Out-takes: April Fools 2024

Did you all enjoy Monday's announcement of the Netflix adaptation? As usual, my post was intended to be so ridiculously over-the-top that most people would get the joke immediately, but I still got a few people with it!

As most of you will have figured out, the promotional shots from the "show" were actually done with AI. I had to go through a number of permutations before I landed on ones I liked. Let's take a look at a few of those that didn't make the cut, just for fun, shall we?

I discovered the Microsoft stable diffusion tool when I made the Missy Funko Pops I posted on Discord a while back. For those of you not in the Discord (or who missed it,) these are they:

I goofed with Jess and forgot her ribbons, but you get the idea. So anyway, this then got me thinking that I could create more sophisticated gags with AI, and while making an April Fools post that I was changing the game to AI CG would have been too close to the 2022 gag, I could certainly use it for something else!

Anyway, the first thing I needed was my splash image. A few permutations were tried before I landed on the great shot of "April Fhurst" up at the top there.

The hair is fine, the face needs some work and the uniform doesn't quite look right. Plus there's a bit of AI hands going on with that left hand. So I tried again.

Cute, shirt still wasn't great, and the pose didn't quite say splashy promo pic, but we were getting warmer.

I probably would have gone with this one if it had got the hair right. That bad girl in the background looks a little more happy and friendly than she should, but I guess that plays into the joke of the tone being entirely changed to mainstream-friendly high school drama.

Another near miss. Cute girl, acceptable hair and shirt, good background characters. But what is this pose? The decidedly AI-looking hand is just sort of up at the side like she's holding up an invisible tray.

Sadly fails the uncanny valley test.

This one again would have been great if Missy's hair was right. Sadly, it often randomly ignores prompts. How is that meant to be curled pigtails? And the pose wasn't quite right.

I also wanted a picture of Missy with Jess, but as people making AI CG games will tell you, it can be hard to make the character look the same in all the shots, so I had to abandon the idea after a few tries, since I couldn't get her looking the same as in the splash and Jess never looked right at all. Here's a few of the failures though.

Jess looks more bored than grumpy here!

Don't know why it gave Missy ribbons, and I'm not sure what Jess is doing to her here either!

"God, Missy, you're such an embarrassment!" Probably my favourite, as it captures the girls' relative personalities the best. Pity about Missy's lazy eye.

Also, for some reason it keeps insisting on giving Jess pigtails, and that's some pretty extreme AI hand on Missy there.

Lastly, I had to show you this alternate one of the dance number. I almost used it, but I just thought having the two boys front and centre would be a bridge too far.

Well, now I've only got 363 days left to think of next year's so I'd better get my twisted mind working! See you next week when maybe I'll actually get back to talking about the game!

Trinian