#creative constraints

[krissym72]

Mastering the Art of Crafting AI Image Prompts: A Comprehensive Guide

In the dynamic landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), the fusion of technology and creativity has birthed a remarkable phenomenon: AI image prompts. These prompts serve as catalysts for AI systems to generate visual content autonomously, igniting a revolution in creative AI applications. Defining AI Image Prompts:AI image prompts are carefully crafted instructions or stimuli designed to…

[angelsdean]

fun writing exercise: construct a scenario where dean and cas reunite and still get together romantically without ever having a Formal Conversation about Cas's declaration of love.

[ruthlesslistener]

My (probably unpopular) hot take is that alien designs based off of simians is fuckin boring and ugly as hell. Like, this is 100% biased by being a simian myself, but that's just a human being that's shaped a little weird, that's not alien enough. There's millions and millions of other face shapes out there you could have picked from, but you chose the one closest to ours because you weren't creative enough to try to fabricate a sympathetic being that didn't break out of familiar and comforting forms with humanlike means of self-expression. You are boring and you are weak, I say. Go back to the drawing board and think of something else. And beforen you do, cepholopods and insects are OFF LIMITS

[jtl07]

alrighty we're doing shenanigans tomorrow! i'll be noodling on some stuff i've had in my head while also opening up to prompts. i'm especially curious about prompts with a location + a random word or dialogue phrase (location could be as specific or as broad as you'd like)!

note: i can't guarantee that i'll get to all of the prompts tomorrow - i might try combining some, we'll see - but if there's some leftover, i'll either noodle on them throughout the week or hold them for the next shenanigans day. we'll see what happens! all of this is very new so i appreciate y'all being so open and willing to play along with me <3

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The writer must impose constraints. A painter who uses a canvas rather than a wall; a composer who opts for a given key - all establish a system of constraints. So do avant-garde artists, who try to avoid constraints - they simply construct others, unnoticed.

- Umberto Eco

[kitkatsgalore]

Happy birthday, Yechan! 🥳

[nihilisticlinguistics]

one of my favorite things that my husband and i do for the holidays is give each other themed gifts.

last year I received a "5 Senses" gift theme from him: a visible mending class (touch), a textiles art exhibit (sight), a candle-making kit (smell), a fancy dinner out (taste), and tickets to a Haydn concert (hearing).

I got him a 'Floral' theme made up of a cherry-blossom gin, a horticulture video game on Steam, a flower jigsaw puzzle, a pack of flower-patterned socks, and a bimonthly bouquet delivery.

this year I'm plotting a 'Treasure' theme. I'm thinking a fancy compass, a set of gold D&D dice he's been coveting, chocolate coins, kohatukou (crystal gummy candy), a treasure box for his accessories, and an Exit: The Game about recovering a lost treasure.

[nightshadesmusings]

Missing Common (Important) Things

What if, at a point, you found That you lack a critical thing? What if you didn’t know That said thing is missing?

What if you didn’t know it was around? You had many doo-dads and it was working Folks call you unusual as you lack a particular gizmo And you unknowingly go along, ignoring loud hissing.

You accepted the pain and assumed this was life You thought you were broken; you’re just something else Like this poem, you’re better when you use all the letters, No matter who tells you to never use your “e.”

Constrained writing: Cannot use the letter “e” until the last verse

[colorisbyshe]

worst experience in the world is watching one of your fave musicians get stunted musically and put out nearly identical tracks three times in a row. even worse is if the main difference in the songs is just that they're getting shorter and shorter.

like please i believed in you, i vouched for you, i was invested in you changing the industry not the industry changing yoooou let me hold your hand i will literally give you my life's vitality to make better music

[princesssarcastia]

watching the clone wars and thinking about The Logistical Problem of Barriss Offee's appearance in both Attack of the Clones and in The Clone Wars. and the ways you can solve or reconcile it as such.

She's at the first battle of Geonosis, presumably with her master, Luminara, and she's not the only padawan there with their master. presumably they only brought older, experienced padawans with them—ones nearly ready to be knighted. but when we next see her, in the TV show, she's still a padawan. they knighted anakin "full of emotions and attachments and pretty clearly not ready" skywalker before they knighted her. there's a few watsonian ways that could shake out.

absurd option: barriss experiences some kind of age regression between the very start of the war, and the middle of it where we see her again. sith artifact, separatist weapon, weird force squall erupting right beneath her, whatever. no one ever talks about it because, well, it's sort of rude to bring up. plus, barriss at any age would probably rather die than admit she's disquieted by the loss of several years of her life and self. but it would explain why she isn't knighted when they're knighting pretty much everyone.

it would also be another reason added to the pile explaining why she sort of had a breakdown before the war ends. one day you go to sleep, and the next you wake up somewhere you don't reecognize, surrounded by soldiers and war, and your master is telling you, "the last thing you remember was three years ago. get up, we have work to do." that'd knock anyone off balance

prodigy option: which padawans would you bring to a giant battle on an enemy planet? the older ones, sure, but more importantly: the ones who know how to fight. the ones who are good at it, who have a knack for it. the idea that barriss offee is too young to be knighted before the war is over, but too good with a blade to leave behind when they need their best? scintillating. tell me more.

tell me about the apprentice to a master diplomat with a level head, a sweet young girl with impeccable manners—and an uncanny and incongruous talent for defeating her opponents in spars and cutting down her enemies in the field. who even at, what, 15? moves so efficiently and purposefully through a conflict she dances. who the temple battlemaster praises as one of the incomparables of her generation.

talk to me about how the order decides to make use of her warrior's body without realizing she, as a middling-aged teen, doesn't have a warrior's mind. making use of it too young and too much and too long for her to bear, until she eventually snaps. radicalizes. decides to fight the violence that's killing her the only way she's learned how: with more violence.

interference from on high option: i'm frankly using anakin as a yardstick here, but maybe he shouldn't be. there's also the chance that she's not even that much younger than anakin, but the council is much less willing to interfere with any other padawan, in any other master-padawan relationship. And most other teenagers aren't supposed to be knighted.

So Anakin and Barriss are peers, but Luminara hasn't had the council breathing down her neck and interfering the way Obi-Wan clearly has. Anakin gets knighted, and it strikes Barriss as odd. Though she would never presume to say it, he clearly lacks necessary control over his emotions, and a certain wisdom and self-mastery Barriss thought was necessary to become a Jedi Knight. But the council has knighted him, so clearly he must be a jedi knight, and have the necessary qualities as such.

And though Barriss would never presume to ask Luminara, Luminara can see her almost-side-eye, her calculation, and wants to stop it before it turns into comparison. "Knighting a padawan before they are ready is often the result when those outside an apprenticeship make such decisions as should be left to those within it."

red flags option: or perhaps, after surviving the battle of geonosis, and being somewhat more outwardly stable than skywalker; being the picture perfect image of a dutiful jedi; the council pushes for Barriss to be knighted at the start of the war, or soon after—and Luminara says no. Luminara says she's not ready.

And when they push back, Luminara goes so far as to warn them that she won't be overruled on or convinced to let go of her misgivings about, her own padawan (the was you have convinced and overruled some jedi i could mention, is what she doesn't say, but she's very much side-eyeing everyone else for that.). Barriss isn't ready, even if her peers are. Luminara can sense it.

Perhaps, if the galaxy was not at war, Barriss would be ready. But the war, the violence...it unsettles her. Disquiets her mind, in a way a jedi knight should not be disquieted, in Luminara's opinion. She waits, she supports, she guides Barriss with a firm hand, but that unsettled undercurrent never goes away.

In fact, Barriss, over the course of the war, becomes somehow less ready to be knighted than she was at the start of it. There's a brittleness to her that Luminara can sense, for all that it never reaches the surface. It goes on long enough that Luminara becomes resigned to the idea she and her apprentice will remain stuck in this holding pattern until the war is ended.

Perhaps Barris will finally be knighted once this war is over, Luminara mulls over, as she leaves Barris behind on Coruscant so she re-center herself for the battles to come. Surely it can't be long now. Surely, I can see the galaxy to peace for the sake of my padawan.

Luminara knew she wasn't ready to become a Jedi Knight. but she never expected....never saw....

How could she not have seen?

[goatsandgangsters]

I've been asked to post my Personal Variation on how to do timestamp roulette, so!

the original premise is based on closing your eyes and wiggling your mouse back and forth over the timeline to select shots at random, which doesn't really appeal to me bc of the inherent biasing of landing more in the middle than on the ends

SO. my method for timestamp roulette is putting the number of minutes for the episode into a random number generator and going to that minute

from there, you could also RNG 0–59 for seconds if you really want it randomized. OR you could select a shot from Anywhere Within The Randomly Selected Minute Only, which I like because it still forces you to be creative with a random scene and encourages you to gif with shots you wouldn't typically use but still gives you a little bit of creative license

[sharpstake]

can't wait to see choicenators bitching about how the survey had no effect for a year while completely forgetting the results of this are likely set to influence the next round of production.

[dorminchu]

concept—hypothetical mr. robot season 5. 2d animation, akin to paranoia agent. or magnetic rose.

— includes flashbacks the fall of e-corp in the 1990s to flesh out mr. alderson a little, like what was he working on before he got fired? how does whiterose know or care? seriously I want to know!

— a few glimpses to the "real" elliot's childhood growing up (a la the opening flashback from 2x04 or 2x01), maybe from darlene or angela's pov, complete w/retrospective voiceover

— all the actors reprise their roles in a style where they would record prior to animating (to keep in spirit with the original format) kinda like how the original dub of beastars worked

well, as long as I'm dreaming -u-

I'll think of more stuff as I rewatch s3-4 for the third time

[divinekangaroo]

I think I posted about getting a Remarkable? Worst name ever I feel embarrassed even writing it so I will call it the rmk.

it’s surprisingly pleasant to use as that infinite notebook, and I’ve found it astoundingly useful at work, like writing/drawing/mapping matrix shit out (or difficult emails) before going to computer.

for writing, though, I’m of two minds. I picked an old concept one shot (a 9k txl) and managed to long-hand write a full zero draft soooo easily. No distraction, good flow, no pain; the ability to add notes at random times; the ability to add a sentence or two in boring overlong meetings…so the zero draft one shot felt like a pure success, such absolute ease of writing. but then I get stuck: the only thing I can do to get that draft a step closer to a post is fully re-type it out on the computer, which took me three of my available night blocks anyway and with very little improvement/edit.

I could possibly improve my handwriting, ‘text to type’ it in the rmk, then email my computer a PDF and copy-paste into word…but then I’m stuck on the computer again anyway.

I could ‘text to type’ it in the rmk and *only* edit it within the rmk , then do the pdf copy-paste only when I’m ready to post - but tbh the editing capabilities for word processing are fairly poor.

and then comes the issue of multichaps. I thought, ‘all right, my handwritings a lost cause on this one for text to type to test that ‘edit and finalise on rmk’ workflow…so let’s try fixing one of these languishing unfinished chapters I have…’ but I can’t get an editable doc from computer to rmk. Only PDF. So I’m not gonna fully re write something just to edit it on the rmk, and you can’t split screen so you can’t even flick back and forth to make that rewrite on the device easier.

then the final issue being, I have no idea how you’d actually write a multichap on this, because I neeeeed to flick back and forth. Does this idea belong here or there or in the future? Did I say that already? Idek! And so again: limited ability to deal with complex story structures.

so yeah, a success at work, a success at actually giving me *back* some time for writing (it’s such a delightfully comfortable thing to use with longhand, and that zero draft really was a fluid pleasure to write - can use at playground, at table, on couch watching kids) but *only* limited to well defined, well visualised one-shots that can be zero-drafted, and at some point there’s a duplication of effort or a transfer barrier that causes delay anyway.

[poligraf]

Form is not a mere lopping off of meaning that you don't have room to put into your poem; it is an aid to finding new meaning, a stimulus to condensing your meaning, to simplifying and purifying it, and to discovering on a more universal dimension the essence you wish to express.

— Rollo May

[hag-lad]

Why can’t I write with voice notes?! When I get into a good flow of writing, I type at about the same speed as I speak, if not a little faster. And yet, when I try to take voice notes for writing, they turn out so stupid, literally not how I would phrase things at all.

I’m sure it’s a perception bias, like. When I write, I can backspace and fix a word here and there but when I speak, it feels more permanent. Still, I think there’s an element of repressed creativity here. Like I feel some kind of shame when I speak my prose style out loud?!

Bananas.