Alright Mr. Demille, I'm Ready for my Close-up

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I’ve been feeling my way around the latest AI tool to try to understand what makes it tick. AnimateDiff is an extension in Stable Diffusion software that allows you to create gifs based on generative art. To test different parameters in the creation process, I decided to create an animation depicting a movie star driving in a convertible down sunset boulevard. I tried to keep the settings consistent and mainly focused on changing the style, but I did experiment with some numerical values such as the number of frames and frames per second.

In the first animation, I did not specify a viewing angle or other qualities such as colour scheme. In my mind, I was envisioning a side view of a dame driving a convertible and on her way to meet her lover in a secret rendezvous. That’s not what the software generated.


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If you look closely at this bizarre video you actually see different characters.

This is not what I was looking for, but it had a bit of that vintage charm from Hollywood films, so I thought I was in the right direction.

I reworked the prompt to include mention of a side view angle and gave it a more comic book style look.

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Fantastic! I thought when the animation was generated. That was more like it. The sideview profile was excellent, the hat was perfect, shades were très bonne, and the vampy look of the female was wicked.

I played around with different styles to see how it would alter the output.

The sense of motion in these two generations is superb. One gets the sense of motion parallax, which is a cue that our visual system uses in order to provide us with a sense of 3D movement.

I even added a steampunk style to the piece and this interesting animation was generated.


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I really liked the movement of her head, but as you can see, the software had some problems handling the change in perspective, particularly with the hat. Surprisingly, her facial features remained consistent and the sky in the background conveyed an abstract sense of motion.

I changed to a Victorian style. The generated animation is pleasant because the woman's head motion is rather smooth. Unfortunately, there is no motion on the background, so it doesn't look like she's driving to meet her lover but more like stuck in traffic on the way there.


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Next, I tried a pointillist approach, and it resulted in an intriguing creation. I’m excited about the motion of the woman's lips, which nicely foreshadows what’s waiting for us over the horizon in terms of animation technology. We'll likely be able to type a phrase and have the characters make the correct mouth movements.


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This last one is nice (if you ignore the distortions) because it has a photorealistic look. The reflection on the glasses is spot on, and there is a sense of movement in the background.


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I'm really excited about this development in AI. It won't be long before we start seeing feature length films being generated in a few seconds by simply adding a prompt. It will democratize movie making when you no longer need a multimillion dollar budget to tell your story. Thrilling!

Thank you for coming along on the ride!


Images generated by @litguru using Stable Diffusion software

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14 comments
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Fabulous work, from the results achieved, the colours and the animations even more. I love it!😀

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Thank you! It's fun working with animation, but the process creates a lot of files, so now I have to find a way to manage it all. 😅

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I create a folder for each design and there I have all the materials and images that I use, then I take it all to an external disk, it cost me to manage but I did it!

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You're right. It is important to organize carefully when the volume of files increases. Each animation generates between 20-30 PNG images plus the gif itself so that's a lot of sorting :)

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If getting organized is very important, it is only practical.

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You have really mastered this technology. My son has made independent movies with his friend. He has been the producer on a couple of films. It was amazing how much a very short, simple movie cost his friend to make. It would be wonderful to harness technical tools that would lower the cost (isn't that what happens with 8mm films?)

However, if AI did it would it really be your own???

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You can make some descent films with a small budget, especially now with so many free tools available. AI is going to accelerate the process and make it way more cost effective.

However, if AI did it would it really be your own???

We could ask the same question of a film. After all, the filmmakers don't paint every individual frame by hand like "real" artists do. Instead, filmmakers use the high tech developments of photographic and video technology (including computer special effects) to capture and string together the sequence of events. This is cheating, according to the old arguments of past centuries. The images are not truly yours but belong to the ghost in the machine. This argument is no longer accepted, and soon it will be the same with those arguments regarding the merits of AI as an artistic tool. I don't think people have come to terms with this yet, but they will :)

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I like how her hat became part of the car 😂 cool experiments

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I like how her hat became part of the car 😂

Maybe she opened the sunroof :)
You can get some quirky effects, which I'm going to miss once the technology matures. It is fun!

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In some way, we see AI's perception of what it means to be human in images like this. The details it picks to highlight the driving aspect are so chaotic and divorced from what people would usually spotlight! Eerie.

Still, the gif are for sure cool, and I can see why you'd be excited! It was fun to watch these develop 😁

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The videos do come out with some strange artifacts. I just saw that a new video component of the software has been released, and the videos it produces look amazing. So, these kinds of aberrations in the gifs are going to be less common as the technology matures. I'm glad you enjoyed them 😄

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I love the world of AI, but it is not easy.

Sometimes you think I just press a button and that's it.

Nothing could be further from the truth, to obtain a result you must experiment and select.

I haven't used animated Gift yet, I'm experimenting with Pika Lab.

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There is a lot of work involved to get the right feel of the piece. My computer is quickly filling up faster than I can sort and organize the material :) I hope to see your animations in the future with your unique sense of artistic style and design :)