Category: Art

Distant Memories

Timothy Price40 Comments

Lindy’s in Downtown Albuquerque

I found myself thinking about the day I had a “Dead Texan Burger” for lunch many years ago. I was not really into cannibalism back then, and even less so today, but I just couldn’t pass up a dead Texan. I found the notes from my lunchtime conversation with the waitress. I’m not making this up:

Waitress: “What can I get you today?”
Me: “I’ll have one of those ‘Dead Texan Burger’ specials.”
Waitress: “Very good.”
Me: “How did they slaughter and prepare the Texan?”
Waitress: “Oh! He was roadkill. We scraped him up off the corner this morning.”
Me: “Mmmm! Even better!”
Waitress: “Would you like anything to drink with your order?”
Me: “Pump me a glass of Coca-Cola, please!”

These lovely young women took my order, pumped my Coca-Cola, and served the roadkill.

As I sat at the table waiting for my order, I started thinking what could be more green than recycling that morning’s hit-and-run, and turning it into the day’s special? I also had a few flashbacks to a couple of old movies from the ‘70s: “Soylent Green” where Charlton Heston was beaten up, and being carried out on a stretcher saying “Soylent Green is people!” I also thought about “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” where the bad guys hit their victims in the head with sledgehammers, hung them on meat hooks to bleed out, sawed them up with chainsaws, and then cooked their victims and sold them as Texas Barbecue. Oh man! I’m drooling like Jake waiting for a pupachino just thinking about Texas Barbecue.

I searched through my photo archives, but I did not find any photos of the actual burger. I remember it looked like any other burger, except it was coated with red chile to help tame the wild taste, and it had a fried egg on top that, I believe, represented a flattened 10-gallon hat. I have a vague memory that the burger was tasty.

Picking up another hit-and-run

Smoke From A Distant Fire

Timothy Price51 Comments

The Sandias and the City of Albuquerque covered by smoke from the Trout Fire in the southwesten part of the state near Silver City this morning.

It was a hot one. The high today was supposed to be 102º F (38.9º C), but on the street it was 117º F (47.2º C) according to my car’s thermometer that records the outside temperature.

I found new Spunk Art when I got home this afternoon.

Jake and I went out for a walk at golden hour. The afternoon breezes had cleared out the smoke that covered the Sandias this morning.

Cotton blowing in the breeze at golden hour.

Michele’s Monday

Timothy Price48 Comments

Please take a moment to checkout the same Moments featering Teagan Geneviene on vocals that I posted last Mondy, but with a different video animated with a Shadow Dancer derived from Michele at My Inspired Life. Michele is into dancing, and working on a few different styles of dance, so when I was creating dancers to animate for the video, I made one with Michele in mind. While the AI created the dancer as a silhouette, the silhouette could be Michele. I described the choreography for the animation and it came out reasonably close to what I wanted.

Jake: “Whoa! Michele is a great dancer. How do I get attention for her?”

First Iris

Teagan’s Moments

Timothy Price109 Comments

TnT’s latest musical collaberation is a version of Moments I made for Teagan. While I was trying different animations for the video, Teagan created a happy image of a singer and musicians for me to animate. Of the many problems I encountered creating animations for the a video to go with the song, the main two issues were 1) getting a consistent singer and musicians through the entire video, 2) syncing the singer’s mouth to the lyrics.

Using Teagan’s image, I was able to keep the singer and musicians the same all the way through the video. I gave AI the lyrics and incuded timing and prompts in attempts to sync the singers mouth with the lyrics. I do not have an AI subscription that allows me to upload the music in an attempt to sync the music with the animation, so I have to do a lot of trial and error to get things synced up the best I can. I got the mouth syncing moderately close to the words in the video, but they are still off.

I know a lot of people don’t like AI imagery and animation and are put off by it. However, it’s getting better all the time. It also gives artists like me and Teagan a way to create images and animation that we could not afford to do in the traditional ways of creating images for animation and video, or paying someone else to do it for us. Teagan has really polished her use of AI to create images, and I am getting better at the animation for video. We are really psyched about the possibilities that lie before us.

Dawn