A recent major work from last year was The Lost Journals of Phineas Finke, a classic gothic horror story. Phineas Finke is a heavily illustrated short horror story, a graphic novel really, because the images tell the story just as much as the text.

It is a story about a photographer in 1906 who created a new emulsion for his glass plates that are sensitive to a special frequency of light that allowed him to see into another dimension.

At first, he saw images of floating, glowing orbs, which intrigued him. But as time went by, the images became more and more disturbing, until he was overwhelmed with terror. Soon, his home and the surrounding countryside became infested with horrible creatures that got closer and closer….

The illustrations in the book (92 images) are the actual wet plate photographs that Phineas took — at least the ones he preserved and didn’t destroy — but I’m revealing too much….

The Lost Journals of Phineas Finke was my first project using AI. Now, before you get all excited, every single image in the book is a complex collage of AI elements. I have used collage in my work since 1999, so this is just another use of public domain images as source elements for my collages. I even received official copyright protection for the images from the US Copyright Office. I have the certificate to prove it!

The story is actually in the Lovecraft universe. He lives near Arkham and Miskatonic University. I even received high praise from the prestigious Midwest Book Review:
“a Victorian Gothic tale worthy of H. P. Lovecraft”
I certainly had a lot of fun creating this book. My feelings are best expressed in the book’s introduction:

“I discovered that working with an AI is a kind of coaxing, a dance you enter into with it. You push in one direction, the AI pushes in another, and in the end it is a compromise, a collaboration between you and the machine. It was like journeying into a bizarre and dreamlike world, and somehow managing to bring back snapshots of my travels.

The concept for “The Lost Journals of Phineas Finke” was an idea that I had back in the 1980’s. At first, it was going to be a screenplay, and then a graphic novel, but it never came to fruition until I discovered AI in December of 2022. The perfect tool to realize this project was finally invented! I generated over two thousand images, and the creation of the final collages was quite difficult with so many fascinating – and disturbing! – images to choose from.

The creation of this book was an amazing journey of exploration and discovery, and I hope that reading it will give you a sense of the mystery and magic that I experienced in its creation.”

The book is available as both hardbound and paperback. You can get both on Amazon, but if you want a hardcover signed, you can only get that on my site, AntarcticaArts.com

I will probably add more posts about Phineas Finke because it was such a cool project to work on, and my favorite project from the last decade! So, stay tuned!