Short Story: Children's Book: Panda and the Dragon

[milo]

Hello

Here is a children's book I wrote.  All words art concepts and direction including describing the scene and characters was done by me.  The actual image renders of the illustrations were done by an AI agent.


Here are the words:

Panda and the Dragon 

Fridays are no good for dragon slaying:
First there's weeding -
weaving fingers through the soil
and cabbage roots until the worms
come wiggling up and dangle,
flop into the coffee can for Sunday's fishing.

Then the dogs, wheezing through
another hazy afternoon, letting
chops flow over paws until
they spill onto the packed earth
of the kennel - they need to chomp
and test the eye-rings of their tethers
lest their knees grow brittle
or the leather of their collars crack.

Still there's Friday evening
cocoa, spooned from pan to
mug before it skins, and an afghan
blanket pulled up tight to chin,
balancing a tin of popcorn
for the 'Friday Mystery Theatre'.

Saturday is the day -
to fetch the wombat armor,
cleave a thistle sword
and march -
past fields of loosestrife,
over shallow hills of clover,
down the ditch to where
the rusting graves of Ford DeSotos
pile, crowding lichened banks
of Guaryumpoo River.

The brace of cold against
a bare-knee'd fording
or the slimey muck that oozes
through the toes make
a teasing case for stopping
or exploring, but large-mouth
river pike or lampreys
like the meaty taste of
trawling legs, so it's a game
of hopping turtle-stones across.

Hidden in the Bumpkoo Mountains
on the way to Hawk's Nest pass
there are caves with scaly Basilisks
to guard the nests of smokey quartz.

And how much farther still
to the rippled basalt plains,
polished smooth with
bone-ash, piled high with charcoal
armor graves - and dragons playing?

Maybe just a peek inside the flannel
kerchief knapsack where two
peanut butter and honey sandwiches
are wrapped in banana leaves,
or maybe just a draught of bug juice -
after all it's hot -
and nothing beats a mid-day nap . . .

To the distant haunting of the Walrog's
baying moan and before the gremlin
clouds chew up the moon, Panda
double-tamps her padded feet
in staccatto rhythm to her heart
until she's reached the cobbled
pathway to her cottage home.

Anyway, tomorrow is a better day
for dragon slaying. 

I also have it available as a downloadable and printable PDF if anyone is interested

Thanks

[CRNDLSM]

I will gladly illustrate all of these for you if you would accept the offer

[busker]

I will gladly illustrate all of these for you if you would accept the offer

In what way? Will you draw by hand what AI drew? What’s the point of that? Or will you draw fresh pictures?

---

Hello

Here is a children's book I wrote.  All words art concepts and direction including describing the scene and characters was done by me.  The actual image renders of the illustrations were done by an AI agent.


Here are the words:

Panda and the Dragon 

Fridays are no good for dragon slaying:
First there's weeding -
weaving fingers through the soil
and cabbage roots until the worms
come wiggling up and dangle,
flop into the coffee can for Sunday's fishing.

Then the dogs, wheezing through
another hazy afternoon, letting
chops flow over paws until
they spill onto the packed earth
of the kennel - they need to chomp
and test the eye-rings of their tethers
lest their knees grow brittle
or the leather of their collars crack.

Still there's Friday evening
cocoa, spooned from pan to
mug before it skins, and an afghan
blanket pulled up tight to chin,
balancing a tin of popcorn
for the 'Friday Mystery Theatre'.

Saturday is the day -
to fetch the wombat armor,
cleave a thistle sword
and march -
past fields of loosestrife,
over shallow hills of clover,
down the ditch to where
the rusting graves of Ford DeSotos
pile, crowding lichened banks
of Guaryumpoo River.

The brace of cold against
a bare-knee'd fording
or the slimey muck that oozes
through the toes make
a teasing case for stopping
or exploring, but large-mouth
river pike or lampreys
like the meaty taste of
trawling legs, so it's a game
of hopping turtle-stones across.

Hidden in the Bumpkoo Mountains
on the way to Hawk's Nest pass
there are caves with scaly Basilisks
to guard the nests of smokey quartz.

And how much farther still
to the rippled basalt plains,
polished smooth with
bone-ash, piled high with charcoal
armor graves - and dragons playing?

Maybe just a peek inside the flannel
kerchief knapsack where two
peanut butter and honey sandwiches
are wrapped in banana leaves,
or maybe just a draught of bug juice -
after all it's hot -
and nothing beats a mid-day nap . . .

To the distant haunting of the Walrog's
baying moan and before the gremlin
clouds chew up the moon, Panda
double-tamps her padded feet
in staccatto rhythm to her heart
until she's reached the cobbled
pathway to her cottage home.

Anyway, tomorrow is a better day
for dragon slaying. 

I also have it available as a downloadable and printable PDF if anyone is interested

Thanks

Can you tell me what AI you used?
I’ve been trying to illustrate a book for my kid, but I can’t sufficiently cute bloodthirsty monsters
Tried ChatGPT 
Or did you prompt engineer a certain way?

[milo]

Yes, it was chat GPT but there were specific instructions for every character and every scene. I had to re do most scenes multiple times. I could share some of the prompts if you wish. Once I ran out of image generation , it did give me prompts to create future frames

[CRNDLSM]

For one thing, ai art won't be monetized, by the pigpens standards AI poetry is considered plagiarism. Artists believe ai art steals their art styles in order to 'create'. I could use his prompts and draw new pictures, scan them into a computer and email them, obviously he likes what the ai did so I could use those as references.

My cognitive dissonance here is watching respectful artists use ai as if it isn't some form of cheating.

[milo]

For one thing, ai art won't be monetized, by the pigpens standards AI poetry is considered plagiarism.  Artists believe ai art steals their art styles in order to 'create'.  I could use his prompts and draw new pictures, scan them into a computer and email them, obviously he likes what the ai did so I could use those as references. 

My cognitive dissonance here is watching respectful artists use ai as if it isn't some form of cheating.

Oh, it is definitely some sort of cheating. My daughter, who is also an artist, was pretty disgusted with when I showed her. We had a decent argument about it last night. In many ways the cognitive dissonance is the point because this stuff is here and I am not going to put my hands over my eyes and pretend it’s not.

[CRNDLSM]

For one thing, ai art won't be monetized, by the pigpens standards AI poetry is considered plagiarism.  Artists believe ai art steals their art styles in order to 'create'.  I could use his prompts and draw new pictures, scan them into a computer and email them, obviously he likes what the ai did so I could use those as references. 

My cognitive dissonance here is watching respectful artists use ai as if it isn't some form of cheating.

Oh, it is definitely some sort of cheating. My daughter, who is also an artist, was pretty disgusted with when I showed her. We had a decent argument about it last night. In many ways the cognitive dissonance is the point because this stuff is here and I am not going to put my hands over my eyes and pretend it’s not.

For what it's worth, if your daughter is an artist and still talks to you you're probably doing a great job, but to be an artist is to understand that beauty is worth studying, devoting time to learning color and texture and perspective.  The fact that ai can do it without even thinking makes me wonder if it's even worth teaching anymore.  No need to learn the different medians to express yourself, the computer can do it for you effortlessly.  Maybe it comes down to money ultimately, but I think this cognitive dissonance is worth exploring.  I just think there's better ways to do it than by promoting it. I appreciate your time here

Anyways offer still stands

[milo]

For one thing, ai art won't be monetized, by the pigpens standards AI poetry is considered plagiarism.  Artists believe ai art steals their art styles in order to 'create'.  I could use his prompts and draw new pictures, scan them into a computer and email them, obviously he likes what the ai did so I could use those as references. 

My cognitive dissonance here is watching respectful artists use ai as if it isn't some form of cheating.

Oh, it is definitely some sort of cheating. My daughter, who is also an artist, was pretty disgusted with when I showed her. We had a decent argument about it last night. In many ways the cognitive dissonance is the point because this stuff is here and I am not going to put my hands over my eyes and pretend it’s not.

For what it's worth, if your daughter is an artist and still talks to you you're probably doing a great job, but to be an artist is to understand that beauty is worth studying, devoting time to learning color and texture and perspective.  The fact that ai can do it without even thinking makes me wonder if it's even worth teaching anymore.  No need to learn the different medians to express yourself, the computer can do it for you effortlessly.  Maybe it comes down to money ultimately, but I think this cognitive dissonance is worth exploring.  I just think there's better ways to do it than by promoting it. I appreciate your time here

Anyways offer still stands

I have three daughters and I am very close with all of them.  We frequently disagree about many things and that is the way I prefer it  I enjoy challenging their precepts as I enjoy them challenging mine.

I think about the future often and, for me, it looks sad but i wonder how much of that is a conservative value set clinging to my personal experience as the "correct" experience.  I used to be quite the chess player.  Not long ago, I could beat pretty much any computer in chess.  Today, an iPhone could beat the best chess player in the world.  I am surprised humans even bother anymore.

How much of this is a programmed "species" response to competition.  Animals are genetically programmed to compete for resources.  Humans have been on top for a pretty long run.  Is the future of humanity not organic off-spring but data-based - as in, instead of passing on our genetic material will there come a time it makes more sense to pass humanity along through data exchange?

All of these questions create a dissonance and it is worth exploring.  Poets need to explore challenging questions.  For enough years, it has been individual mortality but you definitely see the mortality of species creeping in to poetry.

Anyway, me doing this is in no way an endorsement of AI but rather an exploration of these very concepts.  As someone that has yoked themselves to creative concepts for so long it is strange to see such a radical shift.  Now, granted, poetry has been worthless since before I was born, it is one of the things that drew me to it.  But there was always an intrinsic value in the difficulty of creation to those few who cared or could recognize it and now it feels like that will soon be gone as well.