James Cunliffe

3D Animation

New Skool Community

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The Hidden Archive: Free Creative Tools, Resources and a New Teleprompter App Over the past few years, I’ve created a slightly ridiculous number of things. Books. Apps. Courses. Music. Videos. Experiments. Resources. Some useful, some strange, and quite a few that sit somewhere in between. One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while is create a single place where I can bring more of this work together and make it accessible to people who might find it useful. That place is The Hidden Archive Skool community. The idea is to build a growing library of creative tools, resources, courses and experiments for people interested in creativity, technology, storytelling and the changing world of creative work. And there’s already quite a bit inside. Introducing Archive Prompter The newest addition to the Archive is Archive Prompter, a teleprompter app I’ve been developing to solve some of the frustrations I’ve had when recording videos. As someone who spends a lot of time talking to cameras, recording presentations and trying to remember what I was supposed to say next, I wanted something simple, clean and genuinely useful. Archive Prompter has grown from that idea into its own little application, with different ways of displaying and controlling scripts depending on how you like to work. Rather than keeping it tucked away as another personal project, I’ve decided to make Archive Prompter available through The Hidden Archive’s free tier. But it isn’t the only thing available for free. Rob Like a Robot | Free eBook I’ve also added my book Rob Like a Robot to the Archive as a free download. The book explores creativity, automation and the strange relationship between humans and machines — particularly the idea that as technology becomes increasingly capable of doing repetitive work for us, perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to compete with machines by becoming more machine-like ourselves. Instead, we should be asking what technology can free us to do. It was written during an earlier chapter of my own exploration into creativity and technology, but many of the ideas feel even more relevant now as AI rapidly changes the creative landscape. Creative Archetypes You’ll also find the Creative Archetypes app available on the free tier. This was an experiment inspired by the idea that we all approach creativity differently. Some of us explore. Some build. Some challenge. Some nurture. Some obsess over understanding how everything works. Creative Archetypes is designed as a playful way of exploring those different creative instincts and perhaps understanding a little more about how you personally approach the creative process. Between Archive Prompter, Rob Like a Robot and Creative Archetypes, I wanted the free side of the community to contain things that are genuinely useful in their own right. You don’t need to subscribe to a paid tier just to find something worthwhile. Going Deeper Into the Archive For those who want to explore further, there is also a premium tier that opens up more of the work I’ve created over the years. Premium members get access to additional resources connected to Field Notes, my series of pocket investigations exploring ideas around culture, psychology, technology and the stranger corners of human experience. That includes access to the presentation slides I’ve created for the series, allowing you to dig into the research and ideas behind the videos in more detail. There’s also access to some of my older music and albums, projects from different periods of my creative life that haven’t always had an obvious home online. And for people interested in learning the practical side of creative production, premium members can access my 2D Character Animation course. The course explores my process for building and animating 2D characters, taking you through the workflow behind creating characters and bringing them to life through tools such as Photoshop and After Effects. You can also take the first module for free:   Building a Creative Library Ultimately, The Hidden Archive isn’t really intended to be a single course or product. I see it more as a library that can continue growing alongside the things I’m already doing. When I build a useful tool, it can go into the Archive. When I create a course, I can add it to the library. When a Field Notes investigation produces interesting research or resources, I can share them there. And when I inevitably disappear down another creative rabbit hole and emerge several weeks later with some strange new experiment, there’s now somewhere for that to live too. I’m also increasingly interested in exploring accessible creative technology, particularly free and open-source tools that can help people create without needing expensive subscriptions or enormous budgets. So over time, I hope The Hidden Archive becomes a useful collection of tools, ideas and knowledge for anyone trying to make things, learn new skills or simply explore where creativity and technology might be heading next. There’s plenty more planned. But for now, the doors to The Hidden Archive are open. You can join the community for free, download Archive Prompter, read Rob Like a Robot, explore Creative Archetypes, and have a look around. Join The Hidden Archive: https://www.skool.com/the-hidden-archive-4393

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The Hidden Archive

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What is The Hidden Archive? The YouTube channel finally got a rebrand. I realised two years ago that my YouTube page was starting to feel uncurated. The simple truth was that being multidisciplinary, and wanting to explore a wide variety of mediums, had led to a kind of anti-niching. In my own way, I was navigating the principle of correspondence. In creative abstraction terms, that essentially means gaining an understanding of multiple fields and then connecting the dots between them to deepen my understanding of creativity as a whole. That said, I realised that on the surface, this focus was beginning to look unclear. So I split the channel into three: one for music, one for creative tutorials, and one for the exploration of myth, technology, storytelling and ideas. And I really got drawn into this new direction. Since the switch-up, I’ve created two series. The first is The Hidden Archive, a documentary-style video essay series covering a wide range of topics; from UFOs and the Gnostic creation story to the hidden psychological patterns that repeat across human history.   I also have Field Notes, which is a more raw, presentation-led educational format that I record from my desk rather than the studio. These are pocket investigations into subject matters that keep me curious about the world.   I briefly want to talk about the creative direction behind the rebrand. The logo itself is heavily inspired by occult symbolism. The further I dig into the subject of psychology, the more occult themes tend to emerge. I find that a lot of old occult symbols lack readability, though, so I wanted to make The Hidden Archive logo feel less complex. There’s a dual meaning to the logo design. Carl Jung’s Red Book has had a huge influence on my life, and there’s a vision he has about a well at the top of a mountain. From this well flows water, which acts as a metaphor for wisdom. That knowledge travels down from the peak to all those who seek it. There’s a small circle at the top of the peak in the logo. The lines travelling down around the silhouette of the person signify that movement of information. The silhouette receives the wisdom at the centre and sits within the target of an outside force. The message is really this: if you watch this channel, you will be targeted with new ideas. The split silhouette represents balance. The teal colour represents the water from above, while the contrasting gold suggests that the ideas explored on the channel hold real-world value. To people outside of the creative industry, the logo might just look like random lines and circles, or maybe an alien getting abducted. But it has been crafted with intention. And if you’re a curious mind, now you know what it represents. I plan on running The Hidden Archive channel in the background as an outlet for expression, but also as a place where I can provide value to those who want to gain a better understanding of the world we exist within, and how we can get the most out of it.

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What Are UFOs?

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What Are UFOs and What Do They Say About Humanity? Back in 2024, I went down the rabbit hole of UFOs/ UAPs. It was around the time David Grusch hit the scene and it really did seem like we were going to get disclosure any day. There was an energy around the topic, it felt charged, so much so that I found I could rarely think of much else. I read American Cosmic by Diana Pasulka, picked up Elizondo’s Imminent, watched all the congressional hearings on the topic, and got hooked on AJ’s The Why Files. The whole topic was a special interest of mine right until January 2025, when News Nation released a video with US Air Force veteran Jake Barber, of a UAP crash retrieval of a giant egg. The evidence… A video that looks like someone poking a normal sized egg with a stick in low resolution… And honestly, that video switched me off from the subject all together until I started to see patterns re-emerging once more. More recently I spent 6 months working on a series called ‘The Red Book’ which investigated Carl Jung’s Libre Novus, bringing his visions to life, and using the stories and lessons as a lens to view the modern world. Eventually I discovered that Jung had wrote about UFOs in 1958. Carl noticed that UFOs seem to emerge in times of a meaning crisis, which would ultimately become the thesis of the investigative video I made on the topic. I wanted to lay out a timeline of UFO encounters across history, from the alien cave paintings in Western Australia, which are potentially 4000-17000 years old, to the more modern sightings and stories around the Nimitz Tic Tac video. And it all gets a little bit strange to say the least. I feel like I’ve done a good job of condensing the heart of the topic into 35 minutes, exploring UFOs from a multitude of angles, using visuals to help others better understand the recurring patterns that emerge. But where do I draw my own conclusions on the subject matter? I have never seen a UFO, although I have had strange synchronicities in my life that have made it near impossible to remain nihilistic. My gut feeling is that when we feel unsatisfied with reality, there’s something within us that draws us to the sky and hopes that there is something beyond our current understanding of reality. I also think from a philosophical point of view, that we shouldn’t sit back and hope that saviors will emerge from the sky. Instead, we should find ways of living that have the potential to align the world and put it on a brighter path. While I think there probably is more to reality than we can fully comprehend, we should remain humble to the fact that we don’t have those answers and we should be skeptical of those who say they do without substantial evidence to back it up.

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The Gnostic Creation Story

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Why This Story Is Valuable While researching the Red Book series, I’d occasionally read comments linking Jung’s work to Gnosticism. I was raised by Christians, and although I’m agnostic myself (if I had to put a label on it), I’m still interested in the history of religion and more recently whether the stories hold any value in the modern world. I eventually made my way to an Alex O’Connor video with Bart Erhman where they outlined the core aspects of the Gnostic Creation Story, from the Apocryphon of John. Which then led me to a translation of those texts here: http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-davies.html It’s a wild take on the ‘true’ nature of Christianity. That turns a lot about that tradition on its head. If you want to know how, I recommend you watch the video. I think like any story it can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. If you’re like me, with a slight technological bias, you might draw parallels with simulation theory, I enjoy finding relevant symbolism in these kinds of stories, but above all else the gnostic world view felt like an appropriate lens to view the current state of geopolitics and global affairs. The story itself is about a narcissistic and jealous ruler who projects a false narrative to his subordinates with the intention of control and manipulation. It’s a theme that we’re all too familiar with and I think that’s why the story resonates with so many people. Because there’s this glimmer of hope that each and every one of us has the capacity to break away from a broken system, that we have the potential to see through the lies and do something about it, and that’s a powerful archetypical idea. I think a lot of people in society feel helpless as the bigger players make moves that we can’t fully comprehend, yet whose actions cause significant harm to ourselves and those around us. The messaging in this story, at least to me, reminds me of the butterfly effect, where a single flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a sequence of events that changes the nature of reality for everyone. I think we need more butterflies aligning and flapping in a better direction, and if nothing else I’d like this video to imbue a sense of hope in those who watch it. To help them understand that they can make an impact, and that there’s still a reason to try and do the right thing, even in a world that doesn’t seem to reward it.

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New Red Book Series

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What this series is about? Carl Jung’s The Red Book was released to the public in October 2009, almost a century after he began working on it between 1913 and 1921. Jung had collaborated closely with Sigmund Freud until their split in 1913, after which Jung entered a period of intense inner exploration. Around that time, Jung recorded vivid visions: flooding across Europe, mass death, a continent “washed” in blood. A year later, Europe entered the First World War. Whether those visions were prophecy, pattern-recognition, anxiety, or something more symbolic, Jung treated them as meaningful, and followed them inward, deliberately, to map the forces shaping his psyche: persona, shadow, desire, fear, and (in his own language) soul. This series is an attempt to take that work seriously. Not to sensationalise it, but to ask a practical question: what can The Red Book teach us about meaning, fear, and the stories we tell ourselves when the world feels unstable? Why I’m making this? A couple of months ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a rare kind of clarity, the “quiet certainty” you don’t get often. The idea arrived fully formed: make a series exploring The Red Book, and use it as a craft challenge, as well as a research project, writing, presenting, storytelling, editing, with something useful on the other side. Part of the urgency is due to the times we’re living through. When conflict in Europe escalates, it’s hard not to notice how quickly stability can feel conditional. I’m not trying to predict the future, but I do think introspection matters more in anxious times, as the fear can permiate into our culture. It becomes politics. It becomes behaviour. Jung’s work is one of the most direct attempts I know of to meet that fear internally rather than outsource it. And at a more personal level: I don’t want to drift through the next decade passively consuming commentary. I’d rather build something, and build it with intent. Why the production approach is mixed-media (and includes AI)? One practical problem: The Red Book is full of imagery that’s intensely visual, symbolic, and often surreal. To do it justice traditionally would require huge time, specialist craft, or a very large budget. At the same time, the themes feel timely, so waiting “until I can afford it” doesn’t make much sense. That’s where the modern tools become useful. Used carefully, they allow an independent creator to visualise material that would otherwise be inaccessible, as long as you treat the output as raw material, not a finished style. My approach is mixed-media: building a coherent visual language, then using AI-generated elements as components that I art-direct, edit, and integrate through a more traditional post pipeline. On the research side, I’ve used tools like Perplexity and NotebookLM to sanity-check interpretations and cross-reference details in the manuscript, not as an authority, but as a faster way to catch mistakes and surface alternative readings. Visually, I’ve taken cues from Jung’s own illustrations, a blend of illuminated-manuscript detail, abstraction, and private symbolism, then used that as a style constraint. From there: generation, selection, compositing, paintover, layout and motion, with Photoshop and After Effects doing the heavy lifting. The goal isn’t “AI aesthetic”. The goal is authored coherence. Why use AI for parts of this at all? Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious describes shared psychological patterns, archetypes, instincts, repeating motifs across culture. There’s a quiet symmetry in using machine learning systems trained on large-scale cultural material to help visualise a project rooted in shared human symbolism. Not because the machine “understands” the symbols, but because it can help surface forms and textures that feel dream-adjacent, which suits The Red Book. More importantly, this is about creative agency. I understand why people are uneasy about AI, the ethics, the economics, the speed of change. I’ve had the same discomfort. But blanket dismissal doesn’t protect your creativity; it often just delays your ability to navigate reality. Used responsibly, these tools can help tell stories where footage doesn’t exist, where locations are impossible, or where the budget simply isn’t there. Big creators are already doing that, and so are the companies many of us work with. My view is simple: learn how it works, decide where you draw your line, and stay in control of your process. This series is partly an argument, in practice: storytelling is becoming more accessible, and creators shouldn’t surrender their voice out of fear. You don’t have to love the tools, but you do need to understand them.

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Updated Motion Reel

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After a year at GMGN delivering typography-led motion and design for a range of Web3 clients, I’m back in freelance, and back in the gaming space. The last three months have been full-on: producing, editing and animating across multiple deliverables, with a heavier focus on social-first formats and fast turnaround. This has been overdue, but I’ve also taken the opportunity to refresh the site, starting with an updated motion reel:   What’s New? Before GMGN, typography wasn’t a core part of my toolkit. I came up through video production, where the work is often driven by footage, pacing and story. GMGN’s output was different: message-first, text-heavy, and designed to land in-feed. That year forced a step-change in how I think about hierarchy, clarity and brand voice. Over the course of the year I built and shipped hundreds of pieces, embedded into a Figma-led workflow, and left with a stronger, more flexible design palette that now carries into everything I do, especially when a project needs content systems rather than one-off edits. If you’re curious, the case study is here. Tool-wise I’m still primarily in the Adobe ecosystem (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects), with Resolve when a project calls for it, and selective use of AI-assisted tools where they genuinely speed up ideation, visual development or cleanup. Blender and Unreal are still on my roadmap, I’m just being intentional about where I invest learning time while client work is busy. Is That Rotoscoping? A lot of the recent gaming work leans on rotoscoping, cutting subjects frame-by-frame so you can place type, UI and graphic elements behind the action without losing readability. It’s one of those techniques that looks simple when it’s done well, but it’s very easy to get wrong: edge quality, motion continuity, hierarchy and composition all matter. The good news is that modern tools can handle a large chunk of the grunt work, but getting it to a professional finish still needs a careful eye and a clean process, especially when you’re trying to create something that feels distinctive, not templated. It’s been a genuinely fun area to lean into again. Availability? At the moment I’m on a rolling retainer with a tech and gaming-focused marketing agency, and I’m rebuilding my freelance network after the year at GMGN. I’m also balancing a couple of personal projects alongside client work, so I’m selective, but I’m always open to the right conversation, especially where the brief needs strong delivery, clear creative direction, and post-production leadership.  

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How I Built This ‘About Me’ Video

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I recently re-subscribed to Midjourney, to test out some of its new video functionality and I discovered a little VFX/ Post-Production hack that really helps out when isolating images. But first, if you haven’t already seen it, the video is below (there’s no sound as it sits on the Website’s homepage).   Why Make This Video? There’s a big project I’m working on behind the scenes which is going to require the blending of traditional design/ motion graphics/ filmmaking techniques but mixed with modern AI tools. There’ll be more about that in a later post but while I’m paying £50 a month to Midjourney, I wanted to familiarise myself with the tool. So thus began the challenge of rehashing what I’ve been up to over the last half decade in a visual format that would sit well on my website. The limitations I set was to keep the text in 2 containers around a central video component, make the copy rhyme throughout and keep the imagery relevant to the copy while complying with the blue and purple colour scheme of the site. Is it all A.I? No, I wanted to have full control of the copy for this, I often use tools like ChatGPT to bounce ideas off or to troubleshoot but as this piece was about me, I wanted the written part to be as close to unedited as possible. There was a challenge in getting certain lines to fit within the containers, so a lot of sections did change.  There’s a hybrid of Midjourney and Photoshop throughout this one, for example the director’s clapperboard was without text, which was later added in Photoshop. The 3D camera is a gen that required heavy editing in Photoshop (Midjourney tends to generate images with blemishes that need fixing before you can run it through their video gen). The laptop, phone and book are all pulled from previous work I’ve done and are modified After Effects templates. Finally, everything has been colour graded to fit the brand guidelines of the website. It’s Not Possible Without Keylight Here’s the secret sauce to making a video like this, first of all you’re going to need to prompt your images ‘floating’ in front of a flat green background. You’d end up with something like this:               It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to tweak, the following step is to take it into a tool like Photoshop and remove the background, then add a chroma green backdrop afterwards. You would then add this back into Midjourney as the reference image before prompting the video component to spin on its axis extremely slowly. If you’re lucky you’ll get something like this:   And once you have that, you can take it into After Effects and run an effect called ‘Key Light’ to take away the green, allowing you to place it over any new background you like.   What Are The Limitations? You’ll still have to generate multiple iterations to find a clip that you like. You have to be incredibly specific with your prompts or the A.I is going to run off and create a lot of weird visual artifacts. You have to be eagle eyed when looking for mistakes and even with ‘good’ generations, they’re still not perfect. A.I should still be treated like a tool and is worth exploring, but the important factor is blending it with the other creative skills you’re developing. I wouldn’t have been able to create this video without having experience with motion design, typography, Photoshop and After Effects. As these creative tools become more accessible, those with a solid background and understanding of the theory will still have an edge.

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The principles of 3D animation: rigging, keyframes, and more

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3D animation is a complex and sophisticated medium, requiring a deep understanding of a range of principles and techniques to create realistic and believable motion. From rigging and keyframes to timing and weight, there are many different elements that go into creating a successful 3D animation. Here’s a look at some of the key principles of 3D animation: Rigging: Rigging refers to the process of creating a skeletal structure for a 3D model, which is used to define the movement and deformation of the model. This involves creating bones and joints, and setting up controls and constraints to allow the animator to manipulate the model in a realistic and believable way. Keyframes: Keyframes are used to define the major poses or positions of a character or object in an animation. By setting keyframes at the beginning and end of an action, animators can define the starting and ending positions, and then use in-between frames to fill in the action between those poses. Timing: Timing refers to the speed at which an action occurs, and is an important element of 3D animation. By adjusting the timing of an action, animators can create a sense of weight and momentum, and make the action feel more realistic and believable. Weight: Weight is an important element of 3D animation, and refers to the sense of mass and gravity that an object or character has. By understanding the principles of weight and using them effectively, animators can create a sense of realism and believability in their animations. Easing: Easing refers to the way that an object or character accelerates or decelerates as it moves. By using easing, animators can create a sense of momentum and make the motion feel more natural and believable. Overall, 3D animation requires a deep understanding of a range of principles and techniques to create realistic and believable motion. By mastering techniques such as rigging, keyframes, timing, weight, and easing, animators can bring their characters and stories to life in a way that engages and immerses the audience.

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The process of creating a 3D animation: from concept to final product

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Creating a 3D animation is a complex and time-consuming process, involving a range of steps and tasks to bring a concept to life. From the initial idea and storyboarding to the final rendering and compositing, there are many different elements that go into creating a successful 3D animation. Here’s a general overview of the process of creating a 3D animation: Idea and concept: The first step in creating a 3D animation is to come up with an idea or concept. This might be a simple idea for a short animation, or a more complex concept for a feature film or video game. Once the idea is defined, the next step is to create a storyboard, which is a series of rough sketches that outline the action and key scenes of the animation. Pre-production: Once the idea and storyboard are in place, the next step is to enter the pre-production phase. This involves fleshing out the details of the animation, including the characters, environments, and props. It also involves creating a script and a shot list, which is a detailed plan for each shot or scene in the animation. Production: The production phase is where the actual animation takes place. This involves creating the 3D models and characters, setting up the rigging and animation controls, and creating the keyframes and in-between frames to define the motion and action. It also involves creating the textures and materials for the models, and setting up the lighting and rendering settings. Post-production: Once the animation is complete, the next step is post-production, which involves compositing the final shots and adding any special effects or additional layers. It also involves adding sound effects and music, and finalising the colour correction and grading. Final product: Once the post-production is complete, the final animation is ready for delivery. This might involve creating a final video file for distribution, or integrating the animation into a larger project such as a video game or feature film. Creating a 3D animation is a complex and time-consuming process, involving a range of steps and tasks to bring a concept to life. From the initial idea and storyboarding to the final rendering and compositing, there are many different elements that go into creating a successful 3D animation.

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3D animation for games: creating characters and environments

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3D animation is a key element of modern video games, adding depth and immersion to the gaming experience. Whether creating realistic and believable characters or immersive and detailed environments, 3D animation plays a crucial role in bringing the world of a game to life. Here’s a look at how 3D animation is used in the creation of characters and environments for games: Characters: 3D animation is used to create the characters that populate the world of a game. This involves creating 3D models of the characters, rigging them with a skeletal structure to define their movement, and animating them to bring them to life. 3D animation is used to create a wide range of characters, from simple NPCs to complex and realistic main characters. Environments: 3D animation is also used to create the environments of a game, including the landscapes, buildings, and other structures that populate the world. This involves creating 3D models of the environment, adding texture and detail to create a realistic and believable world, and animating any interactive elements such as doors or vehicles. Cutscenes: 3D animation is often used to create cutscenes or cinematic sequences in games, which are used to advance the story or provide important information to the player. These cutscenes can be created using a combination of 3D models and 2D artwork, and are usually rendered and composited in a way that creates a seamless and cinematic experience. Overall, 3D animation is a key element of modern video games, adding depth and immersion to the gaming experience. Whether creating characters or environments, 3D animation plays a crucial role in bringing the world of a game to life.

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