A.I Art Archives | James Cunliffe

New Skool Community

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, 3D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Creative Writing, Design, Directing, Film & Video, Marketing, Music, Producing, Social Media, Tutorials, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

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

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, 3D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Creative Writing, Directing, Film & Video, Producing, Social Media, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

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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How I Built This ‘About Me’ Video

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, 3D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Creative Writing, Photoshop, Producing, Social Media, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

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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Is Gen AI Bad For The Environment

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Creative Writing, Design, Photoshop, Social Media / James Cunliffe

Generative AI is a divisive topic depending on who you speak with. One recent critique I heard was that it’s extremely bad for the environment, but no evidence has ever been presented with this statement. That made me slightly sceptical of that specific talking point so I decided to ask the AI to defend itself. This was my first time using ChatGPT’s deep research and I’ve got to say, I was mighty impressed, it spent a good 12 minutes, checking through 23 sources and refining the information with the queries I’d set and ultimately this is what came back: Electricity Use: AI Image Generation vs. Everyday Activities Introduction Generating an image with an AI model (like ChatGPT’s image generation or similar generative models) consumes electricity – as do many common household tasks. This report compares the electricity usage of creating one AI-generated image (in kilowatt-hours, kWh) to several everyday activities, highlighting the environmental impact (energy use and equivalent carbon emissions) of each. Below, we examine each activity’s typical energy consumption and, where available, provide an estimate of its carbon footprint (CO₂ emissions). A summary comparison table is included for quick reference. (Note: Carbon emissions are approximated using a conversion of about 300–500 grams CO₂ per kWh, depending on energy source. Lower values assume cleaner electricity, higher values a fossil-fuel mix.) AI Image Generation (Single Image) Generative AI models require computational power. Running a model inference to produce one image typically uses only a few thousandths of a kWh. Recent tests on various AI image models found an average of about 0.003 kWh per image generated (theverge.com). This is on the same order of magnitude as the energy needed to charge a smartphone once. In fact, one AI-generated image can consume almost as much electricity as fully charging an average smartphone (theverge.com). In CO₂ terms, 0.003 kWh corresponds roughly to 1–2 grams of CO₂. Why so low? Individual AI inferences are brief computations, often on efficient hardware. However, note that the training of such models is extremely energy-intensive (hundreds of MWh theverge.com), and widespread use of AI at scale means these small per-image costs could add up globally. Boiling a Kettle of Water Boiling water in an electric kettle is a common high-power task. To boil about 1 liter of water (from room temperature to 100 °C) in a typical 2–3 kW electric kettle uses roughly 0.1–0.15 kWh of electricity (theguardian.com). For example, one experiment measured about 0.112 kWh to boil 1 L in an electric jug kettle (theguardian.com). This is about 30–50 times more energy than generating a single AI image. In terms of CO₂, one kettle-boil might emit on the order of 50–75 g CO₂ (depending on the electricity source). Boiling smaller quantities or only as much as needed can save energy. (For comparison, heating water on a stove or microwave is generally a bit less efficient. A microwave might use ~0.14 kWh to boil a cup, see microwave section.) Charging a Smartphone Charging a modern smartphone fully (from 0 to 100%) consumes a surprisingly small amount of energy: on the order of 0.01–0.02 kWh. The U.S. EPA estimates around 0.012–0.019 kWh per charge for an average smartphone (theverge.comepa.gov). That’s only 12–19 Wh – a tiny fraction of a kWh. The carbon footprint per phone charge is correspondingly tiny: roughly 5–10 g CO₂. This means that generating one AI image (≈0.003 kWh) uses roughly one-quarter of the energy needed to charge a phone (theverge.com). In other words, one AI image = 1/4 of a phone charge in energy. Both are very small in absolute terms. Playing Video Games (Console or PC, 1 Hour) Video gaming can draw significant power, especially on modern consoles or gaming PCs. The exact usage varies by device and game complexity: Game console (modern): A current-generation console like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series can draw around 150–200 watts on average during gameplay, which is approximately 0.15–0.2 kWh per hour (gamesradar.com). Demanding titles on a PS5 have been observed to push power use to ~200 W (0.2 kWh/hour gamesradar.com). Older consoles (PS4, Xbox One) or less intensive games might use a bit less (100–150 W). Gaming PC: A high-performance gaming PC (with a powerful GPU) typically ranges from 200 up to 500 watts under load (energysage.com.) This equates to 0.2–0.5 kWh per hour of intense gameplay. An average gaming session on a mid-range PC might be around 250–300 W (~0.25–0.3 kWh/hour), whereas a top-tier rig can approach 0.5 kWh in an hour of play. Over an hour, gaming easily uses two orders of magnitude more energy than an AI image generation. For example, 1 hour on a console (~0.2 kWh) could power ≈70 AI image generations. Carbon-wise, an hour of console gaming might emit ~60–100 g CO₂ (if using ~0.2 kWh), while an hour on a high-end PC (0.5 kWh) could emit ~150–250 g CO₂. Using energy-saving settings, limiting 4K graphics, or enabling efficiency modes can reduce a gaming system’s power draw. Rendering a 3D Object (Graphics Software) Rendering 3D graphics or animations in software like Blender is a computationally intensive task, often maxing out CPU/GPU resources for extended periods. A mid-range desktop workstation can draw around 600–800 W when actively rendering (blog.render.st). This means roughly 0.6–0.8 kWh per hour of rendering time for a moderately complex scene on a typical setup (blog.render.st). In practical terms, a 10-minute render could consume about 0.1 kWh, and a full hour of continuous rendering might use ~0.7 kWh. That’s equivalent to 233 AI images (if each image is 0.003 kWh) or about 5–7 smartphone charges per hour of rendering. The CO₂ emissions for an hour of rendering could be on the order of 200–400 g CO₂. High-end workstations with multiple GPUs could use even more power, while simpler renders on laptops use less. (By comparison, idling or light 3D modeling without rendering is far less demanding.) Watching Online Video (Streaming 1 Hour) Watching an hour of streaming video (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) not only involves the electricity to

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Leaf & Core Comic

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Creative Writing, Design, Photoshop, Social Media / James Cunliffe

It’s been 9 months since I last took on a personal creative project, and that’s simply because life got too busy. I transitioned from freelance to full time in order to better secure a mortgage and help improve my family’s living standards, which has meant a lot of personal sacrifice and less free time in general. On top of this, our house move dragged on for 11 months and the amount of admin to make sure it didn’t fall through was essentially a part time job. The good news… We got the house, after nearly falling through a dozen times we got the home of our dreams (at least within our budget). But it turns out that our new residence was by no means perfect. For one, it was at the upper end of what we could afford, in our starry eyed nature we overlooked some of the minor quirks that quickly became major issues that needed fixing. So my creative aptitude quickly moved from digital to DIY. I’ve been on the roof, scraping wall paper and polystyrene off the walls, painting, ripping up carpet, laying flooring, lifting heavy things which has lead to injuries… Lots of them… All while taking care of my work responsibilities and family. There is an end goal to getting this home in shape, and that is to get back to creating content! But the list of things needing to be done to get to that point is constantly increasing and I’ve found that I haven’t had the environment or time to push forward. But then ChatGPT’s new image features came out, and I saw a glimmer of hope. I’ve made some comics in the past and with the new ChatGPT update, I wondered if it was possible to create a new IP based on the art style of my past projects. After a couple of hours testing out the tools, I fed ChatGPT a character sheet from my animation Wayward Valley, some backgrounds from Frigsbys Ferries and a dozen face shapes from various digital art projects from my past. I told it my inspirations and my vision for the comic and that I wanted 2 characters ‘Leaf and Core’, a sentient rock and plant navigating the post-apocalypse trying to find meanings. And ChatGPT, took my old artwork as a base and produced something new. Now, it’s by no means a perfect workflow. I decide on a location and theme for the 4 panel comic and use ChatGPT to refine the ideas, there’s some clever prompting to keep the characters mostly consistent (although the panels are often photbashed and drawn over in Photoshop). I do feel like there’s a lot of me in the writing, it’s my attitudes and observations about the world that come through, and although ChatGPT will pitch in with line suggestions, I find that I’m putting more thought into that aspect. My wife says the comics aren’t funny but she laughs anyway because she has the context of who I am making them. In reality, I just wanted an outlet to make stories with the limited time I have to create. I have no incentive to get big numbers with Leaf & Core, or turn a profit, it’s a way I can explore ideas and bring them to life while adapting with AI, it’s probably closer to art therapy right now than anything else, there’s no pressure and I’m creating for fun. A much needed break from DIY after an injury has forced me to stop working on the house. There will be those who see Leaf & Core and poo poo it because AI has had a hand in making it. I think that mentality is a little short sighted and sad, as those I’ve shared the comic with have seemed to enjoy it. Me adding value to the world doesn’t stop other people being creative. It’s quite the opposite with these tools. Anyone can use them. But here’s the kicker, just like having an iPhone doesn’t make you a filmmaker, having access to AI doesn’t make you a creative. If you want that, you have to go create things. Anyone could look at Leaf & Core and do their own version of it for the next year, but why would they? When it’s easier and better for motivation to put your time into something that’s personal to you? We’re entering a world where we can make anything we want. It still takes time and commitment to see a project through. With that said, I will be posting the comics on Instagram But if you are someone who has stumbled upon this blog at the right time. You can see the first 9 comics here

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Massively Positive Sentiment Around My AI Music Project

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Adobe Firefly, Animation, Design, Film & Video, Music, Photoshop, Social Media, Unconscious Collective, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

I’ve got to say, I was a bit surprised by this. I would have thought that there would be a much higher anti-AI sentiment when this was posted. The content went out on reddit to 200K people and was on the front page of the ChatGPT subreddit for a day with over 667 upvotes, 147 comments and nearly 500 shares. The following is the description from the post: ‘I’ll be the first to say I don’t fully understand what’s going on with the backend of LLMs but I’ve just got the sense that it can tap into things outside of our comprehension. Without getting all woo, I wanted to see if it could give us any insights into the nature of reality, and maybe a creative medium like songwriting could open that up. If nothing else, it felt like a fun thing to do and it was. It wrote 7 songs which I then took to Udio. I did some editing in FL Studio to tidy it all up and remaster it. Then I’ve used Stable Diffusion and RunwayML to create a couple of shots and mixed that in with a bunch of stock. Edited it together in Prem/ After Effects to make this 33-minute video. Tools: Lyrics: ChatGPT Music Gen: Udio Music Mastering: FL Studio AI Images: Stable Diffusion AI Animation: RunwayML Stock: Stuff from Envato Editing: Prem + After Effects I’ve been working on this in the mornings/ evenings around work over the course of about 10 days. Why did I make it? It was a bit of a compulsion and it seemed like it could be fun, which I guess is the whole point. As scary as this technology can be, it’s a lot of fun and if you’ve not really got a whole lot of time for long-form projects because you work a 9-6 and have general life responsibilities, this certainly is a way of getting something interesting done quicker.’ Here’s a list of the positive things said: ‘It’s really great and intriguing! I hope this gets the traction and visibility it deserves!’ – HimalayanHaven ‘This is cool’ – SilentRip5116 ‘Thing I hardly ever do: Turnoff portrait mode…did here after a few seconds. Need to read the words. Need to listen fully, and the video was intriguing. Keeping watching once I realize the video is hella long. That was amazing, thank you!’ – Weak_Hospital_7854 ‘That was really beautiful, thanks for going through the effort’ – Then-Fish-9647 ‘Humanity is cooked. This is just too good.’ – 1smoothcriminal ‘I cried listening to the first one.’ – Aggressive-Dust6280 ‘I don’t know. I have to double comment. I just finished this and it feels groundbreaking. This is the first time AI art has moved me in such a way and it validates much of where I believe this is heading. Thank you, so much, for this wonderful piece of art.’ – Dadbeerd People couldn’t agree what it sounded like: I couldn’t help but think about Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, in particular the family tree of ideas. Where good art is a remix of several other ideas, I found that this album was compared to several different artists, proving that this project had it’s own unique identity that could sit alongside similar artists in the indie-electronica genre. ‘This reminds me of M83 and Empire of the sun.’ – BoSt0nov ‘Real big MGMT vibes.’ – sprecher1988 ‘The voice is so similar to the singer of death cab for cutie, Love it!’ – fennforrestssearch ‘Daft punkgpt hits hard’ – Mtolivepickle ‘This has that Foster the People vibe and I’m digging it.’ – InterestingFrame1982 ‘Just me or does this sound like J. Timberlake vibes? (unreleased Future.Sex.Love.Sound) ‘ – Food_Kindly ‘Seems to me to be very Taylor Swift influenced.’ – Cloverboy56 ‘Pretty sure that’s a King Gizzard song.’ – issafly ‘Sounds like a Portugal The Man song’ – El_human The main criticisms were that the lyrics were a little too teenage angst, but what was funny to see was people arguing over the quality of the lyrics in the thread. This felt exactly the same as debates had around non-AI music. Prior to this album project I had used Udio to generate some IDM, downtempo/ experimental tracks: There is something a little sad seeing this blow up and have more attention than most of my human made music. I’ve been dabbling in music production for nearly 17 years now and only had one track go viral, although in an obscure way where the credit didn’t really come back to me. I’ve spoken about that here, I remember being frustrated about missing out on the accolades and opportunities around the success of the song. Eventually that sadness and frustration subsided and I was just glad to be the catalyst to create fun memories and good times to the people who had listened. How do I feel about the small success of my AI music experiment? It’s a mixed bag and it’ll take some time to process. I’ll let you know in a later blog post

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Changes To My YouTube Channel

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Adobe Firefly, Animation, Design, Film & Video, Photoshop, Social Media, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

I’ve split my channel into three. Why? Well, it’s because of my refusal to niche down on one topic/ style of content. There are a lot of things I want to explore, some of which won’t be of interest to the people who subscribed to my channel for the AI/ Stable Diffusion/ Automatic1111 content. When my channel initially blew up I felt pressured to ride that wave and create content that was in my opinion very narrow and lacking in scope. I have much more experience in several other creative fields and felt that I was being pulled away from those interests in favour of one particular software. I changed up the content, made a short series called ‘Prompt Gods’ which was more akin to the content I wanted to produce on YouTube. Narrative stories, video essays and deep dives into creativity, technology and the human condition. My main channel has gone through a bit of a rebrand, where I plan to continue creating higher production value content like my recent Roko’s Basilisk documentary: The bulk of the old tutorial content has been set to unlisted as I don’t want potential new subscribers joining the community and then not getting the old style of content. Instead, I will be creating new creative and tech focused tutorial content on the channel below: If you’re a designer/ creative or someone who is interested in Adobe’s new software ‘Firefly‘ you can follow along with my new ‘Morph’ tutorial, which is the first official video for the Innovate and Create | Creative Tech Tutorials YouTube page. Here’s a little more detail on what the tutorial covers: ‘Learn how to create eye-catching 3D textured typography using Photoshop, Adobe Firefly, and After Effects! This step-by-step tutorial will guide you through the process of transforming simple text into visually striking designs with unique textures like feathers, fire, marble, and silk. Perfect for designers and creatives looking to enhance their skills. In this video, you will learn: How to design and edit text in Photoshop Applying realistic textures using Adobe Firefly After Effects best practices Tips and tricks for creating professional-looking typography If you find the content helpful and would like to help me out, drop me a like and consider subscribing to the channel! And finally, all of my music production content will be moving over to the official Alias Here YouTube page. If you’re a fan of my tracks get yourself added. If you prefer to listen on Spotify, that’s covered too!

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The Roko’s Basilisk Documentary Post-mortem

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Alias Here, Animation, Directing, Film & Video, Music, Producing, Social Media, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

On the 28th April, I released my latest single ‘Callie’s Quest‘ aptly named after my amazing wife Martina Callegari who has been a beckon of positivity, always encouraging my creative pursuits. I’ve always loved making music but after failing to secure a spot on Artlist’s platform as a creator, I decided to dust myself down and start up a new project. The plan was to revisit documentary filmmaking, which had been on my mind for a while. Mini docs used to be my bread and butter while working as a videographer in Manchester, UK. I’ve shot, edited, and directed dozens of shorts, some of my favourites were Jordan Thomas // Track To Tokyo for UK Sport and Music Worth Fighting For, which I’d worked on with my former business partner Luke Barnett. I seem to have this problem of overscoping my personal projects. Trying to do too much with too little time and resources. I’d love to be in a position to hire the many talented creatives out in the world but with how expensive the cost of living is. It makes it close to impossible for me at the moment. That urge to create never really goes away for me, it’s a hunger that’s never sated. It doesn’t matter if I’m working a full-time gig or I’m busy with freelance, I always want my next project to be bigger and better than the previous. It’s why I haven’t shied away from AI technology. I’m seeing creators big and small using it and the truth is I don’t want to be left behind by ignoring it. All that said, it’s allowing me to produce more creative content, to a higher standard and quicker than ever before. I lived through analogue to digital. Spent nearly two years creating training data for Epic Games Metahuman Creator while at Cubic Motion… Being a creative in an increasingly more complex digital world has been my whole career so far. What’s bigger than the approaching AI singularity and the duality of what it means to be human? That’s what I found myself asking, and 2 weeks after releasing my last single I’d finished a 35 minute documentary/ video essay about Roko’s Basilisk. It’s a modern day Pascal’s Wager. Having grown up in a religious household, becoming an atheist and then agnostic, It felt like the right time to revisit the topics of spirituality viewed through the lens of technology. It’s not perfect by any means but the fact that I could make this within 2 weeks (albeit ridiculous hours) made me happy as a writer/ director/ producer. If I was just a motion designer/ editor I could see myself being frustrated because there’s a real fear of becoming irrelevant as the process is automated away. Still, if you’re a generalist like myself, you find yourself bouncing ideas off of AI and working with it to problem solve faster than you would on your own. AI is essentially another team member, it takes leadership and direction to get the most out of these tools (if you can call them that). I find myself talking to them as if they are people that I care about and want to work with. What I get back is enthusiasm that matches my own as well as novel solutions that I otherwise might have missed. I used my own custom GPT that has trained off of my book ‘Rob Like A Robot‘ it’s specifically tailored to help structure feature length documentary style projects. I spent 2 days compiling notes around Roko’s Basilisk, checking in with numerous thought leaders to understand their take on the topic. I explored my own understanding of psychology, religion, mythology and the human condition. Once I had 13 pages of notes, I uploaded them to my custom GPT and discussed breaking the topic into 10 chapters that made the most sense from a linear filmmaking perspective. 2 more days were spent refining the script. On the 5th day I read and recorded the entire thing myself to get an understanding of the overall length of the video. On the 6th day, I’d used Elevenlabs to generate the additional voices used throughout the documentary. Audio is never perfect from Elevenlabs, it takes a tremendous amount of editing. Luckily Adobe Enhancer does a lot to bolster the overall quality and you can get as many takes as you like. The ASMR voice used over the titles was originally without reverb, I wanted her to feel eerie and I had the perfect VST for the job. On the 7th day, the script was converted into a Google Sheets document where each line corresponded with a shot number. I then noted down which lines I was going to create titles for, which I was going to Stable Diffusion some stills for, and which needed more tailored motion design elements to explain difficult concepts. Everything else was going to be stock footage, toned down to black and white to try and make the piece feel more cohesive. By day 8 I had all of the voice over audio and music layed out for each chapter in Adobe Premiere Pro. I wanted to make sure the piece had the right energy from the sound alone before I started adding any visuals. Days 9 – 12 consisted of finalising the motion design assets, sourcing footage, cutting, grading and doing minor effects work. The 13th day was a major sound design day, utilising Splice’s sample library, which gave me access to incredibly unique sounds that probably not many filmmakers consider as it’s a website primarily for musicians not editors. The final day we spent in review and going over minor fixes. It’s set to release Friday 17th, April 18:30 GMT. I am absolutely shattered, this was a complete mammoth of a project t0 push over the line in such a short amount of time but it was also a fun challenge that pushed me to develop some new skills and figure

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2D Character Animator | Udemy Course

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Film & Video, Gaming, Tutorials, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

Back in 2017, I was presented with a challenge that would unknowingly alter the course of my creative journey: Inktober. A challenge where artists create a new piece of art every day throughout October, Inktober presented me with the opportunity to revisit a skill I hadn’t touched since high school – drawing. Despite being surrounded by professionals, I persevered, completing all 31 prompts. Little did I know, this was just the beginning. Fast forward to 2019, I decided to take Inktober to a whole new level – not just creating illustrations, but bringing them to life through animation in After Effects. At the time, I was freelancing, grappling with scarce opportunities, and navigating through a toxic relationship that devalued my creative pursuits. I often heard the discouraging words, “It’s time to get a real job.” But creativity has a resilient way of flourishing even in the toughest soils. I made a choice – to leave the negativity behind and fully embrace my creative calling. This choice paved the way for a thriving career, a new supportive partner, and a life rich in artistic expression. This year, I have developed a small YouTube channel with over 8,000 subscribers and 700,000 views, a self-published book on creativity and AI, and an app designed to help creatives discover their true potential. All of these accomplishments led me to my latest endeavor: a comprehensive Udemy course on 2D character animation. This course is the culmination of knowledge accumulated since leaving college in 2012, polished and perfected over the last three months of dedicated production. “2D Character Animator | Photoshop, After Effects, Midjourney” is designed to take you from novice to skilled animator, empowering you to bring your 2D characters to life with professionalism and flair. You’ll learn the ins and outs of Photoshop, After Effects, and AI tools like Midjourney, tackling everything from character isolation to complex animations, lighting effects, and color grading. The skills acquired here are versatile and sought-after, opening doors to endless creative possibilities and will be a great first step towards a career in animation. The course is now live on Udemy, and while it will feature discounts periodically, I also possess coupon powers that might just get you access for free! Keep an eye out and seize the opportunity when it arises. If you decide to embark on this animation adventure with me, I would love to hear your thoughts. Your reviews are invaluable, helping newcomers gauge the quality and relevance of the course. Share your experience, let me know what you enjoyed, and don’t hesitate to suggest new topics you’d like to learn. Your journey into the world of 2D character animation starts here. I’m a tutor who’s been in your shoes, you’re in good hands. I can’t wait to see the amazing animations you create and the creative boundaries you break. Let’s make art that moves, together.

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Testing Gen-2 and Pikalabs with a Starfield Parody Trailer

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Automatic1111, Film & Video, Gaming, Stable Diffusion, Video Editing / James Cunliffe

I was watching a lecture on creativity recently and how it’s not an optimal survival strategy in the modern world. That’s because creatives will spit out idea after idea, and it’s rare that any of them are actually good and worth pursuing. This year I’ve made a free app that has managed 15 downloads, and I published a book that has sold 77 copies (the majority for free under Kindle Unlimited). Both are designed to help creatives navigate the world with a little more wisdom. Especially when we’re living through rough times with AI technology forcing us to raise our own standards of work. I think the app and the book were worthwhile pursuits, but the truth is, no one really cares, and that’s just the reality of these things. They took a long time to make as well, albeit a lot quicker due to tools like ChatGPT, Claude2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. So I’ve tried to reign in the scope of the projects I do, at least in the short term, so I can create content making use of the newest creative tools on the market. These just so happen to be AI tools, which are still massively controversial. Sadly, it doesn’t matter if you like them or not; if you don’t learn how to use them, you’re at risk of losing work to people who do know how to use them. This means if you are creative, the optimal strategy is to be a bit selfish and learn this new technology; all the big studios are already using it, so why put yourself at a disadvantage unless you really do want to be a starving artist, which I do not recommend; it’s awful. Anyway, besides all of that, there’s been progress with AI video generation tools in the last couple of weeks. RunwayML’s Gen-2 is still massively janky, but if you’re persistent, you can get some cool visuals out of it. But the tool I’m most impressed by is Pikalabs, and I’ll tell you why after you’ve watched the video. Now, on the surface, this video was one of those stupid ideas a normal person would ignore. But I had a creative spark and the means to make this idea real. It’s not too dissimilar to the setup for the Wes Anderson Pokemon parody I made a couple of months ago, which was heavily inspired by the team over at Curious Refuge, but this time around, instead of playing around with D-ID AI, I wanted to test out Gen-2 and Pikalabs. Pikalabs allows you to drop images in with a text prompt, and it will render a 2-second video clip at 8fps. So you can’t do much with that, but it’s still less awkward-looking in comparison to Gen-2. Gen-2 needs a lot of rolls. Most of the results I’ve gotten back feel too much like Disco Diffusion; it’s too hallucinogenic for what I’d like to use it for. I suspect it’ll get better, but for now, the subtle movements from Pikalabs are much more what I’m after. Besides that, I’m learning that DaVinci Resolve is amazing. Everyone who does motion work with AI knows about dirt removal and deflicker now. Due to Corridor Crew and Enigmatic E. The latter is a very talented Warp Diffusion artist and is worth checking out. He actually helped Corridor with their latest Stable Diffusion project, Anime Rock Paper Scissors 2. In terms of my own video project, it just feels like sci-fi is booming within the culture. David Grusch is making the news regarding his statements in Congress about a secret UAP retrieval programme. I’ve spent a little too much time on the UFO/ alien subreddit reading all the crazy theories, and although I’m highly sceptical, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly intrigued by what’s going on. Beings from another dimension, the possibility that it’s actually us coming with a warning—that’s an interesting take and one that I wanted to build into this little parody piece I’ve done. Starfield seemed like a relevant game to piggyback on, as the recent gameplay trailer that this mimics was all about finding life within the universe. Wouldn’t it be insane if it was already here and we’d all just been kept in the dark? Aliens, UAPs, AI, simulations—it’s a nerds-wet dream really, isn’t it? And with the Game of Thrones showrunners making the new Three-Body Problem TV series for the start of next year… We’re entering the new sci-fi age, and I’m all for it… Unless aliens are actually real demonic entities trying to cause humanity harm, then it’s a solid nope from me!

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