Digital coloring plus some AI polishing experiments.

So I decided to experiment a bit with digital coloring and AI retooling of some old fanart I drew.

Here's the results.

Image 1 Monlon and Jurojin from the Ranma 1/2 fanfic Lost Together.

Image 2 Ryoga and Ranko also from the Ranma 1/2 fanfic Lost Together.

Image 3 Vile vs Sigma Mk9 from the Mega Man fanfic Relic from the Seas

For this one I not only reworked the coloring, but I used an AI generated image that looks more like a lab from the Mega Man X games than the previous background I used.

Image 4 Ryoga and Ranko from the fanfiction Lost Together again.

Image 5: Ryoga and Ranko VS Pantyhose Taro from the fanfiction Lost Together.

Since this one was action heavy I actually tried to use AI to touch it up a bit and make it look like an anime cel from the 90s. I got mixed results, I must admit. Overall it's not so bad, I guess.

Image 6: Ranko and Ryoga hugging, also from Lost Together.

Image 7: Ryoga and Ranma (female) from the fanfiction Genma's Daughter.

This one is interesting. The original I drew in 2000, so I thought I could touch it up with AI so it would be more like an anime still. I think it's pretty decent, but I still like my original better.

Image 8: Raditz from the fanfiction Historia de dos hermanos.

I've mentioned this before in the blog but the pencils for this particular Raditz illustration were made by Mexican artists Horacio Sandoval, the inks (and this colored version) by me.

Acerca de mi historia "El Corazón de Nabiki" y su posible continuación

Nabiki y Manabu en Furinkan 

La historia El Corazón de Nabiki está técnicamente terminada en el capítulo 17. El mayor rival de Nabiki es vencido en un duelo de citas, y ella y Manabu admiten que hay algo entre ellos de una manera muy ambigua, a fin de cuentas es una historia basada en creaciones de Takahashi así que no podría ser de otro modo.

Y sí, es un final abierto muy al estilo de Ranma.

Pero en realidad, la historia todavía podría ir más adelante. 

Sería de hecho muy sencillo darle más arcos argumentales.

Aunque habría qué decidir si se escriben o no.

Digo, de momento estoy en medio de mi segunda maestría, y no hay tanto tiempo para escribir fanfiction, le estoy dando prioridad a los estudios de posgrado y a mis libros de ficción.

Pero quien sabe? Quizás si me da tiempo, podría volver a visitar esta historia.

Supongo que veremos.

Nota:

Aunque debo admitir que la IA generó una imagen bastante adecuada de los protagonistas de ese fanfic, o al menos eso me parece. XD

The "give a proper ending to the Marvel Comics Robocop comic book run" project

One of my favorite comic books of all time is no doubt Marvel Comics' Robocop run, which ended prematurely in my opinion with a rushed ending in issue #23 and several plot points left incomplete.

For many, and I mean many years, I've wanted to write a proper conclusion to the book.

Up until now I just had the idea for that, but this year (which I spent on many RL things), I decided to actually get to work on that instead of just having the ideas in my mind.

I may (or may not, real life tends to get in the way) work on this. It'd be a very big project, and I probably won't publish it only on Fanfiction.net, I guess I'd also publish it on Wattpad, and perhaps here in the blog, too. 

Wattpad (and the blog) would be cool because I can add images to the chapters, so I'll probably do that, too.

For the images, I'd be using my drafts enhanced with AI to mimic the 90s comic book look. 

I'd probably go with a continuation of the original run's numbering to make it feel like a continuation, just for fun, meaning chapter 1 would be "Issue #24" and so on.

So here's a preview of the "cover" image and a bit of the first scene for issue #24

"Cover" to issue #24

Preview of scene 1:

By the time Anne Lewis arrived at the edge of the combat zone, Detroit was already tearing itself apart.

Police cruisers blocked the main avenue three blocks down, their lights flashing uselessly against the smoke rising between the buildings. The air smelled of burning rubber, cordite, and spilled fuel. Gunfire echoed in short, violent bursts, ricocheting off concrete and steel, sometimes close enough that Lewis felt the vibrations through the soles of her boots.

The paramedics hadn’t shown up. None of them had.

Lewis knew why. Everyone did. Ambulance crews had walked out less than an hour earlier, refusing to enter what was fast becoming an open war zone. She couldn’t blame them—but blame didn’t stop bullets, and it didn’t help the civilians still trapped in their apartments, praying the fighting would move somewhere else.

She stepped out of her cruiser and raised her voice.

“All units, listen up!”

A handful of officers turned toward her. Some were young, some tired, all of them armed and very aware that this situation was getting away from them. Lewis could see it in their eyes. They were waiting for something—someone—who wasn’t coming.

“We hold this line,” she said. “Nobody breaks through into the residential blocks. Not the Razors, not the Spikes. Nobody.”

-

And that's all for now. I'll put the link to the watpad version here once it's live. I'll probably publish there first, and then fanfiction.net and finally here (I may even open an AO3 account, I guess? I don't know much about that site to be honest). 

I opened an Etsy store

I decided to open an etsy store to sell some of the art I have made this way and that (I mostly enhance my drafts with AI to give them different looks, definition, styles like oil painting or watercolor, etc.) 

If you're curious you can drop by and take a look. Maybe you'll find something you like, or share it around to someone who may be interested.

You can find my store here:

https://timelessscenesart.etsy.com

Thanks!

New Lost Together illustration in color

 Dai has been nice enough to color another illustration for Lost Together I drew. 

I think this one looks really nice, it's got a very clean use of colors and shading, I like how it looks now that it's colored quite a lot.

While this illustration does not correspond to any scene in particular, it does show Monlon's relationship with Jurojin, which is something many readers were interested in, and that was the reason why I drew it in the first place (apart from practicing facial expressions by the way). Besides, there isn't that much Monlon fanart out there that I know of, so it seemed a good idea to do this one.

I hope you like it.

Music and writing 5

Sometimes I need music that would fit a melancholic, sad, and sometimes epic feeling to enhance the writing of a particular scene or chapter, and the soundtrack for the SNES videogame Actraiser 2 fills all those points.

This soundtrack is a magnificent composition that I'd place as one of the best ever composed for a SNES game, and has remained a favorite of mine for many, many years (the game I also like a lot, by the way).

Here's the soundtrack, enjoy!

Using AI to create illustrations of original characters

Something interesting that is getting a lot of attention these days (at least at the time I'm writing this entry) is the use of AI to create art or to create almost anything on the internet really. Anyway, I decided to give it a try and dowloaded Stable Difusion the other day and the results are a bit better than I expected once I tried a few prompts.

So I decided to use it to create images of two of the original characters from Lost Together and I thought I'd share the results here.

The first one I tried was Jurojin, the guy from Nekonron who's supposed to be Kirin's bodyguard after Kirin ascends to the throne. He's apparently somewhat popular with readers as far as the reviews go. I'm glad people like this original character.

Jurojin

What's interesting here is that he's supposed to be wearing black clothes but the AI decided to give him a white gi instead for some reason. I'll keep tweaking the prompt to see if I can get him to look like I want later.