This design, one of my favourites, has a convoluted history.
About a year ago, a meme crossed my path in my Facebook feed, a black and white photograph of a trench-coated man in the rain holding out an umbrella over a ghost. The street looked Parisian and the ghost, while clearly floating with no supporting legs, was of the bedsheet with eye holes variety. I thought it was hilarious, so I did a reverse image search and found out it was a doctored version of a photo by Robert Doisneau. In the original, the ghost was a cello in its case, one of an often humourous series involving the cellist Maurice Baquet and his instrument. I made my own version of the ghost photo using public domain vector art of silhouettes I found on Pixabay and made it available on a shirt in this store. I liked it a lot, so much so that I ordered three of them, one for me and two for Rowan, and they are in heavy rotation. You can find that design as well as a bunch of work by Doisneau in this blog post.
I very recently decided to revisit that design with the help of Midjourney, the AI image engine, and set to it last week. It took a while to get to this point, as MJ flatly refused to produce an image of a man holding an umbrella over a small ghost, preferring instead big ghosts holding an umbrella over a man. As usual, the finished product was made by combining and editing together a number of results.
The title for my original silhouette design was "My Insubstantial Friend," a reference to a line spoken by Brian Blessed in the first season of Blackadder. This updated version creates a scenario that I find even more intriguing, mostly due to the glowing nature of the umbrella (I added the spreading cone of light to emphasize it) which suggests it is projecting a field that enables the existence of the ghost. That puts a possible "Men in Black" interpretation on the dark-suited man holding the umbrella. Hmmm...
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Manufactured by Printful.
"Expressing your sentiments or planning an event can be hard. Take some of the weight off of your shoulders by getting yourself an authentic greeting card!
• Material: 14.77 oz/yd² (350 g/m²) paperboard
• Sizes: Small: 4″ × 6″ (101 × 152 mm)
Medium: 5″ × 7″ (127 × 178 mm)
Large: 5.83″ × 8.27″ (148 × 210 mm)
• Product weight: Small: 0.39 oz (11 g)
Medium: 0.6 oz (17 g)
Large: 0.85 oz (24 g)
• Toner-based printing
• Vibrant colors
• Comes with a complimentary envelope"
#midjourney #doisneau