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Kiss, like flower, like water. Cherry Blossoms and Tulips.

by GymDreams
Abstract surreal videography about the love among gay men. Rendered with Stable Diffusion, Deforum, and Juggernaut Aftermath.

Kiss, like flower, like water.

A kiss and a passionate embrace between two gay men started a chain reaction and a visual journey — mixed with flowers, water drops, and ethereal light. Abstract surreal photography realized through AI. Rendered with Stable Diffusion, Deforum, and Juggernaut Aftermath.

The “Kiss, like flower, like water.” series continues with Cherry Blossoms — a flower that has special meanings to me.

When I used to live in New York, I would go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to see the Cherry Blossoms when it’s in season. Usually there’s not a lot of time to see it, but when it does it’s really magical. If I were in a relationship, I would bring my boyfriend, and if I were single, then I would always bring a boy (i.e. man, just to be clear!) to visit. It’s wonderful even with just a friend. It’s magical to be surrounded by thousands of blooming pink flowers.

For this, I chose to show them with Japanese men because Cherry Blossom is especially important in Japan, and is considered the national flower of Japan. “Hanami” is the centuries-old practice of drinking under a blooming sakura, which is a Japanese cherry. It‘s so festive during cherry blossom seasons that many people make it a point to travel to Japan during this period.

As cherry blossoms aren’t under water, I have additionally added pink tulips in the animation so that the figures can be stylistically the same with the rest. These renders didn’t use control net — they are text prompts only — so it’s hard to force something without training data to happen, and cherry blossoms don’t happen inside water. I actually made several renders with cherry blossoms alone before deciding that I would add tulips instead.

Tulips are also special to me — when lilies are out of season or unavailable, tulips are generally the flowers I prefer to pick up to send to the guys I date.

Soundtrack

I wanted to use something from Aaron Paul Low but there aren’t many suitable ones left in the library. I absolutely can’t afford to hire him to write a custom track just for this series — maybe some day… I originally picked up another track but something is just not right, so after picking music for 4 hours, I ended up with another a track from Aaron Paul Low, even if it’s not perfect, it still feels closer to the series. I didn’t want to reuse the music I had for the first video, otherwise that was the prefect soundtrack to this series.

Technical Details

These videos should look sharper than the ones before, because I changed my editing process. Previously, I used the video generated by Deforum and upscaled with Topaz VideoAI. For this video, I first upscaled all 1500 images to 4k with Gigapixel, then use the image sequence directly inside After Effects. The video is still rendered at vertical HD for Instagram and YouTube, but now I also have a vertical 4k video, and the video should be overall a lot sharper and with much more detail.

Text prompts in Stable Diffusion, Deforum, 1500 frames, edited to 1 min 30 sec.

  • Juggernaut AfterMath, DPM++ SDE Karras, 25 steps
  • 512x910, upscaled to 2048x3640, scaled down and cropped to 1080x1920
  • Seed: iter, 3D animation, 1500 frame, Replicate border, 15fps, frame blended to 30fps in After Effects.
  • Images: Topaz Gigapixel HQ 4x, 2048 x 3640
  • Soundtrack: Licensed music “Homestretch” by Aaron Paul Low. Minor edits with Ozone to give it more “airiness” via EQ and adjustments. Edit down to animation length in Ableton Live Suite
  • Animation: Adobe After Effect

Image Index

Stills

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