Call for Art

Hilaritas Press is publishing a new Robert Anton Wilson book about Aleister Crowley and we are looking for someone to coax some AI program into making an insanely good image we can use on the book’s cover. We are also willing to consider original art as well!

RAW had intended to write a book about Crowley that was to be called, “Lion of Light,” but the book was never written. Recently a previously unpublished 70 page manuscript RAW wrote about Crowley was obtained by Hilaritas Press. The new Hilaritas Press “RAW on Crowley” book will include this essay as well as six other essays RAW wrote about Crowley that were published either as magazine articles or as forewords for various books on Crowley. A small group of editors has been working diligently for the last months on this project, collecting and deciding on the RAW content, and the form of the book, as well as adding some additional goodies. 

The title of the new book will be:

Lion of Light: Robert Anton Wilson on Aleister Crowley

We tried various AI attempts at making an “Aleister Crowley Lion of Light,” but none of them seemed good enough – all of them are posted here. Some were very odd. A couple were hilarious. One made RAW into Larry of the Three Stooges, and RAW really would have preferred to be modeled after Moe, if anyone. A couple of the images were not bad. One, the one featured here at the top of this page, seems closest to what we are looking for, but even that one seems lackluster to us. 

If any one of you clever folk out there want to create your own attempt at a Crowley Lion of Light, we’d love to see what you come up with. If it’s really great, we’ll use it on the cover, giving you credit in the book’s front matter, and of course sending you a copy of the finished book. 

Send your artwork to:
info(at)hilaritaspress.com
Replace the (at) with @ in the email address above,
and thank you for helping to fool the spambots!

Be sure to get the AI to make the final image as high resolution as possible.

Lion of light:
Robert Anton Wilson
on Aleister Crowley

Yeah, we kinda like this AI rendering of the book’s title, but not quite enough. It’s compelling, but doesn’t have the spirit we’re looking for. Still, interesting to see what AI comes up with.

Here are some of the AI attempts we made.
We are not thrilled with any of these.
A few seem cool to us,
but not good enough for the book cover.
2 replies
  1. Evelyn Sinclair
    Evelyn Sinclair says:

    I’m seeing some images in color, some in black & white, some in psychedelic color. The one that seems to be #30 has a look I like, in that the color is saturated and the image is strong, not “weird” in a wrong way. It’s just not very Leonine.

    I’m going to do some experiments, but I’m wondering if a more somber look (like the image chosen as “close” to what you seek) would be more what you want.

    I’ve been working with images since I did portraits in the old fashioned way, but learned digital tools decades ago, and picked up the new AI ones as well. So I’m able to do ALL the things, not just “here’s something the AI made.” I make original art and I manipulate images in Photoshop. So I can do things most people simply can’t.

    And I’m a fan of RAW from way back. 😉

    Reply
  2. Evelyn Sinclair
    Evelyn Sinclair says:

    I’m seeing some images in color, some in black & white, some in psychedelic color. The one that seems to be #30 has a look I like, in that the color is saturated and the image is strong, not “weird” in a wrong way. It’s just not very Leonine.

    I’m going to do some experiments, but I’m wondering if a more somber look (like the image chosen as “close” to what you seek) would be more what you want.

    I’ve been working with images since I did portraits in the old fashioned way, but learned digital tools decades ago, and picked up the new AI ones as well. So I’m able to do ALL the things, not just “here’s something the AI made.” I make original art and I manipulate images in Photoshop. So I can do things most people simply can’t.

    And I’m a fan of RAW from way back. 😉

    PS I posted this invitation to the Facebook group I started, Artificial Imagination: https://www.facebook.com/groups/814086959748620

    Reply

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