Let's Chat: Play Along Toys - Mouth of Sauron

The basis for this chat was Play Along Toys AOME LOTR 'Warriors and Battle Beasts' series, 'The Mouth of Sauron'. This was originally posted back in 2011 as a basic photo essay, but Chat GPT has given my old photos new life.

You'll notice I don't delve into LOTR lore in these posts. There's just too much and I can end up spending all my time just researching. I'll let y'all do that!!

While we're talking about photos, I've been busy taking a lot of new photos! Back in the day I posted a ton of snaps but they were all the figure sets. For whatever reason, I took very few photos of larger sets, or the sets with heavy gear, like ballista's and catapults, and such, so that's what I've been busy doing. It's slow going I can tell you and I'll post what I can, when I can!

Ed

Let's Chat: New Ray King Tiger Tank

Let's put that freshly blogged New Ray King Tiger in a setting befitting its stature.

Ed

Let's Chat: Play Along Toys - Orc Drummer

Here's the Orc Drummer just blogged yesterday. I placed in the streets of a ruined Osgiliath rallying his troops. I'll have to find this figure out in The Cave and pose him with his spear and see what I can come up with for that!

Ed

Let's Chat: Play Along Toys - King Theoden on Horseback

This Chat is based on Play Along Toys AOME LOTR King Theoden on Horseback, part of Play Along's 'Warriors and Battle Beasts' series. One of the frustrating aspects of working with Chat GPT is its tendency to want to make every image look realistic - even when that is not the goal. Mostly, for what I want to accomplish with these LOTR figures, is to place them in realistic settings, yet allow the toy to remain toy-like. It's like being a kid again and playing with your little Army Men. The toys are there in all their plastic wonderfullness, but in the child's imagination, they're battling it out in realistic settings. In that regard, this Chat image is a failure. Overall, it's a terrific picture, but the Chat image of Theoden looks nothing like the toy image - he's too real looking!

Ed

Let's Chat: Play Along Toys Eomer on Horseback (Again) and Too Many Flags

Just four days ago I posted a plussed-up photo of Play Along Toys Eomer on Horseback. What I totally forgot to make note of is that occasionally Chat GPT will prepare two images and let you decide which one is better. Such was the case with Eomer on his steed Finrod.

First of all, Chat loves to add flags! Sometimes I'm okay with the flags, but mostly I Photoshop them out of the image instead of letting the Chat program edit it out. Why? Once you start asking the program to make a bunch of edits it totally screws up the image. I've found that if you're not satisfied with the first draft of the picture, one re-edit might solve the issue. If it doesn't - STOP! At this point the program simply becomes befuzzled and will screw up any further edits. It's best to make note of the mistakes and start all over again with more precise instructions.

When the program gave me the option to decide which of the two images I liked most, I decided the first image was the better of the two. The second image has way too many flags in it. I guess I'll need to get in the habit of telling the program not to add any flags at all. What a nuisance.

Ed

Posted 3 Sep

Today's post

I guess all those flags are meant to remind Eomer of where he is!

Let's Chat: Play Along Toys King Theoden on Horseback - Okay but Not Okay

The Chat GPT tries hard to produce a good image, unfortunately it can sometimes go further than what I'd like. Case in point: while I prefer to keep my toys looking like the toys I photographed (with the exception of removing bases from the figures), but surround them with realistic texture and backgrounds, sometimes that doesn't happen. Most of the figures I've shown here have retained their toy-like look, but in a few cases the Chat program altered the figure to look more realistic - and I didn't catch it. It's still a terrific image, but my toy has lost its identity. I now have to specify in my prompts to "remove the base from the figure but do not add details or otherwise change the features" of the toy I want re-imaged.

Ed

This Theoden figure is from Play Along Toys AOME Warriors and Battle Beasts series.

This was the image I chose

The Chat GPT image looks more like Bernard Hill than it does the toy.

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys King of The Dead

This King of The Dead figure was pulled from Play Along Toys AOME Soldiers and Scenes Series set 'Army of the Dead' which was posted here on the blog back in 2011. These early photos weren't that good but I never revisited the series, preferring to post-and-forget. Well, with Chat GPT I can now breath new life into these old photos (hmmm breath new life into the King of the Dead - funny that).

Ed

The prompt was: place this King of the Dead from The Lord of The Rings at the head of a host of dead warriors. I can only surmise that the Chat program can access nearly whatever classic literature needed in order for it to draw inferences and generate a plausible image. In this case it worked great.

Awesome!

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys Dark Rider (on Horse)

The basis for this image came from Play Along Toys AOME Warriors and Battle Beasts series from 2003. The inspiration for the image came from Peter Jackson' LOTR trilogy, Part 1 'The Fellowship of The Ring'. I think a good title for this would be 'The Search For Frodo',

Ed

My 2010 photograph used for making the image

'The Search For Frodo'

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys Arwen and Frodo on Horseback

The figures this Chat were based on is from Play Along Toys Armies of Middle Earth Warriors and Battle beasts series from 2003.

Ed

The prompt was: 'remove base from horse and place horse and riders in a widely spaced forest being pursued by LOTR Dark Riders'

 

Adventures in Chat GPT - Toy Biz Electronic Sound & Action Treebeard, the Talking Ent

I posted this Treebeard the Ent figure from Toy Biz way back in December 2011 and am now able to highlight this terrific toy again - but in a different way. The toy is battery operated (enabling the talking) and is 17.25" (43,81cm) H. The legs and arms are articulated and can be moved around and, while it's not made by Play Along Toys, is a great companion piece to their LOTR figures. Back in 2011, the photos were my basic set of orthographic inventory shots, but with the help of a little computer aided wizardry, Treebeard now is in a setting which makes him look at home! 

Ed

The photo I chose to 'plus up'

The prompt used was: place Treebeard the Ent in Fangorn Forest.

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys - Aragorn on Horseback

 This figure was a part of Play Along Toys Armies of Middle Earth Warriors and Battle Beasts series from ~2003.

Ed

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys - Ringwraith at Weathertop

This Ringwraith was part of the 'Soldier and Scenes' series of figures from Play Along Toys that was released in 2003 and posted here on the blog back in January 2011. The Chat GPT prompt used here was "place the Ringwraith from the Lord of The Rings at Weathertop". I like the image but should have specified that I wanted him inside the ruins vs. outside on a hill. That's okay though - as an image it stands up well in its own right.

Ed

Adventures in Chat GPT - Play Along Toys Fighting Gimli (2004)

After a long dry spell in which I did not notice Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy being played on TV, it has seen a comeback and is being shown fairly regularly now. That re-ignited the interest I have in these Play Along Toys figures which came out ~2004 and which I posted immediately after the blog started in Oct 2010. The only prompt for this figure was to remove the base and place in realistic terrain.

Ed

Adventures in Chat GPT - MPC River Patrol Boat

I absolutely love seeing my toy collection presented in a realistic setting and Chat GPT allows me to do that when I don't have space, time, money, or energy to do 3D modeling. In any case, I would never have immersed a vintage MPC boat in a river made from resin which would ruin the piece, so it makes sense to do a computer enhanced presentation. I really like how this one turned out!

Speaking of 3D modeling, once I'm through with that small MPC Royal Canadian Mounted Police set I started posting the other day, I'll have a nice project to show here on the blog.

Ed

Adventures in Chat GPT - Sometimes You Just Have to Work To Get What You Want

This was one of those images I had to work to get right. Starting with a photo of a  Yonezawa Douglas C-124 Globemaster II taken back in 2018, I wanted to see what Chat GPT could do with it. Unfortunately, I didn't look at the original photo good enough to see the flaws that were right there in front of me and only after a series of Chat GPT and Photoshop edits did I end up with an image I'm okay with.

Ed

Original Photo (2018)

The original photo was taken on my 2'x4' airfield display board that has been used on a number of occasions and is a nice enough tabletop toy display.

Edits

A

The prompt given to the Chat GPT program was "make the background a more realistic military airfield"

Only after this first edit did I notice flaws.

-The first thing I noticed was the missing propellors on the outboard port engine! DOH! They were missing all the time as the original photo attests to. How could I have missed that?

-The second thing I noticed was the pilot figure still retained its base

-Last was a flaw generated by Chat GPT: it put an odd bubble kind of thing on the port wingtip. Like, what the heck is that?

B

Somewhere along the line, Chat GPT thought that adding a third engine was the right thing to do!!

C

Chat GPT did manage to partially fix the propellor issue on the outboard engine. There's still one propellor missing

D (FINAL)

This was one of the first projects using the Chat GPT program and I quickly found out that I simply cannot do all the edits I want to in it because:

a) I can only do four images a day using the free version

b) the more you ask of the program, the more it's likely to screw things up

The solution? Photoshop!

I placed the photo in Photoshop, editing out the base under the figure, getting rid of that odd bubble on the port wingtip and adding the last propellor to the engine.

This is my final image and I'm okay with it.

Adventures in Chat GPT - A Moldy Slice of Cheese Fail

Wellll, ya gotta try. This was one effort that turned out to be kinda funny. Taking a photo of a Tri-ang Prospector on a Tri-ang vacu-form base, the first photo was quite good just as is. There was no Photoshopping, just a bit of tweaking with the brightness and contrast, but otherwise all in-camera.

So I thought I could get perhaps a landscape that had a bit more texture. I loaded the photo into Chat GPT and gave the following prompt: "retaining the original color palette, give the landscape more texture".

What I ended up with looks like a crumpled-up piece of moldy Swiss Cheese (Edamer for you purists) with a toy on top. 😂😂

Live and learn.

Ed