Transcript
00:00
Hello, can you hear me? Yep. Um, looks like we're going to have to roll with the punches, because you know, classic technology, am I right? How are we doing? Yeah. I'm doing good. One issue we have is that I can't get the speaker to work. So what I'm actually doing is I'm sitting right in the middle of the classroom.
00:25
And I have told the students to try to be as quiet as possible while we're talking until like if they have questions and they can just speak into the mic if they have questions because I'm sitting in the middle of the classroom right now. So we have a campfire situation. Yes, a campfire situation for sure. Welcome to the AI campfire. And cheers alike.
00:55
Hello, my name is Wiz, W-H-I-Z, and I'm the founder of WizPill. I focus on researching the intersection of arts, culture, and tech. That's kind of my thing.
01:11
Yeah, I've been showing your Spotify, I showed your Twitter, I showed, I don't know which else I showed, I showed a bunch of your works. Actually, we were just listening to somebody talking, I think his name was Gubovie. Yeah, that guy, he's interesting. He's a, if I recall correctly, he's a Middle Eastern individual who moved to Europe and then...
01:40
has made a bit of a life for himself as a traditional designer and then has gone on to transition full time basically into creating stuff online with AI and selling them on the blockchain. But that's like a whole different rabbit hole. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's interesting. I tried to see if my university would allow us to mint on the blockchain and they got back to me and said that if the...
02:09
students or I minted on the blockchain using, you know, the university's Wi-Fi, which we would have to, that it would be proper of the university. Yeah, that one's tricky, man. You know, for as much of a proponent I am with like open source and open data and free flowing of information, I deem the blockchain space right now to be
02:38
It's not exactly designed to be welcoming for newbies. And by newbies, by the way, I don't just mean people that are not tech savvy. I just mean people who don't quite get the dynamics of like what it really takes to appreciate the scale and complexity of blushing. AI is much more accessible though, from my humble opinion. Yes, definitely. And it's gotten even better than last semester.
03:06
and especially with just people being comfortable with it, other professors starting to use it, and also just the availability of a bunch of different programs to work with. Most campuses, at least in the United States, run on Macs, like it's a Mac lab. Though we don't have PCs, we can't run stable diffusion unless we do it off of a
03:36
hugging face or some other work around. They can't download things onto the computers that could run. So yeah, so we're kind of working with just the software available that's online and on Discord, which thankfully, you know, Discord has a lot and some of them are free. That makes sense. A lot of the software that I'm aware of,
04:05
tends to be web-based. One of the ones I've covered actually is RetroDiffusion. This is a pixel art tool that was custom-created by one guy on his own artwork. And he's then gone on to release it on a licensed basis so that if you buy it, you can just install the whole thing on your computer. But you can also run it online.
04:35
be a web app. So I feel like it's a pretty neat compromise in middle ground.
04:42
Yeah, it's very accessible. You know, so far it's pretty affordable. You know, it's not that bad when it comes to affordability and there's sort of little workarounds you can do. But yeah, I think the most popular right now, I think RunDiffusion, I haven't tried it and I should because I feel like all the stuff using diffusion models is really good. But most of us are working on Runway ML.
05:11
Genmo is another one and I see some people working off of Pika. So those are like the big three. Yeah, there's been some interesting experiments coming out of Pika and from Waze specifically. People are starting to use it to animate proper. I actually pin like an example under Jumbotron.
05:38
I'm supposing if you have a computer set up, you should be able to just pull it up and spread that around so people can take a look at it. That's the kind of complexity we're currently dealing with, man. And mind you, these are people that are based in Japan doing this. Like what I noticed is that compared to the American crowds, the Japanese are really power using these tools to their absolute limits.
06:04
Yeah, for sure. Well, I can't actually share it to the Jumbotron, unfortunately, because actually, I'm just going to move. We'll see how the audio quality works if I move, because usually I sit at the front of the classroom. I'm just trying to see if they can hear you. If I... Well, we can figure it out. Let's figure that out.
06:32
I think they might be able to.
06:35
There we go. WhizPill. Where did you get the name WhizPill? You know, I didn't ask you last time. The WhizPill is just a pun. It's basically the whole concept of the red pill, but with WhizPill, it's really it, man. Okay. Oh yeah, there's gonna be a delay. Yeah. Let's keep that in mind. Unfortunately, Twitter spaces tend to do that. Well, it's okay. I managed to get the-
07:05
post up really quickly so they could see that. You can also, I don't know what browser you use, you can technically mute the browser on and off if you feel like it, that kind of thing. I don't know. Idea. Stuff like that, that's what I think about. But yeah, like that's where the name came from. I thought about it, but it wasn't one of those, like I sat down really intensely and it was like a montage of like me figuring out.
07:34
10 different names until I hit the right one. I've always been about sharing information that is A, accessible, B, hopefully engaging, and C, easy to ingest, you know? So it's like as easy as swallowing a pill, so, whisper, you know? Ah, yeah. That's interesting. Anyway, so what do you wanna talk about?
08:02
I mean, we're here, the agenda is AI, right? Well, first of all, I guess it's worth establishing, you know, like how long do we got? Because I feel like getting as much of community involvement with the actual students would be a great way to think of things. Yeah, so the class technically goes till 12, 15, so it's very long classes, but I was thinking about an hour, if that's okay? Yeah, that's cool. Maybe even less? That's cool.
08:32
Yeah. They're all right. The project we're working on, I told you, is all AI. So they have to create these animations completely out of AI or I said 50% so that if they want to use their own images, you know, they want to use their own video or animations that they can also have that as a basis, which is something that I've been doing personally. And I
09:00
I really like working that way. I guess the thing that I'm instantly curious about is like, I didn't expect schools to be that open-minded to AI, at least not based on what I've heard. People were rushing to ban chat GPT left and right because people are using it to like do homework and whatnot. So from my perspective, I feel like any tools that are similar in the realm of visual or audio
09:30
would be bad as well, you know?
09:34
I don't think so, not in art departments. You know, in art, you've always had more open-mindedness, I believe, and FIU here in Miami has a lot of computer-based classes. And I feel like the faculty here is also very contemporary and we have a really great faculty members.
10:01
that are also using it. But yeah, I was, when I was brought in last semester, because I started last semester, again, I used to teach here, but I was brought in and I was told, you know, like we like what we're seeing with AI, we like what we're seeing with AI.
10:21
all the things that I've talked about in the past and we want you to use it. So I was told that by the chair and the people here, so I kind of came in guns a blazing and I received a little pushback but not much. And I think that with CHAT GPT, I know that the Florida universities met.
10:49
and had a big kind of summit about it and talked about, you know, what to do about it essentially. And there's gonna be a reorganization of how we teach. I mean, it's just not gonna be the same way. It's not gonna be, let's have them fill in the blank of readings, you know, because, or make a summary of what they've read. For example, I'm asking my students to write notes.
11:18
about a reading in handwriting, so that they turn in their handwritten notes. They could use ChatGPT, of course, and I don't mind that, but having to rewrite it by hand, I think, imprints a little bit better into the mind. Yeah, so I've said this before, and I'll say it again on the record, for those that are listening right now in this classroom.
11:48
To be honest, I've had a terrible time in traditional learning environments, simply because the requirement was for me to memorize, not for me to actually understand what I was being taught. So that's like one of the things that I really wanna emphasize with people in terms of this new era we're moving into. If you're the kind of person that's like very, you know, input, output.
12:14
Congratulations, you set yourself up for failure because garbage in, garbage out.
12:22
That got a chuckle from the class. Um, yeah, I definitely think that discussion, live discussion, is going to happen more. Um, I like to do long critiques, and that way we can discuss in person. I think it's just, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing for education because it's going to take a little bit of, um, yeah, the repeating what you've
12:50
you know, memorized and things like that. Although I think there's probably gonna be a return to like Scantrons and things like that, you know, using things that are off the computer in order to take tests. And I grew up with Scantrons, cause I didn't have, you know, I'm not of that generation that we had really computers in school. And so, yeah, so we're gonna have a return to some of these old school methods. So it's kind of like,
13:19
the future is now pushing us a little bit back into the past. I'm curious to hear from these students themselves though, because you guys are like Gen Z and I'm not that far removed from y'all. I'm maybe a decade older or something. I'm very interested to hear how do you people learn? I don't want to listen to myself talk all day, at least not.
13:48
I'm from Haventus, boy. But yeah, like what makes you guys learn? You know, like what actually engages you these days? All right. Who wants to jump in?
14:04
Here we go.
14:07
Speak up, speak up. Okay. Louder than this? Yeah, louder than that. Louder? Louder. Okay. I think that a few things that make you engage probably are, well, like how we're learning just new technologies and the things that we might not know necessarily that we can actually expand upon. Like for example,
14:36
what we've been learning with Professor Baron-Ramans is a lot of this AI stuff that I was familiar with from the start of the semester, but now I am a lot more knowledgeable with it in the sense that I can use it to expand my ideas a little bit more, flesh things out, maybe concepts that I could use for making characters or even coming up with certain ideas
15:06
for videos or settings and backgrounds in certain animations or even just simple concept sketches that you could just come up with three or four words in less than five to 10 seconds. Yeah, yeah, expanding on ideas, that's a big thing. It's actually a fairly recurring theme in terms of the very podcast I host, a bunch of the guests I've spoken to about this AI stuff.
15:36
A lot of them essentially use it as an expansion tool for lack of a better term, especially for people that do visual art based stuff. It's just, hey, here's something for me to go off of and here's something I can potentially go into if I feel like it. But also, for writers, I had a very lengthy discussion with a writer turned programmer turned engineer who...
16:06
It's effectively built as an AI tool that allows you to write a book in less than two hours. And mind you, it's not just like the typical garbage in, garbage out kind of process. It's actually a fairly thought out process where the entire way through, you're involved as the author. So effectively, it's a co-authorship alongside the computer. So that kind of expansion in terms of the output in terms of, I gotta say,
16:36
labor. And I'm putting an asterisk on that one because for the longest, I feel like labor has always had a strange relationship, at least in the context of America, because I'm a foreigner. So where I'm from, we view labor very differently. So it seems to me that not just schools, but the entire American system is going to have to come to reckoning in terms of like what labor actually means.
17:06
how do you expand said labor, you know? So I feel like in a way I'm both envious of you guys, but also kind of fearful for what you guys are gonna have to deal with because I don't think the system is ready to have that many people suddenly have like a mass awakening like that or mass expansion. You know what I mean? Does anyone have a follow-up question about that notion of labor? You mean when you mean like the...
17:36
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that people, when they're not ready, you think they're just going to fight it back, be in denial about it, or you think that they're just going to try to come up with ways to, I don't know, ban these sort of things? Really, at the systemic level, but definitely in terms of banning things too, and systemic as in, you know...
18:05
Not to get like to philosophical on y'all because this is not philosophy 101. It's just AI 101, right? The What what I was taught and mind you I went to school in two countries So I think that might give you guys some additional context when I was taught about things What became apparent to me is that? information is a very powerful thing, right so that
18:34
Effectively, if you have more information compared to someone else, that puts you in a position of power. And more importantly, if you have that kind of power, then it gives you the ability to dictate the outcome of certain things. So we're currently headed into a system where for the longest, power was very much retained in the hands of institutions.
19:02
Most famously, I would highly encourage all of you guys to look into the story of Aaron Schwartz. This is the co-founder of Reddit. Most famously known for having helped build the technology behind Creative Commons and the RSS feed. I'm not going to get into that too deeply, but he died. This is someone who championed the free flow of information for the longest of time.
19:32
The free flow of information and the way that AI is currently introducing and pushing, that's a threat for institution in a lot of ways right now. So, because a lot of the model that they thrived upon was a gatekeeping kind of model slash wall garden, you know?
19:53
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I've kind of thought a lot about is the role of lived experience. And what I mean is everybody has a very unique childhood, a unique background where they live, how they grew up, what kind of art they saw, if you're talking about art.
20:19
their first experiences with computers, their first experiences with animation. And I feel like that's that kind of slow maturation of humans. I feel like that's really important now because the information is just so readily available. Like for example, I've seen a lot of artwork and
20:48
by students and I can easily recognize some common ideas that happen, things that get repeated a lot. And because of that experience, I'm able to sort of tell them, well, you know, this one might need a little bit of tweaking. I've seen it a lot before. Or how about if you look at such and such artists or such and such writer or something like that, and it's very tailored to them. And I, in a way that I'm
21:18
I'm unsure if AI can really do that kind of relationship building with them and also like very customized instructions. The option is not forget that. Again, not to deep dive too deep into certain things because from my vintage point, right, as someone who's sunken.
21:45
40,000 hours and counting into the research element alone, talking to people who have some degree of authority in terms of building their own tools or working at companies like Opinia and so on. It's like, there's a convergence happening, right? I actually had a one-on-one conversation with the very founder of the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.
22:11
which for those that don't know, which I'm assuming basically all of you, I would be very shocked if one of you even knows what Cardano is. Cardano is the brainchild of Charles Askinson, and this guy is the co-founder of Ethereum, another fairly notable blockchain ecosystem. And what he was talking about, essentially during our convo, was that, hey, we're currently headed into a territory where more...
22:39
It's going to be more important than ever to have ownership over your data. And where blockchain comes into play, it's not so much about putting a stamp of ownership and saying, hey, that data is here and I own it. It's more about making sure that said data, for lack of a better term, it is controlled and the way you choose to how it's used. Right. So that...
23:08
If you're going to be doing decentralized training models, for example, that's not the thing that people are currently already working on Where effectively you can instead of relying on like a centralized service like say to say open AI You could effectively leverage the power of blockchain technology to do just that you know, you can have a model essentially live in a decentralized fashion and Tap into its power source
23:37
Also, there's a generative AI project that exists currently on the blockchain and in theory specifically, it's really interesting, at least to me. I wrote about it in one of my latest articles covering that same pixel art guy I mentioned earlier. If you guys are curious about stuff like that, it might give you some ideas and might give you some stuff to tinker with. Last thing I'll mention too in terms of tips of stuff.
24:06
to find, to sort of spark ideas out of you, especially on the internet. Get in the habits of, and I know I'm gonna sound crazy when I say this, right? But like, get in the habits of like using more than one apps or really using no apps at all and actually go on websites. You know, crawl around the internet, man. Go.
24:33
Go on Reddit forums, go on Discord servers, go on random blogs that nobody's with zero readers have published, you'd be very surprised the kind of stuff you'll find in there. These people are coming up with all sorts of interesting ideas and solutions that the mainstream doesn't really talk about.
24:55
That's a great piece of advice. Because we're an art department, I'm always encouraging them to go to galleries and museums and events and stuff like that. Because with the mainstream media, like TikTok, and we can talk about X or whatever, but Instagram, TikTok, I find sort of, and anything that's popular in the movie theaters, things like that, it has a tendency to creep in.
25:23
to your imagination. And a lot of times people perhaps unintentionally repeat that, you know, without even realizing that that's been influencing them. And I'm not gonna give too many examples, I don't wanna embarrass anybody. But if you ask, you know, a group of students sometimes to draw a certain thing,
25:52
a lot of times a good portion of them will draw a similar thing to other people. And they don't necessarily mean to. So it's the influence of a lot of the social media, a lot of the just very, very popular stuff, which is extremely commercial. And I always say like, try to go deeper, try to look at poetry, try to look at
26:19
books. We have a professor here that's requiring all the students to go to the library and get books. Just because of this issue with unintentionally being influenced. Yeah, I guess one last thing I'll add as a caveat to that one. I will be fairly transparent. It's going to sound ironic to you all. As someone who publishes my own article, I don't read all that much, but I'm going to be very clear.
26:48
The reason why I don't read is not because I hate reading or that I don't know how to read or I'm dyslexic or whatever. It's actually because as far as ingesting information goes, I'm just wired differently. And I'm sure in some way you've picked up on that too, Ariel, in terms of what I do. I'm one of those people, I'm like a sponge in that sense where I can take and stuff very easily.
27:15
that's passed on to me verbally and audio-wise. So half the time I'm reading stuff online, but what I'm doing is that I'm using text-to-speech for that. And I actually take in like 10 times as much information. So I don't care so much about the medium through which you take information in. And I care a little bit more about...
27:43
what you're actually retaining in the process, and how effective you retain that information, and more importantly, how capable you are in using it. Because again, to go back to my previous point about education, for whatever reason, the emphasis is to get you to be an input-output machine. You don't really get to think about what you're doing when you're learning about concepts. That's why I've struggled with math for the longest of time, to be honest.
28:13
Yeah, I agree and disagree. I think it depends on the department. You know, I think in the creative departments, you know, we really, really try to emphasize concept, you know, and having your own very unique concept, you know, a lot of work is done in there. And like right now, you know, I was joking with my husband last night that I feel like I'm
28:41
having to very kindly tell people that there's certain styles, there's certain subject matter that AI has gotten so good at, that perhaps they need to go in another direction. Because it is so easy to replicate that. And for anybody to, and I think it's great that there's tons of people that are coming in to art because of AI and because of the ease of it.
29:07
But I also think for people that want to be professional animators or professional artists and need to set themselves out from the crowd, AI can be a tool to see what has become a little bit too common and too popular and too easy for it to make. I'm actually curious now that we're on that topic specifically. So like, to your students in particular, like, what are your guys' ambitions in terms of
29:36
What do you want to do in this future of AI, everything? What kind of IPs, intellectual properties you want to create?
29:47
All right, we have here somebody. She's a quiet speaker, so. So for me at least, I just wanna use animation as a medium for my artwork. So for me, it's not to go into like the industry for animation, but to use it as a medium. So that for me in the future, that's what I wanna do with my artwork.
30:12
That's neat, man. Feel free to plug your stuff, by the way. In the years or so since I started this podcast slash article and everything, I've gone to reach 80,000 people. And I'm always happy to spotlight artists, especially those that are on the come up. So I generally mean this. Plug your stuff, man. So let me see if there's anybody who wants to talk about.
30:37
them going into the animation industry. Does anybody want to go into the animation industry and want to tell your perspectives?
30:46
Anybody? I know I have some people, Frank. Oh, I said your name. Okay, now I'm gonna put this right next to another quiet talker. Go ahead for us. I don't have a question to ask. You don't have a question? No. What do you want to do with your career? I just want to make video games, either on my own or for a corporation. What kind of video game? I'm curious. Like what genre? Metroidvania.
31:16
Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Like, that's a side scroller, if I call correctly, yeah? That's a what now? A side scroller? Yes. Yeah, interesting. I feel like there's gonna be a resurgence of indie titles, for sure. I mean, all these AI tools. Again, to refer back to the article, actually, I said to the professor in the morning before we had this talk. A lot of what?
31:45
the guy that designed it for actually was to create assets, as in 2D assets that are intended to be repurposed in games that are 2D-based. It works surprisingly well, so well in fact, that undisclosed companies have started to essentially reach out to him for custom solutions for their own game engines. It's fairly interesting to see. Awesome. Yeah.
32:13
This is something that I'm not well versed in. So thank you for having that chat. Frank is gonna have to explain all those words to me later. Yeah, the gaming industry is one of those stuff that's like full of twists and turns. And even for myself, I don't know everything, but I will mention generative narratives, that's gonna be a thing in the future for sure.
32:41
I'm sure Ariel, you were old enough to remember, you know, putting click games, right? Yeah, absolutely. So think of like an extension of that concept, but like turned up way up to 100, where now the viewer, or I guess in this case the player, will get to create narratives in real time and navigate worlds in real time.
33:08
especially with the convergence of technologies such as AR and VR, where you can essentially generate environment on the fly. I saw a bunch of viral posts where people were recreating 360 landscapes in real time and it was insane. That's where we're at. It's so funny how people keep saying, yeah, AI is only going to get better. I think people don't appreciate how much better AI actually is getting.
33:37
It is getting so good that we're effectively giving ourselves the ability to recreate the holodeck. I don't know Star Trek all that much, but one of the past guests I've had, Robert Scoble, he talks about that a lot. And yeah, you just jump in, put on a headset, and you create your own environment, and you go to town. So that's where we're headed. Yeah, and I really hope that, personally, I hope that VR...
34:05
takes off a little bit more and AR takes off a little bit more. I think it's gone kind of by the wayside. And you know that I run a metaverse sort of environment for artists. But yeah, I mean, I think it's always sort of, I mean, I was thinking this morning for some reason that I used to play SimCity. I don't know if you remember that. And then they came out with an update that was SimCity 2000.
34:34
and I think this was in the 90s, so that seemed very far away. And it was this total environment that you could go in and it was 3D and you could like kind of fly around everywhere. And I think that it's an amazing experience to be able to do that. And then also, I watched Paprika.
35:02
I watched Paprika last night for the first time because a student told me that's one of the best animes. And in that as well, they have a character who accesses a place on the internet and then sort of goes deep inside of it and is able to. It's basically the concept around that one. It's like dreams, like they're dream hoppers.
35:31
At least that's what I understood of the plot because Paprika is one of those movies, man. Jesus Christ. This is definitely a trip to say the least. But yeah, again, this is where we're headed, you know? And I feel like this, at least for me, it's only a natural progression of like what lucid dreaming already enables people to do. I'm a lucid dreamer myself and I can tell you.
35:59
The stuff you can do in your own dreams when you're conscious is pretty insane. So to have people have that power, but like in the real world context with, uh, through AR, VR and other such technologies that renders environments in real time, you know, like there's a lot of potential there that you can do cool stuff with. Another thing I'm curious about, you know, like, cause I don't know, it feels to me that like I'm speaking, you know, to the,
36:27
Steve Jobs, the next Disney, the next James Cameron in this room. I'm very curious as far as like, how do you guys feel about the role of AI in entertainment specifically? Do you care what your entertainment is? Do you care that it's made by real people or features real people?
36:50
Who wants to answer that one? Yeah. Here we go. So in terms of like, you know, animations and shows or movies being with AI, I don't really think, I mean, personally, obviously there's always gonna be somebody that thinks differently, but I don't think it's so much as a problem.
37:18
when used in a creative way to help further or expand their stories or create something in quotation marks new because at the end of the day, not much is really new because it's recycled stories may be changed up a little bit. But I think that it's inevitable that AI is going to be used and it's being used more and more every day in every aspect, not just art.
37:48
And I don't think necessarily that like how people say like AI is going to take your job and stuff like that. I think it's more along the lines of the person that knows how to properly utilize AI is going to take your job. So at the end of the day, you kind of have to know if you want to be in any field really now I think there is an aspect of artificial intelligence and everything. So you have to use it to your benefit as a tool.
38:17
You can dislike it, you can like it, you can love it, you can hate it, but it's here and it's not really going to... I mean, unless, you know, something completely drastic happens, I don't know what would have to happen for it to not be here anymore, but I feel like it's here and it's going to continue to evolve. So in terms of like animations or shows and whatnot, I'm fine with it. Again, you being used again.
38:45
it has to be used in a creative way to expand on further ideas. You know, Ariel, you told me I would be talking to students, but I just got taken to school, man. I just got schooled by this guy. I'm going to have to simmer on that one. Yeah, they're pretty smart. We have another person here. I actually have like a question because for AI,
39:15
I do know it has to take a lot of stuff to figure out how to do these different types of filters and stuff like that. But when you create AI artwork, I know a lot of people try to be different and try to be unique. But then you can also say sometimes you might get the same image. You don't know for sure if you might get the same image as the person who put in a different prompt. So I know like.
39:41
even with dreams and stuff like that, like you mentioned dreams and lucid dreams, how you can do anything in lucid dreams. But sometimes people have the same types of dreams, which is why sometimes they have like definitions for dreams. So my thing is like, how do you know for sure if you're truly unique, if sometimes even dreams can be the same? Now, it might be a bit of a hot take, but I don't think the goal should be to be unique.
40:09
I actually think that human beings in the grand scheme of things are not that unique when you observe them in a large enough sample size. I'll give you a very simple example, right? And this is like at my base where on this very podcast that I host, you'd be very surprised how often certain phrases come back, certain opinions, certain stances, they just come back in a different way.
40:38
flavor for lack of a better term. Musicians most notoriously I've had this conversation with in terms of like what makes art unique right like and 99% of the time it boils down to oh it's unique because you use that one special sauce okay what kind of special sauce is it a plug-in is it is it a software thing is it a thing that no one else quote-unquote has never done before
41:06
Not really, man. It's just people who, for me, I think the element that storytelling plays, specifically in the realm of animation, is really what makes stuff stand out. Not so much the way it's built. That's what at least resonates with me. I'll give you three examples of movies that I think of that I really think are influential in that regard.
41:35
Obviously Paprika was named before. Another one would be Gustin the Shell. And another one would be Akira. And last one I'll mention is, would be probably a little bit of a curveball for some of y'all. It's not animated, but it might as well be. It's called the Dorohedoro. So from what I understand, like they're using like a lot of interesting...
42:01
forward thinking technologies in terms of implementing both 2D and 3D within the scene and to compose that, right? So like, yeah, like is it about being unique in that context? Probably not because the whole story about Doro a Doro essentially revolves around a guy that has a lizard for a head and goes around eating people to try and figure out like why does he have a lizard for a head? So weird premise.
42:30
Does that make it unique? I don't know. Like these are things that I think people get too caught up in in the grand scheme of things. Tell stories, tell good stories, tell competent stories and worry about the whole standing out thing later. You know what I'm saying?
42:53
I regret to say that I agree with you, even though you've just contradicted what I've said in class, because I am usually pushing them to do something that is at least different from each other and different from the media that they ingest a lot. So I do like what you said about trying to find these weird corners of the internet as an influence.
43:23
I like that a lot and I also agree, sometimes you just make the work and you make the work and you make the work and then a style kind of naturally evolves out of that, which is something that happened to me in art school. I think my early stuff was very much influenced by my professors and then it was influenced by what I was studying and it took a long time for it to mature. So maybe.
43:53
Maybe the classroom is an experimental zone and you don't need to worry so much about if you're doing something completely new, which I agree is very, very, very difficult to do something new. Marcel Deschamps kind of took that away from a lot of people. Yeah, another way to look at it, if we're going to hone in specifically on machine learning as a technology, part of the beauty of it
44:22
under the hood is that it's about either deep learning or reinforcement learning. What does that mean effectively? As the word might imply, reinforcement learning, it's about putting a set of guidelines that you can't stray too far out of, but not so far that it kind of keeps you in a box. It still leaves your room for unexpected...
44:51
outputs to happen, such as when Chad GPT is having those so-called hallucinations, or when you try and render a scene in Mid Journey and then there's a weird glitch that happens. These are things that, that's where the unique factor, at least to me, comes in. Not so much of like an intentional injection of like, okay, this is my special sauce that's going to make the thing unique.
45:19
Yeah, I love that. That is, I love an actual glitch. You know, I've talked a lot about, there's like a glitch art style that's kind of come in. It's sort of just sort of a filter of sorts. But if you can actually find that, you know, real glitch in the system, you can exploit that. Although I am curious what you think, because AI is, some of the more commercial AI's, the more accessible...
45:47
accessible AIs for people that don't have a giant PC. You know, when they update, a lot of times those weird little glitches get erased and can never be recovered again. And I do wonder if that kind of timestamp is a unique property to them. Yeah, I mean, that might, that might
46:15
tell a little bit as far as my stance on data and how it should be used. And I've heard this before and I'll say it again, think about your data not as just a thing that exists in the ether that has no implications with it, attached to it. Your data is as important as what you create with it. So think of how it lives on beyond that, right? So...
46:43
If you're going to be one of those people that predominantly uses, you know, a model that is centralized to create stuff with, understand that said data might end up changing over time. And that's the kind of stuff you're going to have to be okay with as opposed to having your own local trained model where you can do your own stuff with and tinker in these. And I don't really.
47:11
consider the stance that you need to be a technical person to be able to have your own local stuff. Plenty of resources exist out there as we speak on the internet where you can essentially do something as small as 2 gigabytes in terms of raw files to just get started with and have your own local large language model or visual model or audio model and so on and so forth. These things are fairly easy to implement.
47:39
So it's going to come down to how you choose to use it. Another way I think of it, it's the same way like on an app store, we can go and download whatever app you want to on there. You can also, if you have the know-how, design your own app and make your own things. That's how I think of what these AI tools enable for people. Sorry. Yeah, I think that's a really good thing. I've actually kept on
48:08
you know, sort of talking about downloading these things onto your computer at home and trying to do that. I think practically it is easier, like I have a PC. It is fairly easy, but I think we've been so trained over our lifetimes to share things on the internet. And especially with Web2.
48:38
you know, it's just constantly putting stuff on corporate platforms as a way of, you know, just self-promotion. And I think that's going to be a very, very hard habit to break. I'm not sure how many of my students are actually familiar with decentralization. Can I get like a raise of hands about decentralization? Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
49:07
If you want, can you kind of briefly describe what, nobody raised their hand by the way, can you briefly describe what decentralization means? Are you asking me? Yes. Yeah, I mean, again, this is really me giving my biased impression of it because no one seems to agree across the board, you know what that looks like in practice, but decentralization effectively
49:37
is tamper-proof, right? Meaning that once you have different hit points, there's no way for someone that's an outside third party, that's a bad actor to come in and say, you know what, I don't like what you're doing here, so shut this down. That's where decentralization comes in. And for those that are maybe too young to be aware about it, that's...
50:04
kind of what torrenting does. That's actually what torrenting excels at. Torrenting is a peer-to-peer technology that is decentralized, that effectively allows people to share files amongst themselves. And the bigger the cluster of people sharing files, the faster the download. That's the kind of thing that peer-to-peer technology is effectively enabled. So now, put that in the context of training your large language models, training your own data set.
50:33
training really anything and in creation in general, you can kind of see like how this adds up or at least I'm hoping it does. I feel like this idea that we have to rely on centralized services for everything, that's an idea that should be made obsolete because it is obsolete, you know, like innovation does not come from centralized, you know, funnels.
51:02
At least for me, innovation comes from clusters of people who on the surface have no real relationship to each other, but because of their abilities to connect across time and space technically, because we're talking about networks of people who, one lives in Europe somewhere and another lives in Bolivia and the other one lives in Africa and so on and so forth. So these are people that have vastly different...
51:31
ways of life, ways of thinking that are still coming together to either share stuff or collaborate on stuff. That's the power of decentralization here, not the typical buzzword of like, oh, decentralization is about security. You know, I feel like that's what most people think about when they talk about decentralization, but it's not just that. From a cultural standpoint, decentralization actually is a way to preserve
52:00
culture and to preserve third places more importantly. In other words, the places that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for bigger, more established entities coming in to swallow them up. You know what I'm saying? Yes, definitely. I think discord is kind of like a decentralization light. Do you think? Federated.
52:27
I would say it's more akin to that in the sense that everyone got their little clusters that they get to decide how things go in there. And to my knowledge, unless you do something really egregious, Discord is not really going to step in and ban you. So that's definitely that. That's actually part of what, from what I understand, Mastodon is doing. So everyone has their different models and it's going to come down to what you like and what you want.
52:57
Are you trying to be someone who's more of a leader type? Then yeah, like, decentralization might be the thing for you, to be honest, because leaders typically don't like this idea of having people just follow them around. That's not... Real leaders don't lead because they want people to just follow their whims. They want to lead because they want to encourage people to be their most best self.
53:25
Decentralization in a lot of ways allows you to do that in a fashion where you can essentially dispatch lack of a better term, instructions, where people can decide as they see fit whether or not they want to implement. And that's the beauty about it, man. It trickles all the way down, and if someone wants to play with it, they play with it. If they don't, it's also cool.
53:52
it's a self-evolving organism, very much in the same way that we are self-evolving organisms, in terms of how we navigate our home lives, our workplace life, our creative lives. Yeah, and that kind of brings us full circle to the thing I think AI will struggle with, at least a large, well, I mean, I think it's going to struggle with that sort of slow evolution, that lived experience, that going home and
54:21
you know, and someone that travels a lot versus someone that, you know, doesn't. I think it's gonna be very hard. I mean, you say that you could run your own LLM on your own computer and have it be custom in that way. But I do think that the fear around AI, especially with visual arts is...
54:49
unfounded and I think AI is just such a wonderful sort of shot in the arm for art and animation that it is going to change things, but I think it's also going to lower barriers so that more indie people have access to greater, you know, have access to assistance.
55:13
and things like that. I mean, as an artist, I always want assistance because there's some things that are just so tedious to do. And now people have that flexibility to automate some of those things and to have their own indie studios with much less budget. Oh, actually, I'll take this a step further. So since I'm speaking to a class of people who are aspiring, you know.
55:41
business folks trying to really make something of themselves with those skills they're learning right now in this very classroom. So think of like what the future is going to look like for you 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, 50 years from now, right? Are you more interested in living a future where it's, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstrap kind of thing? And it's all by the...
56:09
power and might of your own muscles and blood, sweat and tears, or would you much rather a more village-like kind of ecosystem where, you know, like the term implies, he takes a village, you know, like it's like, yeah, like traditionally human beings, that's kind of where we come from, man. Decentralization actually, that's, that's, that taps into that very core, right? It's not so much about being separate and doing our own thing.
56:39
in our little corners, it's about understanding that we're all part of a whole and we can be in service of a larger vision. So that in the context of like an studio, for example, for those that are more so inclined into the blockchain side of things, you could make a DAO, an autonomous decentralized organization, right? It's effectively what it will allow you to do.
57:06
You could dedicate tasks to people and say, hey, we're currently working on this IP, and we're trying to have storyboards being made. And if you have the skill set to do that, just sign in and contribute here, and you'll be rewarded. And as soon as you put your piece in, and it's done, it's done, and now it's part of the system. And then another person can come in and say, hey, I do voice acting, and I would like to contribute to that. And you can do that as well.
57:35
These are very much possible scenarios that currently are technically happening on YouTube. People from across disciplines are coming together and deciding, you know what, I like your vision, I like what you're doing, and I want to participate. How do I do that? So you'll see a lot of like little clusters of friend groups slash peer groups come together on their Discord servers.
58:03
make full-blown animated shows, you know, these things exist on YouTube and they're pretty cool to look at. It's up to witness. So I would challenge every single one of you to do that very same thing. Don't think of yourself as just one piece, you know? You have a role to play and who knows, whoever is sitting right next to you might be your
58:31
come the next Pixar or the next DreamWorks and stuff like that. We have a couple of people actually that are already working collectively. So it was very exciting to hear that. But there's a question. Who has a question? Yeah, what's up? One more. Let's go. So you mentioned earlier about going into forums and Reddit and really searching for articles that might not be.
59:01
Seen as much, do you have any names or recommendations of those that you could give us? Oh man, off the top of my head, that's going to be a tricky one. So the Blender community, for sure, they're experimenting with a lot of crazy stuff. So off the bat, that's the one way I would point you to. Another way I would point you to would be, surprisingly enough,
59:31
The folks that specialize in motion graphics, as in people who, whether it's with tools like After Effects or whatever other tools they're using, they're creating motion graphics and coming up with interesting visuals that you don't typically see. These communities are alive and well, and they're pretty cool.
01:00:00
Surprisingly enough, the DJs, and here's the reason why. When you're tapping with the DJ community, and that's across genres, music as an art form, as an expression, pairs really well with visuals. You'd be very surprised how quickly you'll progress when you team up with these people, and it forces you to take outside of the box in terms of like, okay, how do I make my visual?
01:00:28
fit the aesthetic and style of this artist or this performer and so on and so forth. I know plenty of people that have put together shows where they take care of the visuals of the live event and then all the performer has to worry about is just come on perform their song or their set and go from there. As far as like more practical I guess like breadcrumbs for you to follow.
01:00:54
shameless plug here, like check out my articles, man. Like that's literally what I've written them for, for people like yourselves who have no idea about this culture bubbling up online. I've written over 52 articles and it covers a wider idea of stuff. So if you're curious to look into it, just read it and you'll find a lot of stuff to get into. Thank you for that. That was awesome. Anyone else have a question?
01:01:24
Bruno, right? Yes, it was kind of the same. Kind of the same? Yeah. I think some people are, I'm feeling the air in the room is sort of like, oh my gosh, where do we start? You know, kind of a thing. So here's something practical. Because actually, I used to be in this exact same place, right? I remember when blockchain first hit me in the face. I was like, okay.
01:01:50
A lot of my peers that are artists are doing this blockchain thing. Where do I start? Um, well, I started by following my interest, right? And knowing what you're interested in is as simple as knowing what keeps you up at night. What's the thing that you will happily ditch class for to do? I'm sure a lot, a lot of you, if not all of you can think of that right now. And if you don't, that's fine.
01:02:18
what's the thing that you know for a fact you do on a consistent basis? Because one of the quotes I tend to go back to a lot is you're the sum of the five people that you hang around with the most, right? So similarly, their interest would effectively be the sum of the five things that you consistently engage with the most. So for me, my entire life it's been photography,
01:02:48
audio engineering, software engineering, and now to a certain capacity, writing. I've always been a writer. I mean, at the foundation I've written poetry books, I've written journals, you know, 10,000 pages worth of the stuff. So it's kind of came full circle today that I'm writing and publishing my own articles just for the fun of it. But yeah, I mean, like it's me observing and-
01:03:14
taking it in and being introspective in terms of like, cool, these are the things that I know for a fact I've done my whole life. And now I'm gonna put them in practical use. But also I'm keeping a reasonable amount of like element of open-mindedness in terms of, hey, what can I learn along the way that will supercharge what I already know or will introduce some fresh perspective from what I'm capable of, you know?
01:03:45
You are dropping a lot of wisdom today. I will tell you that. It's really great. That's why I'm at Best Man. One of the things I'm really passionate about is this idea of passing on knowledge, right? And specifically from the vantage point of the reason why gatekeeping annoys me so much as a culture, especially here in America. Because again, I'm a foreigner. I'm not from here.
01:04:12
What really annoys me about gatekeeping is that you're effectively borrowing an entire generation from accessing a pool of knowledge that could A, be beneficial to them, and B, they actually could use and build upon and actually improve the society as a whole. So my responsibility as someone who's been older, you know, been here, done that, you know, seen it all, heard it all, is that, okay, cool, like, what would I say to someone who's like 10 years
01:04:42
15, you know, and stuff like that. They should be normalized is what I'm getting at. Can you just tell them exactly what gatekeeping is? Because we're using some lingo that might not be totally familiar to everybody. Yeah, so gatekeeping would be this idea of, there's two ways to look at it. There's this idea that one thing that has been one way should be
01:05:12
anything that threatens that structure, you know, is deemed less than that kind of thing. A good example of that would be dubstep music, right? Some of you may know who Skrillex is. I ran into him a couple times, chill guy and whatnot. There was a time where people would say that, oh, this guy, he doesn't make real music. This stupid kid is in his computer. You know, that's not real music.
01:05:41
real musicians that make stuff with instruments, with guitars and drums and stuff like that, that's gatekeeping, right? Like this is you're effectively putting your foot down and saying that things should only be done one way. Another gate effect of gatekeeping or version of gatekeeping would be when you purposely go out of your way to hide knowledge so that you stay ahead of your competition.
01:06:10
however insignificant it might be. I feel like this idea that you need to be constantly trying to battle this hypothetical enemy that's out to get you makes no sense.
01:06:24
Yeah, definitely. And I've heard it a lot used with like art institutions and who they choose from and who they elevate and curation and stuff like that. Although I do feel like there is some need for curation. And what I've liked about some of the NFT platforms is that there's been sort of more curated platforms.
01:06:54
risen down from the hype because I see so much more quality in them. I don't know what you think. I got temporarily rocked because again, you know, Twitter gone on Twitter. I don't want to make the most out of this. I actually want to hear some more of what these guys went because like, again, this is not about me, bro. It's literally about like what you guys are doing and like what kind of stuff you're trying to put out there. I'd be very curious to know, like in terms of projects this year, like, what are you guys working on? Like, what do you hope to?
01:07:25
put out, whether it's in the classroom or out into the internet. All right. We've got someone, they have thesis classes which is literally their own projects they're putting out. So go right ahead. Okay. So for thesis, I'm doing a collaboration with some friends which I did last semester too. We did a whole animation involving three thieves and three different art styles. For this,
01:07:53
This semester, we're doing something similar, doing animations together to make this theme of an animation of death and themes following around that.
01:08:07
Wait, so say that one more time, like beams, like laser beams? Oh, themes. I was like, I was so confused for a second there. OK. Is it like a short film kind of thing, or is it more like a vignette kind of format? It's more of a convenient format. Interesting. Well, best of luck, and stay open-minded, and be ready to pivot, because.
01:08:36
One of the things I've learned in doing creative works is that you can never really commit to a vision and that includes this very podcast This as case in point, you know the whole technical difficulty thing. None of that is in your control What isn't your control though is the execution part, you know right
01:08:56
And he splits the execution, which is interesting. So he's splitting the execution with two other people. And I think in that way kind of removing some control. Anyone in particular is like aiming to do something that pertains with combining like mixed media type of stuff? I'm curious to hear about that. Are you? No?
01:09:27
Is anyone doing mixed media, mixed styles, physical, two-dimensional? I'm getting crickets actually. I guess mixed media is not exactly all that popular when all is said and done, so I'm not that surprised. I guess like the last thing I'll ask about too is like what's everyone's thoughts here on like gorillas, if anyone even knows what that is? The band?
01:09:57
Yep, the band and specifically the concept, you know, they've executed, you know, this idea of like their characters, you know, with their young era, all universes and all that stuff. No? Okay, go for it. I mean, it's a great concept and I like the, I've followed them for like, well, a really long time now, I think more probably like 10 years now and
01:10:25
Seeing their animation style kind of change, now they're moving on to a little bit more like three-dimensional characters instead of like that 2D pop art style. I mean, I think that there's very similar music to theirs in terms of the style and their songs, but I think that what set them apart early on was the fact that they had characters for each...
01:10:53
person in their band and they use the characters in their music videos instead of making, you know, just like regular music videos, how you would typically see it. I think that really set them apart and it changed up and made something new because I mean, I can't, at least I don't remember or recall seeing like other bands using, um, like you know, their characters and animations for music videos like that. Yeah. I mean, I would agree. Essentially, you know, gorillas walked.
01:11:23
basically the entire industry could run specifically in regards of leveraging IP. These guys have mastered that to such a degree that initially was supposed to be a joke, that I'm aware of. The whole idea of a virtual ban was supposed to be a commentary of how fake everything is in the industry. That irony, I guess, took off enough so that-
01:11:49
Now people are unironically going to their shows and paying to see these characters play out on screen Not to dissimilar form from Hachinemiku or to some degree even Marshmallow or Deadmau5, you know, like These are fabricated characters and stuff like that, you know Yeah, Daft Punk and um, and I was immediately thinking of the is she japanese the completely Fabricated pop star
01:12:18
If you're referring to Hatsune Miku, then her story is a little bit more complex than that. But long story short, this is what's called a vocaloid. This is a technology of voice synthesis where you can make the thing talk like a person or sing like a person. And if I recall correctly, Yamaha is the company that is behind that that suite of software. So for whatever reason.
01:12:46
Western audiences took a hold of that, ran with it, and the fandom grew so big that people are now paying first-class tickets to go see how Tsunemi could perform as a hologram. And again, it's cool to see, man. So this idea that we're moving into a hypothetical future that's gonna change everything, I kind of hate to break it to y'all, but it's been already happening for a long time now.
01:13:12
It's just that only people like myself and select niche fandoms are aware of it because we take the time to interact and interface with such off-the-wall concepts that, again, as I described, are not that off-the-wall when you establish the premise of what the gorillas have done, what Daft Punk has done, effectively. If Daft Punk, for example, wanted to, if they really wanted to and they...
01:13:40
believed in the vision to a degree where they wanted to take it to the level of, let's say, Star Wars is in terms of like cultural impact. I'm telling you, man, with the technology of today, they would have such a blast and such a pool of resources to play with because the IP that they have is already strong and powerful enough as is. But now imagine, you know, Daft Punk and space, Daft Punk, but fighting demons, Daft Punk, but I don't know, like.
01:14:09
flying around and doing portal travel and stuff like that. There's a lot of stuff you can do concepts wise that I think really won't hold you back once you have a solid IP built around it.
01:14:25
No, that's really good. Does anyone have questions about like IP? I'm curious if anyone wants to go in that direction. Yeah, anyone has like a favorite IP or a favorite franchise that like they gravitate towards? Oh, that's a good question. Come on, I know you guys have favorite franchises that you like to watch. If I say what anime I wanna, should I watch, it becomes a big talking point, so.
01:14:55
What's your favorite franchise? Give me like a recommendation because I would actually would want to watch something new. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. One Piece? Okay, so we have somebody that said One Piece. One Piece is a classic bro that's kind of old. Give me something a little bit more off the wall than that. Alright, go for it. Well for me my favorite franchise would be...
01:15:23
That post-apocalyptic Mad Max, I seen a bunch of films based on George Miller's, even they made a video game version, but it wasn't created by George Miller, it was created by some industry. That's all I know. Yeah, I don't know too much about Mad Max, I do know it's critical and I also know they have a video game which is interesting.
01:15:49
You don't typically see that for a franchise of that kind of scale.
01:15:56
We have another person back here. I'm moving around the classroom to give you a visual. All right. Oh, me? Yes. No, I was warning Roy up ahead. OK. Back class. Franchise. Go for it. I guess Star Wars is one of my favorite franchises. Yeah, that's me. I mean, um. They're retro in here. They really are. You'd be surprised. The young generation is.
01:16:22
Not necessarily. I feel like a lot of the people I even have AI conversations with are in their 30s, 40s. You know, the AI art today people were 50s, 60s. I mean, it's kind of surprising. Yeah, it's definitely diverse. It's refreshing. Yeah, they know older IPs and there's also like a push for pixel-based art, sort of retro looking things.
01:16:52
I've seen things that look sort of like the 1950s or the 1960s. So it's, um, it's an interesting thing that's happening in the, you know, the 18 to 21, although I think my students in here are a little bit older than that. Um, so. Show of hands, like how many of you guys are using TikTok at the moment? Got one, two, three.
01:17:22
Wow, four, there's about 24 people in here. We have four out of 24. Okay, that's actually opening an interesting kind of room. I'm going somewhere with this. How about show of hands, how many of you are using Instagram?
01:17:37
Oh yeah, that's a lot more. That's probably the majority of the classroom. Okay, and what next would be how many of you are using YouTube?
01:17:50
Yep, I would say majority of the classroom. Interesting. Here's a curve ball. How many of you are using Tumblr? One, two, three, four. Four again. We got four. Yeah, y'all are missing out on Tumblr, man. The really good stuff really tends to come from Tumblr, surprisingly enough. Reddit is definitely the front page of the internet, so that one speaks for itself.
01:18:19
A surprising one for those that care into looking for inspiration or people that really perform at like an elite level, go check out Artstation. It's a website where artists go on to publish their stuff away from social media so you can like see it in full resolution. Another one would be Pixiv. It's P-I-X-I-V.
01:18:48
What it is, it's basically a Japanese website, where you can see a lot of like, think One Punch Man, Attack on Titan, all of these things that are big today. There were once sketches and proof of concepts that existed on such websites. Fair warning though, there's a lot of mature themes and that's all I'm going to say on that. I'm sorry, we're all adults in here. Actually, that's one of the things that we've talked about.
01:19:17
a little bit is that a lot of these commercial AIs, these centralized AIs, they have issues with showing nudity and every student in here has taken figure drawing. It's a foundational course as you take figure drawing with a nude model. It's extremely hard a lot of times to get nudity out of a lot of the software. But.
01:19:45
Yeah, ArtStation, very popular. I think almost everybody is on ArtStation, but I love the other one. That's great. Yeah, and where I was going with my inquiry earlier in terms of what platform you guys use, right? So only a few use TikTok, majority use Instagram, and quite a bit of you use YouTube. So there's cross-pollination. That's like what I'm getting at, right? So the more platforms you're on, the more opportunity there will be for cross-pollination.
01:20:15
because your pool of influences is gonna be that much larger. And that's something I personally, I myself had to grow out of because for the longest, I was very much like a few apps kind of guy, you know? It's like, sure, I'll be on Instagram, I'll be on Tumblr and I'll be on YouTube and that's about it. And eventually I got into Twitter more seriously, but for the most part, it was mostly to go there to just read funny memes. I wasn't really...
01:20:45
actively taking stuff in over there in terms of like artistic culture. But let me tell you, man, the one thing you'll do. Here's if I can show something that I'm really hoping can be helpful for you guys long term, it's digital personhood, especially in this, you know, century of like AGI around the corner society. A lot of what I notice.
01:21:13
And this is speaking as someone who's done a lot of research in terms of subcultures and spoken to artists themselves and spoken to people like the professor, you know, Ariel over here. I noticed that there's such a lack of identity online in terms of people don't have a consistent identity that I can trace back when it comes to me sourcing where I'm getting my information from.
01:21:43
And I've always wondered why, to be honest. Is it an issue of like not understanding branding? Is it an issue of like not being able to, quote unquote, spread yourself too thin? Like, I don't know if I cracked this, but what I can tell you though, is that for me, what I have done with this Whispill project was effectively building a front door, if you will.
01:22:11
that anyone who cares to look into what I'm sharing or what I'm curating, they can find it as easily as a simple Google search, right? It's a portal from which they can jump in and expand from there if they feel like it so that if they care to follow on Instagram, they can do that. If they care to follow on TikTok, they can also do that because I have the exact same username everywhere. I've made sure of it. And I thought very carefully actually, I know I said earlier that like,
01:22:41
My username was like a little bit of a, I didn't think too hard about it, but it was a bit of a half truth. What I thought hard about was what would be something that in the vast sea of like, you know, the internet, that's something that you search for, that it would be me, just me, and there would be no one else that would have that name. So that's what led me to picking that name as well. When I was coming up with it, I went into...
01:23:09
a domain search engine and I search, you know, to see who was currently using it as a website for their names or for, you know, a business or whatever. These are things you're going to have to think about, unfortunately, for better or worse as you build your brand online and your identity online because you'll have to compete in terms of visibility with people who automate content. So keep that in mind.
01:23:40
Yeah, that's totally a very good thing to say, especially for people that want to do industry jobs or indie animations and things like that, is that if you put it out there, have a consistent identity, brand that can be searched for very easily. Absolutely. Any last questions? We're getting close to the end of class.
01:24:11
I'm seeing nose, nose, nose. Okay. Yes, we have one. Go ahead. I was looking at different programs because I've been trying to learn different programs lately and recently I come across something called Touch Designer. Have you, are you familiar with that? Yeah, a lot of the DJs that I'm aware of gravitating towards it for obvious reasons, at least in my mind, because they...
01:24:40
From what I understand, the principle here is that you get to like design live shows for like, you know, the backdrop of the artists or even in some instances like LED panels that are built into the suit or the costume of the performer, that kind of thing. So that's where Touch Designer comes in. Why are you wanting to experiment with it? You know, what about the track suit?
01:25:08
And just playing with spaces like backgrounds. So I was thinking of maybe using it for backgrounds for my animation. Yeah, you can use whatever you want. There's not gonna be a committee that comes in and busts through your door and says, hey, you use touch designer, it's forbidden.
01:25:31
Yeah, exactly. Especially here. I mean, I think the cool thing about the FIU Art program is that they've got great professors that, yeah, they're not going to tell, I don't think they'll tell anybody you can't use this program or that program or anything like that. So I think it would also be cool for a mixed, you know, for a 3D, 2D thing. And I'm glad you brought that up, you know, mixed media, because that's something that we can really discuss now in class.
01:26:03
It's a lot of... I mean, for me, as someone who predominantly tinkers with stuff in the audio realm, like, I'll just do whatever, man. Like, I'll take a sample, warp it, distort it, you know, mess with it, plug it into a synthesizer, resample that, then put a big crusher on it. For this I'm not music savvy, I'm basically speaking Chinese right now, so I'm...
01:26:32
to hone in on what I'm talking about here is this idea of remixing things and being able to take this thing you've remixed and then remix that again, you know? Learn to flip your own stuff, man. Like, get creative with it, you know? Use unexpected formats. I saw a TikTok video, actually, where someone took a render of something they've created and blended, and then they recorded the output into a VHS.
01:27:01
machine and then we recorded that and used it on a projector and then used that as like a backdrop for like an actual animated project. So there's a lot of creative ways you can use these tools. Yeah, I love that. Love that. Yeah, so like I'm saying, we're getting near the end of class time. So this was so awesome. I'm glad we came up with this kind of
01:27:30
hair brained idea. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me in there. I was, I gotta say, like, if you'd told me a year ago I would be teaching a class, like, I don't know, man, I'd be tripping, but here we are. So hopefully, hopefully the takeaway was, you know, create, do your thing, but more importantly focus on like the community aspect. You know, that's like where you want matters in the grand scheme of things.
01:28:00
Yeah, absolutely. And that's really good advice. Yeah, absolutely.
01:28:06
are neat. So if there's like no like less, you know, less closing thoughts from people, I'm gonna jet. Thanks for having me, Ariel. Well, no, thanks for, you know, having me and having us and, you know, the FIU Intermediate Advanced Animation class, spring 2024. It's really awesome and I'm so glad we did this. And yeah, that's, that's, I can't wait to, you know.
01:28:36
re-listen to this as well. Yeah, I'll try to publish this sooner. Typically, I have a bit of a pipeline where I figure out what's going to come next. But this one, I think, for the sake of posterity, needs to go up sooner. So don't worry. I got you. So yeah, once again, for those that care to look into the work I'm doing and what I'm publishing, Wispel, it's W-H-I-Z-P-I-L-L everywhere. You'll find it. It's just one Google search away.
01:29:06
And yeah, keep on creating and keep on doing your things, man. More importantly, stay curious.
01:29:14
Thank you. Awesome. Bye. All right. Peace out, folks. Peace out.
[Whiz Pill Podcast 53] Ariel Baron-Robbin, AI In The Classroom: Modern Animation & Art