Sykosan
Appearances
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It's funny how 3Ds try to do 2D look for so long. They have these cell shading styles, these lines outside of 3D. They're desperate to recreate that crazy control that 2D has. And 2D will always have that freedom that they can draw exactly what they want at any moment. And 3D doesn't have that freedom. So that's an advantage of traditional medium, right, over 3D.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, absolutely. I'm with you. And I think this is why 2D will never die, to be fair. Because it's a source of inspiration, even for 3D. 2D guys will explore new avenues, and the 3D people will be like, yeah, yeah, I find that interesting. I'm going to bring that into... But I think, funny enough, I did a lot of 3D myself, actually. I started in 3D before I did 2D.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So I studied architecture, and I was using a 3D package back in the days. And then when I graduated, it's only after that I started looking into animation. But I was essentially a 3D guy at first. And I learned a lot from 3D. There's a way to approach lighting, to approach colors. and also comping the colors to make things look a certain way.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And I sort of transferred some of that understanding to the way I paint. So when I draw characters, I kind of separate layers in a way that 3D does it. And so sometimes I have students and they ask me about my approach to drawing, and there's some very different approach. You could have like the sort of traditional painter approach, which is
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
pick the exact color that you want, and you go with that. But my approach, for example, is a more layered and constructed approach where you have a base color, and then you've got some light on top and some shading, and then you add some effects, you layer things on top. So that sort of layered approach is very much akin to 3D approach. And one is feeding the other, right?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
There's a back and forth between 3D and 2D, and it's a good thing. It's a good thing.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah. I think people would love to know a bit more about what the people would do those games, right? And how they do it. But we'll get to this, I'm sure.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
They can be separate. But I would say definitely an animator is also an artist. You have to look at animators, I think, a little bit more like actors in movies, right? You would say of an actor that they are artists, right? They don't paint. They don't make music. They act. That's what they do. And that's what animators do. That's how often I describe it to people as an animator.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I'm like the actor on the set, except that instead of acting things live, it just takes hours and hours of drawing frames after frames to get the same result. But we kind of act things out. For example, when I have a shot to do, I just...
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
get off my chair and then maybe i'll film myself and i'll try to act out the scene to see how it is so i become the actor and then i try to translate that into drawings so yeah it's very much an art now however you don't need to draw necessarily particularly since 3d in fact well if you if you're doing 2d animation you need to do how to know how to draw obviously but if you're a 3d animator you you
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
In the ideal scenario, you're given a character that's entirely set up, rigged. And in video games, it's the same. You have to do these animations, and the character could be prepared for animation. And when you come in, you have a sort of setup of tools to move the face, to move the arms and legs. and that's when you come in and make everything move. And you don't need to draw at all.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
You may never have used a pencil before and still be a great, great animator. But often it's understood that the principles of 2D animation that we've developed through the years early are simply translated into 3D. And they learn the same lessons. They learn the same approach. The keyframe approach to animation is 12 principles of animation used in the US, particularly. I'm French.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah. I mean, like, if I want to do good animation, if you're talking about a scene where a lot is happening, it's not just a mouth moving. It will take me about a month to do about 10 seconds of animation.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And I'm not exaggerating.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
That's one of the things that a lot of people don't understand, actually. It's funny. Just the average viewer will associate animation with children often. And they tend to think that all these TV programs for children must be cheap. And it's everything but cheap. In fact, the industry is huge for children TV content.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And the teams and the studios that work on every episode that your children may watch on TV, they cost an awful lot of money because they take a lot of hands and a lot of people working on them, particularly 2D animation, but 3D animation too. The thing is that... It's funny how because of 3D, you'd think, oh, you could save some time.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yes, it might take less time to animate one shot, but you still need to build the 3D environments, build the 3D object. And all of this is also extremely time consuming. So they found other ways to spend the money and their time so that the budget is entirely spent at the end of it. But yeah, 2D is extremely expensive. Think about if you love a Disney movie, traditional, I don't know, you know,
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
pick the lion king for example go on wiki i was gonna say lion king yes go on wikipedia and look how much it costs and uh essentially usually it's about a million dollars per minute uh film that's the budget oh my goodness yes it is oh my goodness man that is uh geez that's wild
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
so is it safe to say that you need an awful lot of patience to be an animator yeah a feature film would take something like 200 people working for five years straight to to to put on a movie that's an hour and a half you know oh my goodness man wow i never yeah that's i never ever would have thought i you know we we always thought it was involved in it and it was very time consuming but
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, you have to be... Patience is key, absolutely. If you want quick results, it's not a job for you. But I think we take an enormous amount of satisfaction in bringing to life a drawing. I don't know what it is. We'll accept to do that. We'll accept to spend days and hours on just a few frames. And then we'll be just so happy to see it move. I don't know what it is.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, I hope I can inspire some people in the way. That'd be cool. Yeah, animation is a great world, and it's just like video games. It's full of similar things, you know? It's very close, so yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, it's true. There's quite a few parameters that you can look at that make an animation a good animation. In video games particularly, I think one of the things that made Street Fighter II exceptional was the quality of the animation. Because the designs were amazing already, but the way they moved, the impact, the weight, and that was very good animation work.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It made you feel the power of the characters, and how they moved around. So it had not only style, but it had personality. So I think what makes a good animation is first is a good drawing. If you have a good drawing, you've got a good start. But you can have also a simple drawing or a drawing that's on purpose made to look a little bit unpleasant or even ugly.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But you can have a great animation behind it. Again, the animation will be delivering the acting, will be delivering the personality of the characters. Now, so the second key factor is the key frames, actually. So having good posing. Think about body language. Are you saying something? How are you saying it? What are your shoulders doing? What are your hands doing? How's your face looking?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So you need to pose your character in a good way. So good keyframes is already half of the way there with a good design. So you could have, on the process of making the animation, you start by those keyframes or some rough thumbnails, as we call them. If they're well made, you can see the animation already. You can feel the character already, even though it's not smooth.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
There's no in-betweening, so it's just very choppy animation. But the posing is so good that you feel the character's emotions already, and that's already a good start. Then the in-betweening process is a matter of making it more or less polished, if you want. fine-tuning your animation. And that depends a lot on budget. Oh, yeah. They would have the money.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
They'd be like, OK, I'm going to animate this 24 frames per second. So for every second, you're going to have 24 drawings. And if you have 10 characters on the screen, that's 10 times 24 drawings.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So if you have the money, OK. But you don't make a TV series for Netflix, maybe. You don't have a huge budget. You're going to have to pick and choose. And that's what Japanese studios have been good at for all these years. They'll give you some very simple shots to tell the story with a minimum amount of animation.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And when it becomes important, you'll have an action scene or something emotional happening, then they bring in the best animators, right? And they'll give them all the money and the time that they need to make those scenes count. And in a video game, you get a little bit of that too. The thing is, it's a bit different because a video game, you have your character moving around,
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And you're going to see that jump, that run, that slide again and again and again. So you need to nail that. You need to make that look really, really good as much as you can. So there's a lot of attention that is put on these little scenes, more even than maybe on a TV series or something like that. And so you've got a few animations, but that still takes an awful lot of work.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So smoothness is important. It helps giving you that premium look. But I think what's important is good keyframing and good drawing is really the essential thing, quality.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, we had three, three months to make three minutes, essentially, which is horribly short. And so I kind of kept the animation like as simple as possible for most of the shots. And right from the beginning, there are some shots that are a bit more interesting. There's a dragon in there. There's a dancing scene. There's different things that definitely take more attention.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
There's a transformation scene right at the beginning, a very anime-inspired thing, where she's a witch, turns herself into a little dress, and she jumps on a little broom to fly off. So there was a lot of references to anime in there. And yeah, that approach was very similar. Maybe 90% of the shots are actually quite simple. The characters don't move too much. There's not much happening.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But when it's important, we put more time in it. So I could spend a couple of days or a day, a day or two on one simple shot, and I would spend a whole week on that one, on a few seconds for that one shot that's important. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, you have to accept that. It's important to understand that you're working for a client at the end of the day, if that's what you're doing. And you need to listen to them and give them what they're looking for. So this back and forth is always there normally. And it can be quite a lot of back and forth before things really start being produced. There's the design phase, if you want.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
In the Katy Perry scenario, it was quite different. In fact, it was a very interesting and unique moment in time. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic that it happened. And so essentially, for the music industry, from one day to the next, they couldn't put people together to do a typical music video where people are dancing. That was not happening anymore.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So a lot of studios turned to animation, and that's the cool thing. They were like, oh, we're going to use animators. They can work from home. They can do some really cool animated music videos, which was great. It just kind of was amazing for the animation world. So a lot of artists decided to do that. And that year, it was not just that. Katy Perry was pregnant.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And she wanted to release a new album and give birth on the same day. All right. That's crazy. And she did. She did. So she planned it all. That was crazy, right? She did manage to make one of the music videos for a new album early in the year. She was heavily pregnant. I don't know if you've seen the video. She made a music video heavily pregnant.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And then for the rest of the videos, she had time for another video where she played into and everything else was going to be animated. So they made one 3D animation in which they put a lot of money in, definitely a bigger team. And okay, they went for a big studio and they splashed out. And then they still had like 10 other videos to make or something.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
They were like, how are we going to do this? So they had a budget. They split it out. And they went for this strategy that said, well, we're going to say we want different styles. And we're going to ask Studio to pitch for it. But because of the limited amount of time, it was a matter of she received the pitches. And she was like, OK, I'm going to pick that one, that one, that one, that one.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And you just do it. So I was contacted by this Partizan, which was an animation studio in contact with Katy Perry. And they asked me if I wanted to pitch. And I said, yeah, that'd be interesting. You got one week. I was like, no time.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
They gave me five pieces of music. And I said, you can pitch for all of them. I said, OK, I'll pitch for all of them. So I made five pitches in a week. And very short, just one little page, one little drawing, a concept, essentially. And I had a favorite one, and it was a cry about it later. I was like, I'd be nice to get that one. And that's the one I got.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And then they asked me, how many can you make? I was like, just one is enough. There's barely enough time. So I was like, no, no, I can only do one. And the funny thing is that I was working on another music video already for another artist, a British artist. And I kind of had to jump out from that project into the Katy Perry one because I was like, I really want to do this.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And I was going to direct it. I was going to do all the designs. And it was my concept. I came up with the story. And Katy Perry was very easygoing, honestly. It's been the easiest, one of the easiest projects I've had to work on. And I think she was aware of the lack of time because there was no room for back and forth. But she did work. Ask for a few things to be changed. And we did it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And every time I suggested something new, she was like, yeah, that's fine. And so it was pretty easy. So yeah, that was very exciting. And she managed to release all these music videos And on the day that she gave birth, she released the album. She gave birth. That's a big thing. And she released my video. That was cool. So it was mine that came out on that day. That's really neat.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I'm okay as long as what you're looking for is some realism. I think that's the objective. By recording reality, you get that extra realism. It's a similar thing to Prince of Persia. You get that realism of motion. It's the same thing because you're tracing real footage. So I don't mind that. I think this is one direction that you can take. And the thing is that you have to explore it in a way –
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
You're all the way to the end. See how realistic you can get. And once you get there, then you pull back. You come back, and you'll be like, oh, yeah, that was interesting. But how about we go back to using animators to do this? Because animators have a different way to stylize motion. Actually, it's not just about stylizing the look of things or the colors. But there's a way to move.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Like, these new characters move in a certain way.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
anime characters move in a certain way yeah think about theater theater they have a way of talking and a way of moving around the stage to make themselves visible right and that was translated into cinema when cinema came along after theater they were just acting like a theater but on screen and it was kind of overacted you know and very loud and we don't do this anymore we we there was after that there was a phase of realism where we'd first shoot people as if
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
uh they were normal people and they would use actors that were not actors so that they would play normally and not overplay things there's this whole thing where we kind of change styles so i think it's okay it's fine let's let's go let's explore realism and motion capture and then we'll come back afterwards it's okay
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
That's right. We want to go back to style. I think about Batman, you know, the anime series or animated. Yeah. It's certainly not about being realistic. It's those sharp angles, those bold moves, those bold colors in contrast. There's appeal in that. So we don't want to lose that. Nobody wants to lose this. So if you don't have it, then eventually you'll go back to that as well.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Like, yeah, I wanted to go see that look again. There's all these different things that... They come and go with fashion, right? And then fashion comes back as well. Same animation, it comes back. So pixel art, I'm sure, will always come back.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It's a very good question. Actually, it's a, it's a very topical question at this time, because I don't know if you've heard about a Fantasia, I think it's called a Fantasia. I've heard of that. Yeah. It's essentially been discovered about three years ago.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It's basically people, we've discovered that some people cannot picture things in their minds. They can't just form a picture in their mind. And that seems incredible because most people do. If I ask you to picture a beach and you say, try to relax, imagine that you're on a beach side or something. And
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
These people were never able to do that, but when they heard people say this, they thought it was a metaphor. They didn't actually really ask you to do this. It was just a way of speaking. But it's been discovered that there's a spectrum, essentially, on how good you can be at just picturing things in your mind.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And I don't know if it's something that you're born with or if it's something that you can train. I really don't know. To be fair, I don't think there's enough data for that. But I can, to answer your question, I can usually visualize what I want to draw before I draw it. Now, it's not perfect. It's not in every detail. But I've got a pretty good idea where it's supposed to be. So I play my mind.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I sort of move things around. I can construct different illustrations, drawings. And until I find something that I like, so different versions will go through my mind before I commit it to drawing. Some of the artists I know will have a different approach. They'll have to draw all these poses and they'll fill up pages of different things. until it looks right.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Now, I don't use many references either, but I think that comes with a lot of practice. I've been drawing and observing a lot through my life, so I can dive into this and use those references that I've acquired to draw confidently without necessarily using a reference. But I will occasionally be like, you know, stumble upon a position or something that I'm just not comfortable with.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
For example, I don't draw many animals. So if I had to draw a lion today, I was like, okay, what's a lion's paw like exactly? I had an idea, but I was like, okay, let's double check. And I went and found some references and I worked with that. So yeah, I still use references now and then for sure.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, of course. I mean, if you know my work, you'll know, I'll just keep drawing these characters even, even today. And I'm still definitely more influenced by the original Street Fighters than the, than the latest ones. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, it's funny. I often come back to, like, it started when I had a little conversation with my mom when I was a kid. And I was saying to my mom, mom, why are you watching anime? Why are you watching cartoons? They're great. And she was like, she told me something like, when you grow up, you'll stop watching cartoons. And I was like, no, why?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Why would I ever stop loving animation? Anyway, that stayed with me. But I never thought I could actually be an animator. It's something that, in my family, there aren't many artists. To be fair, I was the first one to explore that sort of avenue. So I went to architecture because I was also a little bit of a science geek guy, and it was a bit both together, and I did a bit of maths and physics.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But architecture, I decided that by the end of it, I was like, this was fun, but I don't want to have a career in architecture. It's just not for me. So during the last year of my studies, I kind of spent a bit of time making a short film with a friend, having no idea where that was going. But for fun. And we mixed 3D and 2D. So we had 3D backgrounds, 3D spacecrafts, and 2D character in it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Mixing techniques already. It was a lot of fun. And that's when I realized, hang on. There's got to be a way, a path into a career that's never considered before. So I looked into animation schools. And that's when I realized that there were some good animation schools in France. And some of those have an international reputation.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But I went into a small school, a young one, that was teaching filmmaking in animation more than just animating, exactly. So I learned about storyboarding, writing scripts, thinking about music, comping things together, as much as I learned about animating characters. So that was a very well-rounded approach to animation, which I really, really enjoyed. And that was for about two years.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But still, that was the beginning for me. I felt like I learned a lot during my career. I really improved my animation techniques. So it's something I'm still evolving. And I'm teaching today a lot, but I feel like it's an interesting thing
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
go on the teaching side because you have to theorize things a little bit you have to explain to other people how to do it and that forces you to have a different perspective on your own work that that was interesting for me and uh that's it's a good thing too so i see i keep i keep learning and i hope i will do that for another 20 years hopefully
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
That's a good question, yeah. It's a bit like with children, I imagine. I don't have children myself, but choosing your favorite drawing feels a bit cruel to yourself.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Like, you know, you feel bad for the other ones. No, it's funny. Sometimes I go back to some old drawings, and I look at them, and I'm like, oh, I still love that one. It's great. So it's not just the latest ones, honestly, the best ones for me. It's funny enough. I appreciate different things in different drawings because it's like an exploration thing. You're like, here's a new drawing.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I'm going to try something with this one I haven't tried before. And every drawing has like a little bit of a story to it, something that it brings to my career as well. And I think the things I'm most proud of, though, remain little bits of animations. So throughout my career, I've done jobs. And that's interesting. I work for someone, they ask me to do this, and I do it. I can be proud of it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, yeah. Gosh, it's a long time ago. I forget even what the story was in some of these games. But yeah, they just stayed with me, the designs, the style. I think I was very much influenced by the looks. That's the first thing that would attract me to a game. It was the looks. And these games looked really good. They looked amazing at the time. And still today, they do.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
But it's never quite exactly what I want to do. So I did between jobs because I'm a freelancer and I've got sometimes no work. And I'm okay with it because... It's a great opportunity for me to be like, okay, I'm going to animate what I want to and paint what I want to. And then I can just express myself and do just what I want. And these are the bits I find for me that I enjoy the most.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I did this little animation of... I've like a Lord of the Rings scene with the wizard and the, I forget his name. Gandalf. Gandalf, that's it, against the Balrog and the bridge. I just wanted to animate that scene and it's five seconds long or not even that. And I did a little fight between Ryu and Chin-Li just for fun.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I'll just play with these scenes and make them look as cool as possible. And at the end of the day, these helped me get better jobs because I was pushing my skills. I was showing off my personal style as well. And I discovered that people liked that and got me more work. So it was a good investment, a good use of my time, I think, at the end of the day.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. It's a very hot topic at the moment, and it will be for a while, I think. No, I have to agree with the idea that the way it was created by essentially scraping the internet of all this art and using this, and And clearly people are using this to make money now. I can see that everywhere. It's a bit heartbreaking. It's a bit of a shame for sure.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And it feels like we can't, there's not much we can do to stop it. I think you're not going to see big production companies doing that just yet because they're too exposed. But there's tons of little independent businesses that will use that shamelessly and make money from that. It's a bit of a shame for sure. At the same time, I think AI is amazing.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I hope we'll talk about that too. Some of them still stand on their own two feet, despite the new technologies and everything.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
In other ways, it's a great progress, and I think it will bring a lot of good stuff. So I'm worried, obviously. I think it will take the jobs of quite a few of us, for sure. But I'm also pretty confident that it's not going to make artists disappear at all. I don't think so. One of the things that I like to... to take as an example is the fact that we have an interest in what people do.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It's one thing that a machine can do this or do that. And we're impressed the first time a machine can fly. It's amazing. And then nowadays, everybody gets on a plane, and it's fine. But if someone goes out and builds a little bike with little wings and manages to fly with his own energies, people will be amazed. Not because he can fly. We can go to the moon.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
It's because it's a human performance, right? And that's why we put tens of thousands of people in stadiums to watch people run around a ball, you know? Why do we do this? Because it's the human performance. We love to see people do things that are interesting, right? And I think it doesn't matter if a computer can draw an amazing picture and make an amazing film. We'll be like, yeah, great.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I'll play the game. It sounds fun. I'll watch that movie. It sounds fun. But when a guy comes along and does something beautiful, you'll still be like, wow, this is amazing. You'll still be able to measure that it's a great achievement that an artist can do this, paint this, paint that. So I think we'll keep an interest for what human made things are, you know,
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, I agree. It feels a bit soulless, right?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, I agree. But at the same time, I feel like with time, AI will get better at doing things like this. And it's also about who prompts the AI to do something. I think there's a way to prompt AI that will make some interesting content. And I do follow on social media some AI creators because they use it in a way that would not be viable by normal artists.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
The way they produce some imagery, each one of them would take so much time. You would not see that kind of content already just done by humans because it's too much work. And that, in a way, if they do it in an interesting way, you get something interesting out of it, right? And that's cool. So I think it's about who does it and how they... how they direct the AI to do something interesting.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So I think it's okay. AI can produce something interesting as long as there's a direction behind it. And also it has a lot of, like you said, with your child, you can go out and create something. So for example, I had a friend who had this card game project and he can't draw and he wanted to sell this card game project to publishers.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
and used AI to generate different card looks and styles for his card project. And yeah, it's great. You get sort of a preview of what it could be, and that's very, very handy to be able to do that. With the project, if the project gets made, then you hire an artist to create the final visuals. I think that kind of use is fine. In animation as well, you'll see clients come in with a pitch.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Usually they'll be like, um they'll be saying i want something a bit like this and they might have a reference or something and nowadays they come in and like they've already generated graphics and like i want it to look like this and they give you this ai reference feels a little bit insulting like come on you know what are you doing and it's kind of weird because they come up with this
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
very sort of amazingly crafted thing in a way. And you're like, I can't animate this. And this is beyond human. It was certainly not in your budget that you want to use. Right. How many years do you have?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So there's some funny situations like this. But I can see the use of it nonetheless. I think it's getting more and more used and can be good. But I do worry that it will shrink the industry at some point and then people can... We'll be able to do art, but may not be so many people that can make a living out of it. I don't know. It will be different.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I've got memories when I was a child and going to the arcades, right? That's what we used to do to get the best games, I suppose.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I think it will be interesting when you have a good interface to work with. So imagine a proper Photoshop kind of application that has really good tools that you can really use to craft something with AI. prompting a bit of text, and then you kind of hope that it will give you something good. And when it gives you something, there's not much that you can do to change it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And I would just... I didn't have enough money to play for hours. I just had a little bit of money and I would play a couple of games and whatnot and then just stand around for hours or as long as I could just looking at other players or just looking at the... the opening sequences that I've got on the arcades.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And there's a difficulty to create something that's consistent. So for example, for me, maybe if I wanted to use it, let's say we're in the future now, and AI is really easy to use, and it can do anything you want. Well, what I would probably do is that I would probably design my own characters, still draw them, And I could use AI to say, hey, can you refine my drawing?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Just make it look a bit better. And I would say, I want more contrasted colors or something. And I could say exactly what I want. And I could say to the AI, just do a 3D model of this. And then I could go in there and then draw over it to fix things. I don't like the belt here. I'm just going to do that. integrate this into it and it would be seamless.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And then I would be like, okay, now I'm going to do a little storyboard. I'm going to make it simple, do very quickly some thumbnails that give it a good idea of the story. And I could just give that to the AI and kind of generate with my style, what I designed.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
and creates a story that I want to see, it would be quite satisfying and a kind of quick way to get to something that looks good without too much work. And I understand that if everybody can do this, then how do you make money from it? It's another question, but I think a lot of people could create their own content that way as well. That would be interesting, I think.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
it's hard to imagine everything we could do. But I could see myself use it if I was kind of born with it and still want to draw and still use it at the same time. I think it could be interesting.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Oh, well, I don't know. This could be a little bit political. I don't know if you want that on your show, but it's because I'm sort of reacting to what's happening in the news. And one of the things I want to do is to encourage artists to speak up a little bit. not necessarily in a controversial way or in an aggressive way, but to sort of take a stand a little bit on what their values are.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Because I think it would be good if more people were less shy about saying what they want out of the world and out of politics a little bit. So it could be a bit more common to say, I want people to help each other, for example. I want people to have a bit more sharing the wealth or protecting the planet or these sort of things. So I sort of created this look where people wear a red glove.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And yeah, I would look at the, just observe the characters and how they move and their attacks or whatever, because usually it's fighting games most of the time. But we talked about Bubble Ball, for example. It had a really cute style. And the design of the monsters, just a few pixels wide, they were still very clever and very expressive. So yeah, it was fascinating for my childhood eyes.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I've seen that on your Instagram. It's like a thumbs down thing to people. protest a little bit against abuses and bad politics, if you want. And to encourage people to have to say that, to say it out loud, without being too controversial. So it's trying to find the lines so you don't get too much heat in return or too much backlash. So that's my little project at the moment.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I started this a couple of weeks ago. And I'm going to try to encourage people to do this. This is purely a social media sort of thing. challenge that I created. On Instagram, you can create these art challenges and people kind of get on with it if they find it interesting. It's a way of interacting with your community on social media. Otherwise, I still have this project that I had last year.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I had this project called Blue. And it was a project of short film that I tried to launch on Kickstarter. But because, as you know now, animation is expensive, I needed a lot of money to this. And I tried to put the bar...
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
high and that was high relatively high let's say and i was trying to get to a certain amount of money and i was like it's gonna fall short so i kind of stopped the campaign midway but i did spend like a year to build up to this but the project is still there and i'm thinking maybe i will turn this into a comic book or something like this in the future
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
No, the Kickstarter was actually a year ago. But it's still up. You can still look at the project if you're interested and check it out, see what it's about. It's a bit about AI. It's about sci-fi. It's about students trying to build an AI, actually, and trying to talk about this topic. So, yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I had a great time, guys. You're amazing. And I always love talking about animation. So that was great. Thanks for the opportunity to share a little bit more and to let people know about what animators do.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
I was absolutely mesmerized by those. So, yeah, I, um, I remember just, just now about these Irem, Irem games. Um, I think, uh, I don't know if I say that right. It's IRM. Um, they, they made, um, these, these ninja games and I think Irem Corp was the one that did, uh, um, our type, I think. Um, I forget that too, but our type was, uh, our types of throwback, man. Yeah. Gosh, he was so good.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
So good. Yeah. I was a massive fan of that. I don't know about you guys, but I have these songs in my head sometimes from video game times that just keep coming back. And on my playlist, I've got some games, tunes, just because I enjoy listening to them again. Yeah, it just marks you for life, I suppose. That's what it is.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
We're lucky. We're lucky we've seen it all coming to life. We've seen it. We've lived it through it. There's only one time in history when video games...
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Absolutely. I think the technique they used was a technique called rotoscoping, which is, you could say, a little bit cheating. But honestly, even Disney used these techniques, and they're perfectly fine. The idea is that you use an actual footage of a real person as a base for your animation. Doesn't mean that you copy everything, because you have to reinvent the design. You have to simplify it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
You have to add the style to things. And all the effects. There's plenty of work to be done, but it gives you a solid base. And I think they had two things. They had these good modeled footage, and they had more frames. You needed to have the technology to have more frames for your little pixel art, you know, and your little, how do you call them?
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Um, uh, sprites. That's it. I was going to offer that.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Yeah. Um, so, uh, you can only still use so many drawings, I suppose, and back in the days, but it was good to see that fluidity, that, that motion is beautiful. Um,
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
The thing is that 3D had been around for a little while, right? It was coming, right? We were expecting great things from 3D, but I think this one was the first one to really give a glimpse of what we could expect. There's just the fluidity, the nice designs, the clever controls and whatnot. So, yes, I think there was a big leap forward with that game that really kind of
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
said to everybody, this is the future, right? At that point, he knew. Because before that, the 3D was so clumsy and clunky in so many ways. But after that, he was like, no, no coming back now. This is 3D. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
This is a great question because you wonder, right? We tend to think, I think it's probably a default position. Most people think, Better graphics is just going to be better. Why would you look back and go back to something that's less detailed or less smooth? But the thing with art in general is that it's never been about being realistic.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
If you look at any, like the history of painting, there was a time first when you start with simple drawings there's a lack of experience or lack of tools and then painters develop these new art style that become more and more realistic and then eventually when you get to a certain realism you go back to stylized style you know and and
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Picasso came along when he knew how to paint realistic things, but suddenly decides to do cubism and people were like, oh, this is great. It comes down to the fact that there are different styles and I think we appreciate different styles and that's what it is. And when 3D comes along and it's a new thing, everybody's interested because we're exploring a new avenue. That's what it is.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
3D is like a new thing with a new look. So we threw ourselves into it. We want to see how far we can push it. And I think 3D has now basically attained its maturity. We have great styles that are really perfectly controlled. It feels like
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
3d can hardly get any better it's so good uh you know it's so hyper realistic we can do a fantasy we can do realism all that no problem special effects are just mind-blowing so now we've sort of reached the end of of that world in principle. We know what we can do with it. So we're always curious to find new things. So we go back to other styles.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
And what's the beauty of a sketch, for example, is that it's simple. Just a little line on white paper can do something interesting. Why? Because it's stylization of the real world. And everybody, if it's done well, everybody's going to like it. You don't have to go full realism to make something interesting. And I think that's what's happening with pixel art.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Pixel art is interesting because it's a simplification. It's a stylization of the world. And it's interesting in itself. As long as it's interesting, it will always be there, I think. To me, it looks like a painting because the pixels are big and colorful and bright. And yeah, it has this appeal of a beautiful painting when you just brighten up the colors and simplify the drawings.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Hi, it's always a pleasure. I always love talking about animation and video games as well. So yeah, looking forward to it.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
Well, there's other things than just the details. There's, for example, the atmosphere of a game, the colors, the mood. So you can create with simple shapes. You can put an atmosphere into your game. And that in itself can be appealing. And what you see with 3D a lot is that this is a bit harder to control. Let's say an artist is painting something just directly, putting colors on the screen.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
They have a full control of what it looks like. They can decide at any moment, I want to have particles there. I want to have a reddish hue over here. And then it can create that mood exactly the way they imagine it. If you do 3D, you have to go through the rules of 3D, which is completely different. You have to put a light in there.
Video Gamers Podcast
The Art of Gaming and the Threat of AI - Gaming Podcast
You have to use the sort of recreation of real life effects to get the result. and you change the lights or bulbs somewhere, and that changes the mood of the whole scene, it's really hard to combine things in a way that you get exactly what you imagine. And that makes it harder for 3D artists to create very specific looks. And that's why they've been challenged to do 2Ds.