Craziness At The Border — Spies, Lies & Digital Skies

Hi All 👋 My latest post for Susan’s Digital Art Challenge.

There are two images that I’m going with for this week’s challenge. Both came from the same baseline picture.

The first is an action-packed, chaotic scene at a snowy border crossing.

For the second, I re-imagined the scene as a standoff between Roman Soldiers & Pictish Warriors at a Gate on Hadrian’s Wall. Which do you prefer?

As usual, having satisfied the requirements of the challenge, I couldn’t leave it well enough alone; I had a rare day off.

I told the AI to visualise the scene through a set of binoculars; it did this!!!

Cool, I know, but it’s a rifle scope not binos, so I shouted at the AI & it came up with this.

Again, cool, but still not what I wanted, so I tried again.

Starting to get a wee bit frustrated, I went in a totally different direction. Lets go steampunk.

This is awesome, but how crazy can I go??? Let’s try a medieval/cyberpunk blend.

I like the basic elements, but I wanted the soldiers more medieval. I told it to replace the helicopter with a dragon.

I like this, but by mentioning the helicopter in the prompt, the AI thought I wanted it in the picture still. That’s the thing with prompt engineering, if you mention something, the AI will put it in. So try again.

I like the overall setting, but it’s a wee bit static.

This is great! I love the drama, the medieval/cyberpunk blend, and, of course, the wizard coming out of the wall to defend it!

Next up, I thought I’d have the scene viewed from a guard room. But went with a steampunk robot monitoring the border crossing on a giant crystal ball.

Oops, forgot to say wide format.

A great setting; we just need to add some more crystal balls, showing the border crossing from different viewpoints, like a bank of monitors in a modern guardroom.

Love this, I think it will be my feature picture.

Bear with me; still not done. Let’s transform the scene to the time of Hadrian’s Wall being built.

Erm, what the??? Who can tell me what’s wrong with this picture ??? At least the vehicles are Italian!!!

I revisited the prompt, adding in the Pictish warriors.

I love this setting, but lets add in some cyberpunk to the mix.

Okay, I like the setting, but where are the attacking hordes I asked for? Let’s add in some mystical warriors attacking the gate.

All the aspects are there, but the mystical warriors look like they’re defending, not attacking the gate. For one final go (I promise ?), I changed the viewpoint to a guard post overlooking the gate. The final scene is a cyberpunk roman soldier watching an attack on a gate at a border crossing; a blend of mystical, ancient & cyberpunk.