Did We Just Change Animation Forever?

I see a lot of concern, especially from animators, that tools like this will eventually make them obsolete. This isn't a replacement for someone that knows how to animate, nor someone who can draw. Tools constantly evolve, but making something visually captivating always requires those same core skills. It still takes an artist to make art. That hasn't changed. What we figured out here is a very advanced form of old-fashioned rotoscoping. Animation takes a lot of forms; Traditional, 3d, stop-motion... They all have different strengths, and enable different stories. Our method here isn't a replacement, but an attempt at something new. What excites me is that this tech makes it easier to bring my visual ideas to life. Ideas that were otherwise impossible. When I said this democratizes animation, I'm referring to the near-insurmountable mountain of work needed to make a full-length narrative animation. Currently that requires large studios and large budgets. Doing it on your own is nearly impossible. But I see potential in these tools to change that! That's what I'm so excited about. Imagine one person, or a few friends, bringing their crazy ideas to life. Imagine if a traditional animator could automatically have their drawings inked and colored. Imagine eliminating the uncanny valley on cgi faces. These tools have the potential to do that. We're trying to figure out how, and sharing our journey. If we want community-controlled AI tools, we need to develop them as a community, otherwise they become proprietary tools locked behind a company. And yes, this can be done with your own style. We trained our model, not from hundreds of artists, but from ONE film- Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. We've been very open about this, and I think it's important to be. But this is also an experiment and a loving parody of this era of anime. I consider it no less ethical than the countless other videos on our channel that borrow from pop culture to tell their story. Sudden change can be scary, especially if it feels like your passion or livelihood is on the line. But that's why we're out here exploring it. Hopefully we can help shine a light into the fog for everyone. -Niko

As an animator... this scares me. I've dedicated my life to draw and know how to recreate motion within the drawings. Only to be replaced in a couple of years.

I have the feeling "designed by human" is going to be a trademark soon

As an animator myself, this doesn't replace animation at all. It's another tool. There is now just one more new style. Painting moved digital a long time ago and cameras have come a long way and yet there are still somehow people buying and selling brushes and canvases painting portraits the old-fashioned way.

Around the 17:00 mark he says “Anime has no 3D camera movies”. Close to every modern anime does, even slightly older ones like Death Note had spinning 3D cameras in moments.

The next time you invite animators as guests, you should show this to them and get their reactions

I felt a great disturbance in the animation industry, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Rotoscoping has been around since the dawn of time; we've seen it from Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, through A Scanner Darkly and more. While the ability to convert oneself to a 'drawn' character is super cool, no ifs ands or buts, there's a world of difference between animation as a medium unto itself and then just having rotoscoped content.

This has made me consider copyrighting in a creative way I hadn't thought about before. If AI copying a style from human works becomes the norm, I'm worried new animator styles won't have a chance to develop because studios would rather not pay for staff. One of the things I love about anime is when you see a key animators style pop that sometimes doesn't even match what was the norm for the show. I'm thinking of that episode of samurai champloo where Mugen gets super high. While I see this tech could help a vision get made, it does so by copying previous works for the style. I'm worried of the long term implications of that, since we may see less new creative styles.

What’s so cool about this is that when I was younger I honestly thought cartoons were made from actual videos. So in my head I believed that when I was watching YuGiOh they actually filmed everything first then drew over it

Disney absolutely salivating about all the animators they won't have to pay once they get this tech sorted...

This isn't animation, this is rotoscoping.

I think it's a gray area... There's a lot to be great use for Ai mainly in the health and medical industry however for the Arts and Entertainment Industries that's where the gray comes in. I can see where it can be useful however I completely validate the fact that people mainly artist will feel competitive with AI and might not beat that competitor. Studios and Hollywood in general is about making money and seeing how The Writers Guild Strike is going and people wanting more proper pay, I can see Ai being the cheap alternative and since it's new many people will go to it. So I validate the fear and nervousness for artists going against AI and it upsets me that with such a useful tool that can be used for again Health and Medical purposes it's now becoming a trend used popularly for social media and dipping into the Art and Entertainment Industry.

I'd be interested in seeing animators react to this.

I love how we are in a time where, "It's designed by a human" is actually a selling feature.

19:01 when i saw the short i was kinda worried that now that this has become like common that would affect negatively more independent artist...but while watching this making off i started shifting towards Niko's idea...and this here gave me validation. Because normally only big teams were able tu pull stuf like this off, like, it was reeeally hard, but now any artist on a small team can do this with enough dedication.

Im pretty sure that its gonna be similar to 3d + 2d animations where you tweak what looks weird, make things look more interesting and I could even see it being a big fusion where you animate the character with 3d to show more interesting camera angles perspective, ai to make the scaffolding of the character, and 2d to tweak what looks weird and add smears and exaggerated expressions.

I'm so excited to see where you go with this

This just makes me appreciate Joel Haver's animated skits more

I recognize that this is an evolution of the medium using technology, akin to how Pixar leapfrogged digital animation,but it does put into question how the art form of making anime or cartoons is lost. In terms of commercialization and mass production of animated output is concerned, this will be an effective tool. But it does add another knife on the back of an already heavily injured art form. IMHO But cool tech😊