Animator vs The Machine

Three Heads Are Better Then One: A talk with Animation Studios about AI and the future of the Animation Industry, ep.14

Alex Season 1 Episode 14

So with the rise of artificial intelligence, the fear from artist's is at a high. Many believe that this technology might replace them. So instead, of speculating we decided to ask them in person.  In this week's episode, we were lucky enough to talk to three animation studios that have worked on countless animation shows and films over the past 30 years.

From Big Jump Entertainment we have Cory Morrison and  Rob Buchanan  of Mercury Filmworks  and finally returning guest is David Fortier from PiP Animation.

Come check out our conversation as we get their opinions on artificial intelligence, what it means for the industry and if this a threat or a bust. If you are interested in the intersection of technology and artistry, and are trying to navigate the landscape of animation, then this is the episode for you!

Speaker 1:

Animator vs the Machine.

Speaker 2:

Begin.

Speaker 3:

Alright, thanks for joining me today. I am super excited and kind of nervous, as this has been in the wild I've been making for a while now. Today I'll be talking not to one guest, but three, maybe two, depending on how things go. Each of these guests represent a different studio in Ottawa who have been making cartoons for over 30 years. If you've watched anything on television or a streaming service, you've definitely seen their work. With that, I want to get their opinions on. You know, artificial intelligence and the animation industry. Yeah, tongue twister there.

Speaker 3:

I was curious to know how they view AI, the potential impact it might have on the industry and any concerns they might have with regarding its integration into, maybe, their pipeline one day. So let me introduce these esteemed guests from pip animation oh no, that's the wrong person, don't worry about that. Leaping over the competition is cco cory morrison from big jump animation. And then, second, we have revered as the disney of the north from from mercury filmworks, we have rob buchanan technical directors. Hey, rob, hello, hi guys, all right. So the first question I generally ask people and we'll start with cory is what is your definition of artificial intelligence?

Speaker 1:

um, it's a tool that is not necessarily completely usable yet. So I, just as far as I, you know it's. It's. It's a great Steven Spielberg movie, it's not, you know it's. I think it's it's.

Speaker 1:

It's a topic that is in the ether right now for good reason. Right, it's creating a lot of stress in the industry, particularly because the industry is the way it is right now being with the work in North America due to the strikes in the US. So you have this scenario it's just almost like a powder keg scenario where people are seeing all this AI technology coming out into the universe and people are starting to panic. It's like, oh my God, there's technology that is creating backgrounds. What am I going to do if I'm a background artist? There's technology creating and reading characters. What am I going to do if I'm a background artist? There's technology creating and writing characters. What am I going to do if these options take over at studios?

Speaker 1:

The good news is that they're not even remotely close to being where they need to be to be usable in a studio environment, as far as I can see. I could be completely wrong, but I just as far as a production ready option for a pipeline, it's just simply not there. So but again, I understand the concern and it's early and there's. You know what it's going to be five years from now, who knows knows. But until it's in a state where it's even remotely usable in a production pipeline and I don't even think it's going to touch 2D so much, maybe 3D is probably a little bit more of an issue. It's going to take some time and I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of legalities that are going to be discussed over the next year to five years with the courts and with legislation and so on and so forth. It's very, very tricky right now. A lot of lawsuits going on.

Speaker 3:

There are. Yes, yes, there are. What about you, rob? Do you have a different definition, or is it more or less the same? No, it's very similar to Corey's, I mean I what about you, rob?

Speaker 4:

Do you have a different definition or is it more or less the same? No, it's very similar to Corey's. I mean, I see one. There's no intelligence happening whatsoever. It's an algorithmic solution. It's math, right? So all the tools are based on math.

Speaker 4:

So, even like the image generators are just smashing huge data sets of pictures together and then you're getting a result that you fool yourself in thinking it's good, right, when an artist, artist uses it, they go. Well, it's a mood board at best. It's not never final. You always have to polish it. And so your point why am I using doing this thing? I'm stealing it from myself, right? You're not building your own skills. You're just looking at someone else's photo, bash pictures, and you can do that now With Photoshop. You can just smash a bunch of pictures together and you're going to get a result. It's, um, it's like using a base mesh and building on top of it. Um, tools that I think, well, we already have some.

Speaker 4:

Now that we talked about earlier the. There's tools in Photoshop, that auto-correct color, that's useful, right, it's doing machine assisted math there to solve you doing the grunt work. But, like Corey was was saying, nothing original is being made by any of these things. It's just like nothing new in the so-called ai space have I seen in the 2d, stylized workflow is meaningful for a studio right now. Everything's on the periphery, like there's the ai upscalers, right, those are good tools. You have a, you render out at 2k and you can upscale the 4k without having to tend to spend the time to render at 4k. That's passable most of the time. But you still get banding if the, if the subject matter is not, you know, conducive to be ai upscaled, right. So again, it's almost there, but not there even on that rudimentary level. But in creative stuff, like acting emotion, you can't do any of that. It's not consistent and it doesn't take notes like I had.

Speaker 4:

We had fun when we were testing at the studio was when you just ask show me a picture of a sad lady who's tired and feeling run down and old, and it just generates old people. That's not what I want. I want someone that feels like they're old. They're not old. You know what I mean. Like it does. It's all black and white instruction to it. There's no gray. So, yeah, it's not ready for primetime. But back to 3D where it exists now. If they can photograph it. They can quickly extrapolate other angles from it because it has a larger data set to pull from right Real world things and you're seeing that show up in the. In tools now, like blender has a integration for textures, it'll extrapolate like tree bark based on a huge library of photographic bark. Right Like it's. It's safe in that space. But you say, hey, I want to see a tree that might be on office and Tori's one of its moons and it's low G. No, I don't like anything.

Speaker 3:

Right, and it's low G. No, I'm not going to make you anything Right, there's no idea. Hmm, so Well, now that we have our third guest arriving, we now have Dave Fortier. Where is?

Speaker 4:

he Come on, pop up there he is Good to see you, Dave.

Speaker 3:

He's popping up there. He is there we go. There's Dave Fortier from Pip Animation.

Speaker 2:

Hey Dave okay, yeah, no worries, thank you. Logged in. At five two it said no one has joined the meeting yet. Just please wait. And then you sent me a text I guess, you guys, as long as you can hear me, that's good yeah, yeah, no problem, all right.

Speaker 3:

So my question to the group is have you guys had discussions in your studios about the subject of AI, and what does that mean for not only your industry but your businesses? Let's start with Rob.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, we had that discussion and right now it's contractually. We're not allowed to use any generative AI with any of our clients. It's right in the contract. So zero, and that includes as of today, today, generative fill out of photoshop, oh interesting.

Speaker 4:

So no scene extensions. And the reason for that is no one knows how it's doing, what it's doing and where that data is going, even though we track the internet traffic of photoshop, like in and out of the studio, like what's it basing that on? Is it safe? Can we be held accountable to that? Okay? That's fair, that's very free yeah, yeah, that makes sense so we, we, we uh banned it. So yeah, no, no, general okay uh, what about you, cory?

Speaker 1:

uh, we have the discussion all the time like it's not. It's not something we're ignoring by any way, shape or form. So of course we're going to go out, we're going to do our research, we're going to find all the tools that exist. Course we're going to go out and we're going to do our research. We're going to find all the tools that exist out there. We're going to try them out. We're going to look at them. You have to. When you have a business, you have to make sure that you're staying ahead of the curve. You've got to make sure that you're being relevant and you have to know what is coming down the pipe that could affect your bottom line and affect your crew and affect your business. This is, you know, ai could ultimately be a game changer down the road in a way that I don't think is going to change anything creatively, so to speak, like at least, I hope not, because, at the end of the day, what we do for a living is entertainment and it's got to be entertaining.

Speaker 3:

It's got to be created by people.

Speaker 1:

It has to have emotion, and I just don't see AI delivering that anytime soon. So it's it's absolutely important to be aware of what is happening out there. Right, 100% Okay.

Speaker 3:

What about you, dave? Have you guys discussed that Pip?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Most of the discussion is happening with the floor, of course, where people are worried about their employment, how things are going to change. We all understand that the end buyer wants the best product for the cheapest, but that's you know, it's a negotiation point. So when we're speaking about things, we're trying to figure out where could it apply. And with some of the things, like the software Adobe now already incorporates that into Photoshop there's a certain amount of ai and harmony. So we want to make sure it's supporting the artists, not replacing the artists. That's the main, okay that makes sense, perfect.

Speaker 3:

So then, from what you guys seen of ai that's been out, there is everything you've seen either interesting, or is it just overblown to what People are like. You know the panic that's setting it like, oh, it's going to replace jobs, or is it just from what it is right now, it's way too rudimentary. What do?

Speaker 1:

you guys think I just think it's too early. It's just too early. It's great for early it is. It's it's great for, you know, tiktok videos and maybe some YouTube videos, but you know, and I keep saying it's not, it's not production ready in any way, shape or form. So I don't know like, is there an echo? Is there an echo with me?

Speaker 3:

No, don't worry about it.

Speaker 1:

I hear myself twice. I think it's just. I think it's something we all need to keep an eye on for sure and sort of test the waters with regards to, like, how it's going to affect the pipeline. With regards to like, how it's going to affect the pipeline, I think I, with the 2d side of things, it's it's a long way away unless it's somehow going to incorporate into, to move somehow. I just I can't even imagine that. You know, tweening in a, in a in a more energetic way as opposed to a normal way. I just I don't really know yet 3d for sure I could see it affecting that a little bit more. There's tons of tools out there right now which just makes things easier to do building rigs, all the technical stuff like texturing things, all that jazz. It's just. I'm all for making people's lives easier within a particular department, 100%. I have no issues with that, but I do. I do take issue when you start eliminating jobs and people's livelihoods, but it's it's. It's part of every industry. Look at how this industry has evolved over the years.

Speaker 1:

Right, we got into the business initially. There were, there were hundreds of people making a animated feature or series. You had your, your, your ink and painters, whole teams of them gone, right, you had. You had clean up artists gone, you have. You know, you had in-betweeners gone as soon as the digital side of suze flash came out and and to move, all that stuff disappeared. And then you started. You had a team of like 40 animators in a room creating 52 11 minute episodes. Right, it's unheard of. So, yes, it, teams do shrink over time. But I like to think of, think of it this way where, if, if a department shrinks, you're just paying the people in that department that are there more because you're not, you don't have as many people to get in those positions. So it's, it's a catch 22, right?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Does anyone else have an opinion on this matter or?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would have the exact same. I actually have the exact same note about hundreds of people going down to 40. I guess what? Like? I mean AI has been around for 25, 30 years, right, wet has been using it. So when you have films like Lord of the Rings and the Golden Compass and those kinds of things where you need thousands of characters, that's great. You know, it works really really well. You can have them affected by gravity and terrain and if they're wet or if they're moving through water.

Speaker 2:

You know, back in the Star Wars days where they had their 40 stormtroopers and then they reshot it with the same 40 stormtroopers in slightly different outfits and they matte, painted it and they matted it and all that kind of stuff. Now you don't need to do any of the matting and you get 100% crisp work. So it's beautiful. But with the AI for 2D it's one of those things like it's almost like desktop publishing. I remember when I was in art school and thinking maybe I should go into publishing and illustration and whatever. Then desktop publishing came out and you wouldn't need publishers anymore because everybody was going to self-publish. Well, not everybody's a publisher. And just like with AI, I watched this ad where they say it takes control. It takes control away from the creators and gives it to everyone.

Speaker 2:

Well what does that mean? Without the understanding of an end game, a starting point and how you're going to go through those steps? Ai is, uh, it's going to create an awful lot of mediocre, like home printed business cards and that kind of stuff. Um, will it get? Uh, I'm I'm sure it'll be incorporated more like um, with the in-betweening. You know, in-betweening is kind of cool, um, if we could have it. Do a lip sync, that that might. That's another tedious one that could be good, um, but you still want to have the mind where you want, the person overseeing that stuff.

Speaker 2:

And sure, even though the studios have shrunken down, ideally the people in control are the masters of it. They're the ones who are top of the grade, like when it was traditional. You graduated and usually started off as a cleanup artist and then you got into in-betweening and then you got into keys and, like cory said, all that's gone. But the people who remain are able to do all of that and have an understanding of how it all works. So, as long as the ai is becoming a tool to keep those people creative and maybe it allows faster turnaround so our studios, with the same people, can produce more in a given year, okay, but if it's going to reduce studios down to people like me in my basement, who's going to even watch that kind of stuff? Right, like, who's going to even watch?

Speaker 3:

that kind of stuff Right.

Speaker 2:

You know it's a. I think it's overhyped right now, especially in the 2d world, because it's just not not ready for it.

Speaker 3:

Right, so that's I was going to ask. Next was just is this just the flavor of the month, Cause it's just like it's such a hot topic right now, or do you see it actually impacting the animation industry in general?

Speaker 4:

I think, yeah, um, you see it impacting it now in the sense, like it's the same stuff. But the single image generation market, like that's happening now, if you go on, the people that would sell a single image, concept art not that there's much of that left, but any of the single image illustration work, the race to the bottom for how much? Like the what's that? The kindle book market, where they fire up all those books to the kindle market. No one's paying an illustrator to do their covers anymore, they just pay their. They either self-generate it with an ai tool and risk being sued or they pay someone five bucks to make a piece of garbage photo bash start, right. But so the market of top quality, like the respect from the audience to illustrations, is dwindled. Right, like the general public doesn't care. They go to the bookstore. They'll buy a science fiction cover, a book.

Speaker 4:

Now, because here's error. Like if you go and go to chapters now you go to the science fiction section, it's mostly ips from like star wars and Star Trek and all the known things. Like the independent science fiction authors, unless they're a legacy person like Stephen King or someone of that nature, they don't exist. They've all been pushed off the shelves right, because corporate branding have pushed the market. Right. So everyone else that doesn't have any money, like Dr David was saying, is self-publishing or like they don't have much money. So they're going with what's cheap, right? They're not asking their friend to do a book cover like they used to back in the days. You know, they're going for the cheap.

Speaker 4:

So, like the pressure, like Corey was saying, the market is always more increasing profits. Let's call it that way. Everyone wants more profits at the top end. So any tool that they think will save them money and make them more money they're going to chase. So is it flavor of the month? Sure, in the marketing side of things right now, because we're saying it's not going to do the job. But those companies want it to work like they really do, yeah, so they can lower their costs and make more money, right. And then there's that huge fantasy, like dave's saying, there's what? I saw, an ad recently where it says the, the streaming service of the future, will make a show aimed at the person watching it. So it's the show that they like to show. It's even more of an echo chamber than ever before. It's like the endless Star Wars episode of Stormtrooper Battles. Who's going to watch that? There's no end to it. It's like a bad view. An old generation of narcissists right there.

Speaker 1:

I want stuff, just about me.

Speaker 4:

You, I want stuff just about me, yeah, and you can see that now. So is it a risk? You should be aware. Like when I said our studio doesn't use JNR, we don't use it, but we're tracking it and we're monitoring it and there'll be tools that come that make things better. And you see it in the CG space, a lot Like world machine generates terrains that then you can go in and model and guide and stylize and things like that.

Speaker 4:

But you can have a base map template put down fast. You can. We have tools that generate trees, like there's a whole engine on what's it called the tree farm there's a excuse, my name right now but it makes trees and you can randomly generate an oak tree to fill a forest. So I don't have to manually model, you know, a thousand oak trees to put in the forest like. We're going to use tools like that, right, if we can. But 2d stylizes. The whole point of 2d is to stylize it in guide of emotional response to the audience. Ai is not doing that because you're not in control and that's it. There's no control on it like that typing a prompt. Even the world's greatest authors cannot write something that captures what a picture can show, given in the hands of a true artist I don't know.

Speaker 3:

You give uh, you give uh, you give token a description of blade of grass, and that thing goes on for like three pages it's true, but can you imagine giving that to ai, and what wonka thing you're going to get out?

Speaker 4:

of that rainbow, it's like. So back to the troll, back to tolkien, though. If you go back and look at tolkien's original illustrations and then you look at how they're marketed now and then, after the movies came out, what this book covers look like now, it went from true fantasy very unique and original styles based on, like northern european folklore to orcs from world of warcraft like that's where we ended up, oh sure you can see that in dungeons and dragons now too very generic dragons, it's beard.

Speaker 3:

The same way, it went from like very fantasy and now it's very like.

Speaker 4:

Okay, it's very generic, it's all the same yeah, and that's as, as all of us here make original content for purpose. We don't want to be generic everything. It's the last thing we want to be there's.

Speaker 1:

There's a sense of it all looking the same? Right, because it is. It's. It's a jumble of everybody else's stuff all mashed into an image. If you're a Dungeons Dragons player and you want to get an image of what a fighter might look like, you'll get 15,000 different images of what a fighter looks like, but they all look the same. They just all look the same. Different armor, maybe a different face and a slightly different background, but the painting style, the style overall in general, just looks very similar.

Speaker 1:

Yeah um but again it's, it's here, it's not going to go away anytime soon. Um, so you know I, you know I encourage people to research it, look at it, use it, see what it does. So you know what I encourage people to research it, look at it, use it, see what it does. So you know what you're getting into right. Um, it's just there's so much stuff out there and more and more of it is going to be uh, coming out, and I think it's important that if you're an artist in this, in this industry, in animation or illustration, or you're just, you know you do it for fun. Or a filmmaker, knowing what exists out there and how to potentially utilize it, you know, in some of your work, if it helps make things, if you're just a kid at home and you're making films and ideas, it's a great learning tool to learn how to do things and create content and what have you. Fine, no problem. But if you're going to start making, I guess money off of it.

Speaker 1:

You might want to think twice about it, at least for now, until legalities are sort of dealt with, which in these companies. They pour a lot of money into legislation, to change legislation. So it's not going to go away easily.

Speaker 2:

That's one area I think AI can be used, like when we write a script, it has to go through a clearance to make sure there's no copyright infringement, trademark infringements, those kinds of things. So the fact that metadata can be added to everything. When a film comes out, broadcaster X might use AI to run it through and it says oh wait, a second Part of this was created by Alex Moran. Were you paid for this? Oh, yes, he was Okay. What about Rob? Nope, nope, rob wasn't paid. So we can't accept this until all of this stuff gets done, because the AI is incorporating material that wasn't released. That could be a good place to use it.

Speaker 1:

I wonder if there's going to be something out there where you can actually tag your artwork right In a way that you know it would. It would. You could do that. You would run it through some sort of scanner. I know that sounds.

Speaker 1:

No, they're, they're looking at that now around to the UK or the EU AI legislation is that all AI artwork has to be work and you keep selling your those licenses to all the uh, the ai generating world out there and it's like, it's like anything. If you're a popular artist, you're at the top of the heap and you're getting all the residuals. If you're just working your way at the bottom, you gotta, you gotta, climb the ladder right.

Speaker 2:

So, um and I'm sure there'll be a way to tag it. It'll be like the original blade runner, right, he finds a, a scale and he brings it to the lady and she goes oh, that's a snake scale. And she finds the code Like pretty much as a code on it.

Speaker 2:

It must be much easier to do that digitally and with that kind of thing. Like you have I meant to look up his name there's a musician who started to play a bunch of riffs, did them on his guitar, sent out a cd. Like you guys can use these riffs. Just buy the cd. It's two dollars. Guy's a multi-millionaire now because he's made so many different riffs and a lot of um, um.

Speaker 2:

When you have, uh, corporations building the music and then having a singer come in and sing those parts, a lot of times you hear these beats and the.

Speaker 2:

You know the horns are this way and the strings are that way, and it's the same guy playing an awful lot of that and he's licensing it to absolutely everybody.

Speaker 2:

We might've even used some of the stuff in some of the work that we've done and he's properly licensed it and that's all fine and that's great if you can do that with AI, but currently it's just sort of whatever they feed into it and what they've been feeding into it isn't necessarily public domain.

Speaker 2:

I could totally see Disney loving this because they have such a massive archive. They're their own broadcaster, they're their own producer, they have their own studios, oh, but they won't need them anymore because they can just run it through the machine. But for everybody else, we still have the gatekeepers, who are the Netflix and the CBCs and comedy network, that we need to cater to what they think they want, like they always say, this is what our viewership wants. I don't know how much of that's true or if they're lagging behind a little bit, but those restraints help you focus and define and find a unique way of telling that story where, if everyone in the studio is just putting in whatever, I'm just going to plug this stuff in and I'll let AI figure it out, but everything becomes very vanilla along the way and people get lazy. We get a world full of WALL-E instead of creative people lazy.

Speaker 1:

We get a world full of WALL-E instead of creative people Just to piggyback on that. The issue is sure, yeah, the gatekeepers. You have your Netflix, you have Amazon, you have CBC, you have TVL on campus. They want good content. They want curated, well-thought-out content. If it's educational, you need educational consultants to back the series. There's a ton of experts that are on top. Because you're dealing with kids, right, You're making content for children, so you have to make sure that you dot your I's and you cross your T's. You have to make sure that the content works. You can't have any hidden little things in there in the background. Who knows what could be generated out of some of these images. It's so silly. So that alone there is the primary reason why we're going to continue doing the stuff that we're doing right now. You know like Hilda would never be Hilda if you didn't have 100, 200 people like let's sweat and tears over top of that to turn it into what it is.

Speaker 4:

You know you can't the creator who created the original comics.

Speaker 1:

You can't generate that from a prompt right? You can't generate that from a prompt right, and that goes for any content that's being created right now that is going to be viewed on an actual network. What we do is we create stories and we tell great stories to kids and families all across the world, all across North America. They're not going to watch it. They're not stupid, people are not dumb. If a show sucks, they won't watch it. If it's not funny, they won't watch it. If it's not entertaining, they won't. If it's all flash in the pan, it's awful. That's why Netflix, the Netflixes and all these other broadcasters got into trouble. Because they were producing so much content. Right, it lacked story, it lacked the substance, and so people just said, okay, enough's enough, and so it started getting rid of subscriptions. So now everyone's really starting to look towards curating and creating content. That means something that's going to pull the audiences in. Because you know what? I want to get that subscription, because I want to watch that series, right? I?

Speaker 2:

can't wait. That's what's happening, as everyone in the industry we're all professionals, we've gone to school, this is a trade, we've honed our abilities and this is what we do. You know, there's the. There's the weekend warriors like myself, who might do a little bit of plumbing or might work on a deck but I'm not building a house. Well, when we're building these, shows like these are cathedrals. These are works of art that that have gone from concept from one artist all the way through to the final audio mix. That's gone through another artist and it's gone through dozens and dozens of professionals that make it better, hopefully at every step of the way. And then again you have the broadcasters who sit there and go. This is good, but we want this tweaked and this changed and we need to do a few little things here and it gets polished to perfection. And if everybody's doing that in their basement again, maybe their grandmother will love the work that they're coming up with.

Speaker 1:

But it's a team effort.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, the only one. There's only the major streamer that essentially based on letting the masses curated as youtube right and all the youtube had, and they paid for cartoons at one point you remember they were no no, because they got buried under the noise, right.

Speaker 4:

It wasn't good enough, because they didn't promote it. They just let the masses dictate what rises to the top. And if you just look at the youtube home page, what's up the front? It's just you know what 12 year olds are watching on mass? It's just junk, right. And it's 30 second spots, and the tiktok took that even shorter. It's what? Seven seconds like? Wherever the slot is, there's no. Nothing will make you go back and watch more of it right so.

Speaker 3:

So I guess I'm just curious then play PlayDevil's Advocate. Is there a purpose for AI in the animation pipeline or is it just too rudimentary?

Speaker 1:

You know, I think you could potentially use. I was saying earlier, it's like you know, I, I need, I need to have 15 different tugboats and and here you have 15 different tugboats and now you can take bits and pieces of each tugboat and create something that you is really unique and and wonderful. You know, but an artist is doing that. But you say I like this tugboat, this tugboat, this tugboat right, go to town and make a great, make a great tugboat, right, I like these elements no different than you know, scouring the internet to find images that you liked, you know, for some early development projects. Or I'm creating a show that's indiana jones and star wars all together, right, uh, you're, you're using references and material in order to get the idea across to the people that are going to buy your product, right? But then, when you get into production, well then, now you hire a team that's going to make real original work, something that's going to be unique and interesting.

Speaker 2:

That concept through one individual or two individuals to refine the idea. Yeah, I also see it used for blocking and storyboards, but not for storyboarding per se, even though I know, alex, you've had a guest who wrote some material for storyboarding. But to do a quick blog and go in there and tweak things. It's almost the equivalent of thumbnail a storyboard so that all the artists have a common foundation between. Like all the boards could be thumbnail out with the director and the board supervisor so that they're all starting with some solid ground.

Speaker 4:

But honestly I wouldn't see it in places like that or like lip sync, like I said before well, I think the place you'll see when you see it now is in the, in the industrial processes of the animation pipeline, like I said, the ai upscalers. If I can save time rendering for a 4k show by rendering 2k and upscaling at the 4k because that's not taking anyone's job but it's a grunt job that no one wants to do, essentially just machine work anyway, I could run the render farm for a week or I could run it for one week at 2k and upscale it. You know, I mean like that's going to happen. Color correction right, we all use ai color correction now because it's amazing. Like um, we use uh, the, but that's the tool I used in the editing suite the other day where it balances all the audio channels, brings all when you do like crowd record, and it brings all the into the same range. Like those tools are here, just, and they're amazing, right, because it makes our life easier.

Speaker 4:

I think those tools will stick around because artists will, like you know what that tool is awesome it allows me to get to what I want to do faster, because it's not replacing, it's enhancing my workflow, right, or it's taking away a redundant task that no one wants to do in the first place, like the like cory was saying. I think in harmony they have tweening right and it's it's linear based. You can't put a curve in it, like you have to help it by a breakdown drawing. But if you can make that tweening process more interactive and it makes better tweens, that for aiming at your favors you know that would be great. People would like that.

Speaker 1:

I think any animator would appreciate getting the meat and potatoes of a scene pulled together quickly so you can focus on the nuance right, yeah, and I think that's any production process and that's across every department.

Speaker 1:

If I can, if, as a bg painter, if I could just get something to lay down the the base real quick for me, so then I can spend the time on the rendering and the detail right and how this works with the next one. You know, yeah, maybe you know like that's where I'd say it. Uh, it would help wherever it wouldn't. It was not getting rid of any, any specific department or getting rid of any specific job. It's just making it easier so you can get through more of it, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you get to the end result quicker.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So then, as we wrap things up, what bit of advice would you impart on artists who are concerned about AI and animation that are in the industry right now? What advice would you give to each member in your studios who are concerned about it? Start with Corey.

Speaker 1:

Research it, understand it. You need to understand what it is, period. You gotta know what it is. You can't just you can't put blinders on and pretend it doesn't exist or that it's not there. Learn it and understand. You should know how to prompt. You should know how to prompt. That's one of the tools that's going to be everywhere. It's already here, right? You've got to know how to do it properly, right? There's tons of different specific prompts that get you specific outputs. Right, Understanding the tools when you go into Photoshop now, there's so many AI tools. Now, If you go into Microsoft 365, they have Copilot you can get the gist of a document in two seconds. You can get the gist of a document in two seconds.

Speaker 1:

These are tools that will save a tremendous amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Believe me, when you're multitasking and you're doing 100 different things every day, if you can get a leg up anywhere on some of those tasks, I do it right. It just saves some time Instead of perusing through everything with, uh, like with a fine tooth comb. There's so much to do on a day-to-day basis, so, um, I think it's very important to understand the tools that exist out there and uh, you know, try them out, um, and see what they do and, more importantly, focus on just being a really great filmmaker or content creator or artist. At the end of the day, what we do is a craft and it's the 10,000 hour rule. It takes a long time to be good at it.

Speaker 3:

What about you, Dave? What advice would you give to artists who are worried about AI?

Speaker 2:

and EdPip Very similar. I mean, it's just another tool, but it's a very powerful tool. So you know, before paintbrushes they were using sticks to move the mud around to paint things. You know we got digital. I painted backgrounds for years using a mouse and killed my elbow and then all of a sudden the tablet came out and I thought this is so bizarre, I could never go back to a mouse. The tablet is amazing. We have, you know, working with Storyboard Pro and Harmony and even things like Flash, adobe Photoshop. You know, having having been a painter originally on canvas, you know the undo buttons and all those things are amazing. Plus, you have layers now that you can play with.

Speaker 2:

Know the software, uh, understand what it can do. For you also know its limitations. So, like, one of the fears with ai, like with real engine, might be where the executive producers or the broadcasters are saying, so why not just apply that to it? Not understanding how it even plugs into the equation. So the more people understand these tools, the better they can hone their skills. It comes down to that individual filtering what they want to do through that medium. So, if it's a keyboard or a mouse or a tablet or an actual paintbrush.

Speaker 2:

Ai is one of those tools where, again, it's already been in all of our lives, right From farming through to anything. Learn how it applies to your craft and be very good at it. When I speak with the students, I always say be the number one graduate. And there's always a couple who say, like how can we all do that? That's up to you. Be the best that you can be, aim for the top. Maybe you won't be, but at least you're shooting for it. So I think the same as with ai AI and also find out where it can be a benefit in your process. Like, if you're whatever, if you're, if you're a layout artist, how can it benefit your craft so that you're the person who's more hireable?

Speaker 3:

Okay, and what about you, rob? What advice would you give?

Speaker 4:

Well, above, like feed and everybody else. But I'll add one other comment. Like I agree with Corey and Dave, like you have to understand how the tools work, what they do, what they can't do. But you also have to realize we're in, we're in the industrial age, right, we're in the industrial age and everything is aimed at. If we can automate it, we will.

Speaker 4:

So look at what you're doing today, see where you can add value to anything that you're doing. That a machine cannot do by automation and that's where you double down on it, right. So, emotional context right, there's story points and beats. If it's just moving from a to b, yeah, we're going to automate that. Right, you can do that now. But we can make automation better so it goes faster if, if you're painting repetitive, you're like back to the hand-painted pipeline.

Speaker 4:

So you're doing workflow. That's the paperless workflow where you're still drawing key frames, and that's awesome because you want very dynamic acting. That rigs can't get too easily. But if you can use a tool that will paint frame a, then match the colors all the way to frame 100. Yeah, you're going to use that tool, because who wants to bucket fill all 100 frames? It's just not going to happen, right, that's going to be automated. So if that's what you're doing today is bucket filling, you know that it's going to go to automation at some point in the near future, if not next week. So add value to that. Double down on your fundamental skill as a craftsperson and then do that.

Speaker 3:

Perfect. Thanks guys. This was an awesome talk. I loved it, thank you. Here we go Another one of the books. Thank you, thank you guys. Here we go Another one of the books. I want to thank our guests for contributing on the subject of AI and animation and hopefully you get something out of it. Here's hoping. The more conversations we have, the more clear the future will become, and hopefully, the more we talk, the less we demystify AI and show the realities of it.

Speaker 3:

But again, no one has a crystal ball, so that can all change in a matter of seconds, but all we can do is hopefully shape the future that we want. Check in for our next episode. Until then, let's keep the conversation going, see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Goodbye, aborting transmission.