Nrub'atocto - She Who Feeds

"Nrub'atocto - She Who Feeds" --- In the lightless caverns deep below the earth slumbers the ancient daemon Nrub'atocto. Interred in a nameless crypt, she has lain dormant for 917 years, her presence seeping into the rock, soil, and underground streams. When the slow work of subterranean rivers and trembling earth finally cracks open her tomb, Nrub'atocto awakens, ravenous from her long fast. With screeching howls and shattering chirps that echo through the buried passages, she wiggles and claws her way to the surface world that she has not seen for nearly a millennium. Any remote villages or towns built over her restless resting place soon hear baleful chanting from below as Nrub'atocto singly emerges. She brings a wave of maddening, dream-like visions of an alien realm that shake the sanity of all those who fall beneath the pulsing rays produced by her radiant eyes. Nrub'atocto appears as a grotesque hybrid of octopus and female humanoid, her pale pink flesh drooping with decay yet animated with an unnatural hunger. She breaks the surface, pushed forward by numerous powerful tentacles, exposing her two sharp-clawed hands, and screeches from a near bottomless fangless maw, releasing the foulest of odors with each fetid breath. Though she can devour victims physically, Nrub'atocto prefers to drain their life essences psychically, leaving behind desiccated corpses and wildly muttering lunatics doomed to perish shortly after. When Nrub'atocto has fed to her fill and the last haggard humans flee or fall to her mental assaults, she retracts through the deepest tunnels and crevices. Finding another hidden niche in the buried earth to make her lair, Nrub'atocto surrounds herself in a cocoon excreted from her writhing, slug-like lower body, once more sinking into dormancy where she silently feeds on the residual terror left behind.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A dozen image prompts using Bing DALL-E, and Nightcafe ImageAI to generate bits & pieces I wanted to chop up and then combine into new photos.  Combined separate monster heads onto octopus-like body parts, the church was taken from an old painting scan I found, most of the graveyard pieces scanned from a comic book, used a couple Filter Forge tricks to sync look-and-feel, a bunch of manual edits, a lot of clones, brushwork on the radiant eye beams, and tons of masking.

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Hypnotized by a Hippopotamus

This one was a quick single Bing Image Creator (DALL-E 3) prompt which I then enhanced, cleaned up some AI artifacts, and brightened the glow on the eyes.

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Celestial Menagerie Expedition Earth

UFO collecting another pack animal for their celestial menagerie...

[Affinity Workflow: collect images from the USDA public website of farms, found some mules on a public free image, UFO from stock images, added more lights. used brushes to make the tractor beam, particle brushes, a motion blur effect on a mule. hand brushwork on cloud fixes.] --- took me longer to collect all my image materials than to combine them together.

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Lovecraft Murals at the Lincoln Nebraska Post Office

Finally, after 8 days of dealing with multiple contractors, my murals are finished in Lincoln Nebraska at the local post office, right next to the Pinnacle Bank Arena at the intersection of Canopy & R Street.  I can't wait for my series of Lovecraft-themed postage stamps to start shipping next month.

Hi-rez image link [3072px wide] and direct link to my postage stamps.

Beauty and Brains

Here's something a little different today, created as vector art within Affinity Designer, which I'm calling Beauty and Brains.

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Firestarter Habaneros

Where spicy gets fiery!  'Firestarter Habaneros' are from Umbrella Corporation's third-generation biofood labs creating the third hottest Scoville flavor score in the known world.  Meta AI Imagine prompts, composite open-source images, and hand edits within Affinity Photo.

Hi-rez image link [2328px tall]

UFO Sandblasting the Arizona Desert

Image captured of a UFO probing the Arizona desert floor with modulating plasma beams during some late-night experimentation.   There are some surveillance cube-shaped drones flying a perimeter loop around the spacecraft during the operation.   Composited from a few Meta AI Imagine prompts (for inspiration), grabbed a bunch of skyline+desert+UFO image searches, and then combined it all with additional Fx work inside Affinity Photo.

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Batman (papercraft) Standing on My Kitchen Table

Batman papercraft creation that I have standing on my kitchen table, the figure is about 6 inches tall. Created during a Meta AI Imagine session along with using Affinity Photo to merge all the elements together, fix the missing cape the AI forgot, and render a final picture.

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Clayface (papercraft)

Clayface (Basil Karlo), one of Batman's original villains created from papercraft; nearly 7 inches tall.  Created during a Meta AI Imagine session along with some personal Affinity Photo playtime to finish the job.

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Hellfire Peppers

Where hellfire meets flavor! Experience Dante's inferno in every bite!  'Hellfire Peppers' are the latest Scoville-certified spices from the food labs of the Mansonto and Umbrella Corporations.  Meta AI Imagine prompts, composite open-source images, and hand edits within Affinity Photo.

Hi-rez image link

Beef. It's What's for Dinner

Beef. It's What's for Dinner. Interplanetary cattle rustlers at work during a midnight raid on farmer Joe's grazing pasture.

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