‘AI is like fucking Bitcoin!’ Del Toro on stop-motion and CGI

The BFI on London’s Southbank is currently running its stop-motion season, showcasing hand-crafted animation on the big screen. I’ve enjoyed watching this genre for years but have never necessarily been a dedicated fan, but having recently had the opportunity to hear from two of the genre’s masters at the BFI, I was left with a newfound respect for the people who bring these masterpieces to life.

The speakers are: The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline and the Button Witchand also stars Oscar-winning legend Guillermo del Toro.

During his talk (now available to watch on their YouTube channel), Selick revealed that, like many animators, he spent his formative years at Disney. I was especially pleased to hear that his first job there was the 1979 feature film Pete’s Dragon, which was the first film I ever saw in a cinema. (The cinema was the Odeon Hendon, which was demolished two years later, but I should clarify that this has nothing to do with me!)

Selick offered a funny example of how his naturally dark approach clashed with the stiff, traditional style expected at the House of Mouse.

“I became a full-fledged animator under Glen Keane, who is a really incredible artist,” Selick said. “One day I was drawing a cute little fox, but I was having trouble getting it to walk. So to make things easier, I drew the body, thinking I’d draw the head later. When I showed it to Glenn, he was horrified. ‘You can’t do that! It doesn’t work that way!'”

Of course, when these mavericks are successful, movie studios are happy to go along with it, using their newfound reputation as auteurs to gain recognition for their own movie brands. The Nightmare Before Christmas A great example is “The Great Gatsby.” It was originally Tim Burton’s idea, but he didn’t have time to direct it, so he asked his friend, Harney Selick, to direct it. The film was released and did well, but a few years later, Disney realized it had become a cult hit, so they decided to re-release it, this time with Tim Burton’s name in the title.

In telling this story, Selick’s friendship and respect for Tim Burton becomes clear, but he speaks candidly about how he found the studio’s tactics hurtful.

“it was [Tim’s] I was in charge of the original idea and the design of the main characters. [my] “At the time, Henry said it was his film, and I appreciated that, but it was hard to get recognition for what my team and I had created.”

About CGI and AI

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t have much praise for the CGI: “The choices they’ve made are very narrow for an animated film. There’s a lot more that can be done in terms of the type of story design.”

His disdain for AI is even more explicit, explaining that it is useful for two things: analyzing data for medical advances, and making fake trailers for modern movies that look like they were made in the 1950s. alien If it was made in the 1950s, that would be great. “But apart from those two uses…”

Del Toro was equally forthright about the AI ​​trend: “I think animation needs to be done by hand. [It’s] It’s one of the few areas that is at risk because of the way AI is presented. I think AI is like Bitcoin. It’s not going to be what people think it will be. Unfortunately, AI doesn’t go to the artists, it goes to the accountants, bypassing the artists, so it’s likely to be misused before it’s used properly.

Del Toro spoke candidly about how CGI and AI are bad news for animation.

“I think this is a very dangerous moment for animation. When the term computer animation is used, most people think that a computer creates the animation. Currently, people think of animation as something where you give instructions and the computer executes them.

Like Selick, del Toro is also dismissive of AI.

“AI has demonstrated that it’s possible to create some pretty compelling screensavers. In essence, the value of art isn’t how much it costs or how much effort it takes, but how much risk you’re willing to take to experience it.”

As he puts it, people will travel far to see the Mona Lisa or Starry Night in person, but will they pay to see AI art, and will it generate any kind of deep emotional response?

“[Is it] Am I going to make them cry because they lost their sons and their youth? Absolutely not.”

The problem, he says, is that while artists understand AI to be just a tool, for accountants “it’s the solution.”

“That’s like asking a monkey wrench to build you a garage. Fuck that. It’s impossible. You can’t just grab a monkey wrench and say, “Fix my toilet.” It’s a tool. [one] It should be in everyone’s hands. It should be an option and it should be in the hands of the artist.”

Having listened to del Toro speak and been impressed by his ability to come up with seemingly effortless and powerful aphorisms, I am pleased to repost some of them here.

About Art

“Art is not a commodity, it is a human right.”

About love

“I think the worst myths are about love and perfection. It’s horrible that we create standards that torture everyone for things that barely have anything to do with the real world. We’re in a convulsion of perfection, demanding that things be either the best or the worst, good or bad.”

On disobedience

“It’s important to say you shouldn’t disobey your parents. And what I like best is to disobey. I like to rebel. I think we should all rebel. I think obedience is not a virtue, it’s a condition, a slavish folly. To accept the truth of others without examining it is the worst thing for one’s soul.”

About Death

“Death teaches us all how to live as humans. I truly believe that. I haven’t experienced it yet, so I’ll let you know how it goes. But I think death is a metronome for existence.”

Dedication to the arts

Both Selick and del Toro at this time show an incredible dedication to the stop-motion medium, despite the amount of work required to create a stop-motion film. This is best exemplified by del Toro’s shocking yet humorous story, in which he explains how his first feature film was originally meant to be stop-motion animation, but a horrific incident prompted him to go in a different direction.

“It was a film called Omnivore. We made all the puppets and sets out of 120 puppets and clay. We made all the framework. I shot and animated the first minute. My animation partner and I went to my parents’ house and watched TV. When we came back, [we discovered] They broke into the lab, destroyed all the dolls, defecated and urinated on everything, and I thought, oh, that’s an auspicious ending, maybe we should turn this into live-action.

But it prepared me for the Weinsteins!”

Cheers to all you crazy people.

Have fun now The Nightmare Before Christmas and Del Toro’s Pinocchio We encourage you to see these films, and others from Laika, on the big screen (the former also looks great at home on Blu-ray 3D!), and as both Selick and del Toro acknowledge, they need our support.

“I always think of myself as an exception,” Selick says, “and then it comes into focus and then it goes out of focus again, but I can’t think of a better way to make a movie.”

Del Toro is even more pessimistic: “Each one of you is now a preacher of a dying religion, so please go out and spread the word so we can survive in the future.”

I walked away from the talk realizing they are the real deal: their uncompromising dedication to the medium of stop-motion animation is second to none, their approach to their art is uncompromising, and it’s no exaggeration to say they make Lars von Trier look like the McGang.

Let’s salute stop-motion directors. They are, in many ways, the true punk filmmakers of today. As the visionary Steve Jobs once said, “Cheers to the crazy people. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the people who see things differently. They don’t like rules, they don’t respect the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, praise them, slander them, but the one thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They move humanity forward. Some may see them as crazy, but we see them as geniuses, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually change it.”