// What Deep Human Collab Between Artists and Toolmakers Looks Like // One thing that the visual AI hype bros never acknowledge is that artists in high stakes commercial settings like Hollywood movies /already/ have deep, rich relationships with digital toolmakers. Below, I describe the research, development, and collaborations that were required to bring parts of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse to theaters. It's a beautiful story of /technologists meeting artists where they are/ (trained in physical media) and getting them to places they want to be (through design tool customization and automation). The story starts in Eastern Europe where PhDs (Šárka Sochorová and Ondřej Jamriška) studying under Daniel Sýkora of University of Prague spent years perfecting digital simulation of the ways the colors of physical paints mix. It next segues over to another Eastern European country where digital painting tools company Escape Motions /licenses/ that innovation and does the engineering to incorporate it into its design tool, Rebelle, that specializes in watercolor simulation among many other unique types of simulation. Next it segues to Hollywood, Vancouver, and elsewhere where a group of rebellious artists and technologists at animated movie studio Sony Pictures Imageworks did the multi-year work to prove audiences would accept and even celebrate a new expressive/stylized form for animated feature films. As the studio raised their ambitions and scale, they looked to the Eastern Europeans for tools that allowed artists to productively and naturally bridge 2D painting and 3D rendering and animation. Escape Motions developers (Miroslav Sedlák, Pavol Obuch, Anton Poživenec, Rastislav Vejo and Martin Surovče) delivered a custom version of Rebelle that could be integrated with Houdini into a productive workflow. Further, they delivered on the /reproducible/ pseudorandom results the studio required. This is what collaboration between artists and digital toolmakers looks like in 2024 when the commercial stakes are high. It's what happens when toolmakers meet artists where they are, acknowledging that their artistry: a) is very often developed through thousands of hours developing styles using physical media and b) is gestural/visceral/embodied not linguistic. For high-stakes commercial art/design, I'm betting on these toolmakers, on their deep /human-scale/ relationships, on the pride of artists developing true and enduring /expertise/, and on moving slow and fixing things. #digitalart #designtools #visualeffects #expressivegraphics #computergraphics #animation #animationart #comicart #watercolorart #createdontscrape #collaborationaboveall #appliedresearch Peter Blaskovic Michal Fapso Christos Obretenov Pav Grochola
Watch the brand new VFX breakdown for 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' from Sony Pictures Imageworks, at befores & afters. Narrated by VFX supe Mike Lasker https://lnkd.in/eNVEfN7S
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6moA previous related post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/robbbeal_how-spider-verse-forced-animation-to-evolve-activity-7074406443700944896-Bna3 Background from a SIGGRAPH 2023 presentation on the collaboration: Repainting the Spider-Verse: A new painting FX pipeline with Rebelle and Houdini https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587421.3595451