Hey Dreamers,
Bill Meeks here, creator of Everly Heights. First of all, I’ve moved the list over to Substack. You also might have noticed the YouTube channel has been a little quiet this year. That’s because I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on the Everly Heights Story Studio, a Stable Diffusion toolkit built by a professional creative (me) for professional creatives (you?) who want to make original animated/illustrated content. I’ve been working on this toolkit since this time last year, and I’m excited to get it out in the world so I can focus on my main goal: bringing some very personal stories set in Everly Heights to life.
I’m giving these tools away, so you can use them to bring your stories to life too. But I’ll get to that in a minute…
The first year of this project was about process: Building custom models, developing a unique style, recording a Very Special pilot with a talented cast of actors, and teaching my YouTube audience novel creative workflows along the way. E-learning is something I’ve done professionally for over a decade, and it was a key part of the plan when I launched this project a year ago.
But I’m ready to get back to the stories. To that end, I’m adjusting the content I’m producing. I’ll start back with my news podcast/YouTube series Stable DiNEWSion in the next couple weeks, as everybody really seems to like it and it gives me a good excuse to stay up-to-date on the tech. I’ll still produce some tutorial content, and I’m looking to do more blog posts like my quick visual guide for XYZ plots and my guide to online image generators.
But now, in 2024, I’m finally ready to focus on story. To that end, I’m using AI to to convert an Everly Heights screenplay into a comic book script (a process I’ll teach you) for the Fanboy graphic novel. More importantly, I’m using the Story Studio models to finally get the Very Special pilot finished. Now that I’ve perfected the tools, it’s going fast! I expect to be done by the end of March, after which I’ll be submitting it to festivals and digging in on Fanboy, as well as some other fun projects using new storytelling formats that are currently percolating.
I hope you’ll stick with me during this new phase of the project. I’ll be updating my “Welcome to Everly Heights” presentation soon to reflect the first year of progress and set new goals for year two.
But you clicked this to hear about the TOOLS, right? The ones I promised in the subject line? No problem. Time to show off all the new toys…
Introducing the Everly Heights Story Studio
I’m pleased as punch to release 9 new Stable Diffusion SDXL models geared toward creatives, all available for free on CivitAI and at Everly Heights.tv for an optional donation:
Everly Heights Story Studio (Checkpoint)
Build your dreams! This is a fully-featured checkpoint with all of our tools like Character Maker baked in.
Everly Heights TaleSpinner (LoRA)
A LoRA version of Story Studio, with all the same functionality and the added ability to dial down the Everly Heights house style.
Everly Heights Character Maker (LoRA)
Make character turnarounds, or individual characters shots from four different angles.
Everly Heights Set Builder (LoRA)
Consistent background plates where your characters can perform.
Everly Heights Prop Generator (LoRA)
Make individual props on a clean background, or use a Canny controlnet to create a turnaround of your prop from multiple angles. Video on how I made it coming soon!
Everly Heights Comics (LoRA)
A LoRA trained on a selection of the Story Studio dataset with a indie comic book aesthetic.
Dogboy, Mr. Matheson, and Infinite Tina (LoRAS)
Examples of the types of character LoRAs you can make using the Character Maker’s character sheets feature. Mr. Matheson and Tina appear throughout the Everly Heights stories, and Dogboy is a key piece of the Fanboy puzzle, but more on that in the next section of this e-mail… Video coming soon!
I’m just as excited to see what you do with these tools as I am to get started using them myself to tell the story of Everly Heights. If you make something cool, shoot me an e-mail and let me know!
Dogboy Adventures: Make Your Own Luck
Speaking of Dogboy, he’s a key piece of the puzzle for my upcoming Fanboy comic. I wrote a series of novels about him ten years ago, so I’ve decided to release them all for free so people can learn more about him. Check out this blog post for more info, but the headline is that you can read them on my personal website or pick up the ebook pack on our store for mobile formats and a few extra special features.
On The Web
Some of the latest updates from Everly Heights and Building Dreams.
Visualizing Stable Diffusion X/Y/Z Plots (Xena eats Yogurt at a Zoo)
Stable DiNEWSion (PODCAST) – Stable Diffusion News
2 New LORa Models: Created while researching training for the Everly Heights Story Studio models.
COOL AI TOOLS FOR CREATORS
taggui
For the new models, I switched over from basic BLIP captions with edits to the more advanced taggui for tagging my datasets. This app helped with the huge jump in quality between the beta version of the Story Studio and the final versions. I kept the captions on the set builder dataset above pretty basic, but it can generate ChatGPT-level prompts if you dial up the “Beams” setting to 10 or so. If you train and have a decent graphics card, give taggui a shot!
WebUI Forge
While I’ve enjoyed using (and saying) AUTOMATIC1111 over the last year, I’ve been slow to update and use new features because of several incidents where it’s bugged out and I’ve had to spend days getting my system back up and running. After using InvokeAI a lot for dataset building, I’ve realized that a lot of the frustrating quirks I’ve experienced with Stable Diffusion were quirks with AUTO1111, not the tech itself. A few weeks back, a team of devs released Webui Forge based on the AUTOMATIC1111 base, and let me tell you it’s amazing! Full compatibility with plugins, plus a ton of great tools like Z123, Stable Video Diffusion, and Control Net all built in! It’s also upped my image generation speeds about 10%, which ain’t nothing! With a few config file tweaks, Forge will access your current models, LoRAs, embeddings, etc. without having to make yet another copy of them. Highly recommended!
Final Thoughts
It’s been a long year of building the tools I need to tell my stories. I’m so pumped I finally get to start! No matter if you’re a creator using the tools or a fan of the stories, I hope you enjoy what’s coming this year as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. I wrote the first Everly Heights story nearly four years ago, and it’s a thrill to finally be where I am with it. Thanks for all your support thus far in helping me make that happen.
PATREON
Join Our Everly Heights inner circle! Building Dreams and Everly Heights have grown a lot in the last six months thanks to your support. Now, I’m thrilled to announce our official Patreon! By joining, you’ll get exclusive access to our Everly Heights SD models, merch, behind-the-scenes content, one-on-one generative AI/creative coaching sessions with me, and early peeks at new projects. The Patreon is live now! If you dig what we’re doing, please considering tossing a couple bucks my way to support new videos as we explore and explain the latest creative technology we’re using to bring Everly Heights to life.
Follow Everly Heights
If you want to stay up-to-date on the Everly Heights project, and meet like-minded artists, performers, and writers, join us for plenty of fun at the links below.
YouTube | Discord | Facebook | Threads | Twitter | Instagram | Website
That’s all for now. Thank you for being a part of our creative journey! Stay tuned for more exciting updates, and keep building those dreams.
See ‘ya next time!
Bill Meeks
