As someone who's always had a passion for digital media, but lacked any significant hand-drawn artistry skills, I've found that AI imaging tools have become an essential part of my creative toolkit. With tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, I now have access to an endless well of original assets that I can use to bring my ideas to life. Instead of sifting through pages of overused stock photography and plain-looking clip art, I can simply give these AI tools a prompt, such as "Spacetime Control Facility," and watch as they generate impressive and unique visuals.
Recently, I was tasked with creating a short piece of motion graphics to follow a script of a robot leading people through a futuristic science fiction workplace. The video was to be a classic "see and say" format, flipping through images to illustrate the different locations, objects, and situations that the robot was describing for our SXSW event. Typically, a project like this would involve sifting through stock libraries, searching for images that were halfway fitting, and then using photoshop to tailor them further.
However, not only does this yield mediocre results, but it's also incredibly time-consuming. Creating even one image could take hours, time which I did not have at my disposal. Furthermore, I had a very specific style in mind for these images - I wanted them to be rendered in the style of a vintage 1960s science fiction comic book. The high level of specificity I was after would simply not be available out of the box in any stock image library. However, while specificity may be the enemy of stock image searches, it is the super fuel for AI image generators. Within one hour, I was able to generate over 30 images of places and things that don't exist, yet somehow seemed familiar to me. These images were perfect for my project, and in many ways, I couldn't even describe why.
The best part? With these ready-made images, I could drop them into a flashy After Effects slideshow template and create a 90-second original video in almost no time at all. With the help of AI imaging tools, what would have taken hours of tedious work was accomplished in just a fraction of the time, with stunning and unique results. The future of digital media is truly exciting, and AI technology is at the forefront of this creative revolution.
Here's what the final video looked like and how it was used as a part of our SXSW immersive experience.
We see this as just the beginning of ways we can integrate AI into our immersive work. We're continuing to explore and test new tools as they are rapidly becoming available.
