AI doesnt have to replace talent

Cartoon Animator General
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In my mind, AI isn’t a magic button. It doesn’t turn “nothing” into greatness. It takes what you already know, your eye for design, your sense of timing, your principles of animation, and turns them up to eleven.

People think AI is slop (and much of it is) because they imagine it’s just typing a sentence and hoping for the best. But real artists know better. If you understand composition, storytelling, colour, posing, and movement, then AI becomes a multiplier. A creative partner that boosts everything you already bring to the table.

AI can’t replace skill. But skill can make AI unstoppable.

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AI can’t replace talent but it will replace entire
software ecosystems.
That is the reality :hushed:

All animation below, created in theGrok AI phone app
No expensive PC ,no GPU or team of animators.
2D animation Clips where 360 degree turns are easy and natural

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Agree. I just love that I already have developed skills with Cartoon Animator so I can design, rig and pose my characters, ready to set up scenes in Photoshop which can be bought to life instantly with AI. CTA and AI are the perfect partnership!

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Since I already have the expensive hardware Autodidact refers to, as well as an enormous inventory of iClone and CC content, my interest is in how I can integrate AI in my workflow. I wished AI rendering was a bit easier to use and more efficient but hopefully that will come in the future.

For now, I use AI for generating dialog and that is advancing at a rapid pace.

I would like AI to help with environments that I can use in iClone. Animation assistance would be great too. I have another feature film idea and I would like to complete it a bit faster that my previous feature (which took several years).

Autodidact has already found his AI pipeline, so he’s all set!

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It took me a full year to establish my own CTA/A.I pipeline that works, and its constantly changing. Recently I swapped out ChatGPT for Gork because the results were better. And there are new innovations coming all the time. Wherever we sit right now with A.I. and animation, six months from now, we will be able to do even more incredible stuff we never though possible.

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It took me a full year to establish my own CTA/A.I pipeline that works, and its constantly changing. Recently I swapped out ChatGPT for Gork because the results were better. And there are new innovations coming all the time. Wherever we sit right now with A.I. and animation, six months from now, we will be able to do even more incredible stuff we never thought possible.

This is true !
right now My Twitter/X feed is on fire with people raging about the new Nano banana pro.AI engine.

But I have to be honest. None of these new AI animation technologies seem to be built to work in conjunction with traditional 3D. Animation tools.
They don’t need to.
It’s a completely new and separate ecosystem.
You may be able to work something out where you can combine AI. With Iclone.
In fact, all of the backgrounds in my last feature length animated film" Ghost origins" were AI. Generated 360° environments.

But to be brutally honest for me at least it’s faster and more efficient to just do the entire animation with AI at this point, rather than try to figure out a way to incorporate AI Elements into a traditional 3D animation workflow.

There is this psychological phenomenon called the
“sunk costs fallacy”. Which makes people cling to old ways of doing things Because they believe they will somehow “lose their investment” of the money they spent on previous ways of doing things if they move on to a completely different way or toolset for working, it’s a fallacy!!.

The money you’ve spent on all of your 3D programs. and assets is gone!! you’re not going to recoup that money or " lose it" by completely abandoning some of those older workflows and tools and assets.
I am not renewing my Autodesk Maya subscription when it expires next month in December.
In fact, I will probably never spend another single dime on a 3D program or Blender add-on for the rest of my life.
Going forward I will only spend money on whatever paid AI service I feel is going to get me the results I want at the time
I want them.
YMMV.

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the real issue is the people, not the technology. AI is just a tool, another brush, another cooking utensil, another musical instrument …another guitar…and instrument shops around the world have that guy that comes in playing Stairway to heaven by led zepplin on any new thing for the billionth time trying to look cool …same in US politics, there are 3 parties …democrats, republicans and extremists that don’t care about the side they stand for as long as they get to be extreme and famous… with AI you can be sure someone wants to be famous from telling the AI “create anything that will make me famous” and call themselves a famous artist for it…but it’s that same extremist mindset. Those are the people that try to make it look like AI can replace humans. same guys that made 8bit monkeys and sold them for $80k as nft - extremists.

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But musical instruments are really not a good comparison because no new type of musical instrument gave the person to ability to compete with existing trained musicians.
Generative AI technology can do that and even more right now.
You can make a movie or comic book or graphic novel with original characters characters have the voice dialogue spoken by AI.
Have the designs created by AI
And have the original music track created by AI
This is very disruptive and threatening to a lot of people right now.
They’re angrily lashing out at those of us who’ve chosen to embrace this new technology because their ideologies won’t allow them to even touch it.
And they knew they can’t compete with those of us using it in terms of speed or quality at this point.

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actually, it’s perfect for what i’m trying to explain -

you don’t blame a guitar for plagiarism, copyright infringement or lack of innovative creativity, you blame the artist …same in AI - you don’t blame the AI for lacking creativity, you blame the artist. that’s the person that cares nothing about the art itself and just wants to exploit the ai software, interns, talent, or whatever “insert topic” here for fame. Just because a guitar can’t play itself, doesn’t mean it can’t be used to steal the stairway to heaven riff. same with ai, only people that don’t care about art, will replace humans with AI.

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Im really enjoying this A.I. debate, and can I just say how refreshing it is to listen to two people who have the ability to debate without devolving into insults and personal attacks. Great stuff! I really dont care which side of the A.I. argument people sit on, so long as they are respectful of the people on the other side. You can disagree without making it mud slinging match, and thats whats happening here. Bravo!

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Thank you Gary, to be honest, it was always my intention. I’ve never been a dragon to well intentioned posts - i’m happy that peter found the ban hammer to be more merciful than my reaction to disrespectful posters lol - i can’t take back my behavior, because i love how peaceful the forum has grown to become. I do appreciate AD’s point though, that it’s easy to be brainless with AI and not adding a unique touch to your work because AI is auto think. - I’m just saying a good artist will use AI as a brush to express a unique idea …and not just click auto everything and say it’s their art - which is wrong.

“The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”- Sun Tzu

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Planetstardragon is right, though. Too many people are using AI to produce brainless slop with no intention, no story or narrative direction. Just eye candy. but this type of content was being produced long before AI came along.

Just go have a look at the Cocoa melon youTube. channel or most of tiktok and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

The YouTube algorithm rewards this short attention span “slop”. But people are blaming AI as though It’s the cause of it when it’s just a symptom of the larger issue of how the YouTube algorithm works.

I have a small YouTube channel only about 1500 subscribers
Most of my videos rarely break one hundred views
However, if I create some low effort, AI, “slop” and drop it in the YouTube shorts feed, during the evening hours, my view numbers take off in minutes.
This video, for example, it’s only 5 seconds long and it has over 2000 views and I made it in seconds using the Grok AI app.

However, when I take the time to create a nice animated short series. with a narrative, introduce characters & world building. The YouTube algorithm completely ignores it and I can barely crack 50 views for all of the work

By the way, Gary, I saw the way you were viciously attacked, over on the cartoon animator Facebook group, when you dared mention using AI, but you have to remember most of these anti-AI activists are not artists, they’re not animators & they don’t have any portfolios of paid work to show like you do.
They have turned their opposition to AI into some Quasi religious political crusade, that has nothing to do with them "supporting artists "and more to do with their hatred of corporations and capitalism or whatever.

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Depending only on commercial services to generate content can be very problematic. It can be all gone on the next day.

Suno and Udio just were forced by major music labels to “partner” with them, which limits usage of their outputs.

It looks like first AI providers will introduce ads into the generation process, for example Open AI plans to roll out ads in ChatGPT. It would be really funny, if image and video generation will simply add commercial products in the background.

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No one using a paid AI generation image or video service is going to accept having a third party advertisement in their final output.
They may get away with it in the free tiers But no one who’s paying for the service will accept having ads in a final output

Even ad supported platforms like YouTube ,
Do not plaster some random advertisers logo over some youtubers video for the entire length of his video.
They only make you watch a separate ad before during or after the video.
Also, the suno deal doesn’t limit usage of the outputs.
What it does is make you pay for certain levels of usage. So that the musicians who’s content was used to train the AI can get some sort of royalty.
Remember Warner & Disney are All American based companies. They’re striking deals with AI companies or adopting AI themselves, because they know eventually some foreign entity or entertainment group, we’ll just step in
And compete in the market using AI and not be subject to any sort of US laws.
They’re just getting ahead of the curve.

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we live in an era where greed begets greed, and sharing begets lawsuits lol

the idea of ads in chatgpt is horrifying -

“if you like, i can find you the best deals for your budget, would you like that ?”
honestly, i think AI will reveal the worst of humanity with ez automated money, what can possibly go wrong.

but aside from that, grok imagine is way better than sora 2 for illustration, but sora 2 - can be hilarious at making full comedy scripts. - and agreed on the brainless youtube videos, sucks as a creator and even a user when every thumbnail is someone’s “shocked” face with some dramatic “you won’t believe this” clickbait title.

my question, is animation a dying art now ? I mean people are doing it, but will the next gen of kids that were born with AI in full bloom look at animation skills like the horse and buggy of entertainment ?

here’s a sora 2 code if anyone needs desktop access
https://sora.chatgpt.com/invite?code=KPAAS7

tip - tell sora 2 to make movie trailers of some strange scenario, sora2 got jokes!

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my question, is animation a dying art now ? I mean people are doing it, but will the next gen of kids that were born with AI in full bloom look at animation skills like the horse and buggy of entertainment

Right now, grok imagine is my primary AI Animation app and the grok app is my primary AI chat Utility.
I plan to upgrade to the paid tier when I retire in 2 months.

Yes, I believe that hand-drawn 2D animation and hand keyed 3D Animation is a dying art.
It won’t die out completely, but you will not find anybody pursuing it as a career anymore ,just as you do not find people seeking to become photochemical film processors because that is a an activity that has been completely replaced by digital imaging technology.

I’ve had this discussion over in the Daz Community and people were shocked because they never really thought about what’s going to happen in these specific areas of content creation.

But let’s start with 2D animation.
If you want to get into to 2D animation you can, of course, learn to draw frame by frame and go through that long tedious process.
But you won’t be able to easily compete with people using softwares like cartoon animator, MOHO pro , Clip studio paint , or free open source options like opentoonz , krita or professional softwares like Toon boom harmony or TV paint.

Right now Grok can match the output of any one of these 2D softwares, I just named ,easily and you can do it that in the free tier before you even start paying to get more generations.

On the 3D animation side of things, it gets even worse,
Have you noticed there aren’t any really young adults in these 3D animation forums here or at places like Daz.?

Young people do not have the thousands of dollars It takes to get a powerful PC
With a nvidia GPU to run these programs
Even if the software is free, as is the case with Daz studio/Iray, to say nothing of the additional costs of buying the Reallusion suite of software.
However, most young people today have a smartphone and that’s all you need to produce animations like this in the free tier of grok before you even have to start paying anything.

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ouch, made me think of this quote

“You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” - world economic forum

and the saas generation is making that happen. just wait till everyone’s unemployed by ai and these companies have no clients…they will own nothing and be happy too! lol

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My guess is, that big streaming and social media platforms will try to autogenerate movies, music and other entertainment based on the preferences of their viewers.

Then you can basically watch a new TV show every week and it’s only made for your exact taste. Everyone can watch their own shows and movies and listen to their own music.

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The people who create and maintain our modern day infrastructure the plumbers, welders ,electricians sewage treatment engineers are not going to be made unemployed by AI.
And as much as I give credit to Reallusion. for still offering perpetual licenses, you cannot even effectively use the Iclone or character creator software and content. without an internet connection so that is an ongoing cost, even after buying your perpetual license.

But yeah, the days of expecting people to make huge up front investments of thousands in local GPU, software & content ecosystems, those days are over.

Even the much-maligned Autodesk now has an option to rent Maya or 3D max, for days or weeks at a time, instead of having to commit to a monthly or annual rental scheme.

And by the way, the rumor is that Elon Musk is planning to introduce a “dumb terminal” device similar to a smartphone. It will be completely devoid of any local storage or processing
a pure terminal to access His starlink. network where all of your computing will be done on his servers It will be a cheap thin disposable device that will probably be available to anyone who pays for a subscription to his cloud service.
It could literally end the era of $1000+ flagship smartphones.
Welcome to the future.

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Indeed many, people in the AI animation community are already doing just that.
so the big media companies had better get their bespoke content services rolled and monetized out ASAP.