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Middlebury Art Projects 🧑‍🎨

by Greta Hammen

The top image is Marilyn Monroe AI generated in the style of Mona Lisa on the Adobe Firefly site. It looks more like Mary, the mother of Jesus. The second image was generated on Craiyon.com and looks gorgeous. Just like Marilyn Monroe with red lipstick and a gold dress and shawl.

The top image was AI generated on Adobe’s Firefly and looks more like Mary, the mother of Jesus, than of Marilyn Monroe. The second image was AI generated on Craiyon.com and I am pleased with the results. It looks like Marilyn Monroe, but her pose looks like Mona Lisa, the red lips and gold gown with shawl add to the overall effect. On both of these sites, I asked for Marilyn Monroe in the style of Mona Lisa.

I changed the Craiyon.com image into a pop art version and that has a cool, Andy Warhol look. To achieve this image, I used the phrase, Marilyn Monroe in the style of Pop Art. I believe that creating art this way is a threat to artists because it takes time and talent to create original art on canvas. If the masses continue to produce and print art in this manner, it will diminish the livelihood of many.

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Reflections on Kidd, Verdesoto & Stranger Things

by: Greta Hammen

Chip Kidd has an amazing career of designing book covers! Book covers need to get the attention of customers and lead them to want to know more about the contents. After an author has written a story, he takes their creative work and makes a separate creative thing, as he interprets it. He referred to that as “a child that needs to be dressed”. James Verdesoto is one of the Creative Directors at Indika Entertainment. He explained so nicely, how the posters for movies are done and the things that are emphasized. Red and white are typically used for comedies and allows the characters to stand out on the background. The use of negative space is strategic in terms of where it leads the viewers eyes to focus. The color blue is used in thrillers many times and they include a running man too, to emphasize that something is going to happen. What about a significant profile? Russell Crowe is a great character actor, in The Next Three Days, the advertising company used his profile and included an inset, like his thoughts, in a smaller image. When a movie budget is on the conservative side, yellow is a great background for the poster, because you get a lot of bang for your buck! Some examples of this are The Brown Bunny, Little Miss Sunshine and The Optimist 3. The use of negative space and the placement of the actor’s name was also significant on those posters, famous actor’s names go above the movie title. Action movies frequently use black and white with a little fire to create contrast, think of Die Hard and The Fast & Furious. Lastly, in the video with Verdesoto, he talked about blue and orange. They are complimentary colors and Star Wars used it in different ways with negative space to reach audiences that were different.

In the Stranger Things YouTube interview, we see that the font was derived from books from 1980’s book covers. By shining light through the letters imperfections were made visible, and they liked that, so that is how the opening for Stranger Things came into being. The jobs that the two individuals have in each video are dream jobs! CA is a wonderful place to live to be able to do that type of work!

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Vogue

This beach pic, is now an oil painting, by using the AI tools on BeFunky. First, on Instagram story, I added the header text, because the assignment instructions said to do that way. Then I saved the image with the text and uploaded it on BeFunky. They have a large tool bar, and I used the oil painting tool to create this look of texture.

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4 Seasons Collage

Four seasons at the beach! @ds106dc

Rehoboth Beach, DE is one of my favorite beaches. My family went there for many years, as our children grew up. I miss it so much and hope that it will be a destination later, as the family grows.

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1 Too Many on Saturn 3🪐

by: Greta Hammen

The first scene of Saturn 3 (1980) shows a man in uniform and helmet going into a locker room setting. He secures himself into a seat with seatbelt and pulls the emergency lever. The ceiling opens up and the other man in room, Captain James, is sucked out and broken into pieces. The bad guy that did this was Captain Benson, because he wanted to be the lead man going to Saturn 3, instead of his colleague. He took a long cylinder, that contained empty brain matter, in a sealed case with him on his trip to Saturn 3.

On Saturn 3 lived a couple of scientists, Adam (Kirk Douglas) and his female partner, Alex (Farrah Fawcett). Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrived and immediately began making overtures to Alex, who made it clear that she was with Adam and was not interested. Benson got to work on programming the brain that he brought with him and on assembling the robot called Hector. Hector was able to mimic the thoughts and moves of Benson, who had a control portal at the top of his spine. He would insert a pen shaped tool into the opening to make adjustments that directly affected the robot. Intelligence was the first thing observed in Hector, but as time passed the negative aspects of the programmer began to surface. He started to lust after Alex and also showed aggressive tendencies. Robot Hector killed Alex’s and Adam’s dog, Sally, who had full rein to go about as she pleased on Saturn 3. Hector lifted Alex up by her wrists and would have harmed her, but he obeyed her command to please put her down, then he made a piece of equipment fall on Benson. Hector needed to be recharged, but that was thwarted, and Benson disassembled him limb by limb and took his brain out. It looked like danger was out of the way, but Hector had enough juice in his mind to take control of the robots in the command center to put him back together again.

Benson tried to take Alex back to earth with him. She did not want to be with him. There was some fighting and terrorizing by Hector and Benson. Hector broke Benson’s hand off and later Benson’s severed head was on top of Hector, making his appearance more human. Adam knocked Hector into the ice water by using an arm mechanism that swung out 5′ or 6′. Benson had put one of the small control portals at the base of Adam’s spine when Adam was unconscious, due to taking a sleeping pill, in order to take over his thoughts and life. Adam was not going to accept that fate and hid two grenades in his belt. He said, “It’s everybody’s fault” and then pushed Hector into the ice water again, but this time he went with him and blew both himself and Hector up. At the end, Alex was in a space craft heading to earth and eager to see all that it offers., as she always wanted to visit earth.

The line “It’s everybody’s fault” reveals the impact of AI in our lives and the collective responsibility to handle it with caution. Let us be careful what we create! Saturn 3 is a mesmerizing blend of sci-fi effects and retro graphic story telling that somehow even manages a recreational rocket trip to Saturn seem mundane.

Produced and directed by Stanley Donen, story by John Barry, and music by Elmer Bernstein