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I have spent way too much money on way too many failed renders for AI videos featuring ligature stranglings.

My membership plan on DZine.ai gives me 9,000 video credits/month. Extra credits cost between $10 for 2,000 and $50 for 10,000. My account cycled an hour ago, and I’ve already blown through over 2,000 on four iterations I can’t use for a project I’ve been trying to nail down the last few days. I had five previous renders for the same project bomb before my account cycled. Seedance is just too unreliable for such a technically complex scenario at the level of quality I want.

At this point, I’m considering myself extremely fortunate to have generated the six stranglings that I’ve already posted.

My new serial killer strangles a social media influencer in Socialite’s Last Breath!

This is the debut of my new serial killer, Desmond Slade. Enjoy End of Rounds!

I recently learned that sites like mine, that only use essential / functional cookies and don’t track anyone’s activity or share info with other parties, can use plugins to enhance site functionality without needing a cookie banner. So, I’ve added an age gate to the landing page that simply requires a button click to verify your age. It includes an optional ‘Remember Me’ checkbox that remembers your session for 365 days. Otherwise, it expires when you close your browser.

Though I don’t track anyone or need a cookie banner, I also learned that a Privacy Policy is still strongly recommended to provide transparency about the essential cookies I use. Therefore, I’ve added a Privacy Policy to the bottom-right corner of the site’s footer, and a Contact form to the navigation menu for any questions or comments you might have.

In May, I create an image featuring two fictional actors – John and Vanessa – being interviewed during a press junket for a new Halloween sequel I made up called A New Beginning. It’s been nearly a year since I rendered a scene featuring Michael simply stalking someone, so I decided to create one featuring Vanessa in a scene from the faux sequel.

Enjoy Halloween: A New Beginning!

Seedream 5 Pro dropped this month, and I recently learned it can render one of Michael Myers’ most iconic kills – and my favorite – out of the box, at least in so far as spatial positioning of characters within the context of the scene is concerned. Sadly, it struggles mightily with understanding how deep a kitchen knife should be embedded in a character’s chest to solidify the illusion of them having been impaled above the floor. What’s more, Seedream’s instant popularity as an uncensored image model is wreaking havoc on servers to the point that about 7 out of 10 renders either never finish or fail completely.

My latest piece is the most successful iteration Seedream produced for me, out of countless dozens of attempts that never finished, failed altogether, or rendered the knife in entirely the wrong position. Consequently, this will also be my last attempt at this scenario until demand for the model stabilizes, though there’s no telling when that’ll be…

On that note, enjoy Manager’s Last Shift!

Final Draft for New Serial Killer

Thanks to some valuable constructive criticism from fellow artists, I added a ballistic mask to my serial killer’s outfit to make him look more menacing. The notes I received were that the balaclava alone wasn’t scary enough, especially if my goal was to create a Michael Myers-style original character without copying his signature look. I just wrapped up the final touches on the character sheet, and it’s now online.

Meet Desmond Slade, an invincible, physical manifestation of pure evil. No humanity. No mercy. Only purpose.

Possible New Workflow for Ligature Stranglings

I designed Desmond to be used in future AI videos that feature ligature stranglings, as Seedance is the only video model I’ve seen capable of that type of scenario. In my experience, high-end image models like Nano Banana can’t render them at all because they don’t understand geometry well enough. Unfortunately, Seedance is very expensive – $3.30 for every 15sec 720p video – and output quality is equally unpredictable regardless of how well-crafted my prompts and reference images may be. I’m praying Seedance 2.5 will resolve the issues I keep having with v2.0. Otherwise, I’m going to implement the following workflow:

If I can’t get a good quality video on the first attempt for future projects, I’m going to grab screenshots from the first attempt and turn them into AI comics.

It won’t be an ideal solution – I’d rather make videos – but it’ll allow me to use my discretionary income for other video-based projects while adding more ligature stranglings to my image galleries.

Categories Added to AI Videos

I’ve taken advantage of the category selector included with my video gallery plugin to improve navigation of my AI videos. I’ve also limited the number of videos displayed per page for easier at-a-glance viewing of available titles.

Image Galleries Redesigned

After completing the update above, I found myself feeling compelled to do something similar with the image galleries, and discovered the power of tags in my photo gallery plugin. In turn, I’ve redesigned the image galleries as well. Unfortunately, the plugin’s tag system doesn’t work on groups of galleries, so the Multi-Page Comics galleries don’t have them. Also, tags can’t be deselected, so you’ll have to click ‘All Tags’ or reload the pages to clear your selections.

In light of my discovery, I removed The Basement gallery I recently created for my non-comic-style work.

AI Video Gallery Redesigned

There are sixteen AI videos on my portfolio now. That’s a lot of original content for me, and there will be more. In light of this, I thought it prudent to replace the text-based title index with a new video gallery plugin that includes handpicked thumbnails of every video. The plugin is also mobile-compatible.

I trust the new layout will improve your browsing experience.

‘Everything Else’ AI Image Gallery Renamed

I’ve renamed the gallery I created for my non-comic-style images. It’s now called The Basement.

Why My Content is Free

Someone on a forum I frequent recently asked if I’ve ever considered selling my material. I’m going to share my answer here as well.

Considered? Yes. Would I? Never in a million years.

I’ve already got a job, and I was on the financial end of running a fetish video distribution site way back in the late 2000s. Finding payment processors and establishing merchant accounts was one of my responsibilities, and a royal pain in the ass. I went through seven of them in less than a year, foreign and domestic. They all shut us down after learning what kind of content we were selling. I finally threw my hands up and quit. I’ve also seen enough Patreon and Gumroad stores yanked underfoot to know that I don’t want to deal with the stress of wondering if/when my material would suddenly violate their ToS. And I sure as hell don’t want the headache of working out the spreadsheets come tax season.

Bottom line: As with my 3D art, AI will only ever strictly be a hobby for me. As such, my content will always be absolutely free of charge.

With that in mind, I hope you enjoy my work, and I sincerely thank you for your continued patronage!

I’ve updated the video intro for the site’s landing page. I had previously animated one of my old Daz portraits with AI. The original portrait was a Cyberpunk-inspired composition that has never fit the vibe of my fetish-themed work. I animated it with AI just to see what I could do with my 3D art at the time.

The new one was fully generated with Nano Banana, and animated with Seedance.