Cowboys. There was no other term for them and for the most part, that’s the way people saw them. Pilots from the Collective gone rogue, mad some of the more extreme would say. But the fact was without them, things would be, well, things would be not as easy as they were.

This is the first real image I’ve created using AI as an intentional design tool to arrive at an end result. As I’ve mentioned before, I am finding that using it as an aid in concept work brings one to unexpected places – case in point, this image started with a clear vision but after some time playing with the output tree, I ended up not only at the point I wanted, but a whole lot extra. The process of the final image though was not a simple push of buttons, as some may want to think. This image is made up of about five different AI outputs that were then composited and reworked in Affinity Photo to create the back plate, which I then took into Keyshot to create the final composite render with the 3D model.I’m more than sold on the idea of these AI toolsets as creative aids, they definitely speed up the process of ideation to final. But to get something really good, there has to be a clear vision at the start, a lot of judgement calls along the way, and then good old human creativity to arrive at an end result.