SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

The eerie green glow of the night vision goggles fills your vision as you lead your team down the pitch-black corridors. Tension crackles in the air like a living, breathing entity. It’s your first time leading the team, though under the watchful eye of your partner—your mentor. Every detail of your mission is meticulously planned, but that hadn’t prevented previous failures to retrieve the drive. Your pulse races as you round the final corner.

With practised clockwork precision, your small team breaches the door that separates you from your target. Before you enter the room, something stops you—an almost imperceptible shift in the air. You let your eyelids drop as reality sets in. All those times your plans had been scuppered weren’t random bad luck. No, someone on your team had sold you out. Steeling yourself, your hand on your weapon, you turn. But it’s too late. Your partner and two rogue agents already have their weapons trained on you and the others. The betrayal stings.

Your former partner and his men herd you all into the room. His aim never wavers from you; he nods toward the safe containing the drive. Any attempt to take your betrayer and his men out will lead to your deaths. All you can do is comply. You hand over the drive and your weapons, knowing that if you live to see tomorrow, you’ll hunt him down and take your revenge. As your new enemy retreats, he calls out over his shoulder, “Welcome to this week’s SLDS challenge, kid.” 

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:
Infiltrating an Enemy’s Lair

As ever, before we dive into this week’s treacherous waters, let’s check out some of last week’s outstanding entries for Infiltrating an Enemy’s Lair. Your images wowed me!

Visit them below:

Sci-Fi Spaceship Attack: Digital Art Challenge

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SLDS Mission #072624

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This Week’s Challenge:
A Betrayal Revealed at a Critical Moment

Betrayals come in all forms. From a simple reading of an encrypted message to a gun in the face. It could be someone you’ve trusted with your life or even a family member you work with in the espionage world.

Create with Me

I’ve been working with betrayal in a project that my newsletter subscribers know about, and I’ll be sharing more about it on the blog in the next couple of days. So, I’m in tune with the whole theme right now.

To avoid giving away too much about my project, I’m going with simplicity in my prompting of DALL-E. I’ll focus more on facial expressions to show the shock and pain of the betrayal.

A Betrayal on a Mission

I’m going with lazy here. I got carried away with my intro section for the post, and I fell a wee bit in love with the scene in my head. So, I’m going to simplify it to a small team, the guns, and the shock. Let’s hope I can word it just right so that DALL-E can capture the sting of betrayal. ?

PROMPT: Please create a wide-format image of a small tactical team. Half of the team has turned on the other, their weapons drawn on those they betray. The betrayed’s expressions range from shocked to hurt.

The first image is so over the top on the dramatics! And the second one looks like it’s the poster for the next Expendables movie–you know there’s going to be another ?

After trying my damndest to tweak the first one into being something close to what I wanted, I had to quit. All I wanted to change was that some weapons were on the ground… That seemed to cause no end of trouble for DALL-E. The AI’s grasp on faces became, hmm, creepy.

Check out the guy on the left of the image. Is it me, or does he look like he escaped from a medieval painting??

Time for Another Betrayal Setup

When the AI gets stuck on creating images, I find it’s best to start a fresh chat to get it going. Also, steering clear of the prompt that got it confused in the first place is a good plan. So, instead of a team, let’s try two people… maybe then we can avoid that creepy bastard from above ?

PROMPT: Create a wide-format image of two people in black tactical gear. They are in a server room. One of the people (let’s call them #1) aims their weapon at the other (let’s call them #2). #2 is shocked and enraged at the betrayal.

Oh, this is better already! Though, the man in the background makes it unlikely that the betrayal would happen right now.

PROMPT: Remove the man in the background

Okay… the guy is now a woman. But for the betrayal to hit, I think she needs to be in the same gear as her betrayer, and a different stance could help.

Refining the Betrayal

PROMPT: Have his aim firmly on her. And, have her in the same black tactical gear, and her hands raised in surrender.

Despite the complete change of characters in the scene, I think this works. It’s not over the top on the drama. It’s clear that the betrayed had no suspicion that his fellow operative was going to pull a gun on him. Oh, and the wee creepy guy isn’t here ?

Over to You

Now, I won’t lie, this is a difficult mission. But if you’re willing to step into this week’s mission I’d love to see it. So, explore the world of AI imagery and let your imagination go wild. Share your vision of this covert operation with us in the comments. (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