Depicting the (often very vivid) dreams I have is one way to hone creative processes and measure the advances of related technologies.
This is a dream that I had on May 2 2025 during which I saw my baby niece happily and agilely climbing the kitchen cabinet to get some snacks.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJhZH91PWwB/
A few days ago I noticed a dead rodent flattened on the driveway, so decomposed that it is hard to tell whether it is a rat, a mouse, a gopher, a mole, a vole, or something else.
I transferred the dead body to the compost bin via a pair of tree branches.
Today, after the garbage was collected, I found the dead body still stuck to the bottom of the bin. So I picked it up (via the same pair of tree branches), stuffed it inside a gopher hole nearby, and covered the hole with the surrounding soil.
My dad likes to make witful observations about international relations (one of his college majors). He made another one during our conversation this afternoon, which formed a very concrete picture in my mind.
I would like to visualize it with high quality and low latency, so I found a drawing that fits my mental structure with a quick web search, generatively expanded it via Photoshop, used it as reference for Adobe Firefly text-to-image generation, generatively replaced the top of the well in Photoshop, and finally added a decal over the frog’s back via Adobe Fresco.
This whole process took a significantly shorter amount of time than if I were to manually draw the whole thing.
I guess one distinction between a communicator and an artist (or a communicator mode versus an artist mode that could be switched within every individual depending on the needs and situations) is that the former has a pretty precise goal in mind and aims to complete the task as efficiently as possible, while the latter often starts without a clear goal and then gradually reaches the outcome via an iterative exploration process.
This imagined story came to my mind while looking at a house-like structure built over an ocean in this exhibition on March 16 2025.
The following is the imagined story, accompanied by visuals generated from Reve, a new AI-powered image generation tool built by two former Adobe colleagues.
When I woke up I found myself in this dwelling.
There is nothing inside, and from the two open ends I could see endless blue sky and ocean.
A voice came out asking if I need anything.
I replied that I am thirsty and hungry.
I asked where I am and how I got here, but got no reply.
The food and drink came out of nowhere, and I slowly consumed them while contemplating my situation.
Eventually, I realized that my consumption came from the sacrifice of my loved one(s), who were drained slowly to death.
Pencil-style experiment following this earlier one with structural reference via line-art ControlNet, essentially drawing portraits of one family member via the artistic style of another.
I joined a tour in Japan during SIGGRAPH (Asia?), but had difficulty following the tour guide in winding streets in a canal-like environment. Within the group were Szymon and Matt with whom we talked about old age. I realized that I can’t see clearly due to wearing a wrong pair of glasses with one lens missing, and tried to come back to the hotel by backtracking the original way. I found myself with another tour group which was on their way for returning, sat in front of Hao and Eric and got my head pat by Hao’s girlfriend.
This dream is a reflect of several real-word facts:
* My dry eyes sometimes caused blurry vision.
* I found pair of glasses on the ground near San Jose Diridon station last evening.
Walked by this liquor store in TPE terminal 2 and found interesting these wine bottles as lampshades.
Saw and photographed this cute community piano on September 24 2024 and finally got a chance to add some motion graphics to it.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/216256361/CommunityPiano
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