I know I said I wouldn’t do any more Tukti posts, but their appearance is [mostly] co-incidental this time. I just wanted to show you how easy it is to create your own jigsaw puzzle. This is the one I literally just uploaded:
You can find, and play, my puzzle here. Or you can go to the main screen of the jigsawplanet.com website – here – and play one of a thousand different puzzles uploaded by others.
You do NOT need to login or sign up to solve the jigsaw puzzles, so it’s a great site to spend a few minutes [or hours!]. If you do sign up, you have the option of uploading your own graphics to the website.
Creating a puzzle from your graphic is ridiculously easy. Just upload the image, select the type of ‘cut’ you want – i.e. the shape of the puzzle pieces – use the slider to choose the degree of difficulty and…that’s it.
I know a lot of you take great photos so why not turn them into jigsaw puzzles?
In between harvesting strawberries and making passata from our homegrown tomatoes, I’ve been making another Tukti. This is the first one I made:
This is the new one:
And the reason I made a new one is that I’ve discovered Rebubble, a print-on-demand company for things rather than books. 🙂
As with Amazon, you provide the design, and Redbubble does the rest. I’m not sure if any of my designs will appeal to buyers, but there is at least the potential of turning my graphics into a passive income.
I can’t show you any of my ‘products’ yet, but I will say that the Tukti look great on socks! I figured if nothing else, I’d buy Tukti socks for winter and become a walking advertisement. 😀
Ok, enough fun. Time to harvest some more tomatoes.
A gamer friend introduced me to Sabaton, a heavy metal band on Youtube, but it was not Sabaton’s music that made my jaw drop. No, it was the combination of music, animation and history in their videos that has me gobsmacked.
In the first video I watched – First Soldier – I learned about a short, farm boy who became one of the most decorated heroes in France. In this video, I learned about a Serbian woman who became the most decorated woman in history.
Watch for yourself and tell me this is not storytelling for a new age?
My heartfelt thanks to Esme for introducing me to an artist like no other. You may or may not like the music, but you will be mesmerised by the story. I loved both, and I really didn’t think I would. Just listen :
Apologies for being so quiet lately, but I’ve been fighting a losing battle with grass. I mow it and move on to the next spot, but as soon as I turn my back, the spot I’ve just done grows a foot over night. By the time I’ve done as much as I can outside, I’m too pooped to do more than the necessities inside. When I stop, I look at videos of beautiful in-game houses. This one has become my all time favourite.
I feel rested and restored just looking at it. Hope it gives you the same sense of ‘time out’.
Further along in the article, Jason Allen talks about how he set up the parameters for Midjourney [the software/AI] to use. Then he chose what he considered to be the best from three outcomes. And it won first prize at the Colorado State Fair.
When I first read this article, my initial reaction was horror. How could a piece of software, no matter how sophisticated, produce something this…beautiful? But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was the parameters set by Jason Allen that had created an image of great beauty, so in that sense, Midjourney was simply another tool.
I admit an AI is a bit more high tech than a paintbrush, but the creativity still came from Allen.
What do you think? The beginning of the end for artists? Or just one more tool?
I was going to do a cooking post today, but everything fell into place with the graphic I’ve been working on so I couldn’t resist showing you:
The blue background is only temporary as it helps to make the image ‘pop’ much better than a plain white one.
Apart from showing off, I’d also like your feedback on what you think is the ‘feel’ of the image. I’m hoping for something to come through the body language, but as I already know the story, I lack the ability to view it objectively.
So, the red beastie is a Tukti. This is the concept image I finished a while ago:
Happy Tukti
The figure holding the Tukti is the Acolyte. I introduced the Acolyte in the first book:
‘The Female was fast asleep when the steady drip, drip of the timepiece was joined by the scrape of wood across sand.
It was a small sound, as was the gap that appeared between the edge of the door and its frame. The gap was just wide enough to admit two twiggy fingers tipped with blunted claws. The fingers strained at the wood to no avail.
A dull thump sounded from the other side of the door as something heavy hit the sand. Two more fingers appeared and four blunted claws dug into the wood as the fingers jerked at the door. Each jerk widened the gap a little further until persistence finally triumphed, and the opening became wide enough for a small black face to appear.
Everything about that face was small, except for the eyes, which glowed huge and golden in the soft, blue light of the chamber’s single glow-worm.
After darting a timid glance from left to right, the face disappeared only to be replaced a moment later by a small black rump. Over-sized, jet black wings swept the sand as the hunched shape of the small iVokh backed into the chamber, dragging a sloshing leather bota. The water sack was almost as tall as the iVokh itself.
Diminutive by any standard, the healers’ acolyte looked more like an iVokhti than a fully-grown iVokh. In fact, the only parts of its anatomy close to normal size were its wings, and they seemed far too large for its small frame.’
Excerpt from Vokhtah, book 1 of the Suns of Vokhtah
The Acolyte, and the Tukti, have important roles to play in the ongoing story so I’d love your feedback on both of them. Do you get some kind of a feel from the image? Does it tell a ‘story’ or is it just a static image? If you saw this image as part of the cover of a book, would it pique your interest at all?
I know that not many of you are scifi tragics like me, but I’d still love to know what you think.
Meeka's Mind 