And I had to try it. The new model has gotten rave reviews for its improved micro-details in facial expressions, character emotions, and contextual vocal inflections during dialogue sequences.  So, I tried it on the project I shelved the other day, and added a dialogue sequence to introduce my protagonist and set up her character. Her performance during her phone call with her boyfriend completely blew my mind.  When I spliced it together with her fantastic death scene and watched the entire clip, I gasped myself over how unbelievably cinematic the whole thing looked and sounded.

All that’s left now is to hope 2.5 can repeat the level of quality for future projects that it delivered this time

Enjoy Strangled Deadline!

Sorry for the down time, folks. My hosting service upgraded the server’s operating system.

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.