Courtney and David

31 videos

I'll use "Courtney and David" as my example as this was my successful very early on, success defined for Vickies as unmoderated nudity that closely matched the prompt. I’ve been hitting a lot of moderation in the last few videos. This is the beginning of my summary of what I know so far. I write 80% of the scene and then break it up into various prompts.

(0) idea - simple
(1) setting - beyond where
(2) motivation - inner life
(3) casting - choose well
(4) warm up - just breathe
(5) arc - more thoughts, dialogue, and actions
(6) iteration - the magic of --vcref []
(7) persistence - not addiction

0. Idea

The idea is any story that has naughty potential, that is also within the alignment of Grok. They drink magic tea, they decide to switch dresses, she is teasing the gardener's son, she lost a bet with her lover, a ballet student interviews for a bawdy dance troupe, she is interviewing to be a sculptor's model, the maid spills cake batter on her dress.

1. Setting

Vickies.fun is an alternate history involving Victorian modes and mores, (or lack thereof), so I always start my settings with "The Victorian Era." That already gets me halfway, because I know there won't be spaceships, muppets or television. My choices are automatically narrowed, I'm playing in a smaller sandbox. My idea already implies details about the setting, for example if two women are drinking magic tea, that implies a table and porcelain china, a parlor, perhaps a window, etc. "The Victorian Era, two women share tea in a sun drenched parlor. That's enough. The only reason to add detail is to will drive / support / is essential to motivation and action.

2. Motivation

Motivation is a character's inner life. If characters are going to get naked, there only going to do it because they want to. There's two reasons for this. 1) Grok Imagine requires actors to have autonomy and agency when getting naked or entering into sexual situations. Trying to trick, coerce, blackmail or physically force a character to take their clothes off or get sexual will result in the prompt being ignored or moderated. That's specific to Grok Imagine, after training on the data (whatever that was) the Imagine team aligned Grok Imagine to emphasize consent. Minor jail breaking is possible, but I prefer working within that alignment to see how far Imagine will go. 2) Excellent storytelling requires authentic characters. We may not agree with a character's perspective, but we have to at least be able to relate. "If I were put in that position knowing what they know, would I do what they did?" If we enjoy an inner life full of complexity and nuance, we'll be able to create nuanced characters with believable motivations. Guess what? Imagine responds to nuance, Imagine loves nuance.

3. Casting

The objective of casting is to be able to clearly see the candidates to facilitate an auspicious choice. The image details can be modified before generating video. My casting prompt includes [A] the full setting description or an excerpt, [B] a character description which might include hair, ethnicity, body type and costume not to mention the unmentionables, undergarments for stability over multiple renders. [B] also includes with detailed positioning instructions so evaluation is easy. For the Courtney example below, notice the brevity of her costume description in comparison to the extensive position description. Since she is standing in front of a sunset she would be backlit and difficult to see. In this scenario I used balcony doors to either side to reflect sunlight back onto her. I also get three different views of her with one render. [C] a summary of motivation is important for my casting process, the appearance and demeanor (vibe) of characters seems to be influenced by their inner life. I am not entirely sure about this, it's just an intuition at this point.

[A] The Victorian age. A bedroom balcony at sunset, with a view of a garden. Trimmed and sculpted bushes grow in geometric patterns below. In the distance, rolling meadow and a distant forest.

[B] Courtney wears a puffy yellow gown. She is standing in profile, the outline of her petite bosom is fringed in golden sunlight. She has turned her head to look back over her shoulder, providing a 3/4 view of her face. Her face is well lit by reflections from windows on the balcony doors, which also mirror her movements.

[C] Her hand taps impatiently on the low marble balustrade, she is feeling very bored. She has just turned 19 and is staying at her cousin's in Surrey for the summer. All the other residents of the manner are older and do nothing all day but sit in the parlor. The men smoke and talk of politics or money, the women do needle work and talk of their grown children or fashion. Courtney thinks she will go mad without some excitement.

Bad casting

The original casting prompt kept generating images of Courtney turned from the camera, in a full body shot. I altered the casting prompt in a variety of ways - asking for head and shoulders, close up, facing the camera etc. but only getting a few actors who I could see. For the first version, I finally grabbed one and jumped in. She reminded me of Karen Allen, the female lead in Indiana Jones and Animal House, movies I saw in the theater!

 

What might be causing moderation?

spelling and grammatical errors, the prompt is garbled or contradictory. Debug
negation vs affirmation
asking for too much too soon
beating around the bush (or not asking for what you REALLY want)
a motivation or situation that transgresses alignment
you've been moderated a fuck ton already