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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Carnal Corn

'Carnal Corn' is fully grown from seed-to-cob within a single day at the bio-farms of the Umbrella & Mansonto Corporations. Nightcafe Crystal Clear XL and Meta AI Imagine prompts, composite open-source images, and some sign creations within Affinity Photo.

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Beefeater Tomatoes 2.0

More exciting bio-engineered foods brought to by the combined labs of the Umbrella & Mansonto Corporations.  Nightcafe Crystal Clear XL image prompts with Affinity Photo after-edits.

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Super-GMO Prickly Pears

The latest in bio-engineered food coming soon to your local grocery store.  Super-GMO Prickly Pears are the newest invention brought to you by a collaboration between the Umbrella & Mansonto Corporations.

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Huītzilōpōchtli watches as Tenochtitlan burns in 1520

The sun was setting on once-great Tenochtitlan, golden over the chaos and destruction he witnessed before Huītzilōpōchtli's eyes. Sun, war, and sacrificial sacrifice, the sun god witnessed in horror as his people’s capital city was razed.

The god watched from the top of the temple of Huītzilōpōchtli the destruction wrought by the Spanish conquistadors. The pyramids and temples that had once been so proud of themselves were no more, their intricate carvings and frescoes melted to burning trash. The streets – filled before with Aztec bazaars and procession parades – now lay empty and quiet except for a few screaming and wailing cries.

Huītzilōpōchtli bled at the sight of his people’s sacred city. He was a war and sacrifice-god, and his people had taken him to be unstoppable. But now, when the city burned, he saw nothing but misery and powerlessness.

The god thought about his father, Huanitzin, a former temple high priest. He thought of the innumerable sacrifices they’d made together, the blood of the innocent cascading like rivers to the gods. Despite the countless human sacrifices that had been offered to appease the gods, the city of Tenochtitlan still fell to the flames of the Spanish conquest in 1521, a devastating blow that would forever alter the course of Aztec history.

When the sun was setting, Huītzilōpōchtli's eyes glazed over the face of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin on the temple spire, gaze set on the smoldering city.  Moctezuma, who had once welcomed the Spanish as gods, now lay dead amidst the smoldering ruins of his city, a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of his misplaced trust.

[Workflow: I've taken six different Meta Imagine AI-generated source images from my various prompts, then worked on chopping and mixing various components into my final scene of the downfall of yet another Aztec city.]

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