James Cunliffe

Tutorials

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 /

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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GodotGPT | A GPT That Codes Videogames

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Technology, Gaming, Tutorials /

First things first, click here if you want to see GodotGPT in action. GodotGPT, is a specialised AI assistant focused on providing comprehensive support and guidance for game development using the Godot engine and GDScript. I’ve trained it on community-driven knowledge within the Godot Documentation on Github. It’s an amazing resource for everything related to the Godot engine. I’m hoping that it can assist developers, both novices and experts, in navigating the complexities of game development with Godot. Whether it’s understanding the basics of the engine, scripting with GDScript, or diving into advanced techniques, this little GPT will give tailored advice and solutions. It’s capabilities extend from answering specific queries about Godot version 4.1 and later, to providing code examples in GDScript, and even troubleshooting common issues encountered during development. Why did I put GodotGPT together, well I’ve got a video about that below:   I’ve been involved in the gaming industry ins several different roles over my career, but I also wanted to get into the actual development side. It always seemed like a worthy challenge and one that would push my creative and technical skills further than anything else. I’ve taken a dozen Unity courses and earlier this year made a quiz app, ‘The Creative Archetypes’ and released it on the app store as well as itch.io However, I have lost faith in Unity after their attempt to exploit their creators for additional funds. Now, my focus is on learning Godot and GDScript. GodotGPT will hopefully be making my life a little easier as I begin this journey, if you have an GPT Plus subscription, my little chatbot can help you too.

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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 /

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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Rob Like A Robot: How To Be Creative When A.I Does It Better

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, A.I Technology, Animation, Automatic1111, Film & Video, Gaming, Marketing, Music, Social Media, Stable Diffusion, Tutorials /

After a year of deep research into artificial intelligence and its impacts on human creativity, I’m proud to announce the release of my book “Rob Like a Robot: How to Be Creative When AI Does It Better.” This 244-page guide represents the culmination of everything I’ve learned about generative AI and how we can use it to augment our creative potential.   The genesis of this book was in early 2023, when tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion first captured the public imagination. As a multimedia artist and content creator myself, I was fascinated but also apprehensive about what these new technologies meant for human creativity. Throughout the year, I dove headfirst into testing these AI systems, reading extensively, building online resources via YouTube, and writing up my thoughts and findings into this book. My goal was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of AI and use that knowledge to help fellow creators navigate this technology. What I’ve come to realise is that AI is not a threat to human creativity, but rather an opportunity. When used thoughtfully, it can free us from repetitive tasks and allow us to focus on the parts of the creative process that require emotional depth, imagination, and a human perspective. The book aims to show readers how to view AI as a collaborative tool that enhances their unique creative voice rather than replacing it. In Rob Like a Robot, I guide the reader through the exhilarating world of generative AI using a mix of storytelling, concrete examples, and philosophical insights. We explore leading tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT and see how they can augment photography, visual art, writing, music, game development, and more. But I also devote significant attention to the ethical implications of AI, looking at issues like copyright, deepfakes, and dehumanisation. The aim is not just to marvel at the technology but to responsibly integrate it into our creative lives. Rob Like a Robot also draws on lessons from creative luminaries throughout history to provide timeless advice on nurturing imagination. I share my own trials and tribulations in shaping a fulfilling creative career. And I speculate about the future of human creativity as AI becomes more sophisticated. Ultimately, the book is about discovering your unique creative voice and using technology to express it to its fullest potential. For anyone looking to understand this AI-powered creative revolution we’re living through, Rob Like a Robot is an indispensable guide. It’s a roadmap to help artists, writers, designers, and creators of all kinds collaborate with AI in their quest for self-expression and self-actualization. I hope it will inspire people to think deeply about the relationship between technology and creativity and to pursue innovation with ethics and humanity in mind. If AI is our future, let us shape it with care to uplift the human spirit. Want to know more about it you can read more here.

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Creative Archetypes | Helping Guide Creatives Into the Future

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This has been a passion project that I’ve had under wraps for the last 4 months. After studying C# and a dozen tutorials regarding the Unity Game Engine. I felt it was time to take a crack at my own project.   Now, I have a tendency to over do the scope on personal projects, so I decided to reign it in with something U.I focused, and a quiz app seemed like the simplest thing to go after as a beginner. But I was determined not to make something without value. I don’t know if you’ve already heard but, A.I is not only going to destroy the world but wreck the lives of creative workers, at least that’s the narrative that’s pulling in views at the moment. I’m trying to take a more optimistic approach with A.I, treating it as a tool to help us create bigger and better things faster. This app is a prime example of that. I have heavily used ChatGPT when creating the Creative Archetypes. I won’t shy away from that. I’ve bounced ideas off it, tweaked copy so it reads nicer and most importantly as a search engine to help me code the thing. I know the very basics of C#, without ChatGPT I would no doubt still be googling and searching forums for answers on how to piece together the main menu. But to get back to the point of the app. I wanted to combine the functionality of a Likert scale quiz with the premise of creative personas. Having studied psychology and being generally interested in the differences and potential of the human mind, I wanted to tie that in with the field of creativity. Thus, in my own search for meaning and a desire to help others as well as myself, the Creative Archetypes was born. I’ll likely revisit this over time if it gains any momentum, for the time being it’s helped me understand Unity better. I do however sincerely hope anyone that uses it will learn something new about themselves, which will help them on their own creative journey. You can check the app out on Itch.io or the Google Play Store.

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Anime Character Design and Animation, Stable Diffusion, Photoshop and After Effects

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, After Effects Tutorials, Animation, Automatic1111, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion Tutorials, Tutorials /

In this 2 part tutorial I walk you through my process of generating characters using Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111. In Part 1 we use the A.I tools along with Photoshop and Inpainting to tweak the design and prep the character for animation. In Part 2 we take those elements into After Effects to rig, animate and finalise the composition. I’ve taken advantage of the ProtoThing 200 model which I sourced from Hugging Face. Hugging Face is a great website with hundereds of models created by the A.I Art community. Just a heads up, if you’re considering using a local installation of Automatic1111 you’ll need a graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM, the more you have the better as it can be quite taxing on your machine. Unforunately Mac users will have to wait as well as it is currently not supported. I’ve had no issues running the software but have a fairly decent system due to the nature of my work. I’m running it on Windows 11, i9-12900K 3200 Mhz 16 Core Processor, 64GB RAM with a RTX 3090TI GPU. There are a couple of things I need to iron out with the workflow. I still don’t like a lot of the A.I masking tools I’ve tried, just doesn’t seem to grab the fine details all that well which is why I’m still more likely to use the pen tool unless the rotowork can be slightly scrappy. I’m really happy with how this one turned out, very nearly feels like a splash screen you could find in a videogame. If you’ve found it useful or have your own workflow ideas be sure to get in touch in the comments!

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How to Create and Animate a Landscape with Parallax: A Tutorial

Leave a Comment / 2D Animation, A.I, A.I Animation, A.I Art, All, Animation, Automatic1111, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion Tutorials, Tutorials /

The advancement in technology has made it possible to create visually stunning landscapes with ease. With Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111, you can quickly generate a digitally illustrated background image, like a castle, using models from websites like Hugging Face. In this tutorial, I will use Anything V3 to create our landscape. Step 01: Generate the Image in Automatic1111 It’s as simple as downloading the software from Github, grabbing a model from Hugging Face and then typing in a prompt. I’ve found that ‘quality’ keywords work better at the start with the more descriptive elements about the scene falling towards the end. Step 2: Creating the Depth Map Once you have generated the landscape in Automatic1111, import it into Photoshop and create a Depth Map. The Depth Map will be used in After Effects to animate the landscape. Step 3: Animate the Landscape in After Effects Import the Depth Map and the landscape into After Effects and use it to animate the image. You may need to do some roto work to polish up the final result. Step 4: Upscale the Video with DaVinci Resolve If you want to take the animation to the next level, consider using DaVinci Resolve’s generative tools to upscale the video. This will help increases the overall quality of the asset. Bonus Step: Use Mobile Apps for Automation Mobile apps like CapCut are now automating the process of creating a parallax effect. Although the results may not be as high-quality as those created in After Effects, it demonstrates that the technology is constantly improving and becoming more accessible. To conclude, creating and animating a landscape with parallax is easier than ever before. With the use of Stable Diffusion, Automatic1111, Photoshop, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve and mobile apps like CapCut, you can bring your landscape to life in a matter of seconds.

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Create Art From Your Face With AI For Free | Dreambooth Tutorial | Stable Diffusion Guide

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, Automatic1111, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion Tutorials, Tutorials /

I’ve been making content for over a decade and a half and have never really had eyes on my personal work. On retrospect I have had over 500,000 ears my music but also didn’t know until the audience around it had already moved on, you can read more about that here if you’re interested. So instead of working on my own content I’ve spent the last couple of years creating for some of the biggest tech and gaming influencers/ brands with already established audiences. After watching an episode of Corridor Crew where they’d turned their friends into illustrated characters, I just got a feeling that I could figure out how they’d done it, which lead to the creation of this video. And although I’d worked on content for clients that had reached the millions in terms of viewership, it was still amazing to see something that I’d made off my own back had netted over 200K views in a couple of days and had taken me from 120 subscribers to over 4000. The tech evolves so quickly that I’m told the first video is a little dated now. This one focuses around the use of Google Collab (if you don’t have a decent PC), but I quickly realised my 3090TI could handle Automatic1111 so I quickly moved over to a new workflow for training which I showcased in Part 2. If you are struggling with the changes on the Collab doc since this tutorial, I recommend following my ‘Part 3’ Part 2 does a recap on the intial setup, how to take images and also information about resizing. It also covers the installation of Automatic1111 and then this time, instead of Dreambooth, I show you how to utilise Hypernetwork. It’s another form of ML training. Although I’d argue it isn’t as good as Dreambooth. Still definitely one to check out if you’re looking to experiement with alternativer methods of image training. In my Part 3, I showcase another Google Colab method of Dreambooth training by TheLastBen, I’ve been told people have had a lot more luck getting this method to work compared to the methods in Part 1. I also share a little bit of an inpainting trick to paste faces onto the genrated characters if you’re struggling to get an image spot on straight away.   These tools really are incredible, it’s a little bit full circle for me going back to alternative reality faces. My first job in the gaming industry was motion tracking at a video game animation studio that eventually got bought by Epic Games. Some of my manual laboring is likely still part of the dataset that is now used for the Metahuman creator. It’s definiely something I intend to explore further and as these 3 videos head towards half a million total views, I suspect it’s something a lot of people are interested in too. If there’s anything you’d like me to explore in terms of A.I faces or animation, be sure to leave a comment in one of the YouTube videos!

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Is This The Death Of VFX? | DeepDive Into A.I. Art Like Corridor Crew | Ultimate Dreambooth Guide

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, Automatic1111, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion Tutorials, Tutorials /

What a journey this last couple of months was. What started out as a genuine curiosity around a Corridor Crew video has lead to nearly half a million views across my Dreambooth focused videos. I never expected such a positive response and for the videos to have the impact they have had. It’s pushed my channel from 120 subs to over 5000 and with that has encouraged me to get an even greater grasp on A.I tools and how we can apply them creatively. In this video I summarise the best way I currently know of doing Dreambooth training, hopefully it’ll stay relevant for longer than my previous ones that quickly went out of date not even a month after their release. Just want to say a huge thanks to anyone whose watched my videos, commented, liked, all that social media jazz. I’ve spent most of my career making content for brands and influencers that dwarf my own channel and to finally get such a positive response on my own videos has been really cool to see.

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The Automatic1111 Lazy Tutorials Playlist

Leave a Comment / A.I, A.I Art, Automatic1111, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion Tutorials, Tutorials /

In a bit of a homage to Ian Huberts Lazy Blender Tutorial playlist, I wanted to do something in a similar vein but with Automatic1111. Sharing what I’ve mananged to figure out in a quick under 1 minute format. I’ll be honest, since I started putting these out… Although the comments have been massively positive, It hasn’t helped my channel in the algorithm. I’ve actually learned since that YouTube promotes channels that put out content that’s around the 9-13 minute mark more than short form content (unless you’re making content specifically using their shorts format). This is just because it has more spots for advertising and your typical viewer is usually okay sticking around for this amount of time but not much longer. Even though it’s tanked my viewership, if there’s enough interest in these short form tutorials, I’ll try and adapt them for the YouTube short format so it can still help everyone, hopefully without damaging my channel. Fingers crossed  

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