While my writing has always been and always will be my own, the visuals for Legend of Gardyan are the product of sophisticated AI sessions. Everyone knows that I was very critical towards this technology when it first became a thing. After all, it was threatening my livelihood as a professional writer. Entire art sectors see their environment drastically changing due to artificial intelligence, and not every development is to anticipate. By this, I still stand. However, I wanted to give this new technology a try and see if an old-fashioned lady like me could face the challenge.
I’ve always been quite a creative person, experimenting with all kinds of visual and acoustic formats. My fantasy world has been on my mind for literal decades, and I wanted to realise it exactly how I envisioned it. Some AI tools managed to authentically reflect my imagination for this project. I was so thrilled to see those characters and landscapes so dear to me visualised for the first time ever, and it simply blew me away to see what AI did there. That’s why I changed my mind about it.
visuals created with Leonardo.AI
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After having done AI generations for well over a year, I can say that the generative process is not what many people believe it to be. Actually, it is a job fit for a writer to compose proper prompts in order to get good results image-wise. It’s not like copy-pasting a picture for the AI to modify. In fact, you create a completely new image and have to edit the initial result a lot in graphic programs most of the time to improve it. I admittedly enjoy this work and putting together all my creations to a bigger picture.
Besides visuals, I also got fascinated with AI voices and am currently working on realising audio chapters with them. There is a wide range of different languages and accents available, which I find very useful for setting dialogues to tone. Said AI voices are not entirely based on artificial generations. They can also be self-made with real voices as basic models. An absolutely stunning concept, enhancing a lot of processes regarding text-to-speech projects.
synchro generated with Elevenlabs.io
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I came to accept that AI is neither good nor bad. ‘Tis what we make of it. Like colours on a canvas, it can be shaped into anything—putting pieces of thoughts and creative ideas together like a collage until they finally reflect an artist’s full vision. Thanks to this technology, I am finally able to express my creative process in a way I never thought possible. So I hope that what I created will at last let others embark on a magical journey through my inner world and be a part of it if they so desire.
Sign of the Raven: Release Trailer
“Readers drawn to the moral complexity and ferocity found in the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, John Gwynne, and George R.R. Martin will find much to admire in Danu’s storytelling. This is a fantasy where power is inherited, violence has weight, and every choice leaves a legacy.”
—Maisy
Character Portrait: Radu
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