A few months ago, a writer reached out requesting Lore Machine access to visualize a children’s story. Nick Blake was on a mission to build a book about dragons as a Christmas present for his daughter. As it happens, we love dragons. Access granted ✅.
Two weeks later, Nick popped back up with a finished publication and a video featuring his Lore Machine renders sequenced over voice narration and music.
Here’s a heartwarming interview with Nick about his new story and his experience using Lore Machine to make June and the Dragon.
You can read the PDF download or buy a printed copy of June and the Dragon here.
Who are you?
Well, I'm a writer. I'm also a musician and a creative. I love doing video, especially short-form and web series. I also got into coding a few years ago so I could really build stuff and become an empowered artist. During the pandemic, I built and released a GameBoy game.
Have you spent a lot of time messing around with generative?
I've always been an organic artist - doing hands-on work like editing and writing…all the stuff that generative AI doesn't do. Lore Machine was my first time using a generative system. It was really empowering. I was surprised at how good the images turned out. There’s this surreal quality.
Too many folks think of AI’s evolution as a linear path towards depicting the world we know. But inside the more abstract hallucinations of synthetic media are far more interesting worlds to be explored.
That sounds exactly how I would describe Lore Machine.
Tell me a little bit about the project you ran through Lore Machine…
The project is called June and the Dragon.
Last summer, I went camping with my kids. My daughter saw a lizard dancing on a rock. But she really didn't want to tell me; she only wanted to tell her mother, who wasn't on the trip with us. It became this friction point - my daughter just refused to tell me what she saw.
That core conflict spilled out into this children’s story I wrote about a family hiking through the woods, and a girl seeing a lizard dancing on a rock. That moment ushers in the rest of the story, which unfolds into mythological proportions.
Part of that mythology is inspired by a mass dragon sighting on Maui in 1838. So the story goes, a mo’o (dragon) rose up out of one of the island’s remote pools in front of thousands of onlookers.
I wanted to make the story into a book for my daughter for Christmas. Initially, it was a story that was for her alone. When I saw Lore Machine was going into Beta and inviting people to share their stories I thought, ‘oh dude, I know exactly what would be a good fit here.’ So I plugged my story in. When I saw the images I thought, ‘Oh, hell yeah, this is this is gonna work, this is gonna be good.’
Did you encounter any challenges with Lore Machine?
The other children's story that I ran through Lore Machine features a main character that’s a dog. But Lore Machine currently has no way to build non-human characters. So that’s something.
Generally though, I love where Lore Machine is at now and where it's going. It’ll be especially powerful when you lock in that regenerative piece, so you can really refine specific images. That will be a huge win for me as a creator.
Did your daughter dig the book??
She loved it. She told me, “Papa, that story was so great. I'm going to cherish this forever and give it to my kids.”
I did a small run of a dozen copies to send to friends who also have kids. It's great bedtime reading material. Everybody loved it. And hey, maybe it helps kids learn the Pythagorean Theorem.
Any more plans for the book?
We're doing a limited print run of the first edition. We’ll see if it has legs. It's got a good storyline, great images… I think it could be very popular. We'll see how things go.
You can read more about June and the Dragon here. Nick's GameBoy title, Dragon Battle, is available to play online for free here. Nick also runs an underground indie music discovery streaming service called the vt.