I made a mistake.
When I designed the original cover for Reindeer Games 2 I had an idea that I wanted it to look like the poster for Die Hard. I took a number of stock images and put them together on a certain well-known program and got it as close as I could. But it wasn’t close enough and I didn’t have the expertise to add the extra tweaks I had in mind. The program, however, had recently introduced a feature that allowed the user to enter text prompts in order to create certain effects. I read up on it and discovered that these effects were all modeled on the program’s own stock images. In my ignorance, I cracked on and thought nothing of it. I genuinely believed it behaved more like a search engine than what it turned out to be… an A.I. generative fill.
Since then, I have found out that the company might not have been entirely honest in their assertions and there is no guarantee that the effects weren’t generated from artists without permission. I have deleted the original cover and I’m taking steps to make amends for my mistake.
I firmly believe there is no place for generative A.I. in the creative arts, be it in writing or cover design, and I’m gutted that I ignorantly used it.
The new cover… the one on this copy of Reindeer Games 2… uses art from a 1948 edition of Ha Ha Comics (American Comics Group, 1943 series) No. 49 January 1948 by Creston Publications Corporation. The panel is taken from a story called Blitzen Jr. by H.R. Karp. Pencils and Ink by Jack Bradbury. Letters by Melvin Millar. Editor: Richard Hughes.
You may be familiar with Jack Bradbury. He was an exceptional artist who worked for Disney and Warner Bros. in the ‘30s and ‘40s before moving on to illustrate comics. His son, Joel, has created a website of his father’s work, all of which exists in the public domain.
You can visit it here https://jbrad.org/
Sorry folks.
Al (not A.I.)