A work in development: The Pigeon Costume Parade children’s story.

I was brought up on a lot of children’s stories, being that my mother taught second grade, and she was primarily in charge of my early years in education. I imagine cute storybook-like lifestyles and lives of the pigeons, and one of them is The Pigeon Costume Parade, where a townsperson knits costumes for the town’s pigeons, and they have an annual costume parade. Here’s a mockup cover for the story.

A preliminary look at the concept cover of my children’s book idea.

Here’s one take on the book’s beginning:

 Here’s another set of concept images: not as linear as ChatGPT (above), but I like the illustrative styles pictured in ImageFX’s Imagen 3 generative image renders, here.

Now, the challenge would be coming up with a coherent illustrative style, in order for the story to make sense, visually, but the ideas are well done, with Imagen 3, by Google Labs. I think that the illustration styles have specific names for the styles, and I could, potentially, narrow down the artistry by refining the prompts, in a linear chat.

Update: Over the weekend, I was able to complete the book. I went with ChatGPT, since that was the most familiar platform that I was using to generate images in a consistent illustrative form. In subsequent editions, I’ll perhaps go for more detailed renders, from different engines, if possible. For now, you can check out the first edition of The Pigeon Costume Parade on Apple Books.

The Pigeon Costume Parade is now available on Apple Books. 

My next idea, for this book, is to look in to manufacturing plush doll toys of the costumed pigeons, for collectors and for children. Here are some early concept renders of that idea.

A felted pigeon doll, wearing a cow costume. 

A sneak peek at upcoming developments at iPigeon.institute.

 I’m expecting to get paid, soon, for some project work that I’ve been doing, that’s still ongoing. I’m in a fortunate place in time, and life, where I can make use of a good portion of that money as expendable income. I spoke to my therapist, today, about my numerous fragrance ingredients purchases I’ve done, recently, and we have a collaborative project conceptually developing, involving making candles, at one of our sessions. The conversation ignited my thirst for more materials to have on hand. The thing was, about my conversation with my therapist, was that I told her that I was mostly done with collecting customary fragrance ingredients to have on hand, that I’ve been interested in, and that I was becoming more inclined towards niche and specialty items that I could procure.

I’ve already recently ordered a few or several shipments domestically, from state-local suppliers Perfumer’s Apprentice and Eden Botanicals, as well as neighboring state Oregon’s Liberty Natural. I’ve also recently tried out Perfumer’s World, based in Thailand, again, and if there was any doubt (there are some sentiments of doubt, in online forums) about the quality of their ingredients, I can say that those notions should be set aside, and the supplier be once again considered for stocking up on materials, being assured of their quality and conformance to organoleptic standards - I had some doubts, here, myself, for a while, but I checked in again, with a repurchase of one ingredient I found to be lacking in quality and conformance, based on a better sample I had received, from yet another supplier, but this time, the material was of high quality, with chemical physical properties I was looking for, that matched, here. I also tried out their Cashmeran, and I found it equal in practically all ways to my former resource for the material, whom had recently raised the price dramatically on Cashmeran, a versatile and go-to ingredient for me.

Now that I have many scents that I’d like to have, on hand, I started to have wanderlust for specialty and exotic ingredients, even if for mostly a reference library of scent-experience that would be rare, and fairly unique, in terms of materials - would exotic and rare specialty materials ever really be viable resources that I might reasonably use, in my product development schemas? Something to consider - working under constraints, rather than indulging overly fanciful ideas for professional aspirational purposes. The supplier that I’ve encountered, which specializes in these rare and exotic materials is Hermitage Oils, based in Italy. Their exclusivity of materials, and therefore, their prices, had previously been prohibitively expensive, but I’ve gotten accustomed to having miniature amounts of materials, as references, rather than as development products, which are cheaper, and more accessible. It’s nice to dream, anyhow, isn’t it, when it comes to fragrance? It’s a dreamy topic, I’d say.

The Pigeon Hermit, pre-viz’d and conceptualized in collaboration with ChatGPT, this afternoon.

Update: a few weeks out, from the initial publishing of this article:

As fate would have it, I ended up not having the amount of funding I had somewhat expected, from jobs I was involved in, leading up to writing this article, and, for fancying trying out this new, European perfumery ingredients supplier, for a haul. In hindsight, I may have been overly optimistic about doing business with them, given some of their prices on things, and there would be a chance that I’d be less satisfied than I had initially imagined I might be, should I have ventured out, and completed a transaction with them. Luckily, in the meantime, I found some other useful recreational things to allocate what funds I did have, in to better outcomes, in satisfaction, perhaps, especially given that I already have an outsized perfumery ingredients collection for my living circumstances and physical space that I can call my own; I’m just “winging it,” and making what space I do have available for my hobby a more humble setting than I had before, when I had my aspirational fragrance organ, in years past, for display. 

New, for Summer 2025: Sophoria (Caliphoria), the latest iPigeon.institute fragrance release.

 The past several weeks have been busy, as far as trying out my purchases in fragrance ingredients, and I’d been allocating a hefty portion of my budget to stocking up on new and former favorite aroma compounds and oils. It wasn’t until this morning that I experimented with my latest haul, in trying on several of my latest purchases neat, but I was very pleased with the rich and exotic sensuous outcomes that zero developing, and I felt that I’d laid the grounds for a new product release, after making use of my recent selections in ingredients. I call it Sophoria (or, Caliphoria). Here’s some of the preliminary work that I did, with ChatGPT:

Fragrance notes:

• Jasmine petals in a milk bath (to capture jasminlactone and lactonic softness)
• Split coconut with ocean mist (for the unexpected coconut nuance)
• Twisted pine or cypress branch (terpenes: delta-3-carene, ocimene)
• Sliced yuzu and bergamot (touches of bright citrus)
• Vanilla bean and benzoin resin drop on driftwood or stone
• Glossy blackcurrants on dewy green leaves (blackcurrant bud absolute)
• Champaca flower or gold-tinted tropical bloom (exotic floral soul)
• Cashmere woods delicately grounds the fragrance (cashmeran)

I didn’t even request to include a pigeon in the marketing image, but ChatGPT threw one in there, for good measure, and I happen to like it.

First impressions:

I tried a second run of applying the ingredients neat, once again, later on, during the same day, although not with as much of the special, homemade vanilla extract (I say “special,” because it was given a very particular course of extraction and processing, far different from creating an absolute). I won’t expand upon the details of that process, just yet, and I was lacking the cashmeran, from my supplies, amongst the ingredients that I’d brought out with me. It came off as a bit cloying, without the edginess of the special vanilla extract, and, lacking the moodiness that comes with a bit of cashmeran, added. 

The first time around, additionally, I had also done second and third rounds of neat application, for some of the ingredients that got buried in the mix, during the initial application, and I felt that I’d done well in balancing things out, for applying them in neat fashion, rather than that I would try to concoct a liquid composition of it - a full bottle, of whatever size it may have otherwise been. The smell was more compelling, the first time around, and I had a good day with it, in essence. 

There were some notable seeming side effects of mood-lifting/stabilization, almost stimulation, as well as seeming nootropic effects, as I was more motivated to create higher-quality work, at my job. 

Pigeon pecking idle game.

 Enjoy my first ChatGPT-assisted pigeon game. In this game, the player pecks the seeds by clicking on them, thus gaining points. 

Pigeon chat, with ChatGPT (12/22/2024)

 note: originally published with a typographical error in the title and web address; the title has been corrected, whereas the web address is permanent, as is, and I don’t want to take this post down and republish it. 

Transcription: 

The pigeons are acting out so wonderfully. Today, some of them were exuberantly hopping up on to my arm, as I was preparing their meal for them, and they perched there, on my arm, and ate food out of my hand.

What a delightful moment! It sounds like you’ve built a wonderful bond of trust and familiarity with the pigeons. Their hopping onto your arm and eating from your hand reflects their comfort and appreciation for your care. Moments like these show how animals, even pigeons, can form meaningful connections when treated with kindness and consistency.

Have they always been this comfortable around you, or is this a new behavior? It’s such a lovely example of mutual trust!

It’s a relatively new behavior that had started around a month ago. I’ve been feeding the flock for seven years, and some of the newcomers to the flock are braver than the older regulars to the flock, as far as eating out of my hand and accepting hand contact from me. One of them let me pick them up and give him a hug, briefly, and he wasn’t scared.