davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2024

[davidd]

31 January - A Doll A Day 2024:

31 January - Doll Socks via eBay

[davidd]

1 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Super Sonico Mermaid Figurine

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Furyu Fairy Tale Special Figure Series: Super Sonico Mermaid

Figure is approximately 8-inches / 20 cm tall.

This figure has been part of my collection since sometime in mid-2016.

1 February - A Doll A Day 2024

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I know I said I might stop at the end of January. Apparently I haven't stopped... yet... despite the enthusiasm just not being there. I'll give it through the end of Leap Month.

[Alliecat]

But if you don't keep taking dolly photos... what will you DO???

The little running shoes are cute. They look well-made. And with actual laces?

[davidd]

But if you don't keep taking dolly photos... what will you DO???

The little running shoes are cute.  They look well-made.  And with actual laces?

Yeah... I guess I kinda need A Doll A Day to... cope? Cope with what, I don't know. Just to cope.

Yeah, the shoes are nice, and have real laces and a separate tongue.

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2 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

I don't usually repost old photos for A Doll A Day... well, actually, I never repost old photos for A Doll A Day, because that would be cheating.

But today I ran across this pic from way back in 2007 which reminded me of how much fun I used to have with Pinky Street figures.
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Pinky Play Time - 2007

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Of course, part of the reason I was having fun is because I was living on the beach in Hawaii at the time. From the spot where I was standing in the living room when I snapped that photo, I could have had my feet in the ocean within like 20 seconds. I could sit there and play with dolls while watching TV and looking at the ocean with the doors and windows open and the sea breezes gently circulating through the house.

I can easily become super depressed about having made a poor decision to move. Looking back, my reasons for leaving Hawaii were not as pressing as they appeared at the time. (Among other things, there was talk about raising the mandatory flood insurance premiums on homes with mortgages to $20,000 or $30,000 per year, and some area homeowners had already received bills for those amounts. Working in the schools was becoming increasingly problematic for a number of reasons. It was pretty intense when veteran teachers I was working with would break down sobbing during conversations about how hard it was to make ends meet and other rapidly changing aspects of the situation at the time.)

I've been in a morose mindset as of late. The Hawaii thing... well, it's been over nine years since I left. I'll likely never be able to move back. I could dwell on that... like I often do... but that won't resolve anything, now, will it?

But when I look at that picture, I totally 100% feel what it was like. I remember it like... like, I look over from where I'm sitting as I'm typing this and I ekspect to see that scene and the lanai doors and the palm trees and the ocean.

At least I can see a palm tree from where I'm sitting right now. But it's on a street lined with houses.

Anyway... just posting up that pic, which is what I was gonna do, would be cheating, so here's a new one:

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It's Not At All The Same

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P.S.: HAPPY BIRTHDAY GI JOE - Celebrating SIXTY YEARS of "America's Movable Fighting Man" - Introduced 2 February 1964

[Alliecat]

>sigh< it sounds wonderful to be right on the beach. A warm beach with palm trees, that is, not a cold north Atlantic beach that gets hammered by nor'easters.
That is an absolutely insane insurance cost!!! I can imagine lots of people wouldn't be able to pay it at all. I wonder how much it costs NOW.
That feeling of losing something and making a bad decision is scary. I knew someone who moved away from here for a perceived opportunity that fizzled out and when they moved back -- to a crummy little house that was all they could afford after having given up their nicer house on the hill -- there was so much regret

Well, the Pinkys look like they were lots of fun, anyway. Maybe you should dig all that stuff out again and play with them. Dolls are good therapy when everything else sucks.

[davidd]

That is an absolutely insane insurance cost!!!  I can imagine lots of people wouldn't be able to pay it at all.  I wonder how much it costs NOW.

Well, the Pinkys look like they were lots of fun, anyway.  Maybe you should dig all that stuff out again and play with them.  

I don't know what eventually happened. I can't really imagine that they basically priced everybody out of their homes. Then again... maybe they did.

I know I've been saying this for a long time, but this summer "re-visiting" Pinky Street will be a high priority on my hobby goals intentions.

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3 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Ring-Billed Gulls and Royal Terns in Florida

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[Alliecat]

Ha! That's a fun perspective!

[davidd]

4 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

Lots of Mextures and PhotoToaster iPad Filter Layers

[Alliecat]

"PhotoToaster" makes me think of how I always say so many photos nowadays are "overcooked" with people messing with saturation and stuff till it looks unnatural.
It's a fun effect here though. Artsy.

[davidd]

"PhotoToaster" makes me think of how I always say so many photos nowadays are "overcooked" with people messing with saturation and stuff till it looks unnatural. 
It's a fun effect here though.  Artsy.

A nearly infinite number of filters and apps have been available for years. The trend now is to give the "AI" treatment to photos. Nothing seen online can be accepted as being "real" anymore.

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5 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

Face Down Since Christmas

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I should probably clean this stuff up. Maybe later.

[Alliecat]

Nothing seen online can be accepted as being "real" anymore.

Ain’t that the truth. And people don’t seem able to discern it.
You can usually tell a person is AI by the extra thumbs but there’s an awful lot of stuff that is a bit harder to distinguish.
Where is the artistic soul and energy in an image that is made by a computer algorithm in 15 seconds based on half a dozen words? I admit to having played with it one time so far, the other night actually, and it is remarkable how quickly something is generated. I asked for a “mini Pullip pirate doll” and the result was ridiculously cute, although as a shipmate commented, AI can’t do rigging for sh*t    It was interesting but I remain conscious of the complete artistic void of the process.

Anyway. Face Down Since Christmas sounds like a name for a music album. 

[davidd]

I asked for a “mini Pullip pirate doll” and the result was ridiculously cute, although as a shipmate commented, AI can’t do rigging for sh*t  ... It was interesting but I remain conscious of the complete artistic void of the process.

Ah, but AI generative imaging, even at the hobbyist level, has become extremely sophisticated. Which AI app did you use, StableDiffusion (and which version) or Dall-E, or something else? For your ship rigging, or the extra thumbs, have you employed "negative prompting," "hypernets," and "LORAs"? Have you elored the "models" available on a site called Civitai? Have you worked at creating more specific, detailed image prompts? Have you used a "seed image" as a starting point for the AI? I haven't tried anything more than simple sentence prompts, and that was months ago, when the technology was much less advanced, using a basic "free" online AI image generator. I follow one AI art person (who started out doing doll photography) on Instagram, which is where I'm picking up "the lingo" of AI image generation.

Pretty much the only reason I visit Instagram anymore is to follow @PlusUltraSydney, who has been diving deep in to AI generative art for over a year now, and sharing the learning process along the way.

Here's a recent "nautical" pic (that, admittedly, still has a slightly gimpy hand):

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1w2ZWZr3NV/

There are some nice ships in this one:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyZ4eeSrZ7i/

The Civitai website -- https://civitai.com/ -- which I have never actually looked at until now, offers a gallery of AI-generated images from members (many of which are not very good, some of which are superb) and a section of "models" -- segments of prompting code that can be used to generate specific looks for various aspects of AI images.

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6 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

6 February - Ankylosaur Week 2024

[Alliecat]

Yay, dinosaur week!
I watched another "Jurassic" movie the other night on TV... always fun to see the dinosaurs but I can see why it got just 2 stars, not much of a plot, most of the movie was people screaming and running away from dinosaurs, and some plot logic holes a T-Rex could run through    Back to the well, and the well is dry.

have you employed ...  Have you elored... Have you worked at ... Have you used ...

No.  Cos it doesn't really interest me.  I'm much more interested in the organic artistic process done by people handling materials and putting something of themselves into the art, than in computer programming.  Over the lifespan of the Maine tourism magazine I wrote for, I interviewed a couple dozen artists -- painters/potters/sculptors/carvers/tile/textile -- and I'm much more interested in hearing about their philosophies and techniques over hours of work than about what bits of computer code someone used to generate an image.  They were genuinely intriguing interviews and even if I didn't like their art style, after talking to them I at least understood why they did it that way.

The lack of organic participation in the process was what put me off digital photography for so long and is still something I miss doing; I miss my all-manual Pentax K-1000.  I've recovered the participation a bit with the low-light light-painting stuff -- manipulating the light is fun.

I guess they are OK for fantasy art, but, yeeahhh, those aren't functional ships or bits of rigging.  I don't think ever in the history of sailing ships has there been a stern gallery at the bow. 
Just doesn't float my boat 

[davidd]

I don't think ever in the history of sailing ships has there been a stern gallery at the bow.  

The bow full of windows seems to be a common trope in fantasy sailing ship illustrations.

As for AI... I dunno. Is it "just" a computer program? Or is it "a tool" like Photoshop? I've more or less stopped worrying about it, because AI is here to stay.

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7 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Ankylosaur Week 2024

[davidd]

8 February - A Doll A Day 2024:

Ankylosaur Week 2024