Literary Plaques/Graphics

[CCoburn]

Literary Plaques/Graphics


In one thread we combine literary pieces and music, and this thread combines literary pieces and graphics. I will admit though, I'm likely going to miss the music here, but I suppose I still could work a track in on some of these.

I've done similar before, writing and then stumbling my way around the GIMP interface. The idea resurfaced after a friend was creating these extraordinary images using AI and some text prompts that I was supplying.

I do recall things of the sort hanging on my wall as a kid, and as usual, most of the writing is insane, but not all of it.

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The Eternal Seed

[Encia22]

Great thread! That’s a beautiful and profound poem, CCoburn. “Ex-seed-inly” is genius. I particularly love the union of the graphics and the verses.

I’ve been dabbling with graphic design since the late nineties. Mostly manipulating fonts to fit objects, shapes or for metaphorical reasons in logo applications.

I’ve never considered myself a writer but started participating in the ATS Short Story Contests and have learned much from other members’ contributions, yet, finding my own voice.

I always wanted to merge or represent my writing with artwork beyond simple memes, but never had time. That’s until the last contest - possibly the last ever - where I just couldn’t get the BBCode to visualise the point of my acrostic poem. So, I made an image that encompassed both. The words Solar Eclipse are the basis of the poem, forcing the first letters of each line.

Here is my Sol & Luna entry on ATS and below, how I visualised the poem. DTOM very kindly added it to my post for me after my editing window had expired.



I’m not opposed to feeding AI our own writing prompts. In fact, I’m curious to parse some of my stories in this way to see what imagery it produces. However, for me, producing art has often stimulated stories and vice versa. Marrying the two gives me great pleasure and satisfaction.

[CCoburn]

Beauty

[CCoburn]

Forever Autumn

[CCoburn]

Great thread! That’s a beautiful and profound poem, CCoburn. “Ex-seed-inly” is genius. I particularly love the union of the graphics and the verses.

I’ve been dabbling with graphic design since the late nineties. Mostly manipulating fonts to fit objects, shapes or for metaphorical reasons in logo applications.

I’ve never considered myself a writer but started participating in the ATS Short Story Contests and have learned much from other members’ contributions, yet, finding my own voice.

I always wanted to merge or represent my writing with artwork beyond simple memes, but never had time. That’s until the last contest - possibly the last ever - where I just couldn’t get the BBCode to visualise the point of my acrostic poem. So, I made an image that encompassed both. The words Solar Eclipse are the basis of the poem, forcing the first letters of each line.

Here is my Sol & Luna entry on ATS and below, how I visualised the poem. DTOM very kindly added it to my post for me after my editing window had expired.

[Image: https://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/i...1fa717.png]

I’m not opposed to feeding AI our own writing prompts. In fact, I’m curious to parse some of my stories in this way to see what imagery it produces. However, for me, producing art has often stimulated stories and vice versa. Marrying the two gives me great pleasure and satisfaction.

I did intend on replying to this, but when I tried everything I thought of seemed trite and not worth posting, so instead I threw up another graphic, and then another...

I did like your submission though, and rated it accordingly, and now I'm thinking about what else I can do here.

I also made a reference to the Sun and the Moon in another thread here.

Cheers  and good work!! 

[Encia22]

Great new posts. I particularly liked Forever Autumn; melancholic thoughts work very well with the seasonal theme.

Reminds me of this song...

[CCoburn]

So far so good; I think they would all make decent wall plaques. Your Sol & Luna post incorporates some additional facets/dimensions in comparison to what I've been doing here thus far.

I do love adding music to literary pieces, and often times I will be on here just listening to music. The Forever Autumn was actually inspired by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues(a song of the same name), and I actually wrote that particular piece just to serve as a prelude to it.

I did omit the track to the above though since I had already paired the two in another thread(minus the graphic), but I'm thinking I might append it with an edit.

Also like what you said about parsing some of your stories, I too have tons of saved writing and the only question is which one to do next.

I am a little excited over this new AI tool which does freshen things up a bit. I initially wanted to use the Meta AI on Facebook but it's not available for computers, though I did find a couple others via searches; some seem better than others and I'm using a trial one now which seems okay so far and is what I've used for all my posts here in this thread except one which is a real image as far as I know.

[Encia22]

Yes please, adding music to accompany your writing and artwork would be great to experience.

I'm not up to speed with the latest AI platforms. I've only used ChatGPT3 for some research, usually with mixed results. For artwork I only used some free service a couple of times that I needed some particular backgrounds I couldn't find otherwise. I can't remember what they were, but, again, the results were pretty poor. I know it's an exponentially evolving science and I'm probably going to have to use a paid service to get the results I need or that has better features, such as the ability to upload my own graphical elements to work as a basis for rendering more complex imagery.

When I did Sol & Luna, I wanted the image to be representative of the poem and vice versa; a concert of the two elements. I don't know if AI could achieve that, or at least, I wouldn't know what prompts to feed it to make it work.

[CCoburn]

Yes please, adding music to accompany your writing and artwork would be great to experience.

Absolutely, and it's one of the things I enjoy most about these forums. You write a nice literary piece and associate it with a musical track. You then read the piece while seamlessly transitioning to the musical part. It's like a mini/micro literary musical rendition.

The above doesn't work quite as well when logged out though because the "transition" is interrupted with ads, plus having the music embedded is preferable.

I'm going to edit the musical score in now, which is similar to what I'm already doing in another thread, but there is emphasis on graphics here which I suppose does distinguish the two.

[CCoburn]

Above & Below