📽 Don't fear AI's (not-so) 'Secret Invasion' into Hollywood animation

Here's yet another example of how, despite animator fears, robots never take all the jobs

Quote of the Issue

“I believe the tool of an animator is the pencil.” - Hayao Miyazaki

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The Essay

📽 Don't fear AI's (not-so) 'Secret Invasion' into Hollywood

Item: Marvel’s new television series “Secret Invasion” debuted Wednesday with an opening title sequence apparently conjured by artificial intelligence, stoking fiery reactions across social media and from those within production itself. The two-minute sequence features imagery of humans, aliens and locations from the show. But in a strange experience, the credits seem to mix and warp everything together, blurring the lines between what’s human and what is alien. Many commenters and critics decried the choice, using descriptors such as “disgusting” or “utterly horrifying.” And while some suspected the creepy vibe was intentional (perhaps Marvel’s way of warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence) others wondered if it marked the beginning of AI’s invasion into Hollywood — a particular concern of an enormous actors union that is considering whether to strike next month. - The Washington Post, June 22, 2023

Item: On Wednesday, Marvel's latest comic book TV show, Secret Invasion, premiered on Disney+ to controversy: It features AI-generated motion graphics during its title sequence, and some fans and creators aren't happy about it. "For Marvel, whose whole empire is built on the work of artists to do this is disgusting and I for one shan’t be watching," tweeted Marvel comic artist Christian Ward, who worked on Black Bolt. … As reported by Polygon, the show's producers think the melty, flowing, somewhat abstract AI-generated aesthetic (prompted as "Skrull cubism" to the AI model) in the title sequence is appropriate because the show features shapeshifting aliens that are hiding as humans in plain sight. "When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it—it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know?" said Secret Invasion Executive Producer Ali Selim. - Ars Technica, June 22, 2023

There’s no secret invasion of computer technology into film animation, let alone Hollywood more broadly. Nor is concern about the latest developments in “movie magic” on existing movie jobs a new worry. Going back at least to the 1980s, traditional animators, who painstakingly drew and painted scenes and characters frame by frame, worried that one day the machines would come for their jobs.

In 1988, film startup Pixar won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film with Tin Toy, becoming the first film using computer-generated imagery to win an Oscar. A New York Times story the following year, “Computer Animation Now Coming of Age,” summed up the creative potential and employment peril of CGI:

''Animation with the computer as the main form is here; it's going to take over in a very short time,'' said Robert A. Winquist, director of the character animation department at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. ''It's a natural. Put down your pencil and your paintbrush and do it another way.'' For many traditional animators, it may not be all that easy. Some have viewed computer animation with the same trepidation that studio musicians have for digital synthesizers. …''Most of the old-time animators who are left have no use for the computer because most of their art is expressing ideas through a drawing,'' said Frank Thomas, a supervising animator at Disney for more than 40 years. ''They will never adjust to a technical monster,'' he said.

In 1991, Walt Disney Animation’s Beauty and the Beast, the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, used GGI for perhaps its most famous sequence, the ballroom scene where the title characters have their first dance together. CGI continued to play a key and expanding role in the era’s “Disney Renaissance” features.

In 1995’s Pocahontas, ever-improving animation software was used to depict the ship that brought the Virginia Company to the New World, as well as the bark on Grandmother Willow. The film was the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year, earning $139 million, just $10 million less than the third-highest-grossing film: Pixar’s Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature film.

Disney’s CGI-pocalypse

Less than a decade later, in 2004, Disney announced it was closing its traditional animation studio in Orlando, Fla., and cutting more than 250 jobs as it shifted to computer animation. As the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time:

Current and former employees said the studio’s decision to close the facility meant something to them besides losing their jobs. “There are a lot of emotions involved,” said animator Travis Blaise. During a staff meeting Monday to announce the closing, “I saw the whole entire studio there in front of me, and I thought, this is the last time I’m going to see the whole studio.” What’s more, artists such as Tony West were hired straight out of college. “It was my dream job,” said West, a special effects animator who worked at the studio 14 years before being laid off in October. “It was the job I always wanted to have as a kid,” he said Monday. “Now I have to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.”

So the machines had come for the jobs of traditional animators. Disney’s 2006 purchase of Pixar for $7.4 billion only confirmed what was obvious: the machines had won. Or did they, really?