For this impulse I wanted to do a long overdue deep dive on Corridor Digital’s AI anime videos as well as their making-offs and other similar videos, to get to a reasonable watch time for an impulse.
The Animes
Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of how the videos turned out. I know, kill me on the spot. But to me it just looks like the most complex way of rotoscoping ever (talking about rotoscoping animation like Wald Disney did back in the day, not the modern use of the word). Sure, they got the style and the tone right but the proportions and faces are far too human for my taste. Apart from that, the story doesn’t really go anywhere and is at the same time a bit too intense and too boring, it almost seems like ChatGPT wrote it. Hmmm.
Anyway, the video still shows that this sort of quick and dirty production is possible and that the AI can do all the heavy lifting, leaving the creative side of things to the humans, which I think is still very very cool.
Making Off
In their ‘Did We Just Change Animation Forever?’ video, they brake down their technical approach and workflow, but I’m more interested in their philosophy. Essentially, they wanted to create an anime with their known workflows – with filming real footage on a greenscreen and then VFXing their way through the process without having to worry about the anime stylisation and animation, which they can’t do.
That sounds pretty much like what I want to do except I want to refrain from filming real humans and stay more true to the original anime style. They also talk about the democratisation about their process, claiming that they want to share every step of the way with the community to ensure that anyone can recreate what they have made, using free and open source software. This can’t be said for traditional animation, since animation studios rely on skilled and experienced artists to create their films. But this way, anyone can tell their stories in a style that fits that story best, while letting AI do the heavy lifting.
Their video has sparked some controversy, however, with many anime-based influencers across social media platforms arguing whether this is crossing a line, or AI is even art, going so far as to call the video itself offensive. I think it’s pretty obvious what my stance on the matter is, but I’ve included a link to a video going into more detail about the controversy below.
Qualities of Anime
Anime is a notoriously hard style and medium to recreate, and Corridor Digital have made a dedicated video talking about what goes wrong in most live-action adaptations of anime and what makes anime so great in the first place. I highly recommend the video to anyone interested in either of both styles.
First and foremost, they make the point that anime is heavily character-driven. Each character is introduced carefully and thoughtfully and shows their traits in every action they take. With live-action and especially Hollywood adaptations, individual characters and their personalities aren’t as important, more so who is portraying them, which is understandable since many productions rely on a big name to have enough people to come see their movie so they don’t go bankrupt immediately.
Next, they claim that storytelling in anime is incredibly efficient and decisive: Each shot has a purpose and a meaning. I have to say that this is mostly true, but there is of course the edge case of anime series with limited budget trying to elongate certain shots to get more runtime or even creating entire filler episodes that serve literally no function for the plot of the series.
But for the most part it’s true and they come up with an interesting reason as to why this could be: On a film set it’s not unusual to have multiple cameras filming a scene with different actors, each focussing on a different one, and then maybe some more for wide establishing shots. Once everything is filmed, it’s during editing where it’s decided which shot looks will be used. Animated productions could never afford animating a scene from multiple angles just to have some more freedom in the edit, so every single shot needs to be decided on from the start, which in turn means every shot must have a good reason for being the way it is. Of course, budget is also a huge concern, but this video talks more about the creative qualities behind it all.
Some other miscellaneous features they point out is the importance of impacts and the use of internal monologues which is actually very intriguing for my anime film, because it would mean I wouldn’t have to animate so much.
Of course, there’s also anime’s more extreme camera angles, the often distorted anatomy and inaccurate scales to sell certain emotions, actions or impacts and the action anime lines that are frequently used, but that’s all getting a little too detailed and is perhaps best reserved for my master’s thesis.
Oh and apparently the Death Note live action adaptation is actually good?? Have to check that out.
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