Friends Forever.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share my latest piece, "Friends Forever," a cozy papercraft-style diorama featuring an unlikely pair of best friends navigating a miniature world. The entire scene is designed to look like it was meticulously hand-crafted from recycled newspapers, from the striped cat and little mouse to the towering city buildings and the crosswalk itself.

For the process, I started with an initial AI generation to establish the core composition, cinematic macro lighting, and complex text textures. From there, I used inpainting to clean up the text artifacts, refine the characters' hand-holding pose, and fix the traffic signals. Finally, I brought the image into GIMP for post-processing to fine-tune the color grading, balance the warm window glows against the deep blue night sky, and sharpen the intricate paper folds. I’d love to hear what you think of the final look!