The Innovative Adventures of Tom Swift

Tom Swift was a brilliant young inventor featured in a series of juvenile science fiction and adventure novels.  Swift utilized his fantastic inventions to escape the hazards that he confronted in his travels.  The book series ran from 1910 to 2022.

Walt Disney was a big fan of the Swift books as a boy.  He considered adapting the books into a television serial in the 1950s.  Eventually, he abandoned the idea as he realized a series that featured Swift’s dazzling inventions and exotic voyages would be too expensive to produce.  One of Disney’s good friends, Jack Wrather, figured that he might be able to bring Swift to television within budget constraints.  In 1958, he had several scripts written and produced a pilot film.  The networks rejected the pilot.

Tommy Kirk in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)

Disney likely had Swift in mind when he made The Absent-Minded Professor.  The influence of the Swift books is further evident in Disney's "Merlin Jones" and "Dexter Riley" films, both of which feature the amazing adventures of a boy inventor.

Joyce Menges and Kurt Russell in Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972)

Tom went on adventures with his father, Barton Swift, who was also an inventor and served as the boy’s mentor.  Barton Swift was replaced in later novels by Uncle Tom, a friend of the family and also the father of Tom's girlfriend.  

The boy inventor and his guardians bear more than a passing resemblance to Marty McFly and Doc Brown of the Back to the Future films. 

AI Art Notes for May 2024

Image by terryorisms

Midjourney's surreal images can be interesting.  The first image was created by aghezz.  The other images were created by .barracan. 

Midjourney members were enthusiastic about Christmas a few months ago.  Midjourney forums were filled with Yuletide imagery - Santa Claus, elves, The Grinch, Christmas trees, presents wrapped in shiny paper, and snowy landscape scenes.  But Easter inspired little enthusiasm in the community.  Relatively few Easter-themed images turned up in Midjourney forums.  Here is what stood out to me.

This is a quote from Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes novel: 

The lady gorillas sat around in armchairs chatting together in the shade of some big trees that looked like palms.   One of them was sipping a drink through a straw.

I submitted this quote to Midjourney.  Here are the images that the program returned.  As Boulle failed to say how the ape ladies were dressed, the program didn't bother to put clothes on them. 

 So, I tried to get the program to put the hairy nudists into sun dresses.  Inexplicably, I was only able to get two of the three gorillas into a dress.

Here we have 1920s bathing beauties as generated by AI. 

Here is a series of Audrey Hepburn-inspired portraits from thenorwegian.

Just the the word "humor" produced this odd image for eskaaa.

A single simple prompt - "a bear" - enabled lepoutch to create a wide variety of bear images. 

Loud-Tomatillo-8692 created this moody comic book page. 

Midjourney's new --cref parameter allows a user to add a character reference to a prompt.  I have played around a lot with this feature.

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I was impressed by Ned Burgess' cinematography in Errol Morris's 1981 documentary  Vernon, Florida.  I wanted to see if Midjourney could replicate this imagery.

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Dr. Seuss art inspired these images from LongjumpingDrag.

Christopher Smith of The Los Angeles Times provided the following description of Don Knotts: 

His high forehead, perched above a worried, wrinkly brow, set off his trademark googly eyes, ever-ready to pop out in alarm at whatever misfortune came his way.  Below the eyes, his recessed chin tapered into a longish neck that highlighted a bulgy Adam’s apple that Knotts worked up and down in synchronized tandem with petrified double-takes or facial tremors. Out of his mouth came a quavery, yet squalling tenor voice, shrilly sounding in disbelief at the latest unfair turn of events that threatened his well being.

I wondered what it would have been like for this frantic, googly-eyed, long-necked comedian to have portrayed Ace Ventura.

This is the way that Midjourney reimagined Ace Ventura with Knotts in the role.

An abundance of beautiful women are regularly rendered by Midjourney.  No one can deny that.  Recently, a member complained that Midjourney is becoming OnlyFans.  True, AI hotties shouldn’t dominate the program’s output.  The program has far more creative uses.  But they really don't dominate.  There is much more to enjoy in the Midjourney forums than the pretty ladies.     

Another member groused that these women look alike and have the same dead eyes.  I cannot entirely agree with that.  Yes, many of the women do look similar and sometimes look lifeless.  But, still, I see a great deal of variance and vibrance in these images.  You can watch my "AI Ladies" videos and decide for yourself.  

Image by mito1172