Nrub'atocto Stirs

Some more artwork to go with the previous Nrub'atocto - She Who Feeds storyline showing the entity still trapped below ground.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A few image prompts using Bing DALL-E to help create the monster and portions of the cave.  Filter forge used to convert to wood carving-type look.  Edits and additional items added within Affinity Photo.

Hi-rez image link [2804px tall]

Interplanetary Stonehenge

Stonehenge located on a remote planet is illuminated by beams of energy as a local shaman executes a celestial summoning.  Several Meta ImagineAI image prompts to create stones then merged into moon and astrophotography images. Brushwork layers to create a radiant burst behind the moon within Affinity Photo.

Hi-rez image link [2765px tall]

UFO Spectral Mapping of the Arizona Desert

UFO caught on film actively spectral mapping the Arizona desert floor south of Tucson.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A few image prompts using Bing DALL-E, and Meta AI Imagine to get me part of the flying saucer.  Sky image pulled from an astrophotography search, van with reflection borrowed from a car ad, cactus masked from other images.  Laser beams. ring lights on saucer and spectral mapping grid (mesh warping funtime) were added by hand in Affinity Photo.   A lot of masking to get the desert skyline and road added. Boxes and buildings dropped in for extra features.

Hi-rez image link [3362px tall]

Multidimensional Summoning

At noon, the ancient stones of Stonehenge glowed with the sun's warmth and cast long shadows over the desert landscape. A group of wandering mages had set up a temporary camp nearby, hoping to unlock the hidden power within the stones. After many days of meditation and prayers, they finally triggered a bright beam of light that erupted from the circle's center, piercing the sky and forming a colorful vortex in the distant clouds. The mages gasped in a mix of awe and fear, as a colossal being emerged from the opening in the clouds. Their prayers had been answered, but they did not know if the godlike creature from another world would be their ally or their ultimate doom.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A few image prompts using Bing DALL-E, Meta AI Imagine, and Nightcafe Image AI to help create portions of the monster, a lot of cloud images, and the desert valley. Vapor clouds, the sun, sunburst beams, and the summoning beams were added by hand in Affinity Photo. Eyeballs created using Filter Forge were added to the creature. Stone circles and tribal tents were pulled from images and masked in.

Hi-rez image link [2492px wide]

Nrub'atocto Trapped Below the Surface

Some new artwork to go with the previous Nrub'atocto - She Who Feeds storyline showing the entity still trapped below ground.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A few image prompts using Bing DALL-E to help create monsters and portions of the cave.  Masked in the supporting creatures (corners) and fallen stones from public-source other images.  Merged in vapor clouds, edge wraps, and parchment text story all within Affinity Photo.

Hi-rez image link [3000px tall]

and here is another quick image

The Ashes of Cthulhu

Cthulhu rises from the blood-soaked river and approaches those who mistakenly summoned him.

Affinity Workflow: A couple Meta AI Image prompts until I found two creatures I could combine (body + wings).  Water was textured then HSL adjusted to look like blood, mist effects, streaks, ashes added within Affinity.

Hi-rez image link [2727px tall]

Zatanna Zatara repels her attackers

Zatanna Zatara stood tall as the four men taunted her, threatening trouble. With a carefully phrased backward casting ward and a wave of her hands, she summoned a pair of sparkling spiral shields to repel her attackers.

Hi-rez image link [3489px wide]

Thóthchånge Awakens

A small group of science-based cultists, devoted to the worship of a primordial leviathan, have devised a plan to unleash their god Thóthchånge from his prison beneath the lunar surface. They have uncovered a Stonehenge-like formation located only a few kilometers from Apollo 15's original landing site near Mare Imbrium. They intend to use the arcane stones as a casting circle and perform a dark ritual during a solar eclipse when the Moon is aligned with the Sun and the Earth. They hope that by doing so, they will create a rift in the deep regolith, and awaken Thóthchånge from his slumber who will reward them with dark enigmatical powers. However, their slumbering leviathan does not grant rewards, it lives only to consume... **everything**.

Affinity Photo Workflow: A few image prompts using Bing DALL-E, and Nightcafe ImageAI to get me four different monsters to chop, crop, and combine during my photo-surgery.  Some real images of the moon from NASA and other sections of the moon were generated with AI and merged/blended.   Dust clouds, creature glow, energy maw, and particles are added in Affinity Photo.  Eyeballs created using Filter Forge were added to the creature.  Stone circles were pulled from images and masked in, with casting runes embossed on them.

Hi-rez image link [5041px wide]

Animated Nrub'atocto

 I took last night's AI-combo-human-edit image and fed it into Pika.art to see what it could do.  Not bad, I like the flame work.

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.

Hi-rez image link [2546px wide]

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.

Hi-rez image link [2345px wide]