Hacker Cinema
Robot Chicken
2005 · TV series · 12 min episodes · 11 seasons
Created by Seth Green, Matthew Senreich
A series of pop-culture parodies using stop-motion animation of toys, action figures and dolls. The title character was an ordinary chicken until he was run down by a car and subsequently brought back to life in cyborg form by mad scientist Fritz Huhnmorder, who tortures Robot Chicken by forcing him to watch a random selection of TV shows, the sketches that make up the body of each episode.
2 positive2 negative2 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
Passable as an episode of Robot Chicken.
Why would Disney fear you, though?
They'll still own all of the money-making IP that your models are trained on. You won't actually be able to get away with "X in the style of Disney or Y in the style of Pixar." And they'll have their own in-house models, far more expensive and powerful (likely through regulation) than you'll be able to afford.
You aren't talking about competition, you're talking about emulation. Putting an inferior version of existing properties on the market like The Asylum does.
I watched all of the links you provided. The "live action rotoscoped film" didn't need AI. They could have rented a knight costume or did that in AE, it wouldn't have even been that expensive. It wasn't even a good example of what rotoscoping could do - and I can actually accept rotoscoping and motion capture as a legitimate use of LLMs.
The concept for the Predator sketch was lame and it's ripping off the style of an Joel Haver, an animator with actual comedy talent. That legitimately kind of makes me mad. That's exactly the sort of thing that makes people hate AI. You aren't even ripping off a corporation here, which I could at least respect in abstract.
The Superman parody was generic and derivative, but it looked competent. Didn't really look like Robot Chicken though. The way they did the mouths was weird. And the whole plot revolved around a problem that was never actually a problem in the franchise.
The Grinch "anime" didn't look like a good anime. It looked like the kind of thing people criticize when an anime studio cuts costs for a second season. Still frames and very little animation. Inconsistent and generic style.
The horror movie posted below? The "blood" looked awful a lot of the time. The cinematography, as such, didn't carry the story at all. It isn't shot or cut the way an actual movie would be. The actors weren't compelling, the script was tepid.
Understand, I'm really trying not to just shit on this because it's AI, I'm trying to approach it as art because that's what it purports to be. And I can concede that the technical capability of AI has advanced dramatically in this field. They did a Robot Chicken and they did a Joel Haver and I saw a 90s cartoon but... it's bad art. I see no sense of actual unique creative vision anywhere. No sense of an actual artist trying to express something. Nothing that tells me "this could only have been done by AI, and would have been impossible beforehand."
It's like AI people think all you need is the aesthetic, and that the aesthetic they're imitating is a suitable replacement for the actual talent that went into it, but it isn't.
AI music models are a tool. They're only as good as the person doing the steering and curation.
I am a filmmaker. I have made photons-on-glass films for decades.
I have always wanted to make big-budget sci-fi and fantasy films, as have my friends and colleges who went to film school. The barrier to entry is almost impossible to climb. Most of my friends wound up in IATSE or doing commercial work, but never had the chance to follow through on their passion projects.
Ten thousand kids go to film school every year. Very few of them will wind up being able to make what they dream to create. It's a fucking tragedy that all of this ambition withers on the vine.
Getting a large film budget requires connections. You see a lot of nepotism. Sometimes a director who was in the right place at the right time with the right ideas will make it, but that's such a survivor's bias problem. There are orders of magnitude more people that didn't make it. Talented people full of dreams. And that's a tragedy - imagine how many Martin Scorseses, Hayao Miyazakis, Yorgos Lanthimoses, Denis Villeneuves, and Chloe Zhaos we're losing.
AI is the first tool that will level the playing field for truly driven individuals. I mean this with my full heart - this is a great tool for creative and driven people. It's the arrival of the printing press for us.
But the news of this gift has been twisted and soured by the media and by popular influencers who push only a fear agenda.
By trying to make AI films, I have been doxed, sent death threats, insulted, called thousands of names. Every day! People pour out hatred, racist comments, sexist comments - they literally want me (all of us) to DIE because they've been taught to hate this.
I can't even begin to tell you how exhausting this is. Instead, let me focus on the good.
Here's a list of (what I think) are really good AI films. Each of them takes 10+ hours of work:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tii9uF0nAx4 - Made by a film school grad as a demo of real filmmaking combined with AI VFX.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQWRBCt_5E - Created by a Hollywood TV writer for an FX show you've probably seen. Not the best animation or voicing, but you can see how it gives a writer more than just a blank page to convey their thoughts.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4 - Music video. Slightly MAGA-coded, but made by a Hollywood VFX person.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAiiKteM-U - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. If you're going to tell them "don't use AI", then are you going to get them a job at Disney? Also, all the pieces are hand-rotoscoped, the mouth animations are hand-animated, and every voice is from a hired (and paid) voice actor.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NFXGMuwpY - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. See previous comment.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KXYpaTe_8 - Another slightly MAGA-coded music video. Made by the same Hollywood VFX person.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlx5Rslrzk - Amazing Spider-Man vs. Carnage anime created with ComfyUI and other models.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqoCWdOwr2U - Christmas Grinch anime. It's really funny if you like Jojo and get the references.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYeDIiqiHs - Totally 100% cursed. Made by a teenager following the comic book's plot. Instead of this teenager spending 100 hours on Fortnite, they made this.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5Dhc3Lh8U - A Pixar-like short film
These tools do not remove the need for editing, compositing, rotoscoping. You still have to understand film language, character arcs, story, pacing. The human ingredients still have to be there.
By using these models and tools, directors and editors can finally pursue projects that would require many people and potentially very large budgets. Like the Red vs. Blue creators sitting down and making machinima, they can create vivid sci-fi worlds or whatever genre or mood they want to evoke.
AI is a tool. In the hands of an artist, you can make art with AI.
Yes, people are using AI to make slop. Cameras also make slop - selfies, food pics. Your own camera roll is full of garbage.
People are posting slop AI because it's novel. If we'd gone from "no cameras at all" to "smartphones" overnight, you would see so much smartphone camera slop it would be unbearable. We, as a society, had time to develop filters and curation around cameras. That'll eventually happen for AI too.
Cameras can make incredible art in the hands of an artist. They can also make a lot of shit. But we don't demonize the cameras. Soon, our feelings towards AI will become equivalent.
But right now, it's extremely painful to be a creative person using AI.
I -
ABSOLUTELY HATE
ABSOLUTELY DETEST
THE "ALL AI IS BAD" MEME
IT IS MIMETIC VITRIOL
People have let this stupid meme boil over to the point of sending death threats and doxxing creators. And that is beyond unacceptable.
We need to stop adopting angry slogans of hate and start thinking on a case by case basis with nuance.
This entire conversation needs way more humanity and humility.
And we need to accept that there are good things being created with AI too.
That seems wrong. You didn't copy the object. You reproduced its design. The distinction isn't much in the language, but it is important legally.
You couldn't scan the object and print an exact copy, or use still frames from the movie, but you can certainly create your own object and slicer files from scratch to make a novel object visibly indistinguishable from it, or even make a new instance from the original construction recipe (if one exists). You could also take the original prop and make a new photo of it yourself.
All that activity is instead governed by patents, specifically design patents. It is very unlikely that a film production company would seek out design patents for random prop elements that were seen in the final cut of a movie, unless they are to be used for merchandising purposes. Lucas could certainly create a design patent on Obi-Wan's and Darth Vader's lightsaber props, so the licensee could have a protected monopoly on selling the reproductions as toys. In that case, you couldn't 3D-print your own Vader lightsaber. You could still make your own lightsaber design, and print that, but the design patent prevents you from making one that looks specifically like the one in the patent. With no design patent, you can reproduce from scratch anything you see. Copyright is about rote copying of an embodied artwork. Derivative works must include some piece of the original. That isn't what you did.
Alternately, an image or object can be trademarked, wherein certain visual elements can be claimed as symbolic of your work within a specific domain. That's stronger, but narrower protection. If a lightsaber is a trademark image for something like a computer game production company, you couldn't use similar objects or images to promote your own business relating to computers, software, or scientific equipment. But you could probably use it on a beer label with no problems whatsoever, because that's a different domain. You don't need to register your trademark in order to defend it; you just have to use it in commerce. The major characters, unique props, and distinctive sets are all potential trademarks, particularly if they appear in multiple works within the same domain.
Whomever it was that denied you on copyright grounds should not have done so. There is no way to acquire a license because none is necessary. In any case, copyright violation is a civil matter, and only the owner of a copyright has standing to defend it. There is no requirement for anyone else to do it on their behalf.
(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.)
As for Stage 9, it seems like that C&D would have been based on a claim that the bridge set of ST:tNG is a trademarked element of the franchise, in the domains of entertainment and computer software. Copyright is not the issue. The set design was integral to the show and the games based on it; it appeared in almost every episode. That's one of the ways you knew you were watching Star Trek, in addition to the uniforms and logos. If someone were to use a perfectly replicated model of the bridge to produce a video, there could be legitimate brand confusion by a viewer, who might think that their video was officially sanctioned by the Star Trek trademark owner.
Something like Robot Chicken, which uses licensed toys to make videos that include the elements trademarked in the same domain, walks a fine line, that is likely saved only by the crudeness of the reproduction. It is clear that the sets and actors are toys, and not pretending to be the things they represent.
But what about movies? Netflix has a few target groups:
- People who want to watch TV shows when they are released to DVD
- People who want to watch on-demand movies
The US has Hulu plus ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC all have on-demand online channels. In the same respects they only hold seasons for so long. So the market in the TV area is really no different than iPlayer/4oD/etc.
The top online TV series rental for Lovefilm is Robot Chicken - Star Wars.[1] I've been in the UK long enough to know that there is much more demand for US television series than Robot Chicken. (Modern Family for example, comes to mind)
The real challenge here is if Netflix UK has the same ownership rights as Netflix US. Otherwise they will sit no differently than Lovefilm.
Disclaimer - I'm American, but currently live in the UK.
[1] - http://www.lovefilm.com/
I don't have much first-hand experience with Blu-rays, but I wonder if this kind of bad compression is a common thing?
Fortunately it's not too common, but it's more common than one would like. This isn't unique to Blu-rays either; it happened a lot with DVDs. Various problems that I've seen are:
1. Improperly done telecine (e.g. telecining two different parts of the frame at different rates, more common in animation).
2. Badly done framerate-changing (Robot Chicken DVDs).
3. Completely borked interlacing (Family Guy first season DVDs).
4. Bad encoders that can't deal with massive bitrate peaks well (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu R1 DVDs, see http://i43.tinypic.com/105b8rk.png).
The primary problem with Blu-rays is a lack of source quality, not these kinds of mistakes: a lot of Blu-rays simply don't have any detail beyond SD because their source material is horrible (examples: Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).