Ok. There's a lot going on in that title. Maybe it's easiest to start with the final product:
There's a lot going on in that animation, too. Maybe I'm just in my maximalist era.
Anyways, I've had this idea of combining mixed media collage techniques (paper ripping, different photography styles) with animation for a while. This particular animation was actually kicked off as a proof-of-concept for an After Effects script I was trying to develop. While I may struggle to write code, I am quite proficient at asking for help. In this case, I asked everyone's favorite work companion, AI.
From there, ChatGPT developed a comprehensive script that covered the basics of what I was looking for, but missed the mark for general After Effects best practices. This is where having deep knowledge of the program to begin with helped me to explain what I was looking for better.
As an aside, I always love how matter-of-fact ChatGPT is when you correct it on something. It has no resolve in its opinions.
After further trial and error of identifying the ideal effect values, I ended up with a script that seamlessly created a paper cutout effect at the click of a button. Not bad for the 20 minutes I invested in talking to a robot.
At this point, I was curious what other things I could get ChatGPT to develop for me. Beyond paper cutouts, I really love the "jitter" effect that mixed media animations use to emulate stop motion. Similar to line boiling in traditional animation, it adds a level of imperfections that we actually look for when exploring the medium. I proceeded to task ChatGPT with this once again.
Please don't judge how conversationally I talk to this thing. I'm just covering my bases so they don't come for me once they gain sentience.
This script ended up taking many, many more revisions than the first one. Essentially, ChatGPT was struggling to identify the language needed to add an expression to a property inside of a script. It didn't know to use a hash mark, and if it did, the location was incorrect. I was getting endless syntax errors. It seemed like this was the end of the line for ChatGPT.
But it wasn't the end of the line for me. Like I said, I'm great at asking for help. So I went to a Discord community around motion design and asked the expressions folks what they thought.
Within a few hours, I had help from an After Effects expression master, Greg Stewart. He so kindly rewrote my entire script and optimized where ChatGPT said, "good enough." I don't think it's a huge stretch to say I'd be stuck here forever without his help, so everyone needs to send him a thank you on my behalf.
With the scripting elements of this project out of the way, I felt empowered to actually do the work. Could I have made this animation without the use of scripts or ChatGPT? Absolutely. But I think that's where AI's sweet-spot in creative projects may lie: making the lives of creatives easier instead of trying to replace them.
This animation went up on my Instagram and was quickly picked up and loved by my incredibly humble 300 followers. It's also the project with the most shares I've made, showing it resonates with others.
My favorite part of this experience is that, even with all of the help that ChatGPT gave me in creating the scripts, it was still another human that helped bring everything together.
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