Post 811 - Chat GPT Tries Very VERY Hard to "Colorize" One of My Old Sketches

Here's where we started, with a line drawing from my 1997 calendar, "Uncle Stan's Profusely Illustrated World of Pharmacy" -- 

Note that it is text heavy, and the characters have certain pronounced physical characteristics.

So let's check the progress - Run One:

 

It couldn't get in the whole image - and the text is obviously a challenge.  But the old newspaper color paper and palette was sort of interesting...

So - Run Two:

OK, the whole image is nearly there, but the text is a problem, and the characters are - well - still a challenge

Run Three:

 

The cropping was improved, but the characters are still a problem - just can't break out of its own interpretation that misses the whole point of the design - and now the surgeon has three arms and the patient has lost a pair of feet...

 

Run Four (and final, finally!)

Musical notes become birds (because birds make music, obviously) but still...

I'll be sticking to my old Photoshop protocols for the coloring project of this box full o' sketches, I guess!

 

 

Post 811 - Images from the 1927 "Novelization" of Keaton's "The General"

The "novelization" is pretty dreadful, but some of the images in it aren't in general circulation, to the best of my recollection.  So here they all are - (no copyright, all PD images at this point)

Post 810 - 1999: First Animated Gif for Internet Use

Trials and tribulations - in pharmacy, in the 1990s, in using a DOS animation software, and using a mouse to draw - and the 400x300 resolution was a real challenge for file size uploads!

...but there you go!...

Back when independent pharmacies had a fighting chance! 

Post 809 - Eddie Cantor's "Whoopee" (1930) - Comparison of VHS release to DVD restoration

 

 

With its blackface scenes and extraordinarily contrived humor (despite some great songs), Cantor's first sound film, in all its glorious two-strip Technicolor, has not aged all that well since its 1930 release.  

However, some team, uncredited, took it upon themselves to do a masterful restoration of the film, somehow coaxing shades of blue out of the turquoise limits of the original.  Above are a couple of frame comparisons - first from the 1980s VHS, and then from the 2025 DVD reissue.

It's worth a viewing, if for nothing more than the songs and the very fine musical accompaniment by George Olsen "and his Music."  But the scene where Cantor, joyfully unrestrained in his Jewish heritage, hides in an oven and comes out of the ensuing explosion in blackface, in light of what Germany was doing just a few years later... yeah, that was a cringe moment.

You can track down the DVD on Amazon or Movies Unlimited, or download/view it on the Internet Archives:   https://archive.org/details/whoopee-1930 

One final frame to show that they pulled or pushed, but squeezed out the color blue in a two-strip color process:

"Am I blue?"

 

 

 

Post 808 - At a Storyboard Level at this point - "Nero Divergent"

 

(c) MMXXVI (2026) Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

(the first adjustment:  someone's hands are way too big!)

 

Post 807 - Colorizing the Past - Pharmacy Failures #5 - Preparations A Through G and Potato, USP

 From the Animating Apothecary Archives

(c) MMXXVI (2026) Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary
 

Post 806 - Concept design for Scherzoo - Sfumato #4 (In production)

 (c) MMXXVI (2026) Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 805 - The Collection of ASIFA International Animation Day Posters, because...well they've got to be SOMEWHERE!