SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

Acrid smoke hangs thick over the decimated city. The scent catches in your throat, and you fight the urge to cough for fear of raising the alarm. You navigate through the war-torn streets, careful, hyper-vigilant… excited. In the midst of the chaos and destruction, you’re risking it all because you’re not just a spy—you’re heading to a dangerous liaison in a warzone.

It’s not far now.

A cacophony of artillery rumbles on in the distance; for now, you’re as safe as you’ll ever be. You reach what remains of the once prestigious university, your rendezvous point. Your heart drops. Had they been inside when…? Before you can finish the thought, a familiar silhouette steps out from the shadows: it’s this week’s SLDS challenge prompt.

What is SLDS?: SLDS is a weekly prompt challenge that encourages artists of all levels, including non-artists, to create an image with a spy and romance theme. You can use various tools such as Photoshop, ArtRage, Procreate, DALL-E, MidJourney, Microsoft Edge’s CoPilot, or any other software that you prefer to create your artwork.

Last Week’s Highlights: Secret Weapon Reveal

Before we make our way through the warzone, let’s celebrate the incredible entries from last week’s challenge, “Secret Weapon Reveal.” I’m so grateful for you guys sharing your amazing creations with us! ??

Check out my favourites:

Jez’s Inspired Armoury

Check out Jez’s post for more weapon reveals through the ages… and beyond!

Claire’s Clones

Check out Claire’s post for more steps in the cloning timeline!

This Week’s Challenge: A Dangerous Liaison in a Warzone

Love can make you do crazy things. But, when danger keeps you apart, and there’s no certainty that you’ll survive… There’s no end to what you’ll do to see your love again.

Create With Me

There are a couple of variables I need to pin down before I get prompting: time period, location, and how long the couple have been an item (and how long since they’ve seen each other). The last part helps me to tell DALL-E the level of emotion to show in the images. Plus, it helps me connect with the characters better too.

Let’s Get to Our Dangerous Liaison

So, I’m going with a contemporary setting in a small Northern European town. The couple has been together for a couple of years and apart for three months.

PROMPT: Please create a wide-format image of a contemporary small Northern European town. The town is in ruins, bearing the scars of an ongoing year-long war.  A couple embrace in a desperate kiss in the shell of a cottage.

OUTPUT: I was unable to generate the images you requested because the content violates our policy. Please provide a new request that complies with the content guidelines.

I asked DALL-E what the issue was, and it said that some people might be sensitive to the image and the ‘negative’ emotions involved! It suggested changing to post-apocalyptic and something happier than a couple reuniting (what the hell is happier than that?). But I gave in and went with it—the same result. We ended up in an illogical argument loop of me going with the suggested changes, which again resulted in ‘violations’ and zero images.

Let’s Try Something Else

I was sure I would have to give up and start fresh with a new challenge prompt, but as ChatGPT is my random challenge prompt generator, I wasn’t going to let it beat me. Let’s take out anything that could possibly upset DALL-E.

PROMPT: In wide aspect ratio, create a post-apocalyptic image of a town. In an abandoned building at the edge of the town, a couple reunites in a kiss filled with relief.

You will not believe the level of fury the non-stop arguments caused me to hit… though if you’ve used AI, you probably will ?

Oh, praise the big banana! ? We have an image—it’s nowhere close to what I wanted, but it’s closer than I was an hour ago! ?

Changing Locations

Now that I finally have an image, let’s try to force DALL-E to create something close to what I wanted in the first place.

PROMPT: Okay, let’s change the location to a glen.

Not exactly a glen, but it would appear that DALL-E is going to keep the ruined buildings—so that’s a bonus.

To give the sense that this war is still raging, we’ll give our couple some weapons.

PROMPT: Give them weapons

Getting closer!

PROMPT: Let’s make it a dystopian city and have the couple hide behind a building whilst they embrace

Oh, this is getting better!

I tried to add visual elements like military helicopters, etc. And DALL-E added civilian ones or just left them out entirely. After swearing, with great flair, at the excessive levels of censoring this paid tool has, an idea hit…

I’m Telling!

I decided to ask Gabbie (my friendly, personalised version of ChatGPT) what the fuck was going on.

With great calm, I told her the issue and gave her my initial prompt… this is what she came up with for my dangerous liaison:

I love this image! It conveys the ongoing conflict and the deep connection between the couple. With the soldiers in the background, there’s a hint of the danger faced in making it to the meeting point.

Over to You

Okay, this feels cruel. It’s sort of like passing on the cursed monkey paw… But now, it’s your turn to capture the peril and passion of a dangerous liaison in a warzone. If you’re up to the challenge (and I don’t say that lightly), show us your vision and let your creativity shine through the fogs of war. (See the beginning of the post for “How to join in”).

Hit the follow button and join us next week to see where our creative journey takes us.

Till next time, stay awesome,

Susan x