IBC
What happens when the tortoise of animation meets the
hare of artificial intelligence? Speed is AI’s superpower but it threatens to
wipe away jobs and craft. IBC365 is on the ground at the Animation Film
Festival in Annecy. article here
The art of animation was born from hand drawing and painting
frame by frame by frame but the speed at which AI can fast forward the process
on top of existing computerisation excites and terrifies those who believe it
brings essential efficiencies while casting jobs, if not the very bedrock of
the craft, aside.
The great AI debate dominated discussion at Annecy animation
festival with everyone from Andy Serkis and Matt Groening to Deadpool
director Timothy Miller weighing in.
“Even if you can’t blame AI for the current crisis in animation
it is crystallizing discussion,” summed up Flavio Perez, R&D Technical
Director at French animation studio Les Fées Spéciales.
A demonstration against GenAI by international animation
unions, federations and workers from the US, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium
among others was staged at the festival.
Calling GenAI “a copying machine that is flawed, destructive
and expensive to run” a statement by the unions warned against “unjustified
techno-optimism” and that “the absence of humans is a feature, not a bug, of
GenAl.”
What is clear is that AI is driving huge transition in
animation but no-one knows how it will play out.
“If anybody tells you where it is headed they are lying,”
said Miller, Oscar-nominated owner of VFX studio Blur and creator of the
animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. “This is a tool that invents other tools
and the pace of change is exponential – something humans don’t excel at. You
have to keep an open mind and embrace AI. I want to use it for good not evil.”
Presenting the premiere of his new feature Animal Farm
(which could be read as an allegory for artisans against the machine) director
Andy Serkis said, “Our version was not made to satisfy any algorithm,” although
he did not reveal if animation partner Cinesite had used any AI in its
production.
“My gut feeling is that AI will never have a sense of
humour,” declared The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, in town to share
his career experience with animation students. “I think humans are needed.”
“I’m not saying it won’t get intelligent, but right now it’s
stupid,” added The Simpsons’ showrunner Matt Selman. “Artificial
disinformation is ridiculous, the amount of nonsense its piping in people’s
brains.”
Roberto Cardenas, a 2D animator from Chile understood why
animators would want to explore AI “if it engenders better storytelling but
calling it a ‘tool’ is disingenuous,” he said. “AI is designed to remove
creative choice. While humans are required to intervene to correct AI today,
its development is only headed one way.”
Seasoned artists speaking on the panel ‘AI for Animation?’
knocked back the suggestion that AI would take over but agreed on its
disruptive influence.
“We all want to make non-derivative work from our own ideas
and to control AI,” said Thierry Paalman, Head of technology at Belgium’s Submarine
Animation. “We have traditional workflows and use AI to give more time to our
artists.”
Calling AI a “creative explosion” Arvid Tappert, Senior
Director at LA’s AI-driven production company Asteria explained how AI was
boosting R&D and accelerating development from months to days.
“We are proving AI can be a creative sidekick, not a
replacement. It means we can try new ideas and play around really quickly to
extend creative possibilities. You can combine old techniques with AI and still
remain in control. Plus, it’s really fun. I can still use my own style but find
lots of exciting ways to push my style in ways I couldn’t do a few years ago.”
Efficiencies are welcomed but there were concerns that
reliance on AI to get from A-Z without the intermediate steps would erase
skills.
“Repetition is where you refine your craft. Creativity is
diluted using AI,” said Quentin Auger, Co-founder & Head of Innovation,
Dada! Animation. He shared results of an AI workshop he organised for French animation
students. “Many [of them] felt controlled by the machine and that AI generated
outcomes that were so much trash they couldn’t use them.”
It is the “journey not the result” said Paalman which not
only improved storytelling but made the artist better as a result. AI powered
short cuts will lead to a “collective deskilling” he worried. “If you have
senior people feeding prompts into LLMs and they don’t hire juniors any more
then production becomes more about curation than creation.”
Laura Yeo, Executive Producer, Blur Studio felt strongly
that AI generated films “made by one or two people in their bedroom devalues
all the work that goes into ideation and storyboarding and the work of all
artists.”
She said, “Most of the things we hear now is about how fast
you can do something in AI. Consumers want to see new content straight away and
producers need to deliver on that otherwise the momentum [behind a show] will
be lost. AI can help us make the best content as quickly as we can by solving
creative questions at the cheaper part of the process [in pre-production]
instead of at the back end when it is very difficult and expensive to change.”
Nicolas Dufresne, independent director and developer said
that he felt most creatively stimulated when physically writing or drawing. “It
is the actual gesture of drawing which, for me, generates inspiration and
craftsmanship.”
He wasn’t opposed to using AI for specific tasks but warned
against lazy reliance on the tech. “When you do topology, texturing or coding
you are also learning about math. You learn by practicing but if the machine
does it for you – or you’re being pressured to use AI - there's no way to learn
something else. There's no serendipity.”
Radioactive topic
For Dufresne the only answer was collective action to
regulate AI’s use. “People are afraid when they don’t have power and they don’t
have the choice about their tools so the only way to improve this is to
collectively think about what we doing for the public good. The only people who
do not want this are the major AI developers like OpenAI.”
While artists and animators can be trusted to use AI to
improve quality that wasn’t the case with “shareholders, clients and producers,”
he said. “They only think about money. When your client doesn’t know what a
good animation is or when you say you need a week to do justice to a shot yet
they know an AI can do it in minutes, this is the real danger.”
For that reason, perhaps, even where AI tools are proving
creatively beneficial few professionals want to advertise it.
“People are keeping their use of AI hidden,” Perez said.
“Some of those people are in the audience, but don't want to talk about it
because it's kind of radioactive.”
Condemning the growing volume of animated content as “junk
food that doesn’t make kids feel anything,” Dr Essam Bukhary, CEO of Saudi
headquartered Manga Productions said the company was training its
animators in the fundamentals of drawing while introducing AI into its
pipeline.
Invest in human brainware
“We must use AI – but half use it,” Bukhary said. “We will
use it to cut costs and make smarter use of process. It is part of our R&D
strategy. At the same time, we should not only think of output but also about
input. That means developing AI models that are based only on our material. It
means investing in the ‘brainware’ of the next generation by training them in
the basic skills of drawing and animation, of managing characters and IP. That
is the way we compete globally.”
More than 4,000 Saudis have been trained by Manga in manga,
anime, and video game creations – including with internship programs at
Japanese giant Toei. Another project launched in conjunction with the Saudi
state has seen 3.5 million local students take manga classes online.
“I can say with full confidence that AI will not be able to
replace us but those using AI better than us will replace us. AI may generate
high quality production value but it will not create emotion.”
Cutting costs is a good thing
While there were no commercial projects showcased at Annecy
as ‘made by AI’ the bottom line is that the tech’s creeping involvement in all
aspects of the industry is unstoppable.
“For over five years we’ve been trying to get our own IP off
the ground,” said Alex S. Rabb CEO & Co-Founder, Digic Pictures, a
Hungarian studio which makes animatics and animated shorts for movies and video
games including Assassin’s Creed. “Every respectable studio wants to make
their own stories in their own style and make cool stuff but it is expensive.
AI tools will help you tell those stories which would otherwise never get
made.”
Miller echoed, “No movie should cost $200 million to make
but there are stories that I would like to tell that are too expensive to do
with traditional technology. The stories I want and should be able to tell are
not films for kids or four quadrant pitches so nobody will give us the money to
do them at a high level.
“I welcome the fact that AI might bring some of these stories into the realm
where we can actually afford to do them. I don't want to do the same thing with
fewer people. I want to make more, full stop.”
Miller who directed Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) pointed
to a character in the movie who uses AI technology to fight back against the
AI-dominated Skynet.
“She implants the AI in her body. The sequel to that film
would be about the fusion of machine with human intelligence to create
something new and different. I know this sounds too science fiction for most
people, but I believe that the end result of where we are headed won’t be man
against machine it's going to be the two of them together. My hope is that we
can use that technology to make ourselves better and I will be first in line
for implants.”
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