As most of you already know, I’ve a new granddaughter arriving in late November. Can you believe that she’s almost here? As my mind, my heart, and my soul are wrapped all around this little bundle of blessings, I can’t help but want to include her in this part of my life, so that you might be a part of our journey.

With this in mind, I’ve been toying with differing ideas in regards to creating an Avatar just for my little Sugar Plum! As far as a real baby name, her mamma says they’re torn between Maize Anne, or Laney Grace, but they won’t make their pick until after she arrives. So, for now we stick with her nickname… that’s the Sugar Plum part.

Now, beings that I love making an Avatar that truly reflects the personality behind the image, I’ve been working toward some ideas that I think might be really adorable.

Ok, so my daughter and her husband are the equivalent of urban homesteaders. Within the humble space of a typical city dwelling family, they’ve a passel of chickens that lay the most wonderful eggs, and a glorious garden, overflowing with delicious fresh produce. My son-in-law loves to garden, as well as, raising chickens… and both of them work full-time! Honestly, I don’t know how they do it… but, I sure couldn’t be prouder!

Lets look at what we have to work with for our adorable Avatar? They’ve a boatload of pets, including four dogs, and two cats. The picture above is one of a baby with features of a kitten, but let me show you some of the other initial images Norbert (My AI) offered…

If I want to make a new creature with the features of animals and humans combined, Norbert throws a fit. Honestly, I think ai programs can easily mimic something already created, but when you ask it to come up with something new and unusual… they fall flat! Well, at least they do for this writer, because I don’t want the Norbert to lead my ideas. I am the content creator, the one who sees, imagines, and writes out what she sees. All I desire the image program to do, is to follow my descriptions. I don’t want someone else’s stock photo. I want an image of what I imagine… not Norbert!

Before I move further into the creation process, I must ask your opinions on several possible directions to follow, here.

The biggest decision to make before proceeding, is to either accept or reject the idea of using a human feature, at all! I don’t think I’ll be able to successfully add more than one animal feature to the image, without it greatly distorting the avatar’s features. Rather than an image with three differing species types, I end up with something warped and mutilated, with extra appendages and glaring flaws.

I did really enjoy the baby combo with kitten ears.

But, then again, I really like the tiny white kitten, even if it’s not photorealistic.

See my dilemma?

I have the same problems with most of my creature avatars. The program really tries to keep them all animated and plastic, unless I get lucky. There have been those images that really hit perfect on the first run, but most often not, when it comes to mixing image types. Hey, I never said I was an expert at this stuff. Personally, I just want to write… but, it is what it is!

Oh well, it’s not like I have to be in any hurry, right?!

Slow and steady wins the race, as they say, so I’ll just keep working at it, for now. If you would, could you simply leave an answer in the comment section, as to whether we should continue with the baby idea, or one of the others?

If you really want to go hog wild, you can help me create our virtual Sugar Plum. You can do that by giving additional creative ideas, and/or suggestions. Then we can really make something special!