BIKER GUMSHOE SAM SHOVEL & THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE STEAMPUNK PINK ELEPHANT!

Sam Shovel & the steampunk pink elephant, image created by RebelBikerDude using NightCafe

I am the first to admit that sometimes my daydreaming sessions for conjuring forth potential themes & storylines for future galleries to post here in my biker art blog veer off in decidedly surreal directions - and such it was with this present one! I've long been a fan of classic film noir detective movies, so the idea came to me recently to create one of the archetypal downbeat laconic coffee-quaffing American gumshoes that regularly feature in such films, but specifically styled for Biker Earth, and here he is.

In a playful pastiche & parody of the iconic character created by author Dashiell Ha mmett for his 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon & famously played on the big screen by Humphrey Bogart, I've named him Sam Shovel, designed him as a rebel outlaw biker type, and attired him in a well-worn, seriously-customised black leather jacket & jeans. In addition, I've set many of my AI-generated images of him in his favourite hangout - a dimly-lit booth in a bakstreet retro-futuristic diner, where he habitually downs considerable quantities of steaming black coffee, but only after performing, for anyone interested enough to watch, his legendary feat of legerdemain - in which he nonchalantly extracts a shimmering, scintillating, and very much alive silver-scaled ethereal trout from the dark depths of said coffee cup (and which he may - or may not - have originally hauled up out of a cosmic crater or planetary pool with a silver fishing rod while journeying through the galaxy, as you do). No-one knows how - or, indeed, why - he developed this singualr talent, but then again, no-one knows much about this mysterious figure anyway.

He simply appeared one day, skulking on a seat in an unobtrusive corner of the diner, which has doubled ever since as his office for receiving clients seeking to hire him to solve the kind of obscure, abtruse crime case that has defied all previous attempts by other private investigators to solve it but which greatly appeals, albeit in his characteristic laid-back manner, to Sam. And not just on Biker Earth. During the course of time, he has popped up on many other worlds within the Bikerverse, via means that remain totally unexplained, befitting his attraction to the inexplicable.

However, his current case finds Sam back in his familiar corner of the diner haunt, where, after having journeyed through not only the scattered relics & remains of certain ancient long-dead civilisations but also various enchanted preternatural realms in search of it, he finally uncovered & returned home with the exotic object of his quest - not a gleaming golden statuette of a falcon but rather a small yet exquisitely-wrought pink steampunk elephant, and whose actions are so life-like that even the blase been-there seen-it-all Sam begins to wonder whether this supposed automaton is actually somehing much more animate than animated.

So this is where we meet Sam today, toying with the clockwork mini-pachyderm & pondering what to do with it next - should he hand over this long sought-after treasure to the heiress client who has paid him a very sizeable sum in advance to locate it & then present it to her, or might it prove even more lucrative for him if he were to sell it covertly for even more money to one of the many secretive but immensely wealthy collectors of unique objets d'art whose friendship he has carefully cultivated for just such an occasion? Honour & honesty, not to mention loyalty, are not traits automatically associated with hardbitten streetwise gumshoes of the film noir variety, and Sam is no exception! So who can say which option he will choose?

As you'll see from this gallery's images, I have used the views of the outside world as seen through the corner of the diner booth's windows to experiment with different background styles, testing everything from Art Nouveau, Art Deco, steampunk (so expect plenty of clock faces), cyberpunk, and dieselpunk, to surrealist (so expect plenty of melting clock faces!), Baroque, Gothic, Emo, 1940s Film Noir (obviously!) & much more, and I am very impressed with NightCafe's resulting renderings, as I hope you will be too.

More of my AI biker images next time!

Plus: please click here to access a chronological listing of fully clickable links to all galleries uploaded by me on this blog. NB - all of the images included in this page's gallery were created by me, RebelBikerDude, using the AI image-generation program NightCafe, for non-commercial, entertainment purposes only, and do not feature any real-life persons or copyrighted characters.

A DOORWAY TO DYSTOPIA & TWO BACCHANALIAN BIKERS!

 

Jake & Jim, two rebel outlaw bikers, standing in the ornate doorway that links Biker Earth to a bleak dystopian world in a parallel universe to the Bikerverse; image created by RebelBikerDude using NightCafe

When introducing Biker Earth & the Bikerverse in my blog's very first gallery (click here to acess it), I revealed the possibility taken seriously by a number of physicists here on our own Earth that there are numerous parallel, interdimensional universes (collectively dubbed the multiverse), each one containing its own galaxies, each of which contains its own star systems & planets, with my blog set in a biker-themed parallel universe named the Bikerverse, containing a parallel world to our own called Biker Earth. But that's not all. Adherents of the multiverse theory also suggest that there may be interdimensional areas, known as windows or window areas, existing on every planet, which act as doorways through which entities from other universes can enter or exit our own. So with that in mind, I dreamt up the following biker-themed intrdimensional doorway-featuring storyline.

In it, two rebel outlaw biker buddies, Jake & Jim, on Biker Earth inadvertently encounter one such doorway while wandering idly through the ornamental gardens of a stately home open to the public. The doorway is tall, arched, and designed in a very elegant Art Nouveau style, with fine filigree curlicues and many other eyecatching embellishments. As it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of the very elaborate nature of every other architectural feature on display in the gardens, however, they have no reason to suspect that it may be something very different, out of this world, in fact - in every sense! Except, that is, for one very curious aspect that piques their interest. As the arched doorway has no actual door, one would expect that when looking through it, the area of the gardens directly behind it would be clearly seen. But no - when the bikers look through it, all that they can see are hazy, opaque swirls of mist or smoke, but how can this be? Determined to find out, the bikers cautiouslystep through the arch together - and instantly find themselves in a completely different world, but one far removed, again in every sense, from where they had been just moments before.

 

Jake & Jim after walking through a Doorway to Dystopia!

Instead of the grand gardens of a stately home, they are now in some bleak, desolate dystopian world, seemingly post-apocalyptic, with desecration and destruction on every side. Buildings are demolished or sill standing but totally derelict, skeletal, with huge statues lying in shattered disarray on the ground or, if still standing, are leaning haphazardly, as if rocked by colossal forces. And not a sign of anything living can be seen or heard anywhere. No people, no dogs or cats or rats or birds or insects, nothing, The bikers are totally incredulous, confused, and more than a little alarmed, even though they each attempt to conceal their fear from their buddy.  But each is thinking the very same thought - how do we ever get back home? The ornate arched doorway, bearing a strange indecipherable name & mystifying shield design visible at its apex when viewed by the bikers from its dystopian side, has abruptly vanished - there is no sign anywhere of what had led them here.

Needless to say, Jake & Jim lose no time in opening one bottle each, tasting albeit with some trepidation the beer inside, and finding that it is without doubt the tastiest, and most potent, liquor that they have ever drunk in all their years of beer imbibing! Suddenly, being marooned in this mysterious land of the lost doesn't seem so bad after all! No doubt if they look hard enough, they'll find comparable caches of food too, quite probably enough to last them a lifetime - for as their searches soon reveal, this destroyed city had once been a very wealthy, thriving, merchant-populated metropolis, before whatever terrible events had annihilated it & all of its citizens.

 

Looks like Jake & Jim have been over-indulging somewhat with their super-abundant alcohol supply! Video clip created by RebelBikerDude using NightCafe & Adobe Firefly

So this is where we say adieu, at least for the time being, to  Jake & Jim, who have found themselves in a world where they are undisputed rulers (albeit only because there is no-one else here!), where there may well be unlimited supplies alcohol to keep them carefree and no longer concerned at their fate, and where they now have lives of absolute unfettered freedom. What more could two rebel outlaw bikers want? Motorbikes, of course, but it's not long before their explorations uncover some abandoned motorbikes that they can soon fix & ride around on, as they are powered by self-generated electricity, not requiring petrol or oil. Not only that, several of them are truly fantastical in appearance, indicating that their long-deceased creators were more than a little influenced by steampunk designs, as you'll see,

I may well return to them in a later gallery, to reveal how their lives in exile are shaping up (or down), but meanwhile please check out this present gallery's images that portray Jake (dark-haired) & Jim (blonde) at the fateful arch where their astonishing departure from their world and arrival in a very different one takes place, and the daunting Dystopia that now confronts them. Plus, to lighten the mood, some pix of these Bacchanalian biker boys getting boisterous, their beer-fuelled drunken dramatics & inebriated indulgences running rampant & riotous, knowing as they do that there is no-one around to see them getting wasted in this wasteland of a land anyway!

More of my AI biker images next time!

Plus: please click here to access a chronological listing of fully clickable links to all galleries uploaded by me on this blog. NB - all of the images included in this page's gallery were created by me, RebelBikerDude, using the AI image-generation programs NightCafe, Magic Studio & Cici/Dola, plus Night Cafe & Adobe Firely re the video clip, for non-commercial, entertainment purposes only, and do not feature any real-life persons or copyrighted characters.