Director of Japan's First AI Anime Defends New Spring 2025 Work: 'It Will Give More Opportunities to Animators'

Comments

• riskable@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Here I was, thinking that the first AI-generated anime was Ave Mujica. Because it’s that bad.

  • The script sounds like it was written by AI.
  • The animation in half the scenes is like 12 FPS (because they couldn’t be bothered to wait for a full render).
  • The characters lips move like goldfish eating flakes whenever they speak/sing.
  • They appear to have used stock mocap for the characters playing instruments and couldn’t be bothered to match up their movements to the music.

  By all accounts, it’s like AI did 90% of the work and then they handed it off to some intern for finishing.

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  • selayar@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No, Ave Mujica was great. You can criticize its direction, but please don’t call it AI works because there are real people involved behind it, who took a lot of care in composing, screen write, and animate it. They did a great job experimenting the format, incorparating horror element on a band girl anime. Especially, when there are worse anime out there made by people who know nothing about animation, e.g. Ex-arm.

    The animation in half the scenes is like 12 FPS (because they couldn’t be bothered to wait for a full render)

    That’s like the standard fps for an anime. Anime was animated in what they called on-2 (a picture holds for 2 frame in 24 fps), so any other anime also animated in 12 fps. They left it as stylistic choice, and I didn’t find the lower frame making the anime feels stiff or awkward

    The characters lips move like goldfish eating flakes whenever they speak/sing.

    That’s also the standard in anime, they only have mouth animated with 2-3 frame open and closing. Ave Mujica did a great job at making it emotive despite that limitations

    They appear to have used stock mocap for the characters playing instruments and couldn’t be bothered to match up their movements to the music.

    They actually took their VA performance’s motion capture with actual experience playing their instrument. Like any Bang Dream anime, Ave Mujica has a real band counterpart and you can see their live band performance on bandori channel. I think they did a great job to emote the performance and still keep it in sync.

    So, no, it was not that bad

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• rob400@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  People, ai is not the worse thing ever. If maintained by the right people. Big statement I know. (So don’t let Google, or Meta, or Twitter X obtain a monopoly over it.) Complaining while doing nothing to prevent that, is not helping prevent an ai monopoly.

  Also, since someone mentioned artist exploitation, ai would actually reduce exploitation since they wouldn’t have to spend hours physically drawing and putting the animation together. Or atleast not as many hours as with previous technologies.

  Ai opens up animation to new voices, that wouldn’t be able to animate. That can type in specifically the details of their characters. If they even want them drawn in a specific art style, they can possibly put that in the prompt. This is almost starting to look like the Photoshop doomsday all over again. Yet now people be editing photos with no problem.

  Ai lets more people create their dream animations, not less. If you support minorities having a chance at jobs, you should also support the potential for more animators having new opportunities to create animations.

  Ai also means you might actually get more content of a show made in an official means. If you liked a show, you can literally make fan recreations with ai and bring new life into older favorite shows that been dead for decades.

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  • ReluctantZen@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If maintained by the right people

    That’s a very big if

    ai would actually reduce exploitation

    In an ideal world maybe. In reality, I can only see it being used as a reason to pay animators even less or where animators become proof checkers. The real exploitation is animators not being paid enough, not the amount of time they put in. AI would not solve this.

    Ai opens up animation to new voices, that wouldn’t be able to animate

    Like? People that don’t want to put in the effort to get good? Unless you’re disabled, anyone can animate. It just takes a lot of effort to get good at it. But if anyone puts in that effort that means you’re passionate about it and they’re precisely the kind of you want in animation.

    This is almost starting to look like the Photoshop doomsday all over again.

    Not remotely the same imo. One is a new tool that doesn’t try to replace the creator, the other does try to replace the creator.

    If you support minorities having a chance at jobs, you should also support the potential for more animators having new opportunities to create animations.

    What a weird equivalence. How does supporting minorities equate to supporting more AI-gen? It implies they wouldn’t get the job without AI, which is much more problematic.

    Ai also means you might actually get more content of a show made in an official means

    I don’t see how that’s a good thing. Let’s not milk existing IPs any more than we already do. It’s just an opportunity for more slop.

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    • rob400@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There are shows that only had to seasons or even less. Even shows with just 5 episodes or less. Never seen the light of day since, in decades. Fans have been begging. Ai gives that opportunity. This issue i’m describing isn’t about releasing more slop, it’s about giving shows the chance that fans been saying they deserved since their cancellations. The original Teen titians ended at a cliff hanger, and if Warner bros isn’t going to finish it, well, now the fans can easily with ai.

      Supporting minorities actually has a lot to do with ai. Why? Because, like I already said, ai gives the animation medium new voices. By having more people having the ability to provide their own idea of an animation with ai, you end up with potentially more *new animations made.

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  • ninjabard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    AI steals jobs from animators, illustrators, writers, and voice actors. It has no place in a creative space.

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    • riskable@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      On the contrary, AI enables voice actors to change their voice in ways that biology won’t let them. If a voice actor can act, AI will give them the power to play more parts than they would have been able to previously.

      It’s just a tool. It’s not the magic, “replace humans” thing people think it is.

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    • RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Pro capitalism regressive take.

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• vdotgreen@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What a load of BS. Japan has only exploited it’s animators for as long as anime has existed. They just want to get rid of the artists and have the producers churn out as much slop as possible.

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  • Shirasho@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I am NOT disagreeing with you about either of your statements.

    With that said, AI does have a place in animation to ease the burden of animators. A big area for this is the tween frames, but if my understanding is correct they are already using AI for this.

    Unfortunately, like we have seen in the video game industry, AI will be used for full replacement instead of as an assistant tool.

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    • hitagi@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      In my opinion, the cause of “the burden of animation” is being underpaid and overworked. If there were better laws that can address these issues, we wouldn’t need to resort to AI.

      But for in-betweening, I assume you’re referring to something like CACANI but that’s a bit different from generative AI I think. It behaves more like 3DCG because the lines are vectors.

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