Did We Just Change Animation Forever?

This project has been a huge labor of love, and it is due to the amazing open-source community that we have this technology available to us. We hope that by sharing our discoveries and techniques that we can help push this technology forward for everyone. If you want to dip your toes into this tech, there are many amazing online communities ready to help teach you, including ours!

With Your Support, We Can Make More! ►

Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors Shirt?! ►

Gear Used ►

[CorridorCrew]

I see a lot of concern, especially from animators, that tools like this will eventually make them obsolete.

This isn't a replacement for someone that knows how to animate, nor someone who can draw. Tools constantly evolve, but making something visually captivating always requires those same core skills. It still takes an artist to make art. That hasn't changed.

What we figured out here is a very advanced form of old-fashioned rotoscoping. Animation takes a lot of forms; Traditional, 3d, stop-motion... They all have different strengths, and enable different stories. Our method here isn't a replacement, but an attempt at something new.

What excites me is that this tech makes it easier to bring my visual ideas to life. Ideas that were otherwise impossible. When I said this democratizes animation, I'm referring to the near-insurmountable mountain of work needed to make a full-length narrative animation. Currently that requires large studios and large budgets. Doing it on your own is nearly impossible.

But I see potential in these tools to change that! That's what I'm so excited about. Imagine one person, or a few friends, bringing their crazy ideas to life. Imagine if a traditional animator could automatically have their drawings inked and colored. Imagine eliminating the uncanny valley on cgi faces. These tools have the potential to do that. We're trying to figure out how, and sharing our journey. If we want community-controlled AI tools, we need to develop them as a community, otherwise they become proprietary tools locked behind a company.

And yes, this can be done with your own style. We trained our model, not from hundreds of artists, but from ONE film- Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. We've been very open about this, and I think it's important to be. But this is also an experiment and a loving parody of this era of anime. I consider it no less ethical than the countless other videos on our channel that borrow from pop culture to tell their story.

Sudden change can be scary, especially if it feels like your passion or livelihood is on the line. But that's why we're out here exploring it. Hopefully we can help shine a light into the fog for everyone.
-Niko

[PikaPetey]

As an animator... this scares me. I've dedicated my life to draw and know how to recreate motion within the drawings. Only to be replaced in a couple of years.

[denwest]

I have the feeling "designed by human" is going to be a trademark soon

[tniwde]

The next time you invite animators as guests, you should show this to them and get their reactions

[CoopMusic]

As an animator myself, this doesn't replace animation at all. It's another tool. There is now just one more new style. Painting moved digital a long time ago and cameras have come a long way and yet there are still somehow people buying and selling brushes and canvases painting portraits the old-fashioned way.

[andrejuarez]

I'd be interested in seeing animators react to this.

[patrickmcmeel]

I felt a great disturbance in the animation industry, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

[TimeBucks]

I'm so excited to see where you go with this

[GJYYNGII]

"Did we just change animation forever?"
The answer is no. No, you didn't. Rotoscoped animation has been around for the past century. It's nothing new.

[Medaiyah]

Disney absolutely salivating about all the animators they won't have to pay once they get this tech sorted...

[MagivisualStudios]

What’s so cool about this is that when I was younger I honestly thought cartoons were made from actual videos. So in my head I believed that when I was watching YuGiOh they actually filmed everything first then drew over it

[Cyba_IT]

I love how we are in a time where, "It's designed by a human" is actually a selling feature.

[nathantiffen]

Around the 17:00 mark he says “Anime has no 3D camera movies”. Close to every modern anime does, even slightly older ones like Death Note had spinning 3D cameras in moments.

[pieboat]

As impressive as this is, it's scary when you realize a lot of animation companies might take advantage of this and use it as an excuse to put a lot of people out of a job.

[TheDnDHunter]

As somebody who just graduated from college studying 2D animation; this video is pretty scary. It’s so impressive but it takes away years of progress that thousands spent their lives doing

[a_x]

This is a really unsettling video. I'm in animation school and there's a big fear of exactly this depriving the industry from respecting animation for what it is. Animation is respected as film so little already, stuff like this only makes it worse.

[Waterbug]

This isn't animation, this is rotoscoping.

[RealGrogster]

I find it baffling how a month ago, Jake gave a very in depth video regarding ai image generation and the "fair use" of it during the yet to be decided lawsuits, but corridor still releases this video basically showing they used vampire hunter d, a copyrighted series for training(with ads on the video), and the actual video on a for-profit basis

[KorbyPonyo]

This just makes me appreciate Joel Haver's animated skits more

[kevting]

My dudes. This is just glorified retro scoping.