I once studied at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I was studying animation, and I took a class in special effects for animation. The class was created by Pixar, but this was one of the textbooks. It’s a beautiful book. It’s a standard.
I can’t help but look at it now, in the age of AI, and think about how it’s likely been trained as a dataset. Probably a lot. Independently trained into models by a lot of different people a lot of different ways.
What does that mean?
Disney Animation, The Illusion of Life.
Here’s the link to it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lexSa4
Imagine if Disney releases official models when they make a movie. People would create their own additional scenes to the movie. The models would be trained and retrained and remixed all over the place. With “Disney” becoming a keyword in AI generation, and being amongst other Laetro creatives from Disney, I think about this stuff.
It’s weird seeing all sides of this AI generation stuff. It’s a privilege to see it through the lens of Laetro Disney Animators. It’s beyond amazing seeing traditional Disney animators explore AI workflows, and see them react at the outputs. And, it’s amazing seeing them explore what it takes to help all the other creatives by creating a bridge like Laetro.
I get really unique full view of AI generation, and really see the full scope of it.
This book is incredible, and it’s more relevant today than ever.