In 2021 we were at the forefront using AI to animate selfportraits and paintings, to make the biggest danish artists come alive in this documentary series. We furthermore used traditional animation, digital CGI, motion capture and programmed our own UI for the AI software, to make it possible to use the upcoming AI techniques in a production environment, which at the time didnt have any user interfaces.
AI Animation
An example of using AI and traditional animation to make paintings come alive.
Sketchbook Animations
We used AI to mimic the style of sketchbook drawings and made it translate greenscreen recordings into showing historical bits of the artists lives.
More Examples
The techniques combined made it possible for us to play around and have rivaling artists have a dialogue with eachothers selfportrait.
⸺ Creative Brief
The project was a documentary series exploring the works of the biggest danish painters. We had to produce a big amount of animation to make the paintings come alive and speak to the host of the series. To compensate for a small team of two animators, we chose to explore the possibilities of AI animation inspite of it's very early stages in 2021.
⸺ Concept Development
We made the paintings speak through artificial intelligence and programmed a UI for the algorithm which at the time didn't have a User Interface. We animated historical scenes from their lives through green screen recordings and AI, to make the recordings look like drawings and sketches. We furthermore made short traditional 2D Frame by Frame animations on certain drawings, aswell as digital cutout animation in After Effects and Toon Boom, and lastly animated some characters via a Rokoko Motion Capture Suit.
⸺ Team
The Animation Direction, AI Animation, Programming and Production Design was done by Rune Søgaard. The traditional animation was done by Jens Christian Högni. The series was written and directed by Anders Johansen.