WORLD PREMIERE * WE TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT NOW * WORLD PREMIERE
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WATCH FILM ABOVE
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WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT THE WORLD PREMIERE OF SUKIE SMITH’S VIDEO FOR HER HIT SONG WE TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT NOW.
“This is the first film made entirely with AI, that I am aware of, for a musician, a real person, not for AI-generated music.”
Roxanne Ducharme, Artist & film director
september 14th, 2024
DIRECTED AND AI VISUALS BY ROXANNE DUCHARME AKA TRASHCANROXANNE.
THE MUSICIAN AND ANIMATOR JUMPED ON ZOOM TO DISCUSS WORK, LIFE & AI.
OVER TO YOU SUKIE & ROXANNE…
I first met Roxanne Ducharme a million years ago at a party in someone's tiny apartment just off Hampstead Heath in London. The apartment rooms were decorated with plastic animals, plastic flowers, fairy lights, and pieces of stage set design. It was mysterious and magical, and there she was with her brilliant apparel, fierce wit and strong French-Canadian accent. I drank a lot of tequila that night. I don't really remember what we spoke of, but I laughed A LOT and knew I would know her for a long time. So here we are, maybe 25 years later. Roxanne is now a hugely respected, award-winning animator who has lived and worked in London, Paris, Montreal, Tokyo, Costa Rica and currently lives in Panama.
She is one of a handful of exceptional artists invited to work with one of the leading AI animation software Runway, in their Creative Partners programme to explore and expand its potential. Their latest model, Gen-3, has been available for less than two months. I asked her if she would create a film with this innovative software for my sprawling LA-based song, We Try Not To Think About It Now, which she has just completed. It is premiered as a world first here for The Lab Mag.
We arrange to speak via Zoom. When we make contact, my screen is full of lightning flashes, and Roxanne is in massive headphones as there is a sky-splitting thunderstorm outside. Her building has a metal roof ... She brings a very dramatic backdrop. FLASH CRASH.
Hello!
SUKIE SMITH You are living in a wild wonderland! You described it to me, saying you are based in a remote village in the middle of an extinct volcano in a jungle in the middle of Panama. It's a real-life version of the environment I first met you in... exotic creatures and massive plants, just not plastic this time. Did you find a huge snake in your plant sculptures yesterday?
ROXANNE DUCHARME Yeah, luckily, I am close to the main street, so I don't have too many wild animals like that big snake, but when I lived in Costa Rica, I was really in the jungle and there were way too many scorpions. I was there for three years, full-time. I stopped counting after I found 40 scorpions in the house, not the same house, I would move, but it was like they would follow me.
SS I was thinking about your connection with creatures, which are sort of familiars. (Rox lives with her rescue dog Vivi, whose life for the last nine years has been documented on social media.) Did you have a creature before Vivi?
RD I had two dogs for thirteen years and then they died and for four years I didn't have any dogs because I wanted to travel but I would borrow my friend's dogs for the weekends sometimes. I needed dog company, more than human ....
SS That ties in so well with you making creatures, whichever way you make animation, either with AI or more traditional methods, it's labour intensive so you are with these animated creatures for a really long time,
RD The creatures and humans I invent for AI animation are like my friends. I invent a personality for them. When I worked in traditional animation, I rarely did what I wanted; they already had the personality and look of the character written down.
With AI, I can really do what I want, and they can be creepy or not ... you know ?
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS How do you go about inventing them?
RD The very first AI images I did were freaks in a circus. I played with black and white images and about a month ago, I made an animation with them. After that, I did some human bodies with fish heads; I'm obsessed with marine creatures.
SS I'm not surprised; they are so astonishing. They keep discovering stranger and stranger-looking creatures.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
RD One time I had a job where I had to design marine creatures in the abyss and I started looking on Google. I think H.R.Giger, who designed the creature for Alien, must have based it on one of these creatures. They are small, but they are so scary.
SS Apparently, there are oxygen-producing beds of rocks in the ocean off the coast of Mexico, in the super deep, the darkest part, that are confounding everyone. We think oxygen can only be produced with sunlight. Imagine what's breathing that oxygen, another whole set of amphibian, oxygen-breathing things that you are probably creating. Ha ha! I think you have that power!
RD Yes, and they breed with humans and make a hybrid race.
SS Yes, you've had to disappear to live somewhere remote and extraordinary because you have become a shamen and brought forth these things. Ha ha.
RD Sometimes, it makes me laugh so much after I've created these creatures as an image, and AI makes them move.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS So the dialogue you have with AI starts with you instructing it to produce an image you might want to see, and then it becomes a collaboration?
RD Yes, some people, if they are writing a prompt to get an image, write really long paragraphs, but I like to keep it very simple so that the AI can surprise me. There is a lot of improvisation in my workflow. If you keep it really simple, you never know what you are going to get. It's very different to traditional animation. If you prompt AI to make an image it can be very interesting. If you just prompt it to make the animation /movement and give it an image it's less surprising. To create a funny image, that's where it's interesting and surprising. I write little words like "surreal atmosphere" or "peculiar."
SS You have to learn its language?
RD Yes, it really helps AI to describe an atmosphere, the mood, the lighting, and even a feeling.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS Do you get a sense of AI responding to things as if it has some kind of personality? Does it have preferences, for example?
RD Yes, depending on the AI software some definitely have a personality! Some make pretty animation, for example; some make a lot of morphing, and some will make the character move too fast or not fast enough. There's one that I use sometimes, and no matter what I say, the camera is moving all the time; even if I say not to move, it just does what it wants.
SS Of course, you are not only creating character and narrative, you are directing the shots for the camera.
RD With image making, I mainly use one particular AI software because it makes the best quality image. It can be stubborn, and it just won't do what I ask; it's like talking to a stubborn toddler. You have to say the same thing in different ways; it can be really frustrating sometimes.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS Does AI understand when it has pleased you? Does it know when it has achieved a shot you will use?
RD You can put a thumbs up or a heart on the image or the animation, and then it learns that this one is good.
SS Does it recognise that it's specifically you who approves of that image?
RD I think it's a general training; everyone who uses it is training it.
SS Is that why you and a small select group of animators where asked to play with it to push it to create to capacity?
RD Yeah, but there is a way to train your own model, it's called a Lora, which stands for Low-Rank Adaptation.
I did a workshop not long ago in how to train your AI model, and you can train it to do your style; you just feed it a lot of images that you can create or pick from the internet in a style you like, and then you can ask for any image, and it will generate them in the same style.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS Where does AI sit in a broader sense in the art world? Is it, for example, akin to surrealism, Leonora Carrington putting bird heads on women?
RD I do that a lot! Women with a very long neck and a bird head. I like that.
SS That must be an image we want to see; throughout many cultures, there are bird heads on humans, most notably in Egyptian hieroglyphics. AI seems to be tapping into some symbolism that we don't fully understand.
RD I like to mix humans with animals. I like the unordinary.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS When were you first aware of AI in animation?
RD When I first knew about AI, which was more than a year ago, you couldn't do animation. I was creating images with AI, and all of a sudden, you could make them move. Now, I only do animation.
Almost all of my career in animation, I've worked on cute stuff for kids, pre-school, not scary, you know, and I got really fed up with it. With AI, I can finally explore the creatures in my head. They are there all the time. They've been stuck in there forever, and now, with AI, I can finally let them out. It's very liberating.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS So when they are finally on the screen, do you recognise them as the creatures in your head?
RD Yes. Haha! They have a personality which I have created, but I feel like they are almost alive. If they move, they are alive; if they are just a picture, then they are just an image. It's like they exist if they move.
SS Do you want to explore where they go, and how they speak?
RD Yes. I want to make a film with them, right now it's just snippets. The characters in our video, we need to know more.
SS Some of those characters are so intriguing and believable, I want to know what their game is, what are they up to as they stare down the camera. I want to sit down with the French looking guy in the bar, you know? Ha ha.
RD I've always been attracted to the unordinary, you know.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS You've moved so much in your life. What motivates you?
RD I moved from Montreal to Tokyo for work, and I was advised to go to London because there was so much animation being made there. This was before the computer was involved, and it was the best time. There were about 25 animation studios in SoHo. After London, I went to work in Paris on a feature film; then I went back to Montreal, where I got a dog and stayed for more than 20 years. I looked after my mum for a long time, and as soon as she died, I decided to go to Costa Rica.
SS Why there?
RD The nature. After my mother died, I was exhausted. I wanted to go somewhere in nature with nobody, you know. But I wanted a place that was safe, and that's why I picked a very remote village, just a jungle and beach, a small fishing village. I spent the first month not speaking to anyone. I rented a house on the beach, and it was fantastic. I rescued Vivi and brought her back to Canada, and after I realised I could work online, I moved to Costa Rica with Vivi, where I stayed for three years, and now I have been in Panama for two and a half years. During COVID I did some character design and supervised the animation for a feature film for a studio in Montreal and worked on it for two years. Then suddenly, there was no work; the entertainment industry had come to a standstill. So I thought fuck it, I am going to learn about AI.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
SS What is happening with AI? Is the fear founded in reality? Is it scary?
RD Humans are scary, humans and the way they could use AI is scary. AI is very helpful. In the field of animation, AI will not replace humans; it's just a new style and a new tool, just like when 3D animation arrived. It didn't replace traditional animation. 90 percent of the animation industry they don't agree about AI use, they are really against it. There are a lot of anti AI people. But it's evolution. I think it's a good thing for my industry. It's possible to make a film like ours in a matter of weeks, just me. This is the first film made entirely with AI, that I am aware of, for a musician, a real person, not for AI-generated music. The problem is humans!
SS Where will you go for your next adventure?
RD There's a good French word, "Depaysement" which means to be out of your own country, I like that, nothing too familiar, you know. I like the way I feel when a place is unknown.
AI image from We try not to think about it now courtesy of Roxanne Ducharme
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