Tentative Steps In AI Animation
I've been having some fun with an AI animation.... God only knows who owns the copyright. I am claiming it anyway. All images and videos on this page are copyright Gavan Stockdale 2024.
One thing I love about this process is how close to natural evolution it seems to be. Strange artifacts appear at random only be discarded in the next iteration of the process. You’ll see a lightning bolt become a bone and even intertwined with bone. Swords become sticks. A scythe becomes a bow. A purple rose becomes a kind of skull. And so on. Some of the backgrounds here are just great - as creepy and interesting as I could have hoped for.
Why the fixation on skeletons? Actually this wasn’t my initial intention. I wanted to see if I could generate some imagery for a kids’ book I wrote a few years ago, which was a series of vignettes set in an enchanted forest. (As I explain in the book, cursed is probably a more accurate description than enchanted.)
One of the vignettes is the tale of a boy who finds himself stuck at the bottom of what seems like a well, but which is actually a tower that goes underground rather than up into the sky. At the bottom of the tower, there are several skeletons. Growing in the middle of them is a single red rose. The boy reluctantly picks the rose and decides to use to the skeleton bones to make a ladder with which to escape from the underground tower.
I still haven’t gotten around to prompting the AI to do what I initially set out to accomplish. As you can see, I got a little side-tracked.
One clip is extraordinarily good. It captured exactly what I hope for - with one tweak, made by the AI - instead of walking towards us, the skeleton warrior is walking away into the forest with his back to us. There are two clips where he does this. It will be pretty clear which of the two I prefer. It is almost cinematic in quality. Spookily good.
Apart from the hellscapes, there’s some humour here too. Watch out for the guy skipping down the forest path who looks like he has just won the lotto or managed to get the phone number of the hottie skeleton that works in the local tavern for the undead. Oh, and the guy performing magic tricks with roses, flicking them into existence with his left hand and holding the bunch in his right.
As for the guy that looks like Eddie. I have absolutely no clue why the AI decided to suddenly give the skeleton heavy-metal hair and glowing red eyes.