The Fleshmelt Project pt.2 - disparate influences

After creating the fleshy red mother and using her in six generations of AI style transfer over a photobash collage (see

), I wanted to bring some of my older art and photography into the fleshmelt project.

Sixth generation fleshy red mother result X bull kelp style X psychedelic ink drawing style

I had been using my photography of bull kelp tangles washed up on the beach for several art projects immediately prior to beginning work on the fleshmelt project. I decided to use one of my kelp photos as a style image in AI style transfer (deepdreamgenerator.com / DeepStyle v.2), using the sixth generation fleshy red mother result as base image. For reference, here is the sixth generation fleshy red mother result (shared previously in pt.1):

Here is my photo of bull kelp used as style image:

Just for fun

here is one of the pieces of art I was creating from my bull kelp photography prior to starting the fleshmelt series:

Fun fact, I

11 months ago right here on Hive on the . The list price of 200 Hive was a lot less in USD terms back then 😅. The full res 4k version has never been posted online anywhere and the 1/1 NFT comes with full commercial rights to use the image... Just sayin'...

Back to the fleshmelt - raw kelp style output

This is pretty cool, you can still see the shapes of the fleshy red landscape, and if you look carefully you can even see a few shapes from the original faces in the photobash collage... and yet it is clearly a mass of writhing kelp-tentacles :)

Another Input - psychedelic ink drawing

Setting the kelp style output aside for a moment, I used the sixth generation fleshy red mother result as base image with an old psychedelic pen & ink drawing of mine as the style image.

Old Psychedelic Ink Drawing - Out of the light came darkness (and all at once I could see)

I drew this back in 2000 when I was growing psychedelic mushrooms in a trailer in Alaska, and my art... uh... reflected that LOL I

if you are curious, there is a lot of hidden imagery.

Raw output psychedelic ink drawing style w/ 6th gen fleshy red result as base image

I combined the above result with the kelp style result to make the first image I shared in the post farther up.

Fungus Forest style

Setting the above results aside for now, I continued pulling in disparate influences from my art history. Still using the 6th generation fleshy red result as base image, I used the cover art for my self-published old school D&D adventure The Fungus Forest as style image.

If you play D&D, this is an old school / rules light adventure that would be easily adapted to 5th ed (or any other game really). I co-wrote the adventure with my friend Lee Reynoldson and I did all the art and layout. You can check it out for free, it is a pay-what-you-want .pdf download so just put "$0.00" in the box and you can download for free:

Raw output Fungus Forest style w/6th gen fleshy red result as base image

I combined the above result with the kelp style result to make this:

Next I did a series of quick paint / style transfer generations - painting on top of that result a bit, then another AI style transfer run with the fungus forest art as style image again, painted on top of that and another generation of AI style transfer. I ended up here:

Then I combined that back with the original weird faces photobash collage:

Next up - more fleshy red mutations

The series will continue on with another bunch of quick paints / style transfer with the fleshy red mother as style image. Things are going to get a lot weirder in the upcoming generations of the fleshmelt project, believe it or not :)

Stay weird Hive