Isita's Senior Project
Project Results
The Fruits of My Labors In All Forms
With the technique of blending my images with a base real person's photo on ArtBreeder, I was finally able to get the photo-realism I desired. Here are my final works, along with some fun modern edits.
Julia Domna
21st Empress of Rome
For Julia Domna, obviously there is a distinct increase in realism between the portraits. This is due to the style of the real person portrait being applied to the colorizations. Additionally, you can see a bit of a change between the facial structure. This is because originally, one of my sculptures had a significantly wider face and the other was narrower. However, even my third colorization’s face was on the narrow side, so the final image was as such.
Though ArtBreeder did not keep the curls intact, I was able to edit them in on Medibang.
Livia Drusilla
1st Empress of Rome
For Livia Drusilla, I’ve definitely seen a marked increase in realism from the first to the second image. The skin has a more real color and even a skin like texture. It turned out that the “veil” from last time was actually registered as hair, but due to the quality of the ArtBreeder image from before, I didn’t realize. Now that it is more apparent, I manually added a veil through my drawing app, which was a simple white layer with low opacity.
Agrippina Minor
4th Empress of Rome
For Agrippina Minor, I’m absolutely impressed by the improvement in realism. The second has much, much more depth than the first. And the curls have come out well defined and accurate. Again, even though the first time around, there were two pretty different sculptures of the same person, the third chosen looked more like the version with bigger eyes, so the ArtBreeder picture came out resembling those sculptures more.
I think that the reason why Agrippina’s curls were more prominent than Julia’s is because of the sculptures themselves. In Julia’s sculpture, each curl is not extremely defined. In Agrippina’s, the ringlets are extremely clear cut.
A Modern Twist
A Comparison To Current Counterparts
Rouwaida Attieh
Two Syrian Stars
For Julia Domna, I compared her with Rouwaida Attieh, a current Syrian Vocalist. Rouwaida was born in Talkalakh, Syria which is only a few kilometers away from the city of Homs (previously known as Emesa) where Julia Domna was born. For both these women, there is a more tan skin tone, but the hair quite differs. It’s really interesting to see how fashion for women has evolved over that many centuries.
For Julia Domna, there isn’t any media that includes her as a main character. Of course, when her husband Severus is the main character, she comes into play. For example, Julia Domna does appear in the historical fiction book SEVERUS: The Black Caesar by Steve Exeter.
Livia Drusilla Meets Monica Vitti
Two Italian Inspirations
Just as Livia is one of the first empresses of Rome, I chose to compare her with Monica Vitti, the late “Queen of Italian Cinema.” Both our royal ladies here were born in Rome, Italy. Her films in the 1960s such as “L’Avventura”, were famous and her legacy was well honored by Italy, even when she passed away in February 2022. As you can see here, the blonde hair is a commonality and so is to some extent the nose.
In terms of any modern adaptations of Livia herself, there is actually a 2021 TV Series called Domina which is all about Livia and Roman political struggle. I haven’t seen it, but looking at the reviews and episode synopses, it seems to truly show the game of Roman politics from the woman’s view. The show is available on Amazon Prime! (https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.1f682148-de59-4ebd-8f05-82caf3fa69ea?autoplay=1&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb)
Agrippina Minor Meets Kim Petras
Two German Goddesses
Kim Petras is a German pop singer-songwriter born in Cologne, Germany in 1992. Along with being a popular musician, she was one of the youngest people to undergo gender reassignment surgery at about age 16. Though her hair color is vastly different from Agrippina’s, the big eyes are still common, as is the spirit to make a mark on the world.
With Agrippina, she was present in many different media, especially movies on her brother Caligula and son Nero. However, there was actually a 16th century opera about her named Agrippina by Handel. In my expert opinion, I believe Agrippina deserves an anime.