Moebius emulation via Stable Diffusion 1.5: a survey

More delving into the options for ‘add-ons’ that can steer the Stable Diffusion 1.5 AI image generator toward certain styles or objects in its images. The community’s work on SD 1.5 add-ons now has an excellent range and depth (things move fast in AI-land), and also a healthy dash of ‘quirky’. The ethos is ‘free’, and there’s no payment involved so long as you run the image generation on your own PC. Image generation can be helped along by ‘guide poses’ created from 3D-figure desktop software such as DAZ Studio and Poser.

For the style of the French comics artist Moebius with SD 1.5 I found the following, after a thorough search:

* Moebius Color Style – v1.0 is a LORA that tries to emulate the later ‘colour Moebius’ style. Said to work best as an add-on for the large Xenogasm checkpoint model for SD 1.5, which seems to have been specially trained for the sort of subject matter you might find in old 1980s copies of comics magazines such as Heavy Metal, 1984, Epic, etc and similar. Perhaps also Zona 84, Ere Comprimee etc, at a guess. The 1970s-style Xenogasm model is NSWF in the eyes of the 2020s, as you might expect. Apparently Xenogasm 2.1 is the last before it started being heavily re-worked for more realism, so you may want to try that first.

* WASMoebius V1, which is an Textual Inversion ‘Embedding’ add-on for SD 1.5 rather than a LORA add-on.

* For a more old-school ‘B&W Moebius’ one might try the Centerflex – v2.8 checkpoint model. Its main promo images are photoreal and it is a “photorealistic-first” model. But delve into the description and note that this is a dual model. Switch it to its illustration mode and it is said to specialise in the ‘clear ligne’ line-art of the French and Belgian BD comics and Moebius in particular.

Artist styles that this model was explicitly trained to on include Roy Krenkel, Jean-Pierre Gibrat, Milo Manara, Willy Vendersteen, Francois Schuiten, Edgar P Jacobs, Herge, Jacques Tardi, and Moebius. […] This model contains a general activation keyword phrase to evoke a certain hybrid comic book style and composition. This phrase is “ligne claire” meaning “clear line” after the Franco-Belgian comic book [line-art] tradition.

* Possibly also worth a look, in complete SD checkpoint models, is the Protogen Infinity checkpoint model. Trained on comics, isometric art, science-fiction. As well as Protogen, ReV Animated (aka ReVAnimated) is a model name that pops up for use with the more comics-oriented LORAs. There are also SD 1.5 models trained on modern western superhero art, such as iCoMix.

* Metal Hurlant Comics – Moebius, Bilal, Druillet is a LORA trained on a range of the classic 1970s/80s French comics artists. Though it appears to work best with the more grungy Druillet style. An ‘alpha release’, and not likely to be updated to a 1.0 release.

Another Damn Art Model (ADAM) was partly trained on Moebius, along with other Heavy Metal and 1970s artists.

* There’s also a relatively refined attempt at Enki Billal – v3.0, a Bilal style which might combine well with one or two of the above. Update: And another attempt, Enki Bilal Style – v1.0.

Some people combine checkpoint models and LORAs and ’embeddings’. So for instance one might combine the big Centerflex model with the smaller Moebius Color Style LORA as an add-on.

I don’t see anything that can do the distinctive ‘dash shading’ of Moebius. Although I’m not sure an AI could do this, unless it could be trained to follow the shading on a depth-map from a 3D figure / scene…

Ok, that’s what I found. Now all I need is the 12Gb graphics card for the PC, to be able to try them out. 🙂

Recognition reviewed

At the SFRA, a new review of S.T. Joshi’s book The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft

Joshi does not hesitate in calling out cynical personalities who profited from Lovecraft’s legacy only to trample on his reputation later. [But] controversy has had little effect on the sales of his fiction around the world. The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft is ultimately a testament to the power of the stories, which have proved resistant to many different crises, and will certainly survive many more.

Necronomicon Pages AI generator

Necronomicon Pages – v1.0. This is only a LORA, something perhaps best thought of as a small plug-in for a large generative AI base model. The pages were made using this LORA with the EIDOMODE Stable Diffusion 1.5 Checkpoint model.

Here the indecipherable-ness of AI text is turned to advantage.

Also spotted, a new LORA for Hannes Bok – Golden Age Pulp Style – v1.0, for use with the SD 1.5 base model. May work well with Metropolis 1927 style.

And since this is also Kittee Tuesday, yes… there’s also a LORA for High Quality Cats – v1.0 and the more meme-friendly CuteCat – v1.0. Even a cosmic Space Cat generator. Though the LORA for the 200+ feline cat expressions they can make has yet to arrive. Still, these are perhaps useful for making “H.P. Lovecat” images.

Patrick Muller

The monthly update from the German Lovecraftians notes their latest podcast…

An interview with the filmmaker Patrick Muller on 15th October 2023: “With his silent visual reflections on literature, Patrick Muller has created his very own cinematic cosmos,” says Clemens Williges of the Braunschweig Film Festival. There in three short films, Patrick devotes himself to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. On the podcast he talks about his passion for analog film-stock as, pop cultural socialisation in communist East Germany, the cinema as a place for transgressive moods, the role of music, and writing for cineastes – and of course about H.P Lovecraft.

The dLG-Radio interview is on YouTube, so the Googlebot automatically translates the German to English subtitles.

Patrick’s site is www.patrickcinema.de complete with lobby posters and links to his films…

The Ladd in the 1920s

This week on ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’, a pleasing postcard of the Ladd Observatory in Providence. Probably in the late 1920s, as it would have looked on Lovecraft’s return to his city from New York City, since it’s known that the foliage had grown up the walls by the 1930s.

Source:

After my fix, clean and a few dabs of additional colouring and shading:

Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith, and other audio goodness

New on YouTube, an audio reading by ‘thehashisheater’ of several Lovecraft letters. Being “The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith: The First Three Letters From Lovecraft”.

Also on YouTube, a new hour-long S.T. Joshi Interview.

Even more free audio in the form of LibriVox’s new Halloween 2023 Short Ghost and Horror Collection 070 includes R.E. Howard and 2 x H.P. Lovecraft, among others.

And finally, spotted on Honest Abe’s site… a 2023 ‘inspired by Lovecraft’ vinyl L.P. Definitely not free audio, at a hefty $61.

Drone idols

John Coulthart takes a long dive into “The Great Drone Ones”. Being his survey of… “the series of Lovecraft-themed albums that Cryo Chamber have been releasing each year since 2014”. The “wholly instrumental” “dark ambient” music…

is a better match for weird fiction than most of the rock music derived from Lovecraft’s stories, in part because it resembles the kinds of atmospheric timbres that you find on the better horror soundtracks.

Theology and H.P. Lovecraft

A review of the multi-author book Theology and H.P. Lovecraft (2022). Paywalled at Project MUSE, but a substantial chunk of the review is available free. Useful and detailed, even with ‘what there is’ of the review. The reviewer makes me want to take a look at the book, bouncing off my very slightly deeper understanding of theological points which I’ve glimpsed due to my interest in Tolkien. The books TOCs also look quite enticing…

Alice Hamlet of Boston

Deep Cuts examines what can be known about the lost Lovecraft correspondent Alice M. Hamlet, and finds a good photographic portrait. She was a Boston concert pianist and a keen amateur journalist.

I see the New England Piano Teachers’ Assoc. still holds an annual Alice Hamlet Competition, presumably named after her and in her memory. They may be interested in knowing about the pictures of her?