Flow 2024. Birthday 2024
Believe. Don’t give up.
Happy birthday to me. I’m 48. Even though it seems like a random number, it is special. 48 is a beautiful number. 2x2 = 4, 4x2 = 8. It’s a number that subtly expresses multiplication — of our will.
The keyword for this year was flow — and I could feel that flow as today approaches. In Chinese culture, we talk about qi (氣 air), it’s an invisible force that keep everything in balance. This abstract substance is hard to explain in words, but if you slow down and allow yourself to feel, you will know it.
A lot of wonderful things happened this year. I met new friends — all around the world — many of whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person after finding them virtually. I also learned about myself a lot better — by simply being myself and following my intuition.
I also forced myself to do many things that I would never have done when I was younger. Life is too short. Your time is limited. If you don’t take the opportunity to experience what life had to offer, there will only be regrets later on. In most cases, I’ve learned that many things were much better than expected, and wished I had done them years ago. So I plan to do more things that I normally won’t do this year.
Explore the random universe. Meet people. Do crazy things together. Believe. Listen to the heart. Mind over matter. Let go. Don’t give up. These largely summarizes everything that I’ve learned in my journey so far.
Thank you everyone for the positive vibes over the past year. Life has been a blessing because you have been there with me. 😊
Cheers
Don’t give up
2024-09-25 / SML
Image: Typographic design with the phrase “don’t give up” in a flowing script. The text is surrounded by vibrant, swirling colors, primarily cyan, magenta, and yellow. These colors create a dynamic and energetic atmosphere, resembling smoke or abstract light trails. // Created using Adobe Illustrator for the typography, which was then placed into Fooocus (Stable Diffusion) as control net to drive composition. Image composition using stylistic influences with Midjourney as image input. SDXL with Refiner workflow.
Images
Don’t give up is a series that I started in 2024, where I utilized a typographic design I’ve made in 2007 in Adobe Illustrator to drive the flow of design elements in several control nets.
For this image, I used Fooocus 2.5.5 for the Web UI, with the following ImagePrompt settings, together with text prompt. In the past, I would’ve used A1111 if I have complex control net settings, then use Shuffle and Reference control nets to force a specific style. IPadapter is also generally good for this, though they tend to give different results.
- Typographic design (white on black) exported as PNG, using PyraCanny (Stop at 1, weight 1)
- Stylistic design made in Midjourney to force detail, using ImagePrompt (stop at 0.5, weight 0.6) - this is a hack I use often and the results are often far superior than using LoRAs
Rendered with Juggernaut XI with SDXL Refiner at 0.8. The AI output is then re-composed inside Adobe InDesign with the original design. I use InDesign because I’m working on multiple designs at the same time. If you only have one image, doing it in Photoshop may be easier to manage.
These took many tries and the process was quite involved. I often thought that I would have time to talk about what I did, but to distill it into something that I can share succinctly can be hard. I want to do it so that more people can try this. There is power in opensource software becauase you could make them as exact as you want them to be.
