder outputs, so that it doesn't mess with the final output. Getting the best results usually requires letting the AI take some liberties, so the bulk of the face restructuring is usually the final step, in addition to any details that need to be added for specific characters. Wacky eye colors and effects are a common one, as well as scars in specific places. MJ is actually pretty good at generating cool details and effects for eyes. Basically just prompt for a wide image with two eyes, and specify whatever. Then just swipe them out in Photoshop and blend them into an existing work.
Raivshard
2023-12-28 05:43:52 +0000 UTCAs Raivshard said, I made them in ArtBreeder. About a year ago I polled my readers, they voted for character portraits over more grimoire excerpts, and I spent a few dozen hours making base portraits in ArtBreeder while doing the audio review of A Sacrifice of Light. (While listening to work-related audio is about the only time I can make for a visual art project these days.) I have some fairly high skill in painting/illustration, which helps a lot. With this, I spent about 30 minutes per character pulling 20-50 different community portraits with the right "aura," (even if not the right features) combining them together and modifying them with ArtBreeder's gene sliders in an iterative process into a face that's pretty close to what I wanted for the character. Then, when I'm ready to post them, I move them into my Photoshop character card template and spend another 30 minutes re-painting things the AI messed up, changing hair color, eye color, and adjusting the shape of the bone structure and cartilage and stuff like messing with clay. Add a bio, and viola! It takes me about an hour each rather than 30 minutes for me to hunt down a stock photo model and another 20-40 HOURS painting them from scratch. Which means you guys get 30+ portraits rather than 1. :)
Azalea Ellis
2023-12-28 05:23:45 +0000 UTCShe's 20. I think she looks pretty age-appropriate, but that's definitely one of those things that can be "in the eye of the beholder."
Azalea Ellis
2023-12-28 05:08:18 +0000 UTCI did the bases of these portraits about a year ago now, and technology has been advancing very quickly. What I like(d) about ArtBreeder is the ability to control the details and features with some measure of precision, so if I ever do something like this again I'd consider any software that allowed the same. I'd love something that makes it easier to keep people from being too pretty.
Azalea Ellis
2023-12-28 05:07:22 +0000 UTC‘Alias: The Raven Queen. Dangerous practitioner of Forbidden Magics. Flee on sight. Report any information to law enforcement. Reward for information leading to arrest: Five hundred gold crowns.’
Tjolbin
2023-12-28 02:57:44 +0000 UTCI'm 90% certain that these are made with the tool known as artbreeder. There are key details that are pretty distinctive in how it creates faces. Mostly to do with inconsistencies in symmetry and alignment, but the art style as well is 100% artbreeder
Raivshard
2023-12-28 02:08:56 +0000 UTChow are you making these/how are you getting these?
CAPTAINCAEL
2023-12-28 00:15:14 +0000 UTCI love these character cards. Mainly because I can't remember descriptors, no matter how many times I read them X)
Spade ♠️ Dragon
2023-12-27 23:12:57 +0000 UTCIma just say she looks older than how I imagined.
Markel Creek
2023-12-27 22:46:26 +0000 UTCAh, good old reliable artbreeder. With all the tools available these days, have you considered any of the other generative systems? All manner of styles and grades of realism are possible.
Raivshard
2023-12-27 22:29:01 +0000 UTCBlack eye color is fascinating, and Siobhan is very fetching with it. Your current covers are very expressive, but I’d love some covers that showed this face more clearly.
Jonathan Gordy
2023-12-27 22:18:07 +0000 UTCI was wondering if you'd to post it. 😂 To be fair, I dumped so many things in your lap the other day that I probably directly contributed to this card being late. Sorry, everyone... (Also, seeing the final copy is pretty freaking cool. It looks great!)
Stefanie
2023-12-27 21:55:04 +0000 UTC
