The HONEST Truth About Motion Design in 2025 | Year in Review

Every year, this time of the year, we do something really silly. We record an absurdly long podcast going over every single thing that we think is important that happened this year. We talk about all the software updates, industry, news, and trends, events that have happened. And of course, we talk about the economy and all of the changes that are going on, including the AI revolution that we're all living through. This is a very long podcast. It may very well be the longest podcast I've ever seen in my life. But I invite you to close out 2025 with the team at SchoolMotion plus a bunch of amazing guests that we have contribute to this episode. This is a long one. There are chapter markers if you want to skip around and just listen to your favorite part. But I promise you, this is going to be the most in-depth review of this year anywhere on the internet. Thank you for being a part of SchoolMotion this year. We think 2026 is going to be an amazing year. And I hope that this kind of gives you closure for 2025. Maybe you wanted it. Maybe this was your best year ever. Either way, sit back, relax, and enjoy at the SchoolMotion 2025 end of the year podcast. Gergerloin. Alright, fellas. So three of us have been in this industry in various forms for decades at this point. I think between the three of us, there's got to be probably close to 70 years of experience which is absolutely terrifying. And I kind of, I asked this last year, I think I've asked this the last few years, but I want to start by just asking you both, what does motion design even mean right now? Because if I think back to when I got into this field, motion design, it wasn't even really a term. It was mo-graph or motion graphics meant a very specific thing. Now it's like, you know, people are throwing that word around. It means a million different things. If I could explain it, then I'd be able to explain it to my family at Thanksgiving, who although I don't understand what I think. Yeah, that's much more possible now. So EJ, I'll start with you. What do you think motion design is? And I'm trying to, you know, maybe a good way to think about it is like someone who's discovering the world of animation and seeing cool stuff on screens all over the place, like they want to get into it. What are they getting into? Like, what is the thing they're going to be doing? Yeah, I mean, it's, I think our, our, our worlds become more complicated because it used to just be, you know, for what, most of our 20-year existence in this field, it was, okay, you use After Effects and then evolve to, okay, now you use After Effects in Cinema 4D and then it was, okay, maybe you use a little bit of Houdini or something. And like every single year, I feel like there's this new tool or this new thing that we're doing that is expanding the pool of the community or the, just the group of artists that are creating a, what I would say if we would go even a layer above motion design or where content creators or influencers, like I just feel like that, that net has been cast even wider now. And so now you're getting people that are entering the industry that have never heard the term "mograff" before. I don't know what the hell it is. It doesn't even know who the hell Andrew Kramer is, which blows my mind. I know. It pours one out for Andrew Kramer. But I think that's, that's kind of the thing that we're struggling with is we're kind of, I feel like this is such like an us issue where like the older hat people are like, oh, man, no one says "mograff" anymore. It's like, okay, grandpa, like get with the times, like you're a 3D animator or you're a, yeah, product designer or UI/UX experiential designer. People want to, everyone needs to feel special. So everyone has their special term they, they like to call themselves. So it's no longer this blob of morphus, "mograff" term, but yeah, I would say motion as I now is just literally anything that involves some type of motion, whether that's on your iPhone app, your web interaction, your interactive VR thing, like it's all designing motion and experiences and yeah, I don't know. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, well, for everyone who's worried about Andrew Kramer, I saw him with his shirt off last year at NAB. He looks out. He's jacked. He looks great. He's just living the good life, man. That's it. Yeah, he's on that protein train. My name's John LaPore. I am the founder of Black Box Infinite, a practice that helps leading innovators, strategize, visualize and realize the next generation of experiences. Come from a rich background in motion design, working on all kinds of different things from FUI or futuristic technologies, you see in films, to title sequences, to broadcast work, a whole lot of product design and innovation consulting. And I generally just love the motion design discipline at large. I think it's such an amazing jumping off point for all sorts of incredible things that the world needs right now. And I'm also really thankful that there's an entity like School of Motion that's helping brilliant minds out there, harness and take advantage of what this industry has to offer. I do firmly believe that motion design is continually on a trajectory towards disassociating itself with just the term motion design. Like motion design to me is not after effects and cinematography or blender with a little Houdini thrown in for good measure. Motion design is this discipline where you combine visual information, typography, data visualizations, layouts, character designs, and you move them, you make them come to life, you present them in a way that has gesture and action to them. But it's different from just animation or 2D animation or 3D animation. It is something that has this purpose that it serves. It is, you know, it's not just a form in motion, but it's that form with a function. I do hate the fact that motion design is sort of this bastard stepchild of the advertising industry. I think it serves a wonderful purpose in advertising and marketing and is a great medium for conveying those thoughts. But it's really critical to me that anyone who's dabbling in the world of motion design, anyone who cares about the art or the craft of motion design, we're also looking outside of advertising or any of the other traditional spaces where this discipline is deployed. I think we're now at a point where technology and experiences and products, whether that's an app or a VR experience or an environmental installation, they all are these canvases that benefit from the magical discipline of motion design. And so I do think that we'll continue to see, like quote unquote motion design or mograph studios start to disassociate themselves from just this title or this vertical or this set of tools and start to lean into ways that their approach to motion design is catering towards solving very specific problems or solutions. And so for example, there's a number of different motion design, quote unquote motion design studios that will specialize in something like sports broadcast graphics, right? And to me, it's not just that these entities are making motion design or making animations or making animated type or stats or intros or transitions. They're not just making quick times with alpha channels to be used during a sports broadcast. They're playing an integral role in enhancing the product that is the sports broadcast. And even broadcast, right? That's going to become a blurry area where yes, it's a broadcast on linear television or it's a linear style broadcast on a streaming platform. But those things are going to start to become increasingly more interactive things where you're choosing what kinds of information and data you want up on the screen. Things that will start to feel almost like a hybrid of watching a sports broadcast and playing a sports video game, right? And motion design is going to play a really critical role in that in that space. And so I just want to make sure that people are looking at these opportunities say, okay, it's not just motion design inserted into these things, but we're using gesture and motion and information to enhance an existing product. And we're building that product. We're creating that product. We're making a distinct contribution to it. We're not just the motion design department. So Aron, I mean, you've been around, you know, you've done a lot of different things in this industry and you've been, you've worked at Sesame Street years ago. And you've done visual effects and you've worked on short films and you were actually, I guess you were a voice actor in a feature film this year. But you've, and you were early on the tutorial training too, you know, you're back from the creative cow, cow days. That's where a lot of people know you from. So yeah, so what do you do? think about motion design? It's funny because I don't have to like stress about it too much because I've done so much over the years and all these different things. You know you kind of nailed it for me was just like I've never really known even what to call myself. It's like motion designer slash you know animator slash visual effects artist. I just kind of for me my my experience of using all of these tools and doing all these different things sooner or later they kind of leak into each other. You know there's always you know there's there's a little bit of character that gets into into motion design even if it's not the main part of it if we're talking about the motion design in the classic sense and then you know visual effects get added into motion design stuff that we would have considered visual effects years ago but are now like you know there's pyro and sims and all of that that would never have been motion design at least you know that was like you know you didn't do that in a normal studio if you were just doing like a quick commercial for something like that that's like that was like the high-end stuff that now is just kind of seeped in and I think that that sort of you know that that stuff becoming more available to everybody you know and EJ you talked about how over the years it was first it was after effects and it was after effects in cinema 4d and then it was a team like it's I don't even know it's it's not even about the tools anymore you know it's it's just about like the kind you know the kind of work that's being done in motion design is also sort of broadened out and it's not it's not like easy to solve so I you know to say like this is what motion design is but the way I like to think about it when someone really asks me if someone like when I'm like talking about my relatives at Thanksgiving they're like you do stuff it's interesting but what is that motion I say motion design and they're like what is that and I I try to say like oh usually there's there's football game on TV when I'm at the family thing so like I pointed out and like see that that's that's motion design and then a car commercial comes on I'm like that's also motion design and you know then that Apple commercial came on and I'm like that's not motion design that's like the one with the stop motion like that stop motion but not motion but I don't know I don't try to too hard to worry about it you know yeah I I think EJ said something that's like you know this seems like a maybe a self-created problem for for people who've been in it for a while it's like wait wait what am I now and I think also you know at school emotion we we have kind of a unique version of that problem which is like you know we have to tell people this is what we teach and this is cut the kind of career we can help you get into and it used to be a lot easier to just say motion design or motion graphics and people just kind of knew what you meant and now and this is going to come up a lot in this episode and a lot of the guests that we had you know contribute to this episode said some version of this that you know motion design used to be an like an industry or or like an area that you could work in and I see this all the time now on the internet where like developers say motion design and people who are doing websites and people who are who are branding designers are saying motion design video editors are saying motion design when they're using cap cut and using like some cool filter and so what is motion design well like years ago I wrote this article from motionographer and I was trying to kind of answer this this I mean this is a while ago it's might have been like eight or nine years ago now and Adam Ploof of Battleax said something to the effect of motion design is not like an industry it's a set of tools it's like it's like you have this toolbox that says motion design on it and you can carry that toolbox over to Microsoft and use it there or you can carry it over to BMW and work on their you know human machine interface like you know in car screen stuff it's all the same you're you're using this similar tools maybe the software is changing now there's AI which will probably mention once or twice in this episode but actually for me I think it's really exciting because this was the first year where I started hearing other people completely outside the industry say motion design and it meant something close to what I used to think it but different and it's kind of opened my eyes to just how big this you know the opportunities are now and I know that right now and hopefully this this podcast will dispel some of this there's definitely like a lot of fear around a lot in in you know in motion design right now and I think there's probably still plenty of short term turbulence that we'll all have to navigate but in the long run it is clear to me that the motion design skill set is being used absolutely everywhere now like places you would never expect and we got a lot of examples of that we'll get into black box infinite is positioned almost like a creative consultancy I don't like to use the word consultancy it sounds a little like gross and icky but effectively we're working with different leaders typically in technology landscapes and helping them to advance their products and a lot of what we're doing is taking advantage of new paradigms and technology whether that's spatial interactions or artificial intelligence or haptics or ways that sound design can be leveraged in products and experiences and we're helping them just effectively think outside the box and I do believe that all of these new advances that are coming in technology they're happening so quickly around us I think they all deserve a very generous amount of imagination I think they require not just people who have been building the last generation of digital products who are all stuck in the same mold of like making apps and lots of rounded rectangles they need imaginative minds that come from motion design from visual effects from film and other spaces because these new products and experiences they're capable of so much more than things were even just a few years ago and so that's a core focus for us at black box looking for ways to bring that blue sky imagination to the table and we do put a big emphasis on strategic thinking we're always talking about you know any inspiration any any innovation is memorable as long as it is equal parts pragmatic thinking pragmatic strategy and cinematic execution you need the cinematic and the pragmatic to make any of these things especially memorable and so for us at black box we're doing bits of strategy we're doing bits of design and then we're more than happy at any point in the process to dip into the motion design toolkit which for us is just a reflex most of the collaborators that we work with have at least some background or experience in motion design and when you're thinking through product strategies but you're able to make animated demonstrations or even animated diagrams or animated charts to convey your point you can bring these thoughts these strategies to life in a way where it starts to create more of an emotional resonance and so when we're working in these spaces there's always these sort of two layers that I describe one layer is a group of engineers that's immediately around us who can they can kill any exciting idea in the first two weeks of its conception and so it's critical that we're hyper empathetic to those engineering-minded individuals and we're taking their concerns to heart but then when we can also have some magic sometimes in the form of motion design incorporated into these thoughts or strategies or ideas the high-level stakeholders that will really capture their attention and get them excited and get them passionate about what's going on so that kind of sets the stage so we're talking about the motion design toolbox with a bunch of tools in it and that toolbox keeps getting bigger and bigger like cram and stuff into it now okay so before we go any further I always like to do a quick school motion update this year I think was probably the biggest year of change we've ever had since we started the company so if you follow us if your student it's probably obvious what I'm about to tell you but we made this huge shift this year back in April we made the decision which was really difficult and kind of scary but you know the same way motion designers are looking and trying to read the tea leaves what should I be doing what what does the new normal look like what what what what's going to be useful in 10 years versus right now we had to do the same thing e-learning is kind of going through its own little renaissance and you know there's companies like Skillshare and domestica that have been around for years domestica is kind of having a PR crisis right now you guys can google that if you want to and then you know there's still like YouTube and then we've always been kind of in the middle and we've been trying to figure out okay given what motion design is turning into what do we need to do so what we did was we launched all access so up until this year if you wanted to take our courses you had to buy them one at a time they only ran at certain times of the year and if you wanted to take like ten of our classes it would be very very expensive and we found that it was just kind of hamstringing artists who you know if you if you don't know anything and you want to learn animation principles and design and then how After Effects works and then maybe some advanced After Effects talking like four five six thousand dollars and you have to schedule it to be able to do it well now it's way cheaper it's a subscription but you get access to every single class whenever you want you can take them all if you want to if you wanted just kill yourself and try to take every single one in a year I'm not sure that's actually possible someone will prove me wrong but we also kept all the stuff that we're known for there's unlimited critique from actual human artists on everything that you turn in we have an amazing community that you get access to we've started doing live monthly portfolio reviews and guest workshops which have been really successful and a whole bunch of other things so we completely changed our product this year and it's been a very successful year it turns out that our instincts were pretty close to spot on. Like this seems to be what our audience has been asking for. And it's really cool because one of the things that makes me really happy is some of the classes that didn't get as many registrations in the past, like our design classes, for example, 'cause that's kind of like tough medicine to take. You know, they're hard and you don't get the instinct gratification of like learning a new trick and after effects. Now, because they're part of the subscription, enrollment is way, way up on those. And I think that's really important because I think that good taste is gonna be the differentiator, which we'll get into. So other than that, we also have really scaled up our team training program this year. We brought on a head of sales, Anthony Sims. She's been amazing. And one of the coolest things, and you were both there, was we actually did our first live workshop with one of our, one of the teams that's on there, CBS Sports, and we actually flew to New York. And we got to bring Jonathan Wynn Bush, and we did this whole awesome two-day workshop with them. Got to hang out in the city. And this is something that we're gonna be scaling up next year too. We're talking to another company about doing one early next year, a very large company. And they're actually very interested in cavalry, believe it or not. >> That experience, I think, was really eye-opening for us because of the conversation we had with people there about what tools they're using, what their struggles are. Like, again, like we're doing this online, I'm sure people talked us, but when you're in that room with people who are doing this every day, like those conversations lead to some really good things that are coming from us in the future, different kinds of courses that we need. And coming back to the idea that you said that, like other courses weren't being used before, I was talking about this with Blender, for example. I'm gonna dive in this year, for sure. And I'd never, I don't think that I ever would have said, like, hey, I'm gonna buy a Blender course, but because we have that entire offering, and I can do any of it, I'm gonna do it. And I think that a lot of people will too, with that many other courses. Like we have the UX one coming, someone who's maybe would say, I don't know if that's for me, do I really wanna spend a few hundred dollars, or if you know, five hundred dollars on a course. Now they're gonna be like, I doesn't hurt me to go in and take a look, I'm already learning After Effects, and it's gonna be really helpful for their career, because of all the reasons we just talked about before, which is that what motion design means is completely changing. - Yeah, well, I think, I mean, you bring up a really good point, our own, which is, you know, I think, and we'll talk about this a lot in this podcast, what the new generation of motion designer needs to be, to be really employable. I mean, it's gonna depend on sort of who you're working for and the kind of clients you have, or what company is employing you. But the field is so broad now. I mean, you could do the traditional Photoshop, After Effects, maybe some Cinema 4D, you could also go right to Figma and start using Rive and learn a little bit of code, and also be a motion designer. And I have friends at Google that do exactly that. I mean, the guy that teaches our UX animation essentials course, Ivan, he's been at Google for years. And yeah, he's a motion designer and he started in After Effects, but he's using things like Protopi, something that I bet a lot of people listening to just don't even know what that is, but you will, if you get into that world, and it's got a graph editor, and it's an animation tool, it's just designed for a specific thing, and in order to use it, you kind of have to know some other things, and that's what this first course on UX animation is about. Ivan would have worked here. I'm a UX motion designer at Google. I'm also the founder of the YouTube channel, MotionUX, that teaches folks how motion happens in real product teams. And I'm the teacher of the newest school of motion course, UX animation essentials. Tech has gotten faster, and technology has just gotten a bit more robust as far as the workflow from getting a motion concept into production. And so that's moved things from typically out of scope, meaning we're just not able to do this for the specific time period that we have to work on a product to typically in scope, and the typical user experience of apps and websites have a lot of motion integrated into those experiences. And so now it's kind of an assumed that you will have some sort of motion, some sort of interaction, some sort of like fancy animations within your experience. And so now it's more so table stakes that most products will have this. That has made it so that motion is actually in scope now, and making it to the end product. Motion is also now included earlier on in the process, not just waiting until the very end to like put like a nice looking flashy thing on to the end, but considering that as you are developing the entire UX of a product, so that you make sure that the motion is very deeply integrated. Things like Lottie and Rive have definitely helped that to be way more accessible in bring motion into scope and be way more feasible. - I think Joey that it's worth saying that like, you know, what Slinge mentioned again, look was the idea of this transference, and you have this graph that you have this graph, right? Like these skills that you learn at the fundamental level that we're teaching, for example, in animation bootcamp, whatever, these are the kinds of things that doesn't matter what program you go to or even what area, like these concepts of animation, they will carry through, which is why like, I love jumping to another program, like I moved to Unreal a couple of years ago, and for me it wasn't like, how do I, what do I do? It's like, where are these buttons? That was my big thing, like that was it. Like I already know what I wanna do and how I'm gonna do it. I just don't know where those controls are, and that's, that's the thing that's this stuff is transferable completely between space and space. - Yeah, one of the, one of the things about the all-access that I think is the biggest benefit of it is it frees us up from doing these hulking 32 hour courses, like my cinema 4D course is 32 hours, and if you, sure, if you're just buying that, like yeah, you're getting your value plus some, but you know, now we have this, this blender course, and the thing that's great about the blender for 3D artists courses is it's built specifically for people that already know 3D at, you know, aren't as you're saying. Like if you learn 3D in one app, it's so easy to translate. It's exactly where's this button and this app because I know what it is in this other one. So the ramp up time to be able to learn any app you want once you learn something like an after-effects. And once you learn a cinema 4D, like our blender for 3D artists course, I think is maybe seven hours long. Like so you could bang that out in a week and get up and running and blender, you know, in a couple of weeks versus, you know, what would be months to just get up and running in 3D in general. So that's one of the things that I'm really, I talk about this a little bit later on where, you know, if you have, if you're a veteran in this industry, the software is just getting so easy to use these days that it's not as daunting as it once used to be to learn something like an Unreal Engine or to learn something like a blender because, you know, blender five years ago, 10 years ago, was made no sense. I mean, it makes a little more sense now, same with Unreal, but it just goes to show that everything's getting easier, everything's getting more accessible, by the way, those two apps, Unreal, Blender, they're free, so there's no financial burden there. So I think that's one of the, you know, if we want to start off this podcast with some good news, I think we already talked positively before about how just what is available to us as far as industries goes as motion designers is expanding, I think just what we can do with the technology and the tools available to us so easily now is also expanding as well. And the tools are getting even better and the tools are becoming even more numerous as well to do exactly what you want to do. - So yeah, EJ, that's a good point. Like, you know, we've made these courses a lot shorter so we can make them faster. There's a lot of reasons for that, but I think a huge one is just that like, software changes way faster now. And on top of that, you know, everything's changing faster, right, and so we need to be more responsive to our students and to the industry. So if something pops up that changes the way everyone should be doing something, I don't want to have to wait a year to like teach everybody that, right? I want it to be faster. So we've scaled up our course creation quite a bit. This is the most courses we've ever put out in a year. We put out Blender for 3D artists, Premiere for Motion Designers, Rive Academy, Volume 2, After Effects Insider, and UX Animation Essentials, and we have a lot of courses in production. They're coming out next year. And potentially we may even scale up and try to put out more, but we've got a cavalry course coming out early next year, our first Figma course with an amazing instructor. Used to work at Animade, so a really great designer. EJ is doing Substance Course, another Cinema 4D course. We've got another Unreal course. We've got another Blender course. We're reworking our design curriculum. And then we're also doing all of these workshops every month. There's a new live workshop that we record on our community. And those let us be really responsive. And I suspect we'll be doing more AI-related ones next year, because AI is something that's very hard to make a course about, because even if you can only-- if you can do it quickly in like two months, it's still probably at a date like a month later. I was thinking about this morning. How does Curious Refuge even keep up? I don't even understand how they could do that. Yeah, I think it's very difficult for them. [LAUGHTER] Do not think it's easy. Yeah, yeah. And I think that they're doing a similar thing that we are where they have their courses that you can go and you can take a course and learn the basics. But then they have a team training program, and they're working directly with studios and agencies and film studios and stuff like that and doing training for them. So when it gets to the high level like that, and it's like, no, teach me exactly how to do the thing I need to know right now, sometimes the courses isn't even the best way. That's one of the reasons we're getting into these live workshops for some of our teams that we work with. Because like we found out in New York, like a few hours in person with someone just asking you the question in front of a computer, it can save the months, right? courses. are amazing and I think there's no better way of like getting up to speed, getting 80 to 90% of the way there. But when you're working on live sports broadcast, 90% is not good enough, right? You need that extra 10%. Yeah. Cool. So yes, a lot. A lot. I probably forgot some stuff. We did another collab with Puget Systems this year. We did a really cool video with Deep Sky Studios in Portland, Oregon. I gave a talk there and then EJ gave another talk that's on our YouTube channel. So we're also trying to play with different ways of putting content out and our North Star is always is this useful and not just like is this a cool After Effects trick that we can teach you and you'll feel good about it and maybe you use it, maybe you don't, but you feel good. It's like no, I want us to be able to give you insights that will help your career. Like hey, here's a business opportunity that no one's looking at that I keep hearing about that kind of stuff. All right, and we're going to talk a lot about the business of all of this and the, the Moe economy. But first, we always like to feature work that we saw this year that we really like in artists and studios. And I think I always say pick three and then I pick more than that. I picked three this year, but there's an honorable mention. So I'll do my three first. Okay, so these are my three favorite pieces, okay? And they're picked for all different reasons. The first one is the Severance Season 2 opener. First of all, shows amazing. Probably my favorite show of the year. Although pleuribus may overtake it if you haven't seen that. It's really good. But the opener was done by Oliver Lada. And what I like about it, you know, like it's not, technically it's great. It's 3D and there's the character, the main character from the show. But what I love about it is how surreal it is. And one of the things that kept coming up in the guest contributions to this podcast was that what AI's really done is it's just, it's shown everybody, especially artists, how important taste is. And taste is now the new word that no one's going to be able to define. It's going to take us 20 years to know what taste is. But it's what you know when you see it, right? And that piece has so much taste. Just everything. The camera movements, the lighting, the subtle little details, the way it ties in with the show, if you watch the show, you watch the intro, you get all these little inside things. And I love that. And I love that, you know, title sequences, you know, they're not quite as like prestigious they used to be. They don't get, you know, as much attention and every streaming platform has a button to skip them, which I use, by the way, but I feel guilty every time I do it. But I love that it's still, that's still kind of like the high watermark for creativity in the world of motion design. The subtle sequences are still an opportunity to flex and show off and show how much taste you have. And I thought Oliver did an amazing job. The second piece was just a traditional ad, a spot for coin base that Buck did. And what I love about this is, again, it's taste. It's like, you know, if you go to, you know, Nano Banana and say a thumbnail for a video about, you know, crypto, it's going to make some really garish 3D shine. Tiny looking, you know, render look. That's what I would imagine, right? And Buck went the complete other way. It looks like an ASCII terminal. And they used cavalry and probably a bunch of other techniques to basically make like these particle systems that are made out of like keyboard characters and they build into things, but it kind of looks like, you know, early 90s, late 80s, like ASCII artwork. It's super, it's super cool. And it's one of those things where you know how hard it is to make a simple idea like that work across a commercial and have the transitions and the motion and they had to build systems to be able to do this. And Buck is still like just at the top of the food chain in my book. I mean, everything they do is amazing. They just did an amazing campaign for Dunkin' Donuts. And they're one of those companies that's gone way up market where they're not a motion design studio anymore. And they're not, you could call them an agency, but even that kind of short sells what they're capable of these days. But they can still do the motion, the mo-graph stuff. Like they're still the kings and queens of that. My name is Justin Cohn. I'm the executive director of communications for Buck and Residence. We are functioning a lot more now like an agency. We're providing strategy. We're developing concepts that scale across many touch points and not just motion, right? Photography and copywriting and live action production and packaging out of home. All these other touch points that go way beyond just traditional kind of design and animation work that some people know us for. And then the last one was a piece from SIN. So Tony and Thanos, I will butcher their last names if I try their Greek. But they're Yeti. And they made a studio project called SINs, which is amazing. It's kind of reminiscent of like seven. You know, it's about the seven deadly SINs and it's all 3D. They're kind of known for their amazing cinema 4D work. I'm sure they're using Houdini for some things. But it's just, it's like they have nailed the art of like surreal photo realism where everything looks real and they've got the lighting and the shaders and all that like dialed in. But then they push it. And you know, it's harder than you'd think to make 3D that makes you feel gross. You know, like when you see something and you're like, ew, it's actually really difficult to do that. You know, you know, like one of the toughest things is 3D artists is to make food that looks delicious. Well, doing the opposite is also kind of hard, you know, it's just, there's little subtleties. And again, it's taste, right? To be able to do that, to know when it's right, to stare at something and be like, it's not quite there. What do I need to add? Oh, it's not specular enough. You know, little details like that that masters a 3D, no. So I thought that piece was amazing. And then honorable mention, this is a feature film. So Seth Warley of Red Giant, good friend of our own, he released his first like theatrical release of a feature film called Sketch this year. And I took my family to it and I thought it was the best movie I've seen all year and I just saw Wicked 2, it was better than Wicked 2, which I actually didn't think was very good. But Sketch was amazing. It's kind of like a throwback to like old Spielberg movies. It kind of has that feeling of like the goonies where it kind of feels like a kid's movie, but it's kind of scary and there's some dark, there's some really adult themes in it. My kids loved it, my son said it was his favorite movie of the year. And what's crazy is the budget for that film are and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I believe it was $5 million. Something like that, yeah. Something like that. Seth and I know how she worked on it. Probably a bunch of people like in our circle, it worked on the visual effects for it and it looks like, you know, a $200 million film. It's beautiful. I mean, it's beautiful. The character stuff is incredible. Like the way that they, like, you know, if you say the idea of I'm going to take something that looks like it was made by a kid and bringing it to the world world, like that can go wrong in a hundred different ways and not look like it belongs. But they found a way to make those characters look like they actually were from another world, but belonged in hours. And I thought that was really, really awesome. Yeah. Isn't credible. And when you see behind the scenes for like Transformers or a Pixar movie, there's all this proprietary stuff and there's like, you know, the hair simulation specialist and their assistant. I mean, you know, these giant teams to do all this. And when you see the behind the scenes of sketch, it's Seth, like in After Effects doing, like the hackiest tracking thing to fix a shot and he's good. So you can't tell like he does a good job. It's Hashi hacking Cinema 40 to make it look like a bird is hitting a window and splatting against it and feathers flying off. And it's all particular. And they're, I mean, they're using like all the tools that, that Motion Designers know. And it just looks amazing and it's, and it's in a feature film. It's really good. And I hope that that film has like a second life on streaming or something. Because I'm sure enough, not enough people saw it. It was really, really good. And I hope that that just kick starts that career. It's funny. You know, you said something about movie being scary. It's funny because this little girl, I was in the theater and she, and I was talking to my son about the film. And she said, Oh, like what are you, you seen it before? And I said, yeah, and she said, is it really scary? The monster is scary? And I was like, listen, kid, the monster is like, that stuff's all going to work out. It's more of the emotional stuff you're going to probably be in therapy for the rest of your life about that. That's the, yeah. Yeah. Is that one part? You know the part. There's a lot of trauma. It's the film deals with a lot of emotional trauma. And I, you know, it did a great job of it. It's amazing. It's amazing. So everybody check those out. All that stuff will be in the show now. So you can, if you're listening to this, you're not watching. You can, you can just go see those. Really cool stuff. And yeah. And now EJ. And it's funny. I didn't look at EJs until just now. And I noticed he picked one of the same ones. I did in EJs. I didn't see that yesterday last night. But I went to the late, late edition there. But yeah, I also liked the season two title sequence for Severance. I thought that was pretty cool. I love the show itself. So for that. And the one thing I wanted to mention about the Seth Wartley thing is, you know, you, Joey, you called out a good, a really great point where it's like, oh, you know, we, I feel like after-effects users and cinema 40 users don't have that flow moment where it's like, oh, these are the tools that I use every day being used in a feature film. And I hope, you know, Seth and sketched. Like I believe they should win a ton of awards. But I mean, I think that's like, you almost need that validation thing. I mean, you knew what, what happened to any blender artist that saw when Flow won the Academy Award, you know, I think. I think any good kind of confidence boost or anything of like all the tools I use can be pushed this far. I think you don't necessarily see that for After Effects and Cinema 4D artists beyond your, like you said, the severance, opening title sequences for things, not specifically like used throughout a film, especially with character stuff too. So I just wanted to call that out. I thought that's the sketch thing was really good thing to mention and the tools we use. Speaking of the tools we use, so I did this event in Tokyo last month and met a lot of amazing artists from Japan, all over Japan. And one of the studios that one of their artists did a presentation for us, the studio is called Kaki Inc. So just like Kaki's, you know? And they do some of the most insane VFX in like 3D and motion graphics work that I've ever seen. Like as far as like a studio that I've never heard before up until that point, I don't know how big they are necessarily, but they're doing like buck level stuff. And one of the things that they just came out with like a few days before our conference came out was this piece that was just a short film called Wave. And it's almost kind of like a music video, it's just this dude, Danson. And while he's dancing, the background behind him starts to like fluctuate and kind of distort and stuff. And what I thought was really interesting was, basically it was a short film to test out AI. And like how can I use AI with this? And so he was using AI in the hallucinations concept to make it look like the viewer's kind of hallucinating and the whole background's kind of tripping and there's like a part man complex behind him that's doing this kind of crazy ripple effect thing too and the floor is distorting and rippling as well. And it almost looks like, you know, I think we talked about this maybe, if it wasn't last year, it was two years ago where it was like the whole kind of data-mashi AI smearing look is gonna be its own aesthetic. And I think this is kind of like an example of, like let's take that weird kind of, oh not data-mashi, but just weird smearing hallucination morphing thing and actually apply it not to the whole full screen, but in certain, using as like a VFX kind of effect, which I thought was pretty interesting. They also use like AI for face replacements and so this character kind of duplicates in one of the shots as well. And they do some really good behind the scenes stuff too if you wanna check it out. Of how they kind of achieve some things, they used move AI, they did AI face swapping, AI relighting, what else they do. They trained their own like Laura model. So it's just one of these really interesting things where they're utilizing AI with traditional VFX pipelines. And the funniest part is is that the one thing they had to manually do was rotoscoping, which I thought was the most ironic part of it all. It's like the most boring thing you still had to, AI didn't do. So yeah, definitely check that I really love the piece. And like I said, they have a really good making of that is just fascinating of how they kind of put things together. And then another piece that I really enjoyed was a piece for Yalsobee. Yalsobee, so it's a PlayStation thing that was, I don't know what they're technically marketing, I think just PlayStation in general. It's project memory card. And it's just one of those things where it's like, I don't know what it's marketing, it just looks super cool. So they have these like kind of 3D anime characters and like I'm a sucker for really good smearing and squash and stretch and stuff done in really good ways. And so I just love the, like it's got stop motion feel, the lighting's really cool. Like again, it almost looks like a 3D anime. And it's just really fun. And it's cool to see like the stylized 3D as well. I feel like there's so much of the realistic stuff out there that I always really gravitate towards the very stylized kind of stuff. So that was really cool. Speaking of the stylized stuff, there is also a piece that was, so I've talked about like a personal, like a short film. And this one's just a fan film for League of Legends by a studio called Seven Nights. And it's crazy because this, I just saw on YouTube like when I was looking this up last night that they only have like 674 views on YouTube. And this piece is like crazy. So they use Blender, Houdini, and did all these crazy like water effects and fur effects. And they really bring to life the little League of Legends characters really well. Again, very stylized kind of look as well. But I've never heard of Blender being used alongside Houdini much before. So it was just kind of interesting to also see again, the tools and what they're, how they're being utilized alongside other different tools that are maybe more traditional as far as like the VFX stuff, as far as Houdini goes. But they have like really cool sand sands. And it's something where it's like you would typically think Houdini is used in this very realistic way. But it's again, very stylized. Like I'm a sucker for stylized stuff. So yeah, check those out. And definitely again, they have a breakdown too behind the scenes of the fan cinematic for the Seven Nights. But give them some more views than 674. I just don't understand. That's why. I wonder if it's on another channel or somewhere else that it is, you know that exists. I don't know. Well, they only have 65 subscribers on there. Seven Nights Studio YouTube. So maybe that's it. But yeah, super cool work. All right, our own. And everyone should know that last year, our own didn't know he was doing this enormous four or five hour podcast report until I think 15 minutes before. But this time, he had time to prepare. So what are your favorite pieces this year? So, you know, I mean, hands down for me. The number one was the Meet Department opener for Duster. I saw Joey, that's on your list of favorite studios this year. But like that, I don't know. I love that so much that I kind of ripped it off to make my short film The Getaway. Just like, you know, the idea of using little cars and stuff like that. I've always loved stop motion. And even though this one doesn't really feel like stop motion completely, there's this sort of feeling of their toys. And it's very small with macro types of photography. Yeah, it's like a lot of a lot of depth of field. So it feels like they're small. They don't move like their stop motion, but it feels almost like we're looking at toys being played with and I just I loved what they did with that. Like I think that's such a great piece. I'm really bummed the series got canceled too, but it was such a great piece. And yeah, hands down for me, that's the first one. I covered this in motion Mondays, but Lucas Piazzini. It's even the sort of the greatest piece of work. He's really good. He works at Industrial Light and Magic. And he took part in Punisher's Rampage Rally Challenge. He did this piece that was based on Elite of Battle Angel. And what I loved about that was not just the piece itself, but because he's like someone who's very into process and obviously at ILM, you don't just like make things randomly, you put a lot of thought into it. He has a 22 page breakdown of how he did everything. So like you can watch the video and then you can actually like see all the different pieces that went into it. And you realize that like just what it takes to look sometimes to look that good, it's just starting to take for granted. Like oh, it's 3D, you know, like you can do this. I know that once you start using it, you can see how hard it is, but he really, the level of detail that he put into that is incredible. And so it's like the combination of like a really good piece of work plus like a behind the scenes that really helps you to understand like what it takes to make something like that. There's, I'm gonna come back to one I have written down in Grumjum out of order here, but I've got Kevin Perry also did the stop motion thing. I love stop motion. Yeah, I did my Star Wars, the woodcut that was like it. Yeah, right. But Kevin Perry did the stop motion thing where he was like sort of driving and it's like incredible. And he has also a behind the scenes that shows you how he did it. And it's like, you know, it's like why would you do that to yourself, man? But he did it. It's beautiful, it's hilarious. It's funny. It's just like, it's really fun to watch the whole thing happening. It's he just did it by himself, moving items around his office space and making sort of this thing like he's driving, sitting at a desk. It's pretty cool. And the last one was one that I actually saw. EJ, I feel like maybe you covered this. I'm not sure I was in motion Mondays, but it was a proper AG one. It might have been Joey, but it's this like, I can't even say it's like the greatest commercial or anything like that. It's for like a beverage, but their use of color and composition and light, it's so perfect that like, it's almost like they're slumming it, you know, like a little bit. Like, I don't know, the brand is not like a famous, famous brand all over the world. Like, but it was, it's so nice looking and it's so slick and like really super high-end design that I, like I just, like it really stands out to me as like when you put good design behind something that's not even that big a deal. Like it looks like a much bigger deal. And I thought that was a really great piece just from the perspective of like making motion design that was very heavy in the design, you know. Yeah, that piece in particular, you know, I'm gonna say the word taste a hundred times. Like, there's little tiny details. in there, like the water droplets on the glass, they look perfect, but every time it cuts to a new scene, it's different water droplets. Like, you know, there's just little things like that where, you know, I think everyone's probably listening to this waiting for us to talk about AI, and we can kind of sprinkle it in until we get to the AI section. But like, those are the kinds of choices that, I mean, maybe there's a world where AI can make choices that are that like tasteful. But we're not even close to that yet. And maybe AI can help render, you know, a displacement map for water droplets and save you some time there, but like a human has to make those choices, right? And so that's, I think that's kind of a theme, I think with a lot of this stuff, you know, the meat department opener our own. Again, it's like the choice of pairing like a car chase dukes of hazards style car chase with tilt shift photography, but they didn't make the, they didn't make the environments look like a toy, just the cars kind of feel like toys. Everything else looks very realistic, but miniature. And it's just like that idea and the taste that's necessary to say, hmm, this shot's not working. Why, oh, it's because that tree is too out of focus, bring it closer so we can tell it's a tree, you're not reading the silhouette. Like, there's all those things that in all the best work, you don't need, it's like until you look for it, you don't even know it's there, but when it's not there, it doesn't work. And it's funny, it's funny, Joey, that thing you just said, like I saw a Tron aries and theaters in the theater this year. I don't tend to go like, not a lot of movies will get me to see it. And the truth is this movie wasn't particularly stand out as an amazing movie. The design in it was so good. And I think it's going to be completely missed, but there were moments on screen. Like when they're in the Tron world, you know, they're in the grid and water splashes on the lens, the lens drops were square shaped and they were just barely, barely noticeable, but I was looking at it. I'm like, I'm the only guy in the theater that even caught that, I'm sure. And I'm like, that is the kind of design that somebody thinks about, like, how does this make sense in this world? How does that design fit with that? And that like, it's just barely there, but visually it makes just, you know, like I'm experiencing it. I'm like, like that is, that, like, I feel like I'm not in the right, the same world. I'm in the digital world. Like, it's just subtle, you know? - Yeah, yeah, taste man, it's taste. - All right, let's go over our three artists and studios that we thought did awesome stuff this year. And of course, gotta feel like, especially since we started doing motion Mondays really regularly, we've done it like this whole year. I keep finding new studios doing insane stuff that I hadn't heard of. They weren't on my radar, maybe I'd heard of them, but I just didn't know them. And I'm like, good Lord, like, there's so many killers out there. So this artist, I'm pretty sure I discovered him this year, but this year he had a big year, is Ryan Cornel, Duke Gunston on X. And Ryan, I started seeing these in, Oh, and you probably sent me the first one 'cause you track Unreal more than me. Ryan figured out this cool way of making live controllable puppets in Unreal. So he's got some hand controller where he can do this with his hand and the puppets have physics. And if there's fur on it, it goes up and down based on what his hands doing. He can open and close the mouth and then he probably has some keyboard controls for the eyes to blink and stuff. And they look 100% real. They look like real puppets, but he can have the camera move, he can have the environment react, they're running in real time. And the first time I saw that, I was like, this opens up an entirely new type of content. There's been stuff like this in the past where they tried motion capture to have live puppets and stuff. I've never seen anything work as well as this. And I think part of it is just the choice he made to not try to make this like have legs that can walk and you know, look like a real monster or something. It looks like a hand puppet. But because it's 3D, these hand puppets can do things normal puppets can't really do. The arms can stretch and you can program in behaviors if it gets close to this, something crazy happens. So I thought that was amazing. And I remember writing to him and saying, "Dude, this is incredible. Like we'd love to feature you." And he's like, yeah, I just started posting these 'cause it's fun. And then all these opportunities popped up and he couldn't tell me at the time. But he's now the co-founder of some studio called Sand Strings Studio. In French it would be "Sollen Strings" without Strings. And he also, which I think is really cool and I haven't seen anything about it in a while, is he's working on a boxing game. And it was showcased at IGN and made like a big splash in the video game world. But it's using his puppets and his models, but they're boxing. And it's kind of like Mike Tyson's Punch Out with Muppets. So I think we're gonna hear like, you know, big things from this guy. Like he figured out something really, really cool. It's technical, but also he had the taste to make it like appealing. There's another guy, and for the life of me, I tried to find his real name and I couldn't find it. Enigmatic_e on X. So this dude, and he's also got a YouTube channel. Not a huge following yet, but this guy is doing crazy stuff with AI tools. And I've been looking all year and I'm sure a lot of artists have been looking for stuff made with AI that like moves you or is really cool. And you know, the stuff he's doing, he's like a visual effects artist kind of person, but he's using AI in really, really clever ways and then mixing that with visual effects techniques. So he's doing things like shooting himself on a green screen and then generating the background with AI, but then also using a style transfer tool to, you know, change something about the way he looks or adding like a helmet to his head that wasn't there, but the rest of him is unchanged. And so what I thought was cool about, and he does little mini tutorials. He's using comfy UI and some other like kind of more advanced AI tools to do this. And what I thought was so cool about it was, I kind of found him like towards the first half of the year. And that was like my first sense of, okay, you know, going to like mid-journey and typing in the image you want and hoping it gets close, it doesn't work, right? Like I mean, you can use it for certain things, but that's not ideal. And then there's these other tools like CREO where you can draw like some rough painted thing and it'll try to convert that into an image with a prompt. That's better. And then I started seeing him use comfy UI. And if you're listening, you don't know what that is. It's a node-based AI tool that has like 50 or more AI models you can load in and string them together like a Nuke script or a Fusion script or an ExpressO node set up. And then you can mix that with like traditional tools like cropping and levels and alphamets and compositing and other things. And you can build out, it's a compositing tool, but it has AI models built into it that can then take inputs from the other nodes and output to different nodes and split them. And so I was like, wow, okay, this is way more powerful, way more controllable. There's still a slot machine aspect to it. But this guy's a visual effects artist. He knows traditionally how to do this stuff. He's just doing this faster now. - A great model that I look at or even just online creators and online creatives who are dabbling in their own, making their own short films or pieces of content out there. They have this mindset or this approach and half the time I can never tell if it's like an industry veteran or a 15 year old kid sitting in their basement. But they have this approach where it's just like whatever it takes to get the job done using wherever they're shooting things with an iPhone or mixing in AI animation tools or a generative video processes or whatnot. And generative sound and music and voice. And they're combining all of those things and doing just sort of whatever it takes to get their vision out there. I think that's gonna be an increasingly important approach for motion designers that may also mean abandoning typical pipelines or workflows that sometimes I think we can get a little too comfortable with. - Andy has taste. So he knows when it's not good and he doesn't post that on the internet. So everything he's posting at least looks pretty darn good. And when he shows you how he made it, you're like, oh, I actually could imagine using that technique for stuff I do. And so that's why I wanted to give him a shout out because he's kind of really on the cutting edge of that stuff. Our friends at Curious Refuge do a lot of that stuff too. I think they're a little bit more consumer focused in their marketing. So they focus mostly on the simpler stuff. But there's tools like company UI, Weavey and Project Graph will talk about where if you already have these technical skills and you know visual effects, you know compositing, now you have 100 times the control you had with just like a text box that you're typing into and then saying, no, try again, but make it this way. So I thought that was really cool. And then the last one, our one already mentioned is Meet Department. And I discovered them because there's this metal band from Italy, Italy or France, I can't remember. They're called Egor with like three hours. And they put out the weirdest music video I've seen in years. And I was like, I need to know who did this because you could tell it's a combination of 3D and AI, but you almost can't tell which is which. And it's one of those things where like I said before, it's hard to make visuals that repulse you or make you think, oh, that's cute. It's like not easy to do that. It takes a lot of nuance and they nail it. They've got this weird tone throughout the whole thing and it's very technical. And then I went and looked and then our own told me, oh, you should check out this other thing that the car chase opener. And they have some amazing work. And they're awesome 3D studio, but they're also now messing around with AI and trying to figure out how can we push the things we're good at to even weirder levels using AI. They're leaning into the weirdness of it. which I think is the way to go until you have the control to actually make it. not weird and good, which I think we're actually pretty close. So those were my three picks, EJ, who are yours? Yeah, so I'm kicking things off with an individual who, I actually had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago in London, his name is Yat Feng Long, and he goes by Yaddi the man, and he is the man, I would say, when it comes to, like a lot of my stuff, I'm just always attracted to just how stylized can you make things? And I think that's, if we wanna talk about what makes you stand out in the age of AI too, it's not the things, the effects and the looks that go towards the median because that's all what AI is, it's just, what's the average of all the crap that's out there? Let's just, that's what AI is, that's the result. So Yaddi's really interesting because he's got this really cool 2D style, but he does it in 3D, and he really pushes the whole kind of tune look, and he asked him, like, how do I help you get this really unique look in these reflections and like tune reflections, and he had this really ingenious thing where he's basically, it's just way simple. It's just, he's getting these crazy stylized reflections because he's using just these very stylized HDR's images, so he's just like blocks of color, and with gradients, and those are his HDR images that he's using for some of these reflections on these 3D objects. And so he just, really, like his style is just so unique. He does all types of different work too. He's a great example of just what a 2D artist can do as far as like pushing the stylized stuff. He also just did a new short film, which, he said it was like self-indulgence all about like saving files and stuff, and what happens when you don't. And this is a little like, floppy disk character going around and dealing with errors and stuff. And one of the things I liked about this too is he was very honest about what he was going through at the time. He said he found himself burnt out, and he ended up just doing the self-indulgent project. And through it, like kind of found his joy for animating again. And I feel like more and more, like, go into these conferences and speaking at these conferences, I feel like people are feeling that burnout and just not knowing what to do. And I think what Yaddy did was he kind of like, just started creating for himself again. I feel like a lot of us don't do that anymore and kind of lose the thread of like, why? Why did I get into this industry to begin with? So I just thought his mesh is there, even though it's like a secondary thing was really cool. And then short films, great. His new reals great. Another thing that I found interesting too is, getting his a traditional motion designer type of person. He's working on his own like indie game using Gado. And I'm just seeing like, oh, these are all, like kind of they look almost like an eight bit thing or 16 bit thing that you would make an after effects. But he's programming it. And it's all the motion and all that taste coming from animating things by hand that he's applying to this indie game that he's working on and the mechanics and figuring that stuff out. So it's just interesting how, you know, we talk about blurring the lines of what is motion design and what can a traditional motion designer do in this day and age where you can learn, "Rive in a month or so, you're building an app for a phone." So yeah, he's super cool. Check him out again with the whole theme of stylization. So some things arrived, we talk about like viral VFX kind of stuff. So one of the guys who created this studio, his name's Chris Theorin, and he does a lot of really cool like viral VFX on his Instagrams and check that out. But they just came out where his studio called "Some Things Are I" and they just did a project, I think in collaboration with Maxon. So just super stylized and just looks great. And one of the things that, 'cause why I immediately saw him like, "Oh, this has got to be blunder." Just because, again, I think we'll talk about this a little later on. It's the perception, right? Like if I see something this stylized in this kind of tuning, cartoony kind of stuff and anime style, my mind immediately goes to Blunder because that's all I see Blunder artists kind of doing and that's the thing that I'm like, "Oh, that looks really cool." So I thought this was this kind of, again, if people are thinking that, "Oh, if I want to do this specific look, I have to learn Tool X." Well, not necessarily. And I think that's just the thing where it's like, once people show you what's possible with it, with the tools that are using, we talk about, you know, Seth's film, I think people need to show what's possible to give permission for people to even like, have the confidence of like, "Oh, yes, I can do that specific thing with the tools that I use." And I have to learn something else. So I just thought that was really cool. They did a bunch of ZBrush characters as well. Really cool characters, I mean. I wanted to just talk about that for a second because you really made me think about something here with, there's like this idea of what After Effects can do or what Cinema 4D can do. And a lot of it comes from the taste makers, that, you know, the taste and whatnot, right? So you talk about Grace Galgurrilla, right? A certain look that Dave sort of really helped strengthen in the world of Cinema 4D or that Andrew Kramer had his look. I think it's like, it's like we get in our heads at the tools, do these things because a lot of the work follows these trainers or these people who are setting some taste within our, you know, within the learning community. We all start to believe that that's the only way it can be done. I think that those ways aren't cool because they look beautiful but they're also like very specific. And you can see someone who's been a student of Andrew Kramer like their stuff tends to, you know, flow that way. And Grace Galgurrilla, the same thing. And I think that you're right. Like when they do something using those tools and they break away from what is commonly expected of it, you know, your reaction of thinking it's blender is like totally the reaction that, you know, you expect to have because like, you don't see people doing it. And so there's a certain braveness in sort of taking the time to sort of go down that path and see what's even possible and then to put it out there. And, you know, I mean, of course, we're in a day where you put something out and you have to worry that everyone thinks you're using AI. They're like, hey, did you use AI for that, you know what I mean? Like, so like the tools, like, it's just the question of, you know, what's even being used. But I, you're right, looking at his work again, that those colors, they pop, they're so strong. And you just don't expect that to be from this sort of like world of motion design that's maybe a little more sophisticated that comes in the Cinema 4D world in terms of color and whatnot, but it's still beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And he also did some really cool MoCAP too. Again, like I always love, like I love when studios or individuals take the time to show the behind the scenes stuff, 'cause that's not easy. That's extra work, like a lot of extra work. And so they also did the compositing and after effects. So it's like people are still compositing 3D and after effects. Like, you know, people aren't just getting it all in camera and stuff like that. So yeah, I really enjoyed that piece just because of again, I think it speaks to one of the bigger points of, you know, what we'll probably talk about later on, of just like perception and what's the truth? And do I have to worry that the tools I current, or the tool sets and the disciplines and the fundamentals that I currently know? Do I need to feel insecure about like, do it, well, do I need to learn more? Do I need to learn X to achieve Y? Or do I have everything I need? And I just need to kind of focus it. I feel like the studio is on my list every year. I can't help myself 'cause they just keep making just such cool crap all the time. So already been shoot. I feel like this is just recency bias. Well, not recency bias. Like every month they're coming out with some amazing new, you know, motion piece that's just like, oh my god, whether it's like a shoe and they did like the Nike 3D printed shoe ad that just looked amazing earlier. I think that was earlier this year. But one of the things that's making the rounds now is all the work they've done already been shoots done with NFL teams, specifically the Ravens. Unfortunately, they're really awesome motion graphics doesn't seem to be carrying over to their actual season 'cause they're not doing so hot this year. - It's too bad. - But what was really cool, there's a spot that I link where it's the Ravens like hype opener. And I remember, like 'cause I used to do sports graphics back in the early 2010s. And man, the budgets sucked. It was very low budget and not great. So for me to see something, this high level quality for like in arena graphics, this is just kind of like a whole another level of just production value. And they did, I think, I don't know if it was earlier this year or last year they showed off some really cool like force perspective stuff. They did for the Cleveland Browns that looked really cool. But what I loved about this piece, the hype opener for the Ravens was they, again, behind the scenes stuff. They showed how they did like practical effects. So it's a whole Edgar Allan Poe and they're in this library and there's all these books and pages of the books flying around. And they did the behind the scenes of like how they actually used some practical effects to where they're in this room and there's paper. and stuff all over the ground in books. And there's just people physically throwing paper up in the air at the Raven's players. (laughs) Like Lamar Jackson, here's some paper in your face. And it's something that I guess I didn't realize ABC did was some of the practical VFX stuff too. But yeah, I just thought that you're on the age where, you think AI is used for everything. Like people are still figuring out creative ways to achieve and solve certain problems. And sometimes it's like the one piece I said where they actually had to manually rotoscope. Like they still had to do that. Like where they found out the best way to achieve the certain effects to make it look integrated and real looking was they needed to have some practical kind of stuff of actually throwing papers at some of the players. So I just absolutely love what Artie Benchud is doing because they are more of that traditional emograph, motion graphics kind of studio. But just seeing where they are kind of expanding and getting into a Kudini and Unreal Engine and getting into VFX stuff too, like they didn't, I feel like they never did a lot of VFX stuff in the past. But I'm seeing it more and more just, you know, and it's just they have tastes that are super talented. They have a staff that is like transformers. They can transform into whatever type of team they need to do whatever task is at hand. So yeah, Artie Benchud, I'm sorry if I mention the memory, but they just continually are just killing it. So you know, you mentioned that thing about sometimes doing it practically is the best way, like when even you're doing like heavy 3D. Right. I was thinking everyone knows about that thing with Avatar when there's a shot that was in the trailer and everybody was trying to figure out it was done with water and like it'd be like, right? And in the end, it turned out to be practical and that they painted the person to look like the 3D character even with subsurface scattering type lighting because they knew it would be like at a specific angle so that that's what they would do. And so like they could not get it with the CG so they just did it with practical but with makeup and you know, really just the lighting was right and everything. It's just funny that sometimes that's what you have to do to get that to get that, you know, look. Yeah. Right, our own. Yeah, I'm like super vanilla here. Here's the thing, like, you know, you know, you go see a Pixar movie and you sit down. It's very rare that you're going to be disappointed, right? Like you're not going to necessarily, even necessarily be surprised by it anymore. Maybe the story's going to get you but you're like, I've sort of reviewed a Pixar movie that was like, "Hohum, another brilliant movie from Pixar," you know? Right? Because like if they do any bad, that's when you notice it. But like, even so, like I think about a lot of it was like my favorite studios was more like, who is still like in the game, right, in these crazy times and like how are they surviving and doing really interesting work? And Territory Studio is to me one of the most interesting because like, Joey and I were talking about earlier but like they diversified, right? They really, they're doing print, they're doing like, they're doing everything. And they're still going really strong. They did off-sparsal in the closing titles this year, which were really nice and moody. They did, they have an updated screen graphics reel for this year that's just incredible. It's just always like none of that. That's what they're best known for, but even so, like it's always the next level stuff. And they did like the esports world cup graphics, which again, was like motion design and not, you know, that was a move away. They were used to do the, you know, just the screen graphics and now it's motion design. And yeah, like so like, they're, they're even due visual effects work, but they're probably, you know, they're strong as this motion design and screen graphics. They've even done like real world user interfaces for, I forget which company, like which car company, but they, like car company said, like, hey, we want a really cool, you know, user interface in our car. They replaced the entirely, replaced the gauges and everything that you normally have that are physical with digital ones, but they wanted it to look super cool. And so that's, they went to a company that like, that already does the futuristic stuff. And so they're just doing a lot of cool stuff. And they're surviving. And I think that like, you know, I just, I'm never disappointed by their work, even if I can't stand some of the films that get made, you know, like there's a Jurassic, the rest of Jurassic Park, like just, yeah, there's something's awesome. - You can't blame that for that part. - They can't, they can't, they can't, like they're doing their best work. And it really like elevates any project that they're involved with. It's just sometimes the projects just can't be, you know, - Yeah, they also worked on Dune, right? - Yeah, they did, they did, they did, they did, they did, they do what they have to do, which is to go where the money's at. But you know what, I once was watching, Confessions of a Shopaholic. And there is this like crazy visual, set of visual effects shots with the mannequins, it hadn't been done before. And I looked up and it was, it was, it was ILM, right? And I was talking to John Null, who, you know, he's the Chief Creative Officer at ILM now, but back then he was visual effects, he was ahead of visual effects. And like, you were done star with listings. And I'm like, why did you do that? And he goes, listen, sometimes these projects, which seem like they're nothing, and no one's really gonna even see comparatively, is like a really good chance for us to test something that we think might be really useful on a much bigger picture. But like, it's a small opportunity to fail, like quietly, you know, without people seeing. And if it works, it's great, then we can take that over to a bigger film, you know? And that's what they did. So like, you know, sometimes like these great things will be put into the very small projects that, like, you know, that don't go big or that don't look great or whatever. And I don't worry about that. Like, it's like, it's funny. It's like, hey, we needed to find a way to make something work. So we did it in a low stakes situation. So, you know, good for them. I love that. Yeah, so the other one is, another big one is Blur Studio. Their real, to just came out was insane. I mean, their stuff in general has always been, again, they've been around forever. I mean, forever is like so hard to say in this industry. Like, you know, it's not that long, this industry's been around. But like, you know, this past year, they did love death in robot season four in secret level, which I really like, secret level. Their real is amazing. So I think like, just if you wanna see some inspiring work that also makes you wanna maybe get under your blanket and say, maybe I won't go into work today, 'cause I'm not gonna make anything that good. It's a great opportunity to do that. And then finally, I really, like, again, they're just, they just released like a sort of semi-trailer for a new thing, but like a studios, they have a film that come out called Wildwood and their trailer was really kind of a mix of like all the other stuff that they've done plus a tiny bit of like this Wildwood project. But I love them because like, they have the most interesting process in 3D, because it's stop motion. But they, like for example, they 3D print every frame of every face and then they swap out the faces. So like all of the facial animation is 3D printed. And so they have like, I think I was in Portland and they had an exhibit on their stuff and like they had a wall full of all the faces of one of the characters. So you can see all the faces that went into like every phoning that the character said, every expression is pretty crazy. So they're doing like sort of like a mix of like, very old school and very new school stuff. I think that's pretty cool. - Yeah, I've seen behind the scenes. They also have to like composite out the seams with all of those faces. So there's actually a ton of just traditional visual effects in there too. I mean they're masters. - Aaron, have you ever heard of dwarf studios in the Pokemon concierge on Netflix? So it's like the, so it's another studio in Japan, but they do, they did the same thing where they do the 3D printing of the faces and stuff and the stop motion. So yeah, if you wanna get into more stop motion and stuff, yeah, dwarf studios is really cool to check out. - Maybe that'll make it in the show notes and I'll find the links like one of them. - Yeah, the Pokemon concierge just came out with season two on Netflix just recently. - One thing that's interesting about Lika and I know we're gonna talk about this a little bit later too is there seems to be, and I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about this, but like recently there was this Apple IDENT that now plays in front of all their shows and you look at it and you're like, oh that's pretty. And you know, you wouldn't even think twice about it except that it turns out they practically shot it somehow. Like, and there's this behind the scenes of them like actually building the Apple logo out of Plexiglass and shining different colored lights on it and shooting it. And then Stripe just did this thing for their Black Friday. They always put up a website so you can track like how many trillions of dollars are being spent on Black Friday. But they made this website where it was a practical miniature set that they built and then composited real time like analytics on that you could like scroll around and see how many credit card charges there are that minute but it's on the side of a building that's actually a miniature and then they did a whole bunch of press about that. And you know, my gut is that maybe that's a little bit of a response to like, I think it just used AI to make that. And so now it's like, no, no, no, no, we actually, we're actually putting a lot of work and effort into this and that's part of the story now too and that's almost part of the value of the piece. I'm curious how you think that may or may not have time to like it. - Well, I think, you know, with like, I think that Apple, we're gonna forget in like two years from now that that was ever like done with practical. But like a stuff we're gonna look at and always be like, that's just beautiful and like, that's unique and can't be done in the normal traditional way. There's gotta be aspects of it that are mixed in some interesting way that we haven't, you know, that we don't know or that makes you wanna explore it. I'm gonna look at that Apple logo in two years and someone else might see it for the first time, you know, whatever and be like, oh, that's cool, but they're not gonna wanna know how it was made. So I think, you know, the Apple response, I think was to a lot of this very like, you know, this push church, there's just too much of the AI and the CG and like they wanted to try something different. But I think like a stuff is a combination of like, of, you know, wanting to have it look its best and people who are just into physical tactile craft of making things. So, you know, it's a little bit of everything - All right, beautiful. Well, you guys had good picks this year. And even though your picks were all like studios that have been around forever on, I thought it was really, it was actually a really nice way to look at it. You know, like who's still around? That's like been able to maintain the quality after all these years. I mean, that's super difficult too, right? - Yeah. - It's not easy at all. All right, so now we're gonna get into some nerdy stuff. We're gonna talk about software. And good Lord, this has to be the longest software section outline we've ever had. It just goes on and on and on. So we'll try to blast through this. But I wanted to start with the big dog with the Dobie. And before we get into the software side of a Dobie, I wanted both of your takes on this. So there's, you know, I try to insulate myself from this 'cause I think a lot of times it's misguided or it's just easy to jump on a bandwagon. And I don't wanna do that. I wanted to always try to have like a really objective view. There's always like some Dobie haters out there and people complaining about this and that. But this year they have another piece of ammo which is a Dobie stock price is tanked. It's down like almost 30% this year. And there's a whole lot of theories about that. And I've seen a lot of people, you know, on X and other in LinkedIn and other sites like that. You know, especially you've got more apps now. You've got Blender, you've got Cavalry, you've got Rive, you've got all these kind of competitors. And I think I know the answer to this. So Aron, why don't I just ask you this? Like, is a Dobie in trouble at all? Like, you know, the stock price is down. Brand sentiment might not be at an all time high. People are talking about it online. Which you do. - I wanna ask a quick question to you is, when did their stock, was it like slowly over the course of the year, was there like a particular time where it dropped? - It's been, I think it was, there was kind of a steeper decline in the first half of the year, but it's been steadily down pretty much since then. - Yeah, I mean, you know, do I think they're in trouble? You know, there's such a juggernaut, like they'll find ways to fix that. Like that, I think long term they're fine. I think more of like, what is it, say for them? I don't know, like, you know, there's obviously this, like, there's a lot of AI going into their stuff. I, it's funny because in a lot of ways, AI should just be boosting their stock, right? Like, AI is the thing right now. There's AI and I think the next thing is gonna be quantum computing, which is like a whole other, like that's like, you're looking the next thing to invest in or whatever, like, but AI, like all these companies are investing in it, but I don't know, with the Dobie, I gotta be honest with you, man. You thought I know what I was gonna say. Maybe you should tell me what you thought I was gonna say. I got, I don't really know, they're doing so much. - Yeah. - And I, it's in a lot of ways, like, I watched their last, you know, the Dobie max and I felt like an outsider in a lot of ways trying to keep up with all the crazy shit that they're doing there. Like, it's just, there's just so much happening and so little that has to do with things I would have normally done, right? - Yeah. - I used to say, people used to say me, "Why does AfterFix got so little attention?" And I'm like, because they make all their money from Photoshop and Acrobat. They don't, everything else is just, - It's just, it's just sad dressing, right? I mean, but now they have a Dobie, by the way, I think it's possible that a Dobie marketing cloud may have had a lot to do with that, less the creative apps, but it's possible that there's a lot of competition in the marketing area, which is something that a Dobie has invested in heavily. So it may have nothing to do with the software and it may have everything to do with this whole other area of the company that we as creative people do not have anything to do with. So I'm not sure. What did you think I was gonna say? - I assumed you, well, so I'll tell you my take and then EJ, you can chime in. My take is that there's, and I've kind of felt this way and then I kind of did some homework and, you know, there's people that analyze stocks and companies and stuff and this seems to be at least one consensus out of many, is that, you know, right now AI is the thing that's being hyped and that's where all the investor money is going, right? Including institutional investors, right? They want to invest in Nvidia, Meta, and Google and companies like this. And so Adobe, in one sense, is kind of a leader there because they really are the 600 pound gorilla in the creative software space and they've invested heavily in AI. I think they possibly made a misstep, which was going in on this ethical Firefly AI model a little too early. And we'll talk about that when we get to the AI section. And so the results, they've actually been able to drive. Apparently Firefly adoption has not been great. They haven't really been able to monetize it. And as we'll talk about there now, letting you use pretty much any model inside of Firefly. You can use nano-banana inside of it, even after everything they said about ethical AI and all that kind of stuff. And so that kind of creates this illusion that, uh-oh, Adobe has stumbled. If you look at the fundamentals of their business, their revenues at an all-time high, they're super profitable. You know, they are so entrenched, it will be damn near and possible to dislodge them. Yeah, and they can recover from, like, if they're giving people access to the different models, that's something to easily recover from. 'Cause it's not like people said, "Well, I'm canceling my subscription to Photoshop 'cause I've been using it for years and I'm not gonna use it anymore." You know, because it doesn't have all the other models. I think that, you know, if anything, people just went out and bought, like, access to mid-Journey or whatever, and then brought that stuff into Photoshop. So, yeah. I assume that, like, investors, you know, and we're gonna talk a lot about this, like, they're not artists. And they're certainly not professional artists who know the ins and outs of these tools. And so, when they see a gorgeous still image on mid-Journey or they see, like, a five-second video clip that looks pretty real, and they know that Adobe has something to do with that, but it's, like, the old way. They assume, oh, Adobe is in trouble, but when you really get down to it and people are paying you to produce creative work, you're using Adobe. Like, you know, like, it's pretty hard. I mean, it's getting easier not to, but it's so almost impossible to avoid it. So, my take is Adobe is fine, and probably, it's a good time to buy Adobe stock, honestly. I'm not a stock advisor, this is not stockpages by Spinn. - In the right quantum computing, I would not take that, like, I would not put your 401k into it. I'm just, you know. - Yeah, but I'm curious to see what you think, 'cause, like, you know, I know you're more tapped into, into, like, the zeitgeist of, like, the artist community and how they feel about AI, and I know that there's ups and downs to that. And a lot of that negativity gets aimed at Adobe because they're very publicly, like, all in on AI. Like, at Adobe Max, this year, that's all they talked about, was AI. There was really, I don't think anything that was not AI related, so I'm curious what you were hearing. - Right, I mean, well, if, you know, Figma, also, they're stock, they're stock ting too, and, you know, you have affinity now as well, which, I don't even know if we mentioned affinity on this whole thing, but, you know, that's free. So, I think it's just the sentiment out there is just anti-establishment, whether that's, you know, cinema for, you know, max on anything you have to pay for, you know, people seem to be struggling, you know, people want to cut costs, so they're gonna want to go towards the cheaper option. And I mean, Adobe is, you know, the other thing throughout this all is that Adobe is becoming more expensive due to all the AI stuff. So, if you're a traditional motion designer and you're not using any of this AI stuff, you're paying for it, whether you like it or not. And so, I think there's a lot of people that don't appreciate that. Now, I will say, one of the other issues I think Adobe does have and something that I think they're realizing now is that their Firefly model just sucks. Like, it's not good. It's like two years behind, at least, of all the other models. So, I think the smartest thing they've done was allowed you to use these other models. Like the Nano-Mid-Anon stuff. Like, I started using that and I've seen, you know, people like that work for Adobe like, you know, Wes, McDermott and, you know, some of the other folks over at Adobe, they're really showing off some really cool stuff, especially with some of the, the, the Max Sneaks kind of stuff. But one of the things that I've been using Adobe stuff for recently is the Firefly boards, just for brainstorming. And I just found it a much nicer way. It's kind of like a millenote for what, using AI and that millenote kind of thing where you can plug things together, group things, build your storyboards or your mood boards and remix images together. And I think that's one of the best ways, the most, one of the most practical ways to use it right now. But I think one of the issues is even still now, where it's outside of people editing photos. Like no one's using it for any animated stuff, I would say, or video, like we've seen some of your experience, your experiments joy with like the generative extend and premiere and you just get like a cobweb in your mouth all of a sudden. It's like, what the hell is that? (laughing) - It's like, because AJ with, with Firefly, the way that I've tried to describe to somebody, like, what's the difference of ethically chain versus not? I'm like, well, when you ask mid-journey and make a picture of Spider-Man, it's a picture of Spider-Man, but when you ask Adobe Firefly, it's like, I don't know what Spider-Man is. I once heard a guy talk about it. We were in a bar in the volume on the TV, it was really loud, but I think I got the gist of it. You know? And it did not get the gist of it, not even a little. - Well, what's the difference? It's got a fraction of the training data that any of the other AI models do. And so they're always gonna be, like, I think what Firefly, what Adobe is trying to do, is admirable, but, yeah, just think to stay ahead, it's just really rough. But I think even the Adobe, the Firefly stuff, where it's commercially safe, this is one of the things that, you know, we had PJ Richardson from Laundry do one of the workshops for our company. community here a few months ago. And one of the things that I went away with was the fact that they're working on stuff for certain companies that will not allow them to use AI for the final output. It's got to be integrated somehow, but it can't be used for a final product. So there are these big companies, they still are afraid of how you're using AI in the end result. And so that's one of the things where it's like, I don't do client work, I don't do any, I don't work with any companies that would either need AI or be okay with using AI or not. So I think that's the one aspect where I'm just like, how is that going to shake out? Because if there's some ruling that comes down the pike and all of a sudden like, you know, buck used AI in some way for Google and Google's getting sued and somehow like I just don't know what the ramifications of that is. And I don't know what hesitancy there is with like artists and individual or clients on just the legal aspect of it. 'Cause I know there's the moral thing and I understand that, but the legal stuff seems like very, very murky and people are just using AI left and right and the legal aspect of it just doesn't seem to be talked about much at all. So yeah. - I think by the way, I think you're right that like it doesn't matter that Adobe's, like like even though Adobe's doing it ethically with Firefly, the idea that they're using someone is using AI, whether it's ethical or not, nobody even wants to deal with it. But people that don't want to deal with AI, they don't want to have to play with it. Like you could say you used Adobe, but I'm then never gonna have to deal with it. If it's a problem later, I think they'd rather just stay away from AI than use AI. And if they're using AI, they're not asking questions. You know, that's what I think it's gotten to. - Yeah, well, we'll talk about this in the AI section. - I'm skeptical that there's that many companies still doing that. And if there are, then because 100% of the people I talk to, studios, agencies, artists are all using AI, it's not 90%, it's 100%. - I think by the way, and they're doing it for somebody. - Yeah, we're talking a lot about it and we haven't sort of like really talked about it. So we're sort of like keep mentioning it. And I think people who are sort of sitting there and are unhappy with AI, like we're gonna have a conversation about it because what you think is happening and what's actually happening are very, very different in the industry. People are being very quiet about it, but it's on, man. It's on right now. - Yeah, it's on like Donkey Kong, as they say. All right, we're gonna talk about the old tools, right? The traditional quaint ones. We have to use a mouse and click and stuff. All right, so real quick, so Photoshop. I mean, basically everything, I would say After Effects is almost an outlier in the Adobe ecosystem where the After Effects team shipped a ton of stuff this year that wasn't AI-related and it's actually really useful, but we'll start with Photoshop. Photoshop has integrated AI. I think the best of any creative tool, and it's not even close. It's using it now for object selection and creating super detailed, really crisp, clean mats for things. I mean, it's funny. I remember one of the first tutorials I ever made for School of Motion over a decade ago was how to cut out difficult things in Photoshop. You don't need to watch that. It's literally a click, and then if it's really tricky, maybe you gotta clean it up a little bit with some brush tools, but I mean, it's almost there with it's getting bicycle spokes perfectly. I mean, it's insane how good that's gotten. There's the Harmonized tool. I don't know if either you have played with that, but it's very cool. It's not perfect, but basically you can take one image and put it on top of another and kind of position it where you want it and click Harmonize, and it composites it for you. And it'll add a contact shadow. And if there's lighting in your background, it'll add a shadow for that. And it'll color correct it to try to match, and it can kind of relied a little bit. And it gives you three options and you pick the one that you like the best. That's kind of amazing. Now, it's not, I don't think it's as good as like a really experienced compositor. That really knows what they're doing, but it's like 80% good enough. Like, you know, it's, again, this is gonna be another theme is like for a lot of things, 80% good enough is good enough. You know, and Harmonize is pretty much there, I think. Oh, actually, this is an an A, I think. They ship this cool tool. It's called Dynamic Text, where you can have a block of text with multiple lines and it'll scale up the typeface for each line so that you get this nice, left, right, justified block of text, which isn't really that hard to do if you don't have that tool, but it is nice that kind of saves you a few clicks. I think it's actually funny if you think about it, we're teaching a cavalry class now. And stuff like that, you can just do, like natively in cavalry and you can control however you want. But when Photoshop added that, it was a big press release. Like, it was like a big feature thing. So it's nice though. The biggest thing obviously in Photoshop is the AI stuff. Specifically, I think the biggest news there is them opening up Photoshop to now not just use Firefly, but use Nano Banana and other models. You can now also use Topaz Labs for upresing. Firefly has an upresing model and it sucks. It's just not good. Topaz is, Topaz is my second favorite one that Magnific is the best one, but they don't have that one in Photoshop. - Joey, if you have a license of Topaz, does that work with that, or do you have to pay credits for that? - No, 'cause Topaz, you can buy your own. I think you can buy Topaz is like a perpetual license like a run on your machine actually. So you can just use that if you have it, but if you're using it through Photoshop, you have to use AI credits. And that brings me to this is kind of related to everything around AI. It's not just Adobe, but a lot of these companies, most of them, the way you have to use AI right now is with a credit system. And this sucks. This is objectively crappy. So when you use a Firefly tool in Photoshop, it's dinging you for credits. And depending on which Adobe plan you have, maybe you have some credits, but it's not clear how much those credits are, like harmonize, apparently costs some credits. I don't know how many. Does it matter how many pixels are in it? Is it just a flat rate? If you're using Firefly, it uses some credits. If you're using nano-banana, it's more because Adobe is probably paying Google to use their model, right? So then probably marking it up. - I think that what they do is there's actually a lower cost, 'cause they're not using some of their overhead. There's the API. If you look on their pricing, there's API credits, cheaper usually than using it on Google's site, for example, and their whole environment. So I know that with the, yeah, I noticed that with, with a couple of models I was looking at yesterday, just to see like what the costs were. And someone said, look at the API thing, you'll see that the prices are cheaper. So I think that if you're not, you know, if you're using their overhead, there's like there is a decrease in the price, but for them, you're still gonna pay, 'cause like you're now using their thing, you're paying them, but like I think they don't pay, they pay less to use, they'll also buy more. - Yeah, well, and they're Adobe, and they're making an enterprise deal with Google, and I'm sure they're getting like a bulk discount, but in any case, picks in perfect, like the Photoshop guy on YouTube, he's incredible. He did a whole video about this, and talked about this credit system, and I think that it's really gonna hurt adoption of these tools until this gets turned into something that's like one price all you can eat, which I don't think is really financially viable. - I don't even think, Joey, I don't even think, - Yeah, I don't think it's financially viable right now. I don't think, is anyone really making money, like are they burning money right now? Was it try to get to some kind of finish line? I'm not clear on whether the companies are actually making money with any of this so much as like. - I'll tell you a little bit, - Yeah. - Our own, yeah, yeah, that's called a tease. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like that's, I think last year, I can't remember if it was during this podcast or a different one, but I talked about the AI bubble. I think it was during our end of the year podcast. And the bubble I was referring to was the financial bubble around AI. Open AI is still burning billions of dollars. Adobe, I assume, actually I'm pretty sure they're not making money on Firefly right now. They're losing money on it, probably a lot. They can afford to, Google is losing money on AI, but they have a different business model where they can support that same with meta, right? So Adobe eventually will have to make money with AI, and maybe that'll just trickle into more creative cloud subscribers, but the user experience of it right now isn't great. It is very useful to have NANO banana right inside a Photoshop. It's pretty cool. I think the integration's okay, it could be a lot better. But yeah, but I mean, I don't know, I mean, for Photoshop, I think most of the stuff that they added was AI except for dynamic text. It's still, you know, we still use Photoshop every day, the School of Motion. I mean, it's just, it's the standard thing now with affinity, which we'll talk about, that could be interesting. The other thing is Illustrator, and I don't use Illustrator as much as Photoshop. EJ, I think you use Illustrator still. And really the two big things I saw was it got a lot faster and the turntable tool. It looks really cool. Yeah, the turntable thing looks really interesting. It's one of those things where it's like 60% of the time it works every time. You get some weird stuff, but the Max sneaks. So previously, the turntable, you can only do like 45 degree chunks and like overhead. But with turntable, or the newest version of turntable, I don't know what's coming out, but it was teased that Adobe Max, you can get a lot more different degrees of rotation on your 2D vector image, which is that super interesting, because you can change things. You have a lot more control over things as well. The one thing I wish it could do, So the only downside is when you have your, you know, stroked paths or whatever and you do turntable, it just expands your paths and your shapes. So it's very hard to like edit it if you wanted to edit it because if you had a stroke on it, it's just expanded. So I hope they do it in a way where if you have a stroke around something and you do the turntable, it maintains that because then it's, you know, everything about this AI stuff is it art directible. If it is, then it's super useful. But if it's destructive in any way or it's hard to edit, that's where things get a little tricky. So yeah, but turntable seems to be the big thing. I don't know how hopeful it is or how much it's being used in practice right now, but it is, it's, again, one of these AI things, it's like, it's cool. I don't know people are going to actually find use out of this though. It's a great tech demo, right? You know, you know, I was talking to Hashie this morning and, you know, he said to me that like his reaction to all this stuff and that's what our reaction should be instead of having these very extreme emotional reactions to sometimes when people show something really cool and then you're like, you know, it's ethical. You're like, just go neat. That's awesome. Thanks. Because like, like, show me something real, like that's more than three seconds long that looks good and it's consistent and then that does this thing like that we can use practically and it's being used in a real project. Then I'll be like, oh, that's cool. But for now, it's like, yep, neat, you know, thanks. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. You know, yeah. I think that with a lot of these tools, the way that they're positioned, right, like turntable is positioned as you can have a vector image and now you get a 3D almost like a vector 3D model of it, right? And so the implication is that you can use it in the same way you would use a 3D model, right? But it's not good enough to do that in most cases and frankly, the way it outputs it is and you don't actually get a 3D model. But if you have a vector of a tree and you want a variation to make your composition and have a little more of that, you can now get instant, easy variations of it. That's not what the tool was necessarily designed to do, but it is good at that. You have, I think there's going to be a lot of retraining our brains of like, how would I do this without this tool? How could I do it with this tool? How do I hack this tool? I mean, a lot of what After Effects Artists do is they hack After Effects to do things that it wasn't really designed to do. You know, fractal noise was probably put in there because it's a very useful visual effects tool. But we figured out all kinds of ways to get like stylized things with it and, you know, boil edges and things like that. So I think it's going to be the same with AI. You're going to take a tool called Turn Table, but you're going to use it as the variation. Or the Joey, I think someone in Adobe was just like, "Ooh, that's a good idea." They may have like variation tools coming soon with AI that like will take common objects, like trees and things like that, that you need variations. So I'm just doing it. Like, there's some value in that for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, especially with a lot of the modern projects people have, right? We need 700 different emojis and they all kind of let this, you know, I mean, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, AI actually can save a lot of time with that. All right. Now let's move on to After Effects. And we asked Iran, one of our newest After Effects instructors to weigh on in this. And he agreed pretty much with what I thought, which was, you know, there's kind of a big deal, which is that there's not really a RAM preview anymore. When you hit the RAM preview button, which is what I'm going to call it for the rest of my life, because I can't not say it. When you hit RAM preview, it's actually proving to your hard drive now. And so you can basically have unlimited playback, which I mean, it's funny, because like that's a big deal for After Effects artists that are working on like 4K, 8K stuff, you know, that don't have 256 gigs of RAM. It seems like it should have been probably table stakes by, you know, 2025, but now we have it. So that's really helpful. What I like is that the After Effects team added like some really nice quality of life things this year, like native layer staggering, like you can select a bunch of layers in your timeline. And you can stagger them really easily. Now you don't need like a third party tool to do that. Skew is a third party tool that still like gives you way more options and is nicer to use. And I still recommend that for most people if they're going to be doing that a lot. But now it's native in After Effects. The biggest thing is obviously the 3D system. Hey, I'm Aran Stern, one of the cohosts of the very first After Effects video podcasts. Together with Aronobinovich and a guy you might have heard of Andrew Kramer. I think 3D is mandatory for anyone in this field, but it's also a very deep poll that takes time to master. So the fact that we can now import native 3D models with animation, cameras and lights into a familiar environment like After Effects to me is a game changer. I also love the fact that Adobe keeps pushing this forward, especially with the substance tools that we got in the recent beta, things like parametric materials and 3D primitives. They're just great. Now is it ready for primetime? Probably no. It's still evolving, but the direction looks very solid. Now beyond 3D, which I'm sure will geek out more in this episode, I'm really a big fan of the quick offset for layers and keyframes and the dynamic zoom feature, which by the way took years to develop. And it didn't get enough love. At least not the love it deserves so. I made the whole tutorial about it like and subscribe. There were also some little things that matter too. For example, reveal projects file, copy and paste, text formatting, hyper performance, review playback, customized the transparency grid, maintain your workspace when you open projects from other people, as well as control multiple 3D objects with a single gizmo. And of course, the new commands for creating nulls from points. Those are great stuff and some of them are not so small like the ability, for example, to run preview forever without robbing a bag. And yes, I know there are still things to do, but I think they are doing it. The obvious ones are depth of field and motion blur for the advanced 3D renderer. Also, being able to apply substance materials to extruded text and shape layers just seems logical to me. But what I'm really hoping for are 3D supplies and that would be a total game changer for after effects. I also like to see shape layer operators work on those 3D primitives. Imagine if those meshes had the same mathematical operators, like we have with shape layers or even just the 3D repeater that would be instantly true mogroff style tools inside after effects. So have either of you mess around with the new 3D system? I have not. I've brought in the animated characters and stuff previously, but it wasn't the latest version of it. My take is when they first announced it and it first came out, I was like, I'm going to wait and see because my assumption would be like a lot of things with after effects. It's an ancient program by software standards. And so to shoe, when in something as complicated as 3D, which requires a 3D renderer and a lighting system and a texture system and how much control you're going to have and what kind of models are you supporting and all those things, I have to say it's surprisingly good. It's very fast. The render quality is really high if you know what you're doing. So if you just throw a 3D model in there and put an after effects light in there and you don't know anything about lighting or render samples or shadow detail, it's going to look grainy. It's not going to look good. But if you have some of those, if you have that knowledge from being a 3D artist, you can tweak all that stuff and get a pretty high quality 3D renderer. The render is quickly and it lives natively in after effects with the rest of your scene. It's pretty awesome. You can bring in animated models. You can bring in FBXs now, OBJs, GLT apps like a bunch of formats. Some of those formats have the materials built in. I don't know if this is shipped yet as of this recording it may have, but now you can also bring in a substance material, apply it to the 3D object and then tweak the substance material in after effects. So you have to set it up in substance first and tell it what properties you want to be able to change and stuff, but that's pretty cool. I think I want to just come to this holding with substance and after effects having 3D. Six years ago when they acquired substance, I got to say I was completely baffled by that decision. They acquired it. They didn't have any 3D programs to speak of and it seemed like a really random thing. I talked to my friend who was a CEO at a video game company and he was like, well you know what, because truth is that we've moved very far away from using Photoshop. We were always using Photoshop as the tool to create textures and now we're using substance. And it's like, oh maybe that makes sense. They didn't want to lose that market. But it's obvious that they've started to think, I don't know if they had 100% vision at the time that they bought it outside of that, but they're very clearly thinking about 3D now, which is funny because I think Maxon is thinking about the after effects market. We'll talk about that a little later too, but they're very clearly thinking about 3D in terms of motion design and motion graphics. So yeah, so that purchase makes some sense now when it did not six years ago, not really. Yeah, well I think that the good thing about having 3D native and after effects is a lot of things that used to be really clunky. Even just 3D type. You think about how many third-party tools have come around over the years. I remember using Zach's works in Vigorator like decades ago to make 3D type. or Element 3D. You know, you had the Cinema 4D renderer, but it was like, it was really slow. This is actually like a pretty great option. And I think that what's missing is the ability to do a little bit more animation inside of it with like rigs or things that have multiple pieces. I think that would be helpful. I think more control over like some of the lighting settings to mimic 3D lights a little bit more. But overall, like if you're doing basic shape, they added primitives to recently. So now you've got cubes and spheres and stuff, natively in After Effects. It's pretty awesome. I think that's actually that's probably the biggest thing they've added to After Effects in many, many years. And probably the most useful. And I think it's gonna be interesting because, you know, After Effects artists who are used to working in 2D, they're used to kind of faking all of that stuff. Right, that's how I used to work a lot before I learned Cinema 4D was like, oh, I want it to feel 3D. That means I need a shadow and a little glare over here. And then you kind of learn the visual tells of this is 3D. And you fake them. Well, you can't do that in 3D. You have to actually light the thing and put the shadow where you want. You have some control with compositing, but not that much. And so I think it's gonna hopefully get a lot more After Effects artists into 3D. And then when they hit the limitations of it, maybe they jump to Blender or Cinema 4D. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is like, my brain hurts when I see those complex rigs to just rotate a cube. And I'm like, oh my God, just make a cube and just rotate it. So, and I think that's the thing too, where a lot like Kyle Hammerick, for example, like I love him to death. And like when he used to work at school of motion, he'd be like, I need to learn 3D. I was like, yes, you do. I was like, it's not that hard. Like just let me sit you down. And so I just think when you're in that 2D you might like, yes, I think we all forget if you've used, if you know 3D, you forget how daunting that was at first. And so I think if anything, yes, I think it's really big that if people are gonna have an excuse to start learning 3D and using it in their native app, like After Effects, I think that's a huge win. And you just hope that this isn't yet another one of the 3D engines and stuff that Adobe has that then they trash and redo this all again. 'Cause I remember, you know, is this the fourth different time you could do 3D text and shapes and After Effects? I don't know. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, this iteration of 3D and After Effects, I think is on the right track. And I love that the team is shipping, they shipped a lot this year. Like it felt like the velocity's increased. And you know, the After Effects team, we've said it many times on this channel, like it's very small. Like it's not a huge team. But what's awesome is everyone on that team is like an After Effects nerd. Like they love After Effects and they're listening to the community. I think Victoria Nese is doing an awesome job. So yeah, I was really happy about that. Iran really likes the 3D system. And they've added a whole bunch of other like little quality life things around like fonts and variable fonts and stuff like that. A lot of that is in Iran's class. So then we get to Premiere. And we launched our first Premiere course this year. We will definitely have more taught by Kyle, who like probably should learn 3D, but honestly like he's such an expressions nerd. He'd probably rather build a mathematical system to like make a cube. I think he would take all that part of his rant. - Hey, I'm Kyle Hammrich, a longtime motion designer, video creator and teacher across several different formats. I kind of feel like 2025 was the year of Premiere. Adobe added a ton into it. It really felt like it was their focus. We got Premiere for Mobile, which appears to be replacing Rush. And hopefully that will be cool both for folks doing like more streamlined social cuts, but also folks can maybe use that on set to do edits. And then you can push it to the full desktop version to refine it. So I think that's useful. There are several AI focused features. I'll kind of get into all of those in a minute. Some of them don't seem like big headline features, but nice stuff like adding an Adobe stock panel directly into Premiere. So you can just browse for stock clips without leaving the app and it doesn't need to be third party. That's great. There's a third party creator called Film Impact that had been making a ton of great transitions and filters and stuff for Premiere. And they acquired that and integrated directly into Premiere this year. So a lot of those great stylized transitions that people like to use, especially for the flashy social edits are all baked right in now and people don't need to buy additional products. I think that's a good cap cut competition. They're probably trying to lure some of that audience away a bit. Getting into some of those AI features, media intelligence, I think is really huge. That's one of those things that as an editor, I've been wanting for a long time. Basically, unless you turn it off, every time you import clips into Premiere, it's going to analyze them in the background and then auto tag them for you. So you can use the search panel to look at all the footage in your project. And if you want to define that clip with that one specific thing that you were looking for, you can just search for that. And it will show you every piece of media that you've imported that has that thing. While it's not something I use a lot, being able to automatically translate captions into every language is really helpful. And they added improved color management so that if you don't already have an understanding of how to work with luts and raw footage and stuff, Premiere can do a lot of that for you. Now, as with most things, is it going to get you all the way? Maybe, maybe not, depends on the clip. But you're not starting from zero if you need to help. They added a ton of audio enhancements. I think some of these were actually last year as well, but this sounds a little silly, but one of my favorite things that we got, again, I think last year, is the ability to do crossfades much more easily, like you can in addition, you can just drag from the end of the clip and much easier than having to deal with the old way. And that's great. The enhanced speech feature is really nice too. Again, I think that was also from 2024, but sometimes people don't catch all of those. And you can tell there's been a big focus on making audio more usable. You could see a couple really amazing things and sneaks from this year, where, for example, they brought in a clip and it just kind of magically extracts stems of all the different elements of a single audio file. So they were able to pull out background music and have that separate from the person speaking and being able to filter that out or change it to something where that doesn't have licensing issues. That's pretty incredible. As someone who watches all the sneaks that they put out at Adobe Max, I think that's probably the easiest way to guess where things are going. Some of those audio features that they premiered this year just look absolutely incredible. And that seems like that's going to kind of revolutionize the way that we can work with audio in post. I think we're going to see continued development in object masking and whatever that turns into in After Effects, which is great because I don't think too many people are going to cry about rotoscoping disappearing. I don't think anyone loves that. And anything that helps you get rid of those tedious tasks, like painting things out with cloning. That's stuff that these tools do pretty well and helps free us up from the tedious parts so that we can be more creative and make the thing that we want instead of spending days going frame by frame. Premiere, we use Premiere at School of Motion, all three of our editors use it. I use it. I know the two of you use Premiere. Honestly, it's a great editor. I don't really have anything bad to say about it. I've tried DaVinci Resolve and it seems great too, but it's like going from C40 to Blender. Like the muscle memory is totally different. And I don't have time for it. Despite the fact that that one's free. But Premiere has added some really good stuff. So they added text-based editing. I believe last year, but it's gotten better. I still prefer Descript for that stuff. If anyone's unfamiliar, it's a text-based video editor that transcribes every piece of footage you put in, and you edit it like a Google Doc and it instantly makes the edits, and it's amazing. It's incredible. It's got AI built in so it can also tell you what's the best sound bite from this interview. And it'll just give you five. And it's awesome. So Premiere doesn't have all that yet, but it does have text-based editing. And that then gives you the opportunity to make captions automatically. So that unlocks a whole bunch of things. And now they're using-- they've got this thing called Media Intelligence, where it scans your footage. Apparently it does this locally somehow. And it can essentially tag your footage. So it knows this is a wide shot featuring a male and a female human. It can kind of know that stuff. This is an exterior. This is an orange cat. This is someone stirring a bowl of porridge, whatever. I don't know why he used porridge. There's the example there. I've never actually had porridge, but kind of wants them now. But yeah, so to me, that is like-- I'm not sure I can think of a better use of AI than now. That's amazing. I started my career as an assistant editor. I know what it's like to get 100 hours of footage, and you have to not just log it all. You have to digitize it in with a tape deck. I mean, you kids don't even know how easy you have it. Yeah, there's also-- and this is actually really-- it's really good. It's really useful. They're using AI to enhance audio. So if you have a noisy audio clip with some wind or the mic wasn't very good, so there's no low end, it's got these enhanced tools that you can mix in the amount you want in there. really freaking good like they've gotten better. There's a really good roto tool now. It's called Object Mask. It has to make it swing into After Effects at some point. Right now it's just Premiere. And it's like, from what I've seen, I'm used to using Boris FX's, I forget what they call it, the Machine Learning Mat. I think is what they call it in Mocha, which is incredible. This looks just as good as that and it's fast and it's built right into Premiere. And it just saves you a trip to After Effects. You don't need roto, you don't need the roto brush. I think for a lot of things, like you're done with that one. You said it saves you a trip to After Effects where you would then have to do it by hand, right? You know, right? Yeah, exactly. They don't have a tool for that. Exactly. And then the last thing, which I don't know how big of a deal this is, but Premiere for iPhone dropped. And I haven't played around with it. I don't really have much desire to edit on my iPhone. But I think that that's kind of a sign of like, there's a big chasm between us old heads and younger kids coming up and how they think about making content and making video. And I know like my kids are all cap cut fluent. Like they use it all the time. They know how to put tiles in and add filters and sound effects and all this stuff. And so if you're coming up in that generation and all of a sudden you want to jump to a professional app, well, this is kind of a nice stepping stone. So that my gut is that's probably what the strategy is for Adobe is just making it accessible. I know that some of their iPad apps are free. So I don't know if Premiere for iPhone is free. I probably should check before recording this. But I think that's kind of cool. But overall Premiere, I think, is just still like a workhorse powerhouse. Our own, I know you edit everything in Premiere. I don't know if you've noticed anything new or cool about this here. I'm doing fairly simple stuff. I don't-- I create my own problem. Just because I'm making the content that I'm then editing. So I already know what the solutions are. There have been a few times that I've used extended the footage. And that's been OK. Because I know what kind of footage it works with. And I know what kind of footage it does not work with. I've definitely used the-- when you have a cut and you remove an um and then you want to have the footage blend, I don't know why I can't remember the name of that feature. And sometimes it's great and sometimes it's so bizarre. More of cut. It can work or it cannot work. I don't know how-- I don't know if someone's had a predict. Stuff I think would work just doesn't. But yeah, but the extension of the footage, that can be pretty good. I think somebody did an experiment where they just kept extending it further and further. And the first few seconds, it was good. By the time it's done, like 10 seconds, it's like that typical hallucination of content. Yeah. Like a timber and character. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, premier is just-- I think it's just kind of industry standard. When I talk to editors that use DaVinci Resolve, almost none of them use After Effects. So I think that's-- I mean, that's really-- If you're using After Effects and using Photoshop, you pretty much know the interface of Premiere. Some of the shortcuts are weirdly not the same as some of these other things. But I know I get it. I get it in there in the same environment. I'm not saying it's better, but I'm saying, I'm so familiar with the other stuff that this is easier to use than trying to use something that has a completely different paradigm for how the tool work and all of that. Well, from what I can tell, Resolve is-- I mean, it has every feature Premiere has, and some, and it's fast. And yeah, it's more modern. It's amazing. It's just-- it doesn't have the instant back and forth with After Effects, right? It doesn't have dynamic link. And honestly, that's a deal breaker. Like, you can't import a moogurt file. It's got fusion. And fusion has a version of a moogurt file. I forget what they call it. You can set that up. But it's a node-based compositing app. It's not a motion design tool. It's not a motion graphics tool. And I've gotten into YouTube arguments over this in the comments because I'm like, no, it's not a competitor to After Effects. It's not. And I guess that's one thing I didn't really say when we were talking about After Effects. As far as I can tell, there are still absolutely zero after Effects. I think that's going to change. There's not one out there. I think that's going to change soon. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. That's another tier. So I've pretty much tried everything. Apple motion, cover-y, lottery, rive, blender, autograph, and even some of the big guns like Unreal, Newc, Fusion, and Flame. And I can tell you, they all have something great to offer, more than just one thing. Some have fantastic type tools. Some give you real-time playback. Some have high end compositing node-based workflows. Vector Magic or clever state machines. But none of them gives me what After Effects gives me. It is always one of the two things. Iver, it's not powerful enough, or it's not easy enough to learn and use out of the box the way After Effects was for me. The combination of simple intuitive UX with almost ridiculous depth under the hood is still unmatched, in my opinion. And that is before you even count the huge ecosystem of plugins, scripts, and extensions that I talked about before, that wraps it all around. So I must stress. I'm not saying After Effects is the best app out there, but I'm arguing it's the best solution for motion graphics and for the things that I use it for. I also feel that the team at Adobe is genuinely pushing the app forward and making it better with each release. Is it perfect? No. There's always room for improvement, but it is still where I feel most at home and where I can be most creative. All right, let's talk about substance. And this is something I know very little about. So I'm going to throw it to my Boi user. Yeah, so yeah, a lot of stuff with substance designer, which I don't use a ton, but there's like a lot of cool stuff in there. Substance painter got a lot of quality of life updates. So if you use substance painter a lot, they had a ribbon tool, which is super cool, which allows you to stretch an image along a path. They updated their path tool to be able to actually fill a path, which is like a pretty big deal. It's like, imagine if you were an illustrator and you drew a path, and you couldn't easily just fill it with a color, anything like you couldn't do that before. So now you could do that and you can do it with the mirror tool. There's, so talking about integration with After Effects, there's real-time asset updates between say if you made a texture in, you know, illustrator or something like that, like a vector logo. If you change the logo, it automatically updates inside a substance painter, which is super cool. Sampler has a better updates too, which is if you're not familiar with the sampler, basically you take a, you can generate whatever kind of image pattern or something you want. If you shoot like a photo of grass, like just outside in your lawn, you can easily make a tie-label texture. With substance painter, one of the biggest things was like doing all your mesh map baking, and you have to adjust the, if you want to do low poly to, or high poly to low poly, baking in all the normal details and stuff like that. You used to have to manually create a cage around it and deal with errors and stuff like that. Now they have an auto cage option, which makes things super easy, super seamless. But as far as substance goes as a whole, if you want to try it out, they have a new indie bundle that came out a little bit earlier this year. So if you have steam, you can get the indie bundle for substance. I think it has painter designer and maybe sampler, but it's all for 2499 a month. So a little bit cheaper entry to get into the substance tools. If you just want to try that without getting the whole creative, creative cloud kind of thing. Well, it's not even included as a part of the general creative cloud. You have to do encryption, right? Yeah. So I got, yeah, I mean, I wonder how long that'll be, I mean, right now it makes sense that they obviously thought when they first got it, it didn't make a lot of sense to include it because there was nowhere to use that stuff, right? But now that it's an after effects, yeah, I don't know, maybe that'll change. I don't know. Yeah, that'd be nice. I'm curious, DJ, because you have a substance course coming out like what, you know, you know cinema 4D inside and out and you're starting to learn a little bit of blender. Like what does substance give you in terms of capabilities that you think is really cool? One of the things that blender can do that cinema 4D's not great at is like actually making custom textures. So there's some procedural texturing things you can do and say like redshift and blender. But if you really want to get in there and in the nitty gritty and like paint on your model and, you know, grunge things up or add, you know, wear and tear to different, different aspects of your model, it's really hard, especially if you're trying to work light, especially if you want to get into games at all, like you have to learn substance painter just to get the high poly detail information onto a lower poly model and use all that information to generate effects on your models. But there's just so many, it's kind of like after effects where there's just so many effects and tools and just things that you, it's just quality of life that you can just do things so much easier. Like, you want rust, like there's a rust preset. Like, there's just so many cool presets and like if you want stitches for like, you know, you have cloth and you want to add stitches, you can just like use a path tool and the path tool was like 3D and it actually sticks to the curvature of your model which is super cool and you can't do that and blender, you can't do that in cinema. So there's just so many things that you just can't do or if you wanted to do it would be super, super hard. So if you do, if you want any kind of like custom materials authoring like it's really the go-to and you're learning it, really diving into it for the course, it's something where it's so easy to use that and it's so easy to learn too. Like if you know Photoshop, you're right at home. Like it has the same exact kind of layer system and folder systems and adjustment layers and stuff like that. So it's so easy, it's ridiculously easy to pick up. So I think that's even one of the other benefits is just plug it in really easily to your workflow and massively increase what you can do to your textures in 3D. - I don't know if you ever saw Quixel Mixer. It's already like, it's been depreciated. You can still download it and use it. I tried learning both Quixel Mixer and it's before I used even using Unreal. I tried using Quixel Mixer and also the substance and substance obviously is an order of magnitude much more complex and deep. And not like in a way that's not even approachable is just like it's meant for like really, for you know, it's a lot in there. Quixel Mixer had a lot of some of these features that you're talking about. You bring the model and you could paint the do stuff. It was easy, you could mix textures, materials, all this stuff. It's a bummer that it's not there 'cause it's like a really light version of that that if you were trying to get your feet wet and this stuff and you wanted to do. But I still play with it every once in a while. I get curvature maps out of it, which is something that much harder to do in other places. So like I don't know how curvatures are handled by substance, but it sounds like it's like obviously right up its alley too. - Yeah, so there's, yeah, there's so many things that you can use like your curvature, your ambient inclusion, your normals, your even world space to drive different effects. So if you want like weathering, but you only want weathering on the bottom side of your model, like, okay, well you use like the minus Y vector, world vector kind of set up and stuff like that. So there's just, yeah, it's one of those things where it's so easy to get into, but then half of it's just like learning all the presets and all the effects and just how you can combine them to get, it's like Photoshop, or like I said, it's like after effects or Photoshop, it's like, yeah, you have your poster eyes and your whatever and then you mix all those things together and you're like, wow, that was a really cool like, warp effect, like Star Wars warp effect or something like that. - You got to learn the recipes, yeah. - Yeah, one of the recipes, yeah, that's exactly it. And that's, there's so many, yeah, there's so many effects and layer stacks and different ways to do the same thing. And yeah, the presets are really the strength of it because no matter what you do, you can save whatever kind of effects stack that you want into a preset super easily. So you can, you know, apply it to any model. And like I said, like any game, like if you want to get into games at all, like you have to learn substance. Like there's, it's just the standard material authoring tool for that kind of world. Like I play a lot of, you know, switch to and stuff like that. And I can tell I was like, oh, yeah, they used this effect, this substance effect for that. And so it's super good. - The danger of our career, right? Like everything you look at, you're breaking it down as soon as you're in the game. - Yeah, yeah. - As soon as you're, you start enjoying it, you're like, oh, but also, how does this relate to work? You know, it's just there soon. - We interrupt this podcast briefly to tell you about our all access program, the number one way on the internet to learn the toolbox emotion design. For one price, you get access to every single course we're making, including all upcoming courses as long as your subscription is active. You get unlimited critique from a professional motion designer on 100% of the projects you upload, access to our 24/7 community, which hosts monthly live portfolio reviews and live guest workshops on all kinds of awesome topics. If you complete a project-based course, you also get a verified credential that you can show off, join over 3,000 artists from all over the world who are dedicated to improving their careers and their skillset. All the details are on our site. Check the link in the description. We hope to see you in class. All right, I think now we should talk about Figma, and we have our first Figma course coming out early next year. So Figma is an interesting one to me because it kind of started as the tool just for designing websites and products and stuff like that. And what they've been doing is slowly expanding what it can do to where now they have drawing tools in it. And it's become a very, very powerful design tool, but it works completely different than Photoshop and Illustrator. It's got way different strengths. It's missing a bunch of features that Photoshop has and stuff like that. So the big news with Figma this year, so Adobe tried to acquire them. That officially fell through at the beginning of the-- at last year. And then the IPO this year. So they just decided, OK, fine, we didn't get acquired. We're just going to become a publicly traded company. And their stock, like a lot of-- like Adobe stock is down very significantly from the beginning of their IPO. I think that has more to do with the kind of shenanigans that bankers do when they bring a company public and insider trading and stuff, but it's my theory. But I think the big thing with Figma is, at the beginning of this year, Figma basically had a couple of things it could do. It had its design tool. And it had this cool thing called Fig Jam. Fig Jam. And it's kind of a separate app, but it's inside the same main Figma app where you can-- almost like Milano. You can flow chart things and you can make plans and simple graphics, but really it's for planning. And then they announced all this new stuff. So now you can design a website and then click a button. And now it's a live website. You can do stuff like that. It's got an AI thing that can help you prototype little pieces of apps and all that. I think the biggest announcement, which was made pretty recently, was they acquired a company called Wevy. And Figma, they haven't gone as all in into AI as Adobe has. But Wevy is like comfy UI. It's a node-based AI comping tool. And I've actually been using it a lot the last month on a project for School of Motion. And I got to say it's amazing. And it took me a while to get the hang of it. Once you get it, you're like, whoa. And again, like I said before, you have to think a completely different way. Like if I wanted the same result before AI, you could do it. Might just take way longer. And there's things that you might have to hire someone else to help you with if you're not good at it. But now once you wrap your head around how these tools can be just a part of your process that you already have, it's pretty amazing. And it's weird because Wevy doesn't seem to obviously fit into anything Figma is known for doing right now. So I think this kind of speaks to the direction they're going in. But I think as far as motion design folk are concerned, I think it's almost time to start saying, OK, you probably still need to learn Photoshop. You probably still need to learn, at least be familiar with the Illustrator. If you're going to be working with your motion design toolbox, Figma can almost replace probably 60% to 70% of that now. And in some ways, it's a far better tool. Hi, my name's Becky. And I'm a motion designer and illustrator. I first started using Figma mostly for team projects. So that initial ideation phase where your brain storming and coming with ideas. So me, it was really great in a remote working environment. And it kind of replicated that buzz of working inside of a studio. And then I was also using it for things like sharing works with clients and presentations as well. And then over time, I became such a fan of the interface that I just started to design and draw in Figma. And I realized they had all these really great tools and features that made designing just such an enjoyable process. And yeah, I was just a big fan of it. I love how collaborative and flexible Figma is. I can brainstorm, design, and pitch all of my ideas in one place. To be able to go right from those kind of early phases of a project, right through to the pitching stage in one place is something that is very unique to Figma. And it's really great to not have to rely on multiple programs or bits of software to do those things in separate places. So yeah. Yeah, I would say Adobe still wins when it comes to things like heavy illustration projects and photo editing, especially. I would say those tools are necessarily as developed just yet inside of Figma. But yeah, for kind of day-to-day design and concepting, I find that Figma is just faster. I'm definitely excited and have been excited about the Figma draw tools. I think things like the textured brushes and effects have been a real kind of game changer for me in my work. And I would say one of the main driving forces us to why I wanted to use it more in my work and why I am using it more with my work, the process of adding detail to illustrations just feels a lot smoother than Illustrator. at the moment and I'm really looking forward to seeing how they continue to expand on those. Obviously there's UI and UX design. I think those are the ones that everyone knows Figma for. But I would definitely say that features like the components inside of Figma. I think they're going to speed up the workflow for all kinds of design tasks. You can see how it would really help for things like campaigns, especially very big ones, right through to kind of icon design for example. I think also the fact that you can easily export work from Figma to apps like Cavalry and Rive shows it's going to be a really great tool when it comes to motion designers. Potentially, but only if it keeps expanding. If Figma starts to work more seamlessly with tools like Rive and Cavalry and adds kind of stronger photo editing capabilities, I can definitely see a future where I rely on Adobe a lot less. That said, I'm not sure they will ever be a single app that will cover absolutely everything designers need. I think it will always be a case where we have to kind of do one thing in one app and one thing in another. It's just whether or not those things are going to be Adobe based. I think that's the question. They've continued to experiment with non-Adurbi tools. We're already kind of seeing it at the moment, but right from that kind of design phase, right through to the kind of motion design phase, I think it will be interesting to see people kind of trying out new app combinations and seeing if they can kind of continue to kind of step away from that workflow that we're all kind of so used to using. To me, it kind of feels like the beginning of a shift kind of towards a more kind of diverse design setup and one that doesn't kind of rely on Adobe or even use it altogether. It's built to be collaborative, so it's just this endless canvas. You can have as many artboards as you want, as many layers, and multiple people can be working on the same thing at the same time and you see the other person's mouse. You can leave comments. You can have different pages. You can organize things different way. There is this feature called components, which is kind of like pre-comps, but way more powerful where you can very easily make variations of things. I've heard from a lot of just straight up motion designers. The instructor for our first Figma course worked at Animate. She's like an illustrator designer. She uses Figma a lot and said that she still has to jump back and forth between the Adobe stuff, but Figma is starting to replace a lot of that. Now there's tools like Battleaxx, which can go easily from Figma into After Effects. The company Canva, they're really into Cavalry. They made a tool that lets you go from Figma to Cavalry in like a click or two. Figma is just an interesting one. I don't think it's a required thing to learn yet, but depending on what area you want to work in, it may actually be. If you're working on any sort of web product, interaction design, you're designing it in Figma, or at the very least you're building, you're assembling your design there. You can copy and paste between Figma and Rive as well. Are either of you using Figma, or is this just a Joey thing for now? I've just had, like, when I've worked at different companies, they had me jump into Figma to like red elements that were kind of kept in these projects, but I'm not a Figma user for sure, not. The only thing I've seen is we have our local Denver meetup here, and we had a presenter that did some like Figma awareness campaign kind of thing. One of the things that, you know, because we, with all these new tools, it's like, is this just replicating a lot of what Photoshop can already do and all that kind of stuff? I would say the one thing that they showed off in Figma that I found was really interesting, it reminds me of the stuff you can do in Rive, where I forget what it's called, but it's the dynamically, like, adjusting a design and all the elements kind of fit, like, perfectly inside of it. So that's something that, like, you can't, that Photoshop can't do that as far as I know, you know, after Effects can't do that. So that was one of those things with the collaboration aspect as well that really popped out, and that was the, that was like one of the aha moments during that presentation. Yeah. Yeah. So what you're, what you're mentioning, EJ is called responsive design, and if you're building anything for a product or a car or a website, of course, it has to be built responsively. It's just table stakes, right? And, you know, Adobe has XD, which I feel like is kind of just getting deprecated and no one uses anymore. That was kind of their answer to Figma and Sketch, which is another web tool, another product design tool, but Figma from the beginning has had ways to do that. And now that tool is very, very mature. It's called Auto Layout. And, you know, if you're a motion designer, if you design an animate, you're used to, like, you know, making little 30-second animations or social media things, the reason to care about that, you know, specifically with Rive Cavalry has this feature now too, you can actually make responsive designs. And After Effects has plugins that can sort of in a very, very clunky, hacky way to do that for you. It's very painful and takes a lot of setup and it's easy to break. But, you literally can now, if you know these tools, After Effects is lagging behind, but if you know Figma and you know Rive or you know Figma and you know Cavalry, you can build designs that you don't even know what size the screen is going to be, that it's going to show on. It could be any size. And you're setting up design rules of how things will rearrange. And if it's tall, use this set of rules. If it's wide, use this set of rules. And it's insanely powerful. And if you're working, you know, for Google and you're helping to work on a website or an app, you have to design things responsively and they have to be executed responsibly. So Figma is like where all that stuff starts typically. And you can translate a lot of that over to these other apps and to websites and web flow and framework and all these things. So I think it's a really important skill for anyone who's not in the traditional linear motion design world, you should start getting familiar with that. Our Rive Academy Volume 2 class teaches you how it works and then how it works and arrive. Because the way it works is the way it works. It works that way just across the board on every platform. It's just the tools are called slightly different things, slightly different options. But that's a rabbit hole. And we have another Figma course we're working on for next year that will get into how that works inside of Figma. So motion designers can start actually designing those things responsibly. So that's a big one. Another app, I don't have too much to say about it other than I love it to death is descript. And I've talked about it before. It's an editing app, right? It's, you know, built in transcription. It can do a lot, a lot of things now. The interesting thing that they did this year was they, they've always had AI tools like it can automatically add chapter markers for you and name them correctly. So we use that. It can automatically find the best highlights like the best sound bites and cut those out and put them in another sequence for you. But now it's got what I keep hearing referred to as an agent inside of it, an AI agent. So the difference between like chat GPT and an agent is chat GPT. You talk to it and then it answers you and then you talk to it and it answers you. You can tell it to go look at this website and it can go off and do that and then come back. That's kind of what an agent is. But a real agent is, you know, like for example, hey, here's a six hour podcast. I don't know how long it's going to be. And then here's four and a half hours of sound bites. Go find the sound bites that fit into this and then put them in the right place and it will go do that. Now I don't suspect it will work that well. I'm going to try it. But that's what you can do. You can now type in commands to descript and say edit this down to 30 seconds. Make sure to keep this part and it will just go do it. And then you can say add music and edit it so it ends cleanly and it will do that. So it's one of these interface things that's really coming up more and more people are trying to do this with After Effects now. People are trying to do it with I mean, Rive has as a version of this too. And I'm skeptical that this is actually how we'll be interacting with apps. But it's kind of an interesting idea and descript is kind of all in with it. So they've got their AI bot that you can talk to. Now here's an interesting one. Affinity. Have I either of you used the affinity apps yet? No. Okay. So in case someone listening doesn't know affinity makes three apps. They make affinity photo, affinity designer and affinity layout or something. It's like it's basically in design. It's like a lay up print layout app. And they were selling them for I think 79 bucks. You could get all three of them for like 200 bucks. It was a one time fee and you just own them. And these are modern basically versions of Illustrator Photoshop and InDesign. And they're great. They work really, really well. You can even import and export Photoshop files using them. And so then they get acquired by Canva. Now Canva. You may not have even heard of them if you're a professional motion designer. This isn't something that you may use very often. It's one of the biggest design companies in the world. It has half the market cap of Adobe. So it's been around a lot less time. And it's basically a web based design tool that has a million templates and assets. And it makes it really easy to design social media graphics and YouTube thumbnail stuff like that. Very, very useful for companies. They acquired affinity. And they made their apps totally free. So now if you don't want to pay for Photoshop Illustrator, you can go download for free right now. Affinity, photo and designer. And now it's all inside of one app, it's just the affinity app. And when you're in there, there's a little toggle at the top, which app do you want to use? And you can seamlessly move your file between all three apps and go back and forth and work in it. So I played around with it for about an hour. If you know Photoshop and Illustrator, you don't even need instructions. It works mostly the same way. There are some differences. And there's the recipes are different for certain things. It has a lot of features I like. In Photoshop, one of the things that's always bothered me is if you want to put a filter on something but not have it baked in, you have to first make it a smart object. - Right. - Right? - Yeah. - Which kind of annoying. It seems like-- - I came from After Effects first almost. I used Photoshop a little bit, and After Effects is non-destructive. Come into Photoshop. It's always been like, why do I need to break something to make it? That's always been like a blame. - Yeah, and even just simple things. Like if I scaled down something in Photoshop but I haven't made it a smart layer, it loses all the resolution. It's destructive. And affinity is mostly non-destructive unless you tell it's, you know. And so it first of all, it's just like, that's a more modern way that I'm guessing the Photoshop, the reason Photoshop works the way it does is because it's, you know, 30 years older, probably even older than that, right? And so back in the day, well, we don't really have gigabytes of RAM, that wasn't even a thing. And so we need to think about memory. And so we're just gonna ditch that data. And otherwise save a copy of that layer if you think you might need it. And so there's a lot of ways you end up working in Photoshop that if you sit and think about it for five seconds, you're like, this is actually like really inefficient and kind of silly. And why do I have all these smart layers? And then if you need to make a copy of a smart layer and change that one, it's kind of a pain. So affinity just works better, like for a lot of that stuff. Affinity is also a modern app. It's only, you know, maybe 10 years old, something like that. So all the architecture is just newer. And so everything's like instant. And this is especially noticeable when you go from illustrator to affinity designer. Zooming in and out, manipulating giant vectors is instantaneous. There's never lag ever. So it's pretty interesting and it's free. So there's an interesting-- - Yeah, so I was in a spray that I, this whole thing, like when they got bought, obviously the panic that something terrible was gonna happen to the software happened, right? I remember that when it got bought. And a week before they made it free, they actually took it off their site. So you couldn't buy it. - Right. - And people were like, what? They were just like, they were furious, right? Like I never see people like, I can't even buy it right now. I need, like I have licenses already and I need more so that we can work. And like a week later it was free and then we can have it. It was just really interesting to see that switch. - Yeah, so I think that, you know, unlike, there's obviously a correlation here between C40 and Blender, and then Photoshop illustrator and the affinity apps, where you've now got this free thing that is like in most cases just as good. And in some cases way better and it's free. And so the obvious thought is, okay, is this actually, I mean, it's obviously shots fired at Adobe. In fact, they announced it on the last day of Adobe Max to kind of steal some of the thunder, right? Which was, which I thought was brilliant. And the marketing around, it's been great, right? And Canva has a pretty good reputation, you know? So the thought is, okay, does this impact Adobe at all? And I think that this actually might, because for people that animate, well, there's no affinity animation app, yet maybe they acquire one or they build one themselves that would take years. But if you're animating, you need After Effects. Like you just, you have to have it. And so you're already gonna have a creative cloud subscription and there's way more Photoshop and Illustrator training as of now than there is affinity. So they're a little bit insulated, but there's like other industries where you don't need to animate. You just need to design, you need to photo retouch or whatever. Or I think this is actually a pretty big deal. But having watched Blender over the years, you know, I would, you know, some people might have assumed, oh, there's this new free 3D app that's like just as good. Everyone's gonna switch by next year. By next year, no one will purchase Cinema 40 anymore. Of course, that's not the case. And Aron, we've talked about this in the past. I'm curious like, you know, if you have any thoughts on what having a free Photoshop and Illustrator alternative that are actually good, like this isn't pixamator or something, you know, some open source thing that is okay. - So we've always said that the way that like for that to happen for people to make the change there needs to be a really good reason, right? If you're using After Effects, there's not a great reason to go over it because like you'd have to, you know, like you need it, Photoshop Illustrator, it's all integrated, right? But if you're someone who's just doing graphic design or, you know, who's really just focused on the still imagery, you're right. I mean, I think that this might be the thing, especially if the transition's not hard to make, but even more so, anybody knew, you know, like there's no reason for them to necessarily go to Adobe, except like if they're looking for jobs where the jobs are like you need to use Photoshop. But I think more and more people are just being hired to do the thing. And like no one's gonna say, I can't use a free tool if it's gonna, you know, if you get the job done, especially if it can really do the job. So I think next year we'll see a lot more of what, you know, what that looks like, but I do think we're gonna see an impact on usage. Again, is it gonna really hurt Adobe and like they're, they're like tremendously, man, you know, so much of their businesses diversified again, like there's that marketing stuff, you know, the video stuff you can't, if you're in video, you're not using that, but who knows? Like I'd love to see what happens, but I don't, I don't have an answer for you. It takes a lot to make people switch and, you know, there's definitely something there, but I also felt that about Unreal and we're starting to see that too with Unreal, like people make, you know, switching is not necessarily the right word, but maybe using it because they can do, you know, it's free, why not use it and also use the other thing. So, I don't know, I think over time it'll, like I'm sorry, you ask me those questions and I'm more like, I don't know, that's it. - We're supposed to speculate, you know, I just wanna, I'm just speculating. - I'm throwing darts, you know? (laughing) - Here's my speculation, if I'm really, just kinda like say like, what could happen is I think that people will start using both, they'll definitely experiment with it, especially if they don't, if they're not married to the other products in the Adobe Suite, but, you know, I think that people in our core audience are gonna generally speaking, stay with After Effects and Photoshop and Illustrator. So, yeah. - Interesting, yeah, the reason that Canva did this, and I think they've even said this, but this is kind of obvious, it's like, they have the kind of, you know, they kinda own the lower end of the design market, like, you know, mostly like non-designers that need a lot of design, or junior designers that need to just make tons of stuff really quickly, and they don't have time to design from scratch, so they use Canva. They didn't have the up market, right? They don't have the high end designer. Now, this is a really good strategy for a company worth $65 billion, or whatever they're worth it right now, to kind of acquire a bunch of them. And then their ultimate goal is, I assume, to bring them back into the Canva ecosystem, right now, Affinity is free, but they have AI features in it that you can't use unless you have a paid Canva account. And from what I've seen, the Canva AI features on the Canva app itself, which is a web app, it's mostly around like, auto layout, or generating an image, you can place into a design, or something like that. It's not really like what Photoshop has, so if you wanna have content aware fill, or you wanna integrate nano-banana to do something really complicated, I don't think you can do that in Affinity right now. And Affinity always had a way less AI friendly stance than Adobe does, so to be interesting to see how that culture clashes with Canva, who has a lot of AI, and doesn't seem to be shining away from it. So I think that's interesting. - Do I have to tell you who's gonna win that war? I can tell you who's gonna win that war, right? It's gonna be the company that bought the other company. It doesn't matter, the people that work there may resist it for a while, but if that's their stance, if their stance is seen many times, their stance is we're in it with AI, like AI's coming to these apps, 100%. - All right, so now we'll talk about, so it's interesting, when we get to arrive, I'm gonna gush about it, this thing has surprised anybody. I'm gonna gush about this one too, so cavalry. So I'm assuming YouTube not touched cavalry yet, right? - Just barely, you know, when the first came out especially, I was playing with it, but I have not used a resource. - I was gonna say, you need to tell me when cavalry went from like an afterthought to like, like did they have a big uptake? 'Cause I feel like, you know, cavalry's been around for years now, and it just didn't get traction, and then I feel like just all of a sudden this year, something happened, and now I'm seeing it all over the place. So, - Yeah, I think what happened, if I had a guess, it's that there's some critical massive artists who have figured it out. And so now you're starting to see, 'cause the capabilities, it's added a lot of capabilities this year, but it's always had the core ones, and the way it works hasn't changed, but now enough artists are using it, that there are now some really good artists using it, and making crazy stuff, that like we featured on Motion Mondays, and it goes viral on Instagram, and there's an artist, Fafa, I believe he's Chinese, who's done some crazy, amazing, beautiful stuff in cavalry. And so, I think like mass adoption, it's really hard to know when that's gonna happen for any tool, right? Because you need the tool to be good, then you need artists to know how to use it, which for cavalry is tricky, 'cause it's not a simple thing to use, and then you need artists that understand it who are good in making good art, and then also promoting themselves, then you need an ecosystem of training, and companies asking for it, and so you kinda, it's like, It's like a table that needs eight legs to stand up at all. And you have to build them all at the same time. It just takes a long time. I don't know if that-- What do you think about that matter? I would say, though, that a lot of what went, like, kept them from even sort of rising to the level of attention where we would pay attention-- a lot more attention to it is they had a rough start, which is the initial thought, where people saw it, was like, this will replace After Effects, only to discover that they still needed to do all this-- After Effects does something, and this does something else, and that you might be able to use it together, but they're not even integrated. Why would I do that? I want to stay in After Effects. So I think even though that wasn't necessarily what they were marketing as, that was the perception, the initial perception, and then the initial disappointment. And by the way, that's like with a lot of technologies, the company has an idea about what it can do, but people are like, oh, this is going to be the next after Effects, and then it's not, and you're like, that's it. So I think that they kind of fell very quickly out of mind for a lot of people. And then the ones who knew, and the ones who saw the value and said, I'm just going to keep using it, hoping that the company doesn't go bankrupt, which they didn't. And so now they're starting to have resurgence as these people have been doing more and more with it. And the examples are better, and the software definitely has come a long way. Now I've seen the features that get released as they go, has been definitely leaps each way. My name's Greg Stewart. I'm a motion designer, animator, director, all those sorts of things. Currently, I'm employed full time at a nonprofit in the Portland area called Bible Project. Before that, I was an art director, an animator, and founding member at a studio in Vancouver, Canada called Ordinary Folk. Since I've achieved cavalry brain, so to speak, though I don't know if I've fully achieved it yet, there's always more to learn. I'd say I probably use After Effects 40% less. At least in my current work, most of the final exports that I do for shots and combined projects are going to be out of After Effects and not cavalry. But I would say that I use After Effects significantly less now that I have become really familiar with cavalry. And I'd also say that it's replaced a lot of the things that I used to do in After Effects. And even things that I used to really enjoy doing, I feel like when I was really getting into After Effects, some of my favorite things to do, were to build really complicated expressions, rigs to work with multiple shapes or control tons of different things, all from a single null with a bunch of different sliders, or just to try and break After Effects to do things that it couldn't really do on its own. And I still enjoy doing some of that. But now that I have cavalry in my toolkit, I can do a lot of those sorts of things in just a couple clicks and it's way faster. And it frees up a ton of my time to focus more in on animation curves and some of the other things that are also really important. So I'd say for those sorts of things, especially working with tons of different shapes or manipulating a lot of things all at once, cavalry is for sure my go-to. But I think that's also had the benefit of freeing me up to use After Effects more for what it's really good at. I think I'd say to any motion designer out there who is curious about learning cavalry, but maybe hasn't yet their toes in quite yet, it is 100% worth getting over the learning curve. There is a learning curve. I've heard some rumors that school of motion might be putting out a class on cavalry that will probably be really, really good. But once you do get over that curve, it's tons of fun to play around with. And for me, it was just really refreshing to start using a different animation tool other than After Effects and see what kinds of things that opened up for me. Some other things that have been really awesome about cavalry for me have just been getting to interact directly with the people making cavalry in their Discord channel. I've had feature requests get implemented into the software, sometimes within days or weeks, depending on how lucky I am with the timing of when I suggest things. So it's been super refreshing for me to feel like the features that I'm requesting or bugs I'm reporting are actually being listened to. And I know they're not just listening to me, they're listening to everybody in the community, which is really, really awesome. I cannot say enough good things about the people who make cavalry, Ian and Chris are just such nice people. And anytime I've interacted with them, they've just been so kind and willing to help. And I think it really helps that they also come from an animation background as well. I think all of these things contribute to why there's been a lot more hype around cavalry recently and bigger studios like Buck and Ilo are starting to use cavalry in their work. And even the team at Canva has started making some really awesome tools for working with cavalry, particularly one called Quiver that helps you bring stuff from Figma at Raid into cavalry super easily. There's just a lot of growth around cavalry and excitement and I think it's really worth checking out. One of the other really amazing things about cavalry is how fast it is evolving and changing. I feel like the team is constantly putting out new builds and shipping new features. It's honestly hard to keep on top of. I went on vacation early this year for a few days and came back and found that cavalry head all of a sudden introduced motion tracking in their beta software and a bunch of other new filters and effects and things like that. So it's evolving really fast. I think a couple specific new features in cavalry in 2025 that stood out to me were the huge load of filters that they dropped with 2.5. Previous to that, I don't know that I would have said filters and effects were a weakness of cavalry, but I definitely wouldn't have said they were a strength. And I think that's really been changing in the last couple builds that they've shipped out. Not only have they been adding a bunch of new filters, but they've also been working on performance a lot and cavalry does not tend to chug as much when you start working with a bunch of effects and stacking them up on a bunch of different shapes and things like that. So that's been really nice to see. A couple other really awesome features are referencing which lets you save your scene file, your cavalry file as a template that other people can then import and use as sort of like an essential graphics rig in their scene. And then any edits that you make in your original scene will get updated in the scenes of whoever is using your scene if that makes sense. One other really exciting feature for me this year was the arrival of the dependency graph, which is kind of like a node-based way of working inside a cavalry. If you've got experience in blender working with geometry nodes or shaders, it's gonna feel really intuitive. I think that was just a really fun way of working in cavalry, but I think it also helps you make more sense of how cavalry works because even though it looks layer based on the front end, it is really a node-based software under the hood. I'm not sure that I'll ever work 100% in cavalry and that'd be true for any software honestly. I sort of have this philosophy of wanting to use the right tool for the right job. And one analogy I've used in explaining that is that a hammer is a super versatile tool. You can do a lot of things with a hammer. You maybe technically could chop down a tree with a hammer if you spend a lot of time and went through a lot of hammers, but you should probably just use something like a chainsaw or if you're trying to get into like being like an ice sculptor or something I've heard, you can do that with a chainsaw as well. But I'll let to say there's some things that I really, really love using cavalry for and there's other things where at least currently it doesn't make as much sense. So compositing work or especially if I'm working with Photoshop art, I'm probably gonna do that in After Effects. But I think in terms of things that would help me work more exclusively inside of cavalry, I love to see some growth in being able to work with Photoshop and Illustrator assets. Currently you can just import a flat in PSD and I'm sure it's complicated to figure out how to import layers, but that would be one really awesome feature that would help me stay in cavalry a little bit more. Outside of that, I think it'd be really helpful to just have the cavalry community grow and have more people using it and making scripts and tools and plugins and those sorts of things. I think After Effects is such an industry standard and has been that way for such a long time when working with other studios or clients it can be hard to sell people and using a different software because they're so used to what they already know. In terms of where cavalry might be aiming in the coming years or where I'd like to see cavalry aim, I do have some inklings of some really, really incredible features that might be coming down the line in the near future. If you're in the cavalry discord, you might know what I'm talking about. Can't say anything yet, but there's some really cool things coming in terms of what I'd like to see though. Maybe hard to articulate super well, but I think of a couple things. I'd love to see cavalry continue to capitalize on what it's really good at, so things like speed and performance and also just shipping really good features really quickly, continuing to evolve. I would love more reasons to not have to open After Effects, but I also don't want cavalry to become too focused on being an After Effects competitor because I think they're just very different softwares and I don't want to see cavalry become just known as the After Effects alternative. There's a lot of things that make After Effects great. There's also things that make cavalry great and I think the strengths are very different. Anything they can come up with that makes working with large data sets is always exciting to me too because that's become a personal favorite way of using cavalry for me. - Yeah, so we've got our first cavalry course coming out next year. And so I've been watching all the lessons and before we started recording it, I met with the instructor and he walked me through, we was with this very detailed process of how I make courses at School of Motion. And as he was walking through how he was gonna teach it and what he thought should be included in it and kind of showing me some things, I finally had the aha moment. And I think that that's what is really making it hard for people to adopt cavalry 'cause I think you're exactly right. Our own when it came out, people, it looks like After Effects. Like the interface is similar enough where you're like, oh, there's a timeline. Oh, there's a project panel and a comp viewer and oh, they have effects and they, okay, well, they're not called effects, but they look like effects. And so you thought, oh, this just works like After Effects. And it can, you can have layers and keyframes in a graph editor, it has all that, you can animate stuff. It's got, it's not always real time, but the preview is way, way faster than After Effects. But that's not what's cool about it. What's cool about it, and I've used this term before, is it is Houdini for 2D. So if you don't know how Houdini works, it's not going to mean anything. But essentially, it's the whole thing is procedural. Right? And so what that means is, you could-- and this is the difficult thing about it too-- you can have a word that you've typed out into a type layer, and then you can access every vertices of that piece of type, and you can attach things to it, and then you can attach behaviors to those things, and then you can attach lines to those things that are attached to others, and you can create these crazy 2D systems. And you can build things that look like they were done in Houdini, or they were code or something like that. But you don't have to touch code. It's all just piping things together. And what's difficult about it is you have to first get cavalry brain is what we're calling it. You have to kind of develop an intuition for like, OK, I've got a duplicator, which is like a cloner, in Cinema 4D. And I want to iterate across these five clones, and but I want them to randomly move. But I want this one to always be still, but the rest of them move, and you can do all of that. And you don't need code. And you can code if you want. There's a full code editor in it. But you don't need any of that. And so I think the hard thing is you're going to have to relearn how to think about doing things. Step one, and that takes a little while. Then your brain starts going, oh, what if I did this with that? What if I did this? And that's when you start getting these really cool animations that you're seeing on Instagram and places like that. So it is not an after-fetched replacement. It is just not. It never will be. It's not designed to be. It's a totally different thing. But I think the reason that companies like Canva are really interested in it is because you can set up systems. Like the way After Effects works is you're building a comp. And you can use expressions. And if you really clever with pre-coms and maybe essential graphics, and maybe some plugins, you could theoretically build a system where you put in type and an image, or a folder of images. And it spits out all your variations at different resolutions. But it's very hard to do that in After Effects. It's not impossible. You can use data clay, a template, or-- these things are not intuitive. They're not built in. Some of them are very expensive. It's all built into cavalry. You can link it to a Google sheet. You can have responsive designs where everything is exactly where you want it. And it's all this node-based way of thinking. And then you hit render. And it renders 1,000 things very quickly in two folders named correctly at all four sizes. And so once you see it done from start to finish-- and that's what this course is-- shows you the whole process and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Once you see that, it's like, oh, OK. I actually have to do that a lot. Big tech companies are constantly-- I mean, just for social media, cavalry is better than After Effects if you can achieve the look you want. And that's a big F, because it doesn't have all the filters and all the tools After Effects does. And it probably won't ever have all of them all though this year. They did add a built-in tracker, which kind of shocked me. A keyer-- they added project referencing, which is like extra apps in Cinema 4D, so you can create a cavalry project, leave some controls exposed, hand that off to another artist, and then they can use that in their cavalry project, and then you can update it. I mean, it's really, really cool. When the course comes out, I think it's going to blow a lot of people's minds. And we are actually starting to hear companies talk about it. This was like, one of the reasons we wanted to make this course was like, wait, canva's using it? They're really interested in it. And there's other companies too, but that's a huge company. That's one that has lots of artists doing lots of things, lots of social media. So I think cavalry-- I think everything else, it's going to take a long time for it to really gain mass adoption, but it feels like they've hidden inflection point. I'm hearing more about it. All right, now I'm very excited about this. So we're going to talk about Rive. How do you boys use Rive yet? Come on. Not yet. I know. It's not really your wheelhouse. I totally get it. I get it. Making me feel the foam. Yeah, I get it. I got a better job. No. You're not paying for your ride, right? Yeah. OK, so-- [LAUGHTER] I mean, don't get me wrong. It doesn't stop me. You don't love it, it's not. It's tough. So Rive, so let me start here. So I think for the last two years, I've been as hyperbolic as I possibly can about Rive. And there's been very few times in my life where I have 100% total certainty that I am right about something. Even if I sound very confident, I'm often like half sure that I'm wrong. And I'm just talking out of my ass. Sure you I am not, in this case. So Rive, I've said it before. It's the most important motion design app that's come out in the last decade. And the reasons just for recap is because-- and at this point, I can safely say it has replaced Flash. It does everything Flash used to be able to do. But it's better. It's faster. It's more secure. It's supported by every platform, parts of it are open source. And it's just designed for the modern things that need to have animation on them. And like, going back to what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation with what is motion design, right? Motion design as a term is used every day by people working on apps and card displays and AR and VR and all these things. They have to run in real time. They have to be updatable really easily. You need developers to be able to talk to it easily with like a bunch of different languages. And you need all this complexity. And there's been this huge problem up until Rive came out where when you have huge complexity plus motion plus code, the process of actually deploying the final product is so painful and tedious and revising it as a nightmare that it just really means there's going to be less motion. Because it's just too big of a liability to include it. And Rive has completely solved that problem. So at this point, Rive has basically replaced Flash. But it just goes so much further. And so the reason I keep just gushing about it is because what it unlocks is motion to be able to live literally anywhere. And the two pieces of that are you need motion design. And then you need some developers to implement the actual thing and tie it into whatever else it is happening, right? And what's really cool is that Rive has released some features this year where you don't need developers for a lot of that stuff. Actually, it's almost like Flash. Where if you're a little bit on the technical side and it's a lot easier now with AI, but you can design, you can animate. You understand how the state machine works. You can build interactions. You now have all these tools built right into Rive to make basically full blown games. And then you can also set things up so a developer can then pipe in whatever they want. So if you're developing the UI for a video game or a car or a museum installation or a live broadcast package, it doesn't matter. You can build the whole thing and you can test it. And you see exactly how it's going to work. And then you can like tell the developer this trigger that makes this whole animation happen is called this. And then they can trigger whatever they want. That is massive, massive, massive opening into a giant, a massive bag of money. Basically, OK? If I'm just going to be blunt about it. My name is Joey Judkins. I am the director and high torch bearer at We Ride Dawn, which is Rad Studio. And you can check out our work at rad.work, which is www.rad.work. I love Rive. While it's not all I use, sadly, it is all I want to use. But it's one of those things where once I got into Rive, I saw just how different and how fluid and how much better it felt to be working in something like it and how much creativity it sparked in me and just the kind of output I was able to produce with a tool like that was just invigorating. And I hadn't felt that in such a long time that I was-- I think it was just a matter of-- I think it's time for me to try something different. We rarely ever use After Effects at rad. We try to be very clear in our focus. But occasionally a client will have a need for an ad or video related to something they're promoting. And that's when we would turn to After Effects. When you're talking about anything for YouTube, Pinterest, Meta, so like Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn, those are where ads would exist. And I've asked the Rive team, this would be a great place for interactive content. It'd be so cool to do an ad, even for some of these clients that we've worked with before. So I used to work with Scots and Miracle Girl all the time. And they'd have a bunch of little videos that people would watch that they're selling a product with. And it's like, that's fine. But wouldn't it be cool if you were on Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram? And these ads were actually interactive. And you could sort things. And maybe you could plant some seeds. And I don't know. I just feel like Rive would be a great opportunity to make ad content for those platforms. I did ask Rive, if there's any plans to bring a Rive runtime to those platforms. And it sounds like the tech is all there to make it happen. But it's just a matter of those platforms adopting Rive. So honestly, I think it's just a matter of time. And hopefully we will see that because obviously that creates even more opportunities for Rive. So each program solves completely different problems. And they're four completely different markets. And I know Rive has said this before, but I don't know if they've put this sharp of a pin on it. I'm going to do that. Rive, I know they're not trying to be like After Effects. Rive isn't trying to be like After Effects except where After Effects was trying to be like Rive. So After Effects was trying to create Web anywhere where After Effects is trying to make Web ready animations for interactive designs, so a lotty. Like think, think lotty. That's where Rive is clearly better than After Effects and that's the tool you should be using, not After Effects. So anytime anyone asks for a lot of animations, it's like, well, why would you want lotty? It's like, well, we want it to be responsive and lightweight. It's like, well, there's a better tool now. And so that's where I would direct people, anyone who's kind of stuck in lotty land, I would say time to switch to Rive. But anyway, for everything else though, like for high-end motion, cinematic motion, compositing, linear animation, really anything that's meant to be a video as an end product, that's After Effects, right? After Effects is the tool. Where do the tools cross over each other? So I'd say anytime I'm designing with 2D vectors, making 2D character animations, rigging, making type animations, animating UI, I'm in Rive only and I have no need for After Effects anymore for any of that stuff. And so I feel frustrated, in fact, when I'm in After Effects, when I'm trying to do something like any of that stuff, because the tools are better now in Rive. And the real distinction is that companies who need Rive are making apps, product, games, and websites. And they need their animation to be interactive and responsive. Rive has incredible potential. I've used it quite a bit to just create animations, create concepts to just understand the tool a little bit better. I haven't used it yet in an end-to-end process where we're actually implementing Rive into an actual product, but hopefully that's something that will happen very soon. With the scripting feature, from all the things that I've seen, it really opens the window to just really do a lot of amazing things that helps the Rive interface and the editor kind of get out of the way. The editor, I feel like I've gotten a little bit claustrophobic as they've added a lot new features, which I know that they're going to be cleaning that up soon, but that allows you to just kind of like get to the bare bones coding and just make whatever you want to happen. Having an AI coding agent there just helps just speed up that workflow exponentially. So that I'm very excited about. Because in just like the product design world, the closer you can make your prototype or your mocks or your concept closer to the real thing, the better, because then you know you're running into all the limitations that an engineering team would already run into if you just like handed them a video mock. And so you get to run into that as a designer and say like, "Oh, this doesn't actually work. The technology doesn't actually do this." And so it helps you create more realistic ideas, but then also push engineering teams to say, "Hey, this is actually possible here in this like web code. How can we translate this into like iOS Swift or Jetpack Compose or something like that's that you're actually able to implement it into a actual live app?" The companies that need After Effects animators are making videos like period. That's what they're making. So if you're, that's, I mean, I don't know if there's a better way to say that honestly. That's that they are now different markets for these motion design outlets. I would say though, there's a big jump that you have to make when you become a rive artist or a rive animator. It's that you have to sort of shift your mind from making things for viewers to making things for users. So you're always thinking about the user and how is the user going to experience this? What happens when X happens? When you roll over this or when you hover on this or when you click on this, what happens? What's the next thing that happens? What does the user experience? And so yeah, you're not just making a video anymore where you press play and hope that the person watches it all the way to the end to see what the end product is or the call to action or whatever that the video was designed to do. It's engaging a user throughout an experience. I know I'm not the only person who thinks that and who is constantly learning new things, like trying to learn new things. I've been a motion designer forever and so I've jumped in the out of all kinds of software. I loved learning ZBrush a few years ago and I feel like I got to a point that I was getting good at it. I loved learning 3D character animation. Back in 2016-2017 when I felt like I was kind of getting good at that. I just feel like with so many directions you can go in the field of motion design, there are endless tools you can pick up and try. So it's fun. It's fun to learn new things. That's why you should bother to learn Rive. You may find that you have a knack for it and that you really like it and that you're good at it. For me, Rive did two things. One, it offered a new tool that sparked a lot of creative energy in me to make things that I had never done before. I picked up so many skills over the years being a generalist. So I did 3D character rigging, character animation, 2D animation design, even some hand-drawn animation every now and then. And Rive was sort of this single tool that allowed me to flex a lot of those skills. The rigging in Rive feels kind of like Do-Wik a little bit, but it also has a lot of 3D-ness to it. There's weights and constraints and stuff. And I was just like, man, this feels like 3D. It's just like what I was doing in cinema, but now it's like it's this whole other thing. And every time I opened it, a new idea was popping into my head. Just like, instead of making a character that animates to a voiceover, I can make a character that interacts with you in real time. And then the mouth can move to real time text to speech with Rive based inputs. Maybe I can, instead of a video, that explains how you use a product. Maybe we can make a step-by-step interactive experience that walks you through it, like maybe with some slick animation and transitions and stuff, with like maybe some fun little delightful moments that pop in that sort of keep the user interested. So I mean, that's the kind of stuff when you're opening up a. that's what happened to me at least. When I opened up Rive, I was getting these sparks of energy and creative ideas, just writing them down and hopefully creating enough demand even to. that people would want to hire me to help me make these things for our company or for our studio or whatever. The second thing that Rive did for me was that it unlocked a whole new area of motion design that I had never worked in before. And one that I think is still sort of in its infancy and it's flourishing with opportunities. So if you're looking for like a shift away from video-based animation and wanting to get into product development, apps, games, web technology, then Rive is the tool to learn. Rive's the tool. It is crazy how much Rive has added in the last year. Layouts actually came late last year and I think people are still not fully grasping their true power yet, but they will. I mean, so any kind of interactive menus, particularly user menus or game UIs, they make heavy use of Rive's layouts and that's super powerful. If you're making UIs, like 100% layouts was a huge deal, but it is a little bit like kind of late last year. The biggest things they've added this year in my opinion have been vector feathering and data binding. It wasn't that long ago. Okay, that in order to get a decent drop shadow, you had to export an image of one as a PNG out of Figma or whatever and then plop it behind the vector graphic to make that drop shadow. Now I feel like it's really unlocked our design capabilities to have built in vector feathering. Just love it. And then I'd say data binding is the biggest thing yet. We know scripting is coming and it's going to make things even more powerful, but even just the way data binding allows us the full capability of animating during runtime and manipulating animation during runtime. There's even some little things in Rive when you're just animating and Rive. Not even thinking about the runtime side of data binding, but within Rive. Where you might use a script in After Effects to do things like a number counter. Now with data binding in Rive, it's even easier than that to just make a number counter or one thing that's like something I use all the time, which is I'll sometimes bind the ends of a gradient on a shape in Rive to other layers. You can only do that with data binding. So you have to find the position of the gradient start and to find the position of the gradient end and you can sort of bind those to other layers. It's sort of like also kind of like how expresso rigs worked. Where you would bind, you can have a driver and a driven and just have those things connected to nodes. But I feel like Rive. sort of makes it really easy to do that with data binding. I think they've drastically opened up the possibilities for Rive in the design space and in web technology. And I think that's increased the demand for people who know how to use it, especially for those who know how to use the sort of technical side of Rive. Okay, so Rade was meant to be an interactive animation partner. So we work with brands, agencies, and even other studios. So we worked with Cream Studio and BN. And we just are the ideas that we would bring an interactive component to any projects that they are working on when needed. So mainly an execution partner, I'd say, we want to get into the earlier stages of things, getting to more design, helping with like creative direction for design, interactive design projects. But at this point, we're still just, we're just starting. So it's, we're coming alongside agencies, studios, brands who already know that they need interactive animation. And so we are their execution partner, interactive animation partner. I will say I never really had the desire to start my own studio when I was a generalist. I think the thought would come into my head and I would talk to folks about it. And it always just seemed like this was sort of just what people do. You know, when they get to a certain point, they, they start a studio. You know, it's like, well, you're, you're getting, you're aging into this industry. Maybe you should start a studio. It's just like, well, okay, well, but why? Like there was never like a, a, a, a, the motivation just wasn't enough. That, that motivation wasn't enough. Just because it's something that people do wasn't enough for me to really answer the why question. I just didn't feel like I really had anything to offer. That was different or better than other studios sort of doing the same things. It was like, okay, well, yeah, well, do you want to work with this studio or do you want to work with Joey? It's like, I didn't, I don't know. I just didn't, it never really made sense to me. When Rive came along, there was a great enough spark of creativity that it lit in me compounded with what felt like a rush of demand for interactive animation. That I felt like I really could deliver and that we could really deliver a team that I could build could deliver on these, this new fresh kind of way of doing motion design. So that was the first time. That was the first time I really felt like I had something different to offer that I could form a studio around it. And so I did. We do have, we have big dreams. We have some big dreams at Rad. Beyond just the client work, we are working on an app that's for nonverbal communication. So I have a child who's nonverbal autistic and he has this, this app that he uses. That's called an AAC app, which is the term is augmented, augmented and alternative communication device. And so you might have seen, you might see kids with these, but it has little icons on it and they can speak with it if they're not capable of forming the words themselves. A lot of these kids have the ability and adults have the ability to use these as communication devices. So they'll form the sentences that they need. I want water. I want to go on a walk. All that kind of stuff using the little devices. And it looks kind of like an iPad and the app is sort of like an iPad app. But I got to tell you like with a child who uses one of these. And as a parent who I've tried to learn how to use one of these, the apps are awful. They're not well designed. They don't look good. They're not fun. They're not intuitive. The icons, illustrations are bad. They're really bad. And there's no animation. There's no like a parent, any parent who tries to use it. It's like a, you have to take a class just to learn how to use the device and kids kind of learn. They pick it up and learn it through like muscle memory. But, but it's really not that intuitive. And so I just felt like there was this moment where I just, this is like early in my ride days, in fact. So 20, 24. I was watching my kid use it and I was trying to learn it. I was like, man, someone, someone needs to make a better version of this app. And that's when I, I kind of realized it's probably going to have to be me. I'm going to have to make a better version of this AAC app. That's animation forward. It, you know, I hate to say the dual lingo of AAC apps, but that is pretty much what it needs to be, right? For it to really change the landscape of nonverbal communication. But yeah, we want to get into that kind of stuff. We want to make our own products. We want to make games or at least get into making like game UI stuff. I mean, that's some really, really fun stuff. So yeah, that's, that's the sort of thesis. And the reason that we exist, I'd say is to help people create really fun and exciting experiences using interactive animation. So I'll just say this. I trust the Rive team. They are doing the coolest things. And I'd say like, like all of the other things that they've already done, I know that their scripting engine is going to be a game changer. Everything's been a game changer already. This is just going to be another game changer, right? So they're changing the game. It's happening every few months, it seems. So I trust them. They know what they're doing. I will say I would honestly be happy if they could just make it when, I don't know if, if we don't know if you're listening right now. I'd honestly be happy if all they do in 2026 is make it so that when I take a bone in Rive and put it in a group, so if I command G on my bone in Rive, it places the anchor point at the base of the bone instead of at the center of the bone, because that's just making any sense. Why would I need it at the center of the bone when I wanted to rotate it from the base of the bone? So if they, if that's the only new feature in 2026, I will be super happy. All right, so let's talk about the features that Rive added. So Rive added vector feathering this year. Now normally you'd call that a blur. You can like blur your artwork now. Hey, what've you do? The reason they didn't have it before, and this is an issue with every other thing out there, like if you're using a lot of file and there, you know, and there's a blur or gradient or something like that, there's a big performance hit with that. And you don't really think about it, but when you have real time and you've complex artwork and it has to run on a little device, like a phone or a watch or something, you have to eke all the performance out of it. You can. And so the traditional way of blurring things is too slow. So Rive invented a new way. They literally, like, I think they got a patent on this or something. Oh, no, they actually, they open sourced it so they don't have a patent. They, they, somebody over there, like invented a new blur. It's called vector feathering. There's a whole thing on their website about how it works. But basically you can have as many things on screen blur as you want. And it plays back a real time. No lag at all. It's just way faster. It wouldn't surprise me if other tools actually implemented this because it is so fast. I'm hoping Unreal does because they're, they don't really have a great system for blurring that, yeah, like it's not, there's no nodes for it and the material's like, it's complicated to do. And it's um, I mean, there is a note, but it doesn't do it like this. Yeah, this is, this is what I'm looking for. It'd be interesting to see if that technique could work with 3D because I'm guessing, you know, sort of the way you can actually. It's more like, it's more like textural could, like, if you want to have, there's no, there's no way to even blur a texture basically in Unreal. Like you can't have a, there's no blur. No, not a really good one anyway that does anything of value that I found. Yeah. You know, whereas, whereas, like, I mean, it takes a lot of work to get that blur going and it also, that hogs resources, right? Yeah. So I think that like, even if you could just blur a freaking texture in Unreal easily, you could do a lot, but I would love to see be able to have like objects that are in front and anything behind it is blurred without having to jump through crazy hoops. Yeah. Yeah. That would be cool. Yeah. I don't know what's possible, but, but I, I, I think that technology's going to make its way out of Rive 2. They've added more options. So they already had responsive layout options so you can build a Rive file that will work on any size screen and you set the rules and layout rules. Now they've added more options like you can have scrolling behavior. So, you know, at this point, you know, if you're designing for a phone, you have to think about what's it going to look like, what happens when the user scrolls down, scrolls up, how does that work? These are things that like linear motion design, you know, think about, but once you start thinking about them, you get all these ideas like, oh, it'd be cool. Like, I know how, you know, I use an iPhone every day. I know how it works, but wouldn't it be cool because I'm an animator if I did this and now you can do all that stuff. So I think we're going to see more apps looking like duo lingo because you can now make fully responsive interfaces for them that have animation every time you touch something. It's really cool and it's on brand and you can build and prototype the whole thing, right? Data binding. That was the first giant feature this year. It's kind of a technical thing, but essentially what it lets you do is you can think of it like you're building your artwork and let's say there's a type layer and there's an image and there's like a colored thing, like some light that changes color. And you don't know what image that's going to be, what the type's going to be, what color that thing's supposed to be. You just know like it's going to be laid out like this and you preview it and test it. You're going to hand that off to a developer. They're going to change all that for you. And so this is like a very clean easy way of setting all that up, testing it, making sure it works. You hand it off and now they can insert whatever image they want and set this thing to any color and it can be any any type, any string. And it's way more involved than that. Like you can do wild things with it. They added a feature called lists, which is basically you can and design animations and interactions for like a list of things, like if you were designing a menu for a website, but you don't know how many things are in the menu. Well, you don't need to know how many. You can like see what it looks like with 10, see what it looks like with 5, and then the developer just says, no, there's actually 30, and it just makes 30 of them. And so there's all these things that are really developer centered, but there are things that now animators can have a say and that you almost couldn't before, because it was just too technical. There was not really a way to do it, other than knowing how to code and understanding all of this. And now it's like the gates are open. You have access to all that. - So everything you really need to know about the UI/UX space for a motion designer, we package that all up in the UX animation essentials course. So definitely take that. But really, it's a huge shift from thinking about creating motion for a viewer who just kind of sits back and passively enjoys a thing to creating motion for a user. And so I'm actually experiencing the motion that you're creating, experiencing the interactions that you're crafting. And so it's that big mental shift that changes how our work manifests into like an actual product in the hands of someone. So if I'm creating something for like a car, like dashboard, I'm not gonna create super flashy, fast moving, a bunch of stuff animations while you're driving in the vehicle, 'cause that can distract someone and cause an accident. And so that shifts your mind of like, okay, well maybe if that's the context, maybe things like appear subtly on the screen. Maybe I change only there's like two specific types of notifications that will be a little bit more aggressive with their motion or the way that they appear because they're very important, like low gas or low tire pressure. And so that type of just like mental shift helps you problem solve in those things. Also there's definitely different tools. So as a traditional motion designer, your main tools is like After Effects, maybe Cinema 4D and some of those like animation-specific tools. When you get into the world of UIUX, Figma is like the bare bones fundamental tool that you're gonna be working with every single person on a product team. And so you definitely need to know those tools and know how to use them for the best of their abilities. And so there's tools like Figma, which is kind of just foundational. And then tools like Protopi, which allow you to actually create a prototype that feels like the real app with interactions and gestures and all those types of things baked into. And there's a lot of other tools like Rive, like Lottie, just being familiar with some of these tools that are specific to the UIUX space is definitely important. But really at the end of the day, a UIUX motion designer, a UIUX designer, a motion designer and interaction designer were all just problem solvers. We're taking problems and we're trying to solve them for the specific context that we're working in and using our tools of emotion to solve those problems. And this is all a lot to capture just in this one response. And so definitely check out the UIUX animation essentials course as I dive into all of the different aspects of how it differs from traditional motion graphics. And then how do you actually approach solving these types of problems in the UIUX context all the way to how you even actually start to searching for jobs in this space? - There's one more big feature and it launched kind of late. So it's kind of the end of my lesson, I'm gonna say it now. They just launched scripting. So the big thing that was missing from Rive versus Flash, Flash had its own language called ActionScript. And you could tie it to anything in your Flash scene. You could make it control the playhead, like jump to frame three and then play. And so, and you could do way more complex things. You could have it talk to the website and pull information from there. And then that shows up in your Flash file. And so this is how companies like to advanced made really complicated websites using Flash. You didn't have anything like that in Rive. And now you do, they just added it. And they're using the same language that Roblox uses, which I'd never heard of, it's called Lua. And the reason they picked it is 'cause it's like one of the fastest ones, so you can do everything real time. And they announced it. And within like a couple of weeks of announcing it, all of a sudden, there's all these insane examples of people who've built their own physics systems in Rive and full blown games and someone figured out how to port Doom into Rive and they're running Doom inside of Rive. So now, it's, I mean, it's kind of nuts what that feature does. And I think the big deal is that now that you can actually code inside of Rive, developers are gonna be even more drawn to it. And there's always gonna have to be this balance of developers who can like, you know, use Rive and who can like, execute, you know, like implement it. However many of them there are and there's gonna be a lot now 'cause of scripting, you're gonna need twice as many designers and animators. And so again, I just feel like this is one of the biggest growth areas for motion design in general. Okay, some other cool things about Rive, Joey Judkins, who is a guest contributor for this episode, launched a studio called We Ride It Dawn that is a Rive Centric Studio. And you can listen to him gush about Rive. He, I think it literally changed his life. But he's, he's been early on it from the beginning and like opening a studio just for that I think is really smart 'cause there's not really a lot of those yet. Maybe his is the first one, I don't know. So just like an example of how like, if you're willing to get in early and learn these things, like the opportunities are like, they're way easier to grab in the early days than they will be in 10 years. There are huge companies using it. So notions using Rive for their little AI assistant, Buck actually designed and animated that thing and it's implemented in Rive. Dropbox used it for their brand guidelines website, which made all the rounds on the web world this year. Netflix, Disney, is it both using Rive? I don't know what I'm allowed to say, Netflix has a lot, a lot of licenses Rive. Like way more than you'd guess. And BMW made an investment in Rive. And so they're tightly connected to that company now, which just shows that Rive is like, probably gonna be the default thing for car interfaces in the future. I don't know how much 3D they'll need to implement or if Unreal or Unity can take some of that, but Rive is really the perfect tool for all that stuff. Dual Lingo's FaceTime feature, which I talked about in Portland and my talk earlier this year. They added a new pricing tier, which is $9 a month. So you can download Rive and use it for free. If you want to actually save out a Rive file and implement it into a website or a product, then you have to have a paid version and there's a $9 a month version. So it's very cheap. And I don't know, like they're just kind of doing everything right. They have a ton of momentum. We're gonna be making more Rive courses next year and talking about all these new fancy features. So yeah, I'll stop gushing now. But there was a reason that Flash was as big as it was for so long. I mean, the issue was, they kind of got killed by the speed issue and Apple also being like, we're not supporting that. And that suddenly made a very big difference, but there was a need for the ability to design like that. And I was just thinking, I just think about this morning, I was looking at one of the things that I chose was territory 'cause they did the off festival. One of the F's in off stands for Flash. By the way, that was back when I was in the first place. It did not know that. Flash animation, yeah. So it was like a Flash Festival. Like that was the first one. And so there's been a need for something like that. But other tools for animation, and there's different animation tools for character and stuff like that. But yeah, for interfaces, and I think we had a momentary golden age of really cool stuff. And then the internet needed to get faster. And Apple was like, yeah, well, that means we kill Flash. It wasn't their product, but they were like, we're not gonna support it. And that's a lot of people. And then Adobe was like, yeah, you know. So, but I think that there's a real value in it. And I think we're gonna be seeing a lot of cool stuff that's coming here. - Yeah. So there's one other kind of rivey thing that I'll talk about, which is Lottie Files. So Lottie Files is this cool website where they kind of do a few things. One is they have a great plug-in for After Effects. That makes it super easy to make Lottie Files. Now you can use BodyMovein. But Lottie Files has some nice features. And you have to have a paid account to use some of them. But for example, it can compress a Lottie file, make it smaller. Because Lottie Files, you know, I've said this before, Lottie is a piece of duct tape to hold two things together that were never meant to be together. After Effects and Code. And it works. And Lottie Files has continued to surprise me. They've really innovated in that world and come up with a bunch of features that make Lottie Files more useful. You can upload Lottie Files and change the colors in them and change the playback speed and do various things with them, which is kind of cool. They have a giant library of Lottie Files. And I think that that's probably their main thing. You know, if you're a developer making something and you just need a cool celebration app, you don't want to hire an animator to do that. You want the stock version of that. So this is like stock Lottie Files. So that's cool. But one thing that's interesting that they launched this year is a feature where you can actually create Lottie Files with state machines. So the state machine is what Rive has, built right into it where you can have different timelines and you can blend between them. And you can have triggers like if my mouse hovers go to this one. If I click, go to this one, right? And it's very intricate and smooth and you can do whatever you want. Lottie Files has figured out-- it's kind of a hacky way to do it, but it's clever. And essentially what they've done is they've got this web interface where you can have a Lottie file that has a bunch of different segments to it. Like, OK, if it let's just say it's a button, right? Well, the button appears from frame 0 to 10. And then the hover state is from 10 to 20. And then the click is from 20 to 30. And then maybe like when the button's inactive, it's from 30 to 40. So you've got these states kind of baked into the animation. And then you can use this interface to tell the Lottie file like, this is what you do when the user hovers. This is what you do when the user clicks. And what it does is it gives you a lot of file and some code that you can then use in your app or your website. And now your lot of file kind of is interactive the way a rye file would be. And the tool itself is actually pretty intuitive. They did a good job with it. The big downside is once again you're hacking a lot of file to do this. And this may sound like a small thing until you actually try it. With rye you can blend between timelines. And you can have 50 timelines with different things happening on the same object. Blend between all of those depending on what the user is doing. And with a lot of file you can't really do that. The lot of file is-- >> Yeah, I mean, you're describing that sounds a lot like the way flash animation worked when you would have interactions. Like, you know, you'd say if you click on it then play these 10 frames. If you're mouse over it, play these 10, but you couldn't do-- >> Yeah. >> Yeah, totally going to do both good times. >> Yeah, now I think-- and I've said this in the past and I may want to walk it back a little bit. I said, you know, in 10 years we won't even have a lot of you. We won't need it. And I think that that is technically true. You don't need it. Rye does everything it does, but just better. But there is-- like, you know, the way that I think people underestimate like what it would take until knock after effects of its pedestal. I probably am-- I'm probably underestimating what it would take to knock a lot of its pedestal. Because there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of lotty files out there. There are way more animators that know after effects than Rive. And there are plenty of applications where you don't need the interactivity of a Rive file. If you used a Rive file, it would be faster and better and the file would be smaller and you'd have more options. So it's objectively better. But maybe you don't need it. And the Loddy file already exists. You can still use Loddy. So I think Loddy files is really-- they've really surprised me with like how they've kind of innovated on Loddy as a platform and a format. And you know, there's also tools like Loddy Labs, which is like a web-native animation tool that's really simple, that spits out Loddy files. I've seen a lot of developers learning that because it's so much easier to learn that. And after effects, it has 1% of the features. But if all you're doing is animating simple lines and stuff, it kind of does everything you need. So I think there's still life in Loddy, which is kind of interesting. I think last year I was a little more skeptical, but now I'm like, huh, maybe they'll co-exist. We should have been obvious to me, I think. Yeah. All right. Now it's time to talk 3D. And we've got a bunch of 3D stuff to talk about. So I'm going to let you two lead this. EJ, why don't you kick it off there? So Grace Go Gorilla, they merged with Kit Bash. Yeah. And I don't know how much you know about that. So if you want R1 and I can take that. But what else besides that do you know about Grace Go from this year? Well, they came out with their brand new, like, their asset browser, like separate thing. And they built the connections like super easy to get assets inside of Blender, because I think before it was really easy to get in cinema 4D, but nothing else. And I believe it's Blender and Unreal, they build a connection too as well. They Substance Painter 2, which is really nice. There are a lot more models and assets and stuff too. But yeah, the Kit Bash thing was the real big surprise there. Which I think makes complete sense. You guys are more of them business side of things. But I know one of the things that GST wanted to do was expand more in the Blender in Unreal areas. And I think it was probably difficult for them to just build off of the cinema 4D audience. So I think this solves a huge issue for them because I'm sure Kit Bash has a way bigger audience of Blender users and Unreal users. Yeah. I think there's something to, like, I think that it's in terms of reaching those people with that kind of thing. It's good. But aesthetically, they're very different companies. So I'm really curious to see how that works out. GST has always had impeccable aesthetics with very high end design. And sometimes you'd even open it and think you were looking at a catalog for real furniture and things like that. And obviously, I already have a subscription to Kit Bash 3D. And I'm using stuff all the time because I'm a big sci-fi nerd who loves that stuff. And it's very not. Grace Kogel-Rill is so like, I think that was actually a big thing keeping them messed thoroughly from getting into Unreal and getting into Blender is that the kind of stuff that they do in Cinema 4D. That's not the kind of stuff being done in those other applications. So this could be very interesting. I'm curious to see the adoption that happens with Grace Kogel-Rill is content into those places. But we didn't already see one move from them, which was that they used Kit Bash got a much better-- this was where Kit Bash benefits more than anybody of the two-- is there Cinema 4D Import or Now Imports things as much better than it did before. So it's like, that's where Grace Kogel-Rill has always had its strength. They have their plugins in C4D. Actually, I think the plugins, some of them are really great for C4D. And they're one of the few people that have survived the C4D plugin market, which I want to talk about in a second because we get to that question of what Max on Sutra is looking like. I'm like, the reason I'm even thinking about Blender is because when I want to do something in Cinema 4D, that's hard. I got to do it the hard way. There's no other solution. But when I want to do something that's hard, I can go to the Blender market. I'm looking at it. I was like, oh, I wish I had that in Unreal. I wish I had in Cinema 4D. So I think that if we're making that transition from GsG over to Max on, we can start talking a little bit about GsG is the pretty much the only really real plugin company to have survived that change to R21 that broke so many other plugins and that the developer said screw it. Yeah, let's talk about Max on. This is the one, so we talked a little bit about this with Adobe that there's always someone gunning for Adobe and there's always like, you could find posts on the internet of people saying, all right, Pia Adobe, look, affinity's free and stuff like this. And when you really look at it, you're like, okay, Adobe is fine. They're still growing. They're going to be around. I can't imagine a world without them. They're just everywhere and I love the tools. Max on, and I want to just kind of preface this with like, this is the kind of stuff I really want to try at least for me to be objective about. I never like, there's a lot of negativity on the internet and I'll point it out, I'll comments on it, I don't want to jump in and be negative. This year something feels different about the way people talk about Max on to me. And I think that's because there really is a viable alternative. But I'm curious, why don't I just leave it there? What do you guys think about what's been going on with Cinema 4D in the motion design space? You can go Lauren. I'll follow you. I mean, listen, we do this all day. I mean, what I would say is, I don't, like, the sentiment doesn't mean anything to me when I look at it is really like, how are they performing in stocks? I hate to say it, but like, the company is not suffering that way. So like, they may be losing a lot of the more independent artists. Big companies are still absolutely using it. But that doesn't mean there isn't room now. That hasn't left a lot of room for Blender to come in and do some stuff. I just think that like Cinema 4D, the Max on as a company, you know, there, it seems like their priority has shifted to much more of a bigger company that they want to service these bigger companies. Lauren is necessarily as worried about the indie designer, but I don't, but, but, but, like, their numbers don't show anything bad happening. In other words, like, when their stocks come out because there are publicly traded company, which most of the companies we talk about outside of Adobe are not, you know, you don't know what's going on with them. You have no idea, like, how they're performing. You don't know what their numbers are. But with Max on, their numbers just get better every single year. It's just how they, you know, that, how they roll. And so like, people can complain about it all they want. Like, at the end of the day, as long as Max on is still making money and, and that's what the products are going to continually exist. And, and they're going to keep doing whatever it is that they're doing, right? So yeah, I mean, it's interesting because they do tend to put some of their own, like, developers out of business by like, for example, they haven't done it yet, but they, they, they obviously invested heavily in simulations. And that is directly going to affect why I'm drawn a blank on the name of J of the, of the city. Yeah, in city and city and right. It's, it's absolutely hitting in city and people because they asked the question, why do I need in city and when it was pretty obvious before, now it's more like they have to get into that stuff, discover how freaking hard it is to do and then see that, oh, there's a solution out there that is more focused and better at it. But like, you know, it don't be, has done similar things in the past too, getting, you know, lumetric color, you know, red giant had magic bullet and stuff. They would, they would often teach people that the thing is important and then teach them that they should be disappointed and find a better solution, right? So, you know, max on, I mean, their stuff is like, if you're just trying to do basic stuff, right, EJ, you can definitely talk to this more than I can, but for fluid simulations, for particle simulations, like you could get started and get a lot, get a lot out of cinema for the alone. It's just that when you want to start doing more niche and heavy duty stuff, like the tools are not there yet. So, but, but I don't know how long, I don't know, I don't know what, if they're planning to develop them further or if they're just kind of checking off a bullet pointed list of like, hey, we don't have this kind of thing. Just get it in there and that's good enough we move on to the next thing. Yeah, I think it's, it's, I think it's a lot of the, it's the perception thing, the social media perception, Joey, that I think you, you kind of allude to. And I think it's the same thing about the AI where there's people using it, but people weren't really talking about it. And I also think about like just the, are the most of the people that are using Cinema 4D, they're older and they just are not on social media as much anymore. They don't have the time for it. They got kids. They got other response. It's just not, you know, they, they just get burnt out on it. So, you know, the more I talk to actual people that work at studios and stuff, like people are still using Cinema 4D, I just think it's not absolutely it. As someone who posts about Cinema 4D all the time, like I get no engagement on it at all. So I think most people just give up because there's just no, you're not getting the numbers that you used to see when you post a Cinema 4D tutorial anymore. That's why there's maybe a handful of Cinema 4D tutorial people that are consistent out there doing it and they don't get any views. But the moment you put, like put the word blender in a tweet, like I have the most engagement I've ever had in my social media life because I retweeted someone, oh, Ducky 3D and said, Hey, actually, you know, the people that are poo-pooing the new array tools and blender, you know, I think it's actually a really big deal because yes, you were able to do this before. But now it's way easier. And I think it's important for software to get out of the way of the artist and just let them do their thing. I got like 2,000 likes on it or something, which is the most I've ever gotten. So it's, it's just the thing where if you see that as like an influencer or something, guess what you're going to pick up. And so that's why I think the social media thing is totally detached from reality of what's actually happening in studios, what's happening for freelancers. You know, I, I get a lot of messages like almost like once a week at least, like I get the question of like, should I move to blender, da, da, da, da, da, da, and I'm always like, well, why? And they can never tell me why it's always they feel the phomo. Like they feel the fun. And it's like, boy, are you getting jobs? Like, yeah, I was like, okay, well, then just keep doing what you're doing. You know what I mean? So, yeah. So that's, you know, by the way, you talk about that, like the thing is, when I look at blend, when I look at blender, I look at it, uh, not as something I would use because my job requires it. But more like, there's some things I want to do in my personal work that I, that I just can't do. Like, these, this is great. They're great. Yeah, there's like so much great tools for that. But the truth is, like we spend time at, you know, CBS or wherever we know that they're all using cinema 40. Maybe there's one guy using blender right now. But I, I do think that this might be like, we're going to see a shift. More people are who have started out and we're using it as like a younger person or now using it. And I think it is definitely becoming more acceptable as a tool in professional space. And I just think it's been a very, and I'm just trying to think the previous years, but I think even last year, uh, was very like the updates have been not very newsy or headlining, like liquids were the big thing this year, which, you know, I think that's a, that's a big deal. Like I think they're very well designed. They're very easy to use. And when Max on first came out, when they announced they were redoing their simulation system, I was like, if they can get 80% of the quality of Houdini with like 10% of the complexity, I think they, they'll nail it. And I think they have nailed it. But with a lot of these things, it's, it's almost like the, you know, they, they come out with a feature like UV unwrapping the update it. And then there's a lot of issues and shortcomings with it. And they're just like, it's done. We're done with that or like sculpting like, well, now we got Z brush. So we're not going to do anything to the sculpting inside a cinema 4D. But it's like, but do I really want to learn Z brush to just do some basic stuff when I just want to stay inside of cinema? And that's a thing that like I think would attract anyone to blender is because their sculpting is really great. Their grease pencil is really great. They have like basically, there's a plug in for a thing that can replicate a decent amount of like, you know, a okay amount of what substance painter can do. So it's kind of becoming a one stop shop for things. I think for anyone who use After Effects or anything like that, it's like, you don't want to learn, you want to keep everything inside of After Effects. The moment you have to learn something else, especially for something niche, like you don't want to do it. Um, so I think that's recently, recently I worked with a hard surface modeler and like I was looking for different ones. They're all using blender, actually, like all the ones that I wanted to work with were using blender. And, and I thought that was interesting because, you know, it like, it hasn't maybe necessarily reached other places in our space, but it's a free tool that does modeling and it does it really well. Like why wouldn't you use it? Yeah. There's specific things that like for simulations, for example, like even the blender guru, dude, will say that, you know, blenders, simulations, just they stink. Like they're not good. Um, they're not stable. Um, so I think there's, there are a lot of things that you just can't, it would be so hard to do. Like there's no, for example, there's no spline wrap in blender. If there is, like it's very hard to do. So I think, and this is one of the things that I keep saying is that cinema 4d is still the easiest way to learn 3d, like hands down. It's the easiest way to get into 3d. And I'll, I'll tell that to anyone. Um, but I think where they're kind of where they're losing the thread is that used to be their like big marketing push is like, look how easy all this stuff is. You can make all this cool stuff. Super, look at this cloner. Look at this dynamics at all fall. Look at how great this looks. And, and Grace Galgurillo were the people that were like, yeah, and then look at how beautiful you can get this to look with these materials and these light and the lighting setups and stuff like that. Like really good product rendering. Um, and I, I just, I feel like there's like I personally don't know in like I'm, I talk to people at max on all the time. I'm like, I just don't know where the direction is. Like I see where blender is going in some ways. Like I see what its strengths are. And they're continuing to develop that way. I know what cinema 4d strengths are. I just don't see them continuing on like when's the last very useful to former that has came out like there's all the like normal smoothing and stuff that's super cool and blender that if you're unfamiliar, it's like you can have two separate pieces of geometry and put one on top of a surface of another and blending the normals, you basically just combine those two objects together without like any Boolean operations. So there's, there's a lot of innovative things that they could be doing that I'm really not seeing. So like I mentioned liquids, your liquids every app has liquids. So okay, they, they finally came on par with that. You dim support. Holy Lord. Like they were the only app. Like the only major app that didn't have that and now they finally do. So it's like, okay, well, you're just adding these things that, you know, all these other major apps have had. And there's nothing like, like I said, there's, there's no big new shiny feature that is hyping people up about like liquids was that for a while, but there hasn't been anything since. And I think that's where they are really struggling where okay, they might say like, well, we're fixing a lot of bugs, but it's like, okay, well, so is blender. And they're also innovating and adding all these really cool shiny tools. Oh, by the way, there's also like Aaron mentioned. There's all these add-ons that like literally every motion Mondays, there's at least one like incredible blender add-on where I'm like, oh man, I wish, I wish they had this for cinema for a day. So I think they're just, they're losing in the social media war. And you know, they, I know they just hired a new head of marketing. So it remains to be seen like what their new direction is there. But I know they're really big in this arch and visual stuff, which I guess makes sense in some way, but they're, they're kind of expanding in these other markets and they're kind of losing in the mograph kind of market, I feel like. So yeah, they're losing, you know, that battle maybe on social media, but they're still like, it's just, it's just perception. And I think that they've got a long time before they're going anywhere or or anything like that. Like, some before D is still really strong. I just think that they have, in a way, opened up for more professionals to start using to use blender, but I don't think it's going to, it's going to affect them in like, you know, make the software disappear in any meaningful way. I think one of the biggest, one of their biggest problems right now is even if they maintain their current audience, which I don't think they are, they are not, I would love to know what the, the new user, like the younger people get not a college or in college, I would say they're, they're massively losing to that younger age bracket that are, you know, first time 3D artists, just because people aren't going to put down the money to play with cinema 4D. And, you know, like I said, I think cinema 4D is the easiest way to learn 3D, but if it's expensive, they'll never know. Yeah, yeah. I, what I would say is I think our own is exactly right. It's hard to always draw a line from like the social media sentiments you're seeing to the actual performance of the company. And from what we're hearing, Maxon's doing awesome. But we're at what the reason that I even brought this up, because it, and what feels different to me is that there's a, there's a contingent of people. And if you're on X for long enough, you'll, you'll, you'll know who they are. Who's just complaining about everything, right? And YouTube comments like, or, you know, like, like probably a quarter of them are negative. If you bring up Maxon or Adobe or anything like that, right? And I tend to discount those. What, what felt different to me this time was just artists who have like been on the C4D train for, you know, almost 20 years, have made their whole career on it, done some of the best work, and these are like very high level respected artists. Starting to say things publicly about, like not just I'm thinking of switching to Blender, but saying negative things about Max on it, I think EJU covered it really well. I think that there was a culture at Max on of really communicating with our tribe. That's maybe that's just like an artifact of being a smaller company back then. I know when Paul Bab left the company, he was really tied into our community, so I'm sure that was part of it too. If anyone from Max on is listening to this, I also agree with EJ that C40 is by far the easiest entry point into 3D, it's not even close. And I would love to, I would love it. I know I don't have a saying this, but I would love it if there was some innovation on like, really trying to get that younger audience. Like how do you get young 3D artists to use this instead of Blender? Because that, you gotta play the long game, right? I mean, a lot of apps have a free version that's just kind of handicapped, right? And you have Cinema 4D Live, that's very handicapped. But I mean, only render out at 720p, right? Or you can't use the simulation tool. Just something where you can use the MoGraft tools, you can learn how field of, you know, the factor systems work, you can use the, the cloners and the modeling tools and all those things. And you know, maybe, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe you need Redshift, maybe you don't, but like, I think there's a way to fix this. I would love to see that, 'cause, you know, I've tried learning Blender. I don't think it's that hard to learn when you have a good teacher. I think Elijah's made an amazing course. But there are things that you just, you can do so fast in C4D that you, as of now can't. Now, before we talk about Blender, there is a very interesting curve ball that Maxon threw this year, which was acquiring an autograph. And Aron, I know you've got some thoughts on this. So first off, what is autograph for anyone who doesn't know? And then what do you think? - So there was a company called Left Angle, they make a product called autograph, which is essentially like, it's an After Effects competitor if it could compete and it couldn't, because for a lot of reasons, they didn't have, they had no marketing money for to put that product out there. And it still, you know, it lacked a lot of features that you'd find in After Effects that are really important for motion design or compositing. And so, but what I will say is, 'cause I used it, I tried it and I was like, this is fast. This is like, does not, like whatever it is, it's new architecture that isn't built on old stuff and it is completely, it's completely new and just a few years old and it's got way, way faster. Now the thing is that Maxon bought it. And, you know, what I would say is, like, it's an interesting buy because Maxon is the current owner of some of the most like staples, like the most important plugins for the motion design and After Effects space. And right now they're in After Effects, which is a company that Maxon doesn't own and has no control over. And by buying this thing, they could put their products into this thing as a default, right? If you buy Maxon one, you get all the stuff in there that would instantly make it usable in a way that the software isn't already. They have a high end compositor, right? So they've got like, they've got their super comp, which is like, that was hard to get people to adopt, but it is a really good compositor for After Effects and it would be great here, basically, you know, it makes layers aware of other layers so that glows behind that effect, a layers in front of it, which is something you can't normally do, but you can do in more complex node-based compositors. And they've got all the trap code stuff and the magic bullet stuff and the universe stuff. It's like, there's just like a huge bounty of very powerful tools that run slower in After Effects because After Effects is slower, that will run faster here. And just by the nature of having this included in an After Effects competitor that comes out and instantly has all this stuff, that is actually huge, right? Is it gonna happen? I mean, they bought it and I know that like, listen, from what I understand from autograph, they did not left angle, they didn't have money to market it, so they built the product and it kind of just sat there. I imagine that Max Lund did not have to invest heavily in buying that, like probably was an easy buy, you know, bought it for essentially a song. That number's not public and I don't know it, but just from like knowing where they were and the situation they were in, like a great product with nowhere to market it and use it and sell it and whatnot. Suddenly a big company like Max Lund, in the same way they bought, you know, ZBrush, right? It makes sense. It makes sense for them to have that because it's the one thing, they bought this company Red Giant, which I used to work for, and sure we sat in the same space kind of, but like they had all these tools that they were still reliant on another company. And so now that's not the case. I think that they've been quiet, but I really feel like this year, we're gonna see something. I've based entirely on speculation. I've not heard from anyone at Max on this, but like it's been sitting there quietly for quite a while now and they don't buy things to crush them. They buy things to build on them. - Yeah, and from what I remember, 'cause I downloaded it when it came out, I played around with it, I had the same reaction as you, it's like everything's real time. I assume it probably leverages GPUs way more, you know, I know that like the After Effects rendering engine that actually like puts pixels together and composites things in what you see in the comp viewer, that's old, you know, they've been updating it, but like it's built on a very old architecture and autograph was new. Autograph also had a full 3D system in it. So you could bring in 3D models and it had lights and it had all that. And so, and now After Effects is added 3D, right? So I could see from Max on's point of view, you know, one of our primary products is like living in the Adobe ecosystem and Adobe is starting to not really encroach, but like, you know, in a way, like they're adding 3D. So I don't know what to make of it. I don't know what's gonna happen. I think it's very interesting. And the only way a real After Effects competitor emerges and even if this is what happens with autograph, it will take years, take 10 years, right, to really make a difference. But you're gonna have to have very deep pockets. And Max on's one of the few companies that has deep pockets, right? Rel it not, you know, not nearly the size of Adobe. - Not Adobe, yeah, not infinite, but, you know, relative to cavalry for example, or even rive, right? Which has investors and they've raised millions of dollars. They can't compete with Adobe on the marketing and the community that can't do that. - I mean, the other thing to think about is, if you wanna use Cinema 4D for compositing, right? Like the whole process to do that in After Effects right now is either you render it out with everything or you try using Max on's, it's janky, it's not good. But if they have a system that makes it easy to take motion graphics or other stuff, they're an individual effects stuff and you wanna composite it. And it's easy to do like, that would really help people. Like they're already paying for Cinema 4D and have this stuff and it's all part of Max on one, they'd give it a shot. I don't know if it would take, it definitely wouldn't take the way that After Effects has, but in a couple of years it could, you know? - Yeah, there's another tool out there called HitFilm that almost no one's heard of. That is very similar to autograph, real time everything, full 3D system. I'm pretty sure, I don't know, do the Red Giant's plugins work with HitFilm? - No, it's, you use it, I forget what kind of architecture it has, it's a different one that-- - There are plugins that exist on both on After Effects and HitFilm, but for some reason it's almost like Sony Vegas, like it just never caught on with pros. - So, yeah. - So I remember, so originally they, like long ago, they made plugins for After Effects that were pretty cool and they tried, they decided like, again, they were like, why don't we just make our own thing? They made a free version and the adoption for the free version was very high, but the transition from free into paid was almost non-existent. - Yeah, that's a brutal business. - Yeah, it's brutal, but like, and it's not, like the tools aren't bad, but again, nobody professional was using HitFilm, so that's very hard to get people to buy it when they can't get work using it. So if you were like doing, a lot of people were, who were doing visual effects shots, the kind of stuff that Andrew Kramer would do on his thing, like you could do that in HitFilm really easily, and people love that, but to take it beyond that professionally was not really possible. - Well speaking of brutal business models, how about we don't charge anything for the product? Let's talk about Blender. And Blender fascinates me. I know that they had a big leadership change announced this year, the head of the Blender organization is stepping down. This sort of beloved guy who's been running it for years and has kind of shepherded it into what it is now. And when they made that announcement, it was at the Blender conference, and I think they showed this slide of how much money the Blender foundation brings in in donations and sponsorships and stuff like that. And it's like a few million bucks. It's not a lot. So it boggles my mind how they're able to develop it so fast and have so many releases now, all these features. And then this year they launched Blender 5.0, which is a big deal. So, EJ, I know you've been following Blender pretty darn closely last couple of years and working with the Lijon on his course and his next course. So what's your current take on Blender? How's it doing? - So one of the things that I've been saying for years is that, you know, and that's a reoccurring theme with a lot of people that try to pick up Blender is they, there's so many stories of people trying it and just not getting it and just bailing. And then trying again and just bailing. And, you know, one of the issues was that they're slowly fixing is just, their UI UX. It's not, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's slowly getting better. And one of the things that, you know, I keep saying about Cinema 4D is they've nailed the UI UX super easy to use. They got the cloner stuff, the mograph stuff. You know, I said once Blender figures out the UI UX and it figures out how to do some cloner mograph stuff, like it's going to be rough, sledding for Cinema 4D. And well, the first shots were fired at the whole mograph stuff with the new array tool, which looks pretty impressive. So basically what it does is they're presets for the geometry node system, which geometry nodes can do a lot of stuff, a lot of procedural modeling, generation, all that kind of stuff. But to do something as simple as like, let me clone something radially used to take like a whole bunch of nodes. Now it's a preset. You add the array object, you set the, define the object and you just do it. There's randomization built in. Now the one big downside is there's no effectors or anything like that. So like once you do it, you just clone the stuff and you kind of scattered things on a surface. So you can clone on a surface, you can affect things with like weight painting and stuff like that, which is really cool. There's a sweep object. There's basically got their version of a sweep object, which you create a spline. You define the profile shape and it creates a little sweep object. Now that is also something that used to be a huge pain in the butt. So they're slowly making these very basic things to do in Cinema 4D, also very basic to do in Blender. Now there's still a lot of things that like, I said before aligned to spline, stuff like that just is just impossible or very, very difficult to do in Blender. But like I said, they're really, they're really, I think they're maybe Blenders getting to the point where they're seeing like where this big opportunity is for them. They added some new asset shelf with the compositor as well. So not only are they building presets for geometry nodes, but they're also doing it for their compositor. So now you have presets like, chromatic aberration and vignettes. And so there's all these kind of like really cool post effects that you can now do that again, used to take a lot of different nodes. And there's some grease pencil stuff. So grease pencil now supports, supports motion blur. There's Aces compatibility. That was a big deal because before I feel it wasn't, it wasn't able to fit in those pipe lines before. The grease pencil has a new pen tool in the edit mode, which makes it allow, it allows it to function a lot more like illustrator paths where you can kind of change the, you know, do you want a pointy point or do you want it to be rounded or busy a paths. And before when you drew a grease pencil path, it was very kind of like you use the pen tool and illustrator would have a lot of extra points and stuff like that. Now you can easily clean that up into like a nice curve with your busy a handles and stuff like that. There's updated geometry nodes UI. There is a storyboarding template. So you can actually storyboard within a blender, which is super cool. There's new sculpting brushes and stuff like that. And of course, like all the add-ons that have come out in the last year, like there's a new retopology tool that looks pretty promising that uses AI. There's pencil pro. There's clay dough that's gotten like a lot of updates to. And so these are the things that is like, you know, if blender had or if cinema 4D had these, they'd be doing really good. And another one of those is just the, you know, the add-ons. And there's also a thing they just launched called blender labs where it's, it's basically like they have all these projects that were like, hey, let's, let's all work on these projects together. And so there's, you can contribute if you want. And you can kind of get a sneak peek at all the tools that are in development as they're kind of building it. Hello, my name is Elijah Sheffield. I'm a professional 3D motion designer and I educate the masses on YouTube teaching them to use blender as a professionally 3D viable tool. Blender has added a lot this year. There's some really cool features and some cool things to be really excited about. The first of which is then kind of leaning more into their grease pencil tool. Now, grease pencil is kind of a unique tool just in a bit of a league of its own, but they've started adding more functionality to it recently with Blender 5.0. They added a motion blur, which I don't really care about. I'm not really sure who is super excited about motion blur in grease pencils, but they did add in a pen tool, which is one of those things that feels like it should have already been there, but we're just happy we got it now. So they are kind of leaning into that a little bit more and adding more tools at the top of the air. I believe it was still in 2025. They also added geometry node support for grease pencil, which was really cool, so you can get the clay pencil stuff and look into that. But some really interesting things there. Another thing that they've added that I think is a huge, a huge get for more of the casual users or people who are not as node-minded is bringing some of those basic geometry node functions into the modifier's panels. So with the modifiers being the very accessible things, you can just slap on objects and curves. Now you can do things like they fix the array, so you can make it array in a circle now. That's something that should already be there, but okay, fine. Now we have it in a tie to your package that don't have to turn to geometry nodes or make some complicated setup to get around it. We also have stuff like scatter on point, curves to tube, stuff like that where it's things that you would typically turn to geometry nodes to make. And it's not that complicated of a setup, but it's certainly more complicated than just clicking, you know, scatter on point. So that's a huge thing as well. And the last thing I'll say, I think the addition of Blender Lab, the launch of Blender Lab is a really big deal. Now I don't really fully understand it, so I'm not going to speak from a position of authority. I'm just going to give you my layman's take on it. But essentially they are kind of outsourcing the pioneering to some degree to people that are like dedicated in the space. So it's not really even the core fundamental development team for the Blender Foundation. I believe they're going to outside people, maybe peripherally adjacent people to do bigger projects that the Blender Foundation used to kind of focus on there. And they're looking to these outsized side sources, these outside studios to produce little short films or projects that are pioneering new tools and using Blender in new and exciting ways. So kind of the ingenuity of Blender is kind of now being outsourced to the masses, which I think is going to be a really cool thing. They can focus now more on making a really solid product, rolling out more LTS versions, where they're really stable and studio stable. And then this Blender Lab can kind of handle more of the experimental features and the new pioneering in 3D. So I think that's a really good omen for how things are shaking out as Blender becomes more ubiquitous. But that's just, and maybe that's a nerve thing, but that excites me a lot. So I'm in a really unique position where I did a course for school emotion, but it is not a course of just like here's your basics of Blender. Here's how you kind of scoot into the Blender space. It's more targeted at people who are like me. They're coming from Cinema Horde, they're coming from Maya from ZBrush, things that have some familiarity and have some things in common. Obviously they're a 3D DCC, but they're still quite different. They're still quite unique in their own way. And so that course kind of ushers people from those other packages into Blender and kind of gives them a jump starter kit from the perspective of I'm not talking down to you. You're already a 3D artist, but now you're going to learn some new tools and some new nomenclature. So coming from that perspective, obviously I interacted with quite a few people who are kind of coming from Cinema, coming from Maya. I've had some really exciting and big names kind of reach out to me and want to talk to me. Or let me know that they took the course and they were really excited about it. So that is kind of an interesting thing to see that more and more studios, more freelancers, more little pop-up shops. All of them are not all of them. But a lot of them are starting to look at Blender as a more viable tool if not something worth being curious about. So if studios are not switching to Blender, they're certainly starting to incorporate it more. And I've seen a large shift of people being like, okay, there's something here. And honestly, the Blender price tag is quite a lowering. So you have a lot of freelancers and a lot of really small studios that are like, if we can pull this off and our overhead is zero for the software package on the 3D front, that's pretty enticing. So cinema is still king in the motion design space. It's integration with After Effects is amazing. That's like one of the biggest things. Recently, they added a new liquid simulation tool or function. And that seemed really great. I wish Blender's liquid sims were a little bit better and certainly wouldn't mind having the stuff from cinema. And cinema also has really great tools for motion design when it comes to type. Blender's type is not really there. I've talked about this a little bit in some periphery. But to get good type animation or dynamic type animation in Blender, it's either a little bit of a pain or takes a little bit of a setup. So getting something like that would be really awesome. But from what I'm seeing, I think that perhaps Blender might be taking a little bit of a step, maybe even just an inch, but even a step closer to kind of that more mography stuff. a couple of features that I'd like to see added into Blender in upcoming releases. I would love to see a little bit more UI customization. Now you can already change your windows and kind of change the configuration of your screen, but I would really love to see a little bit more button customization, a little bit more getting inside and fine-tuning some of the details. I think that could be a really great feature, especially for developers and people who want to make a little bit more earth-shattering tools other than just hitting in to open the side panel to access your stuff. So hopefully they will upgrade that a little bit and give us a little bit more customization there. Now another thing that I think could be really interesting within Blender would be a more competitive and a little bit more robust set of texture painting. Right now, if you want to do texture painting and you're really serious about it, the kind of ubiquitous software would be substance painter. It's really good, it's really simple, it's very intuitive to use, and it has a lot of really great common-sense tools in there. And obviously it can, it's a standalone package so it can do what it does really, really well. But Blender is kind of unique in a way that it has a little bit of everything. And I think they're starting to get a lot better with the sculpting. I think the sculpting tools are really good. I think the UVing tools are starting to get really good. So what I would like to see from Blender is that they actually put a little bit more time into the texture painting thing and the texture painting feature. And maybe they spend a little bit more time developing that so that it feels and works a little bit more like substance. You don't even have to have all the right tools, you don't have to have the new pen tool, you don't have to have, you know, all the things that are included in that. But it would be great to see a little bit more functionality and for it to work a little bit more smooth and a little bit more like substance painter. Something that just feels really good to use. This is something I will credit Max on for doing. And I don't know if it's because I complained enough behind the scenes with them about it. But one of the things I told them, I was like, you know, I do motion Mondays, we do motion Mondays. And there's always these previews, whether it's a new, their tea Adobe's teasing a new beta feature for After Effects or Photoshop or whatever it is. Like they're teasing it before it actually comes out. And I think that's helpful in the development process. Just to like get that reaction, get it tested, get in people's hands and make that product the best that it can be. And I was saying that, you know, why doesn't Max on do this at all? Like you only hear about the feature once it's out and then there's very limited information about it sometimes and you don't how to use it or maybe there's a really cool feature, but it's not talked about. And then it's up to us to kind of hype it. And that's one thing they started doing. Like they, I think the first time they actually did this was with Zbrush for iPad and they had an event and they made a big deal about it. And I think it actually worked like it built a lot of hype around the Zbrush for iPad. And even the Zbrush stuff that they're doing now like they got a new like UVs and we'll talk a little bit more about Zbrush later. But that's the one thing that I think if Max on leads into a little bit more, they'll do well to do. But anyways, going back to Blender and I talked about Zbrush for iPad, I think the biggest news for not only 2025 but 2026 is they announced that Blender is coming to iPad, which I think is a massive deal because one of the biggest issues with Zbrush was the UI was difficult and really hard to learn. But the moment they ported everything over to iPad, they kind of had a fresh slate to let's think about how can we redesign this for the UI UX experience plus all the, you know, the Apple touch experience and stylists and all that stuff. And so Blender has this all this opportunity as well to kind of rethink how they could redesign their UI to be more, you know, more responsive to that mobile workflow and the stylists and everything like that. And the thing that like if cinema forward, you ever tried to do this, I couldn't tell you what would translate to the iPad like Blender, I can immediately think like Greece pencil, that would be awesome. Like you're basically drawing in 3D space like feather 3D and then they're sculpting like they're sculpting tools are actually really, really good. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens there not only with, because I think they tease like they're going to some of the first things they're going to port over is the sculpting and then the Greece pencil. But and then the UI was going to be kind of updated to so it's going to be really interesting what happens there with the UI UX does some of the things they do with the UI UX translate to the desktop. Like a Z brush, Z brushes doing that now to they just had a big announcement that they're, they're updating their UI like refreshing it completely, which I think people have been waiting for 15 years to do so yeah a lot of, and this is the pro is like Blender has all this news coming. And yeah, not so much on the max on side. I do think that with max on something you get to keep in mind is that each of the teams that make the products so like you know you have the Z brush team it's a different culture they came in with and for a little while they certainly held the hold on to that so like wanting to share that stuff at a time. Like you know it's not maybe and it's not maybe like the normal way that max on would do things but I think a lot of the companies operate on the worry that if they announce something and then they don't release it in time then people get angry like the exact opposite approach of entry. But yeah, but like you know like because I know the rich and we're always afraid of doing it because like if we if it took even a month longer we afraid people will be so pissed about it. But the truth is that like the way things work now is teasing is just a really big part of this process. So I think there's older thinking there with some other people who like culturally are like hey when we always share so they're doing it because like you point out that the really big instances of max on sort of sharing ahead. Have been with the Z brush I don't know if I've seen it as much elsewhere maybe a couple of places with some before even not too much. I mean the news cycle is 24 hours long now so you you have to always have something to talk about you know yeah one thing I'm curious EJ what you think about this like with blender. The reason that I you know when I was like okay I'm gonna learn 3d c40 was kind of the obvious choice but people were still using 3ds max and Maya and things like that. And those tools I you know I put I dip my toe into them and was like whoa scared off and went into c40 and I think what c40 has done so well which is a really deliberate kind of design philosophy that you have to have if you're making software which is they've taken all of this complexity like what's happening inside of the world. And you know you're moving inside of a cloner when you're moving an effect or through it that's a very complex mathematical thing happening and they totally abstracted away where you know you've got your options on the effecter and it's gotten more you know intricate over the years and you can you can stack effecters and this one's add this one's a track you do a lot of stuff like that. And so not only do you not have to know you don't have to know how to build it from scratch but also you don't have to think about it because you can't right like that you know you can go into express so and I know that there's there's that whole I forgot it's called c40 the it's like geometry nodes but it's like the whatever c nodes yeah yeah in c40 that I don't think a ton of people use but you don't need any of that right no in blender it sounds like what they've done because they started with geometry nodes which essentially that's the way who didn't works like it's it's completely procedural and if you want vertexes to do a specific thing you need to like point them in the right direction and do it kind of manually and now they're making presets that make that easier but it doesn't really truly abstract away all the complexity underneath and I wonder if really that's the thing that needs to happen because c40 artists are used to not having to think about what is going on under the hood right and if I even if I wanted to change it I can't sometimes right you just you just can't by design but you were you figure out how to work around that and make amazing stuff and it's easier cognitively and that was that was my impression of blender was like when I started learning it things that in c40 you take two splines you combine them subtract this one from this one and then you extrude it and then you bend it like it's just so it just works in in a more natural way whereas blender you have to really understand kind of like I imagine who Dini works where no I need to understand what each step is actually doing and use the thing that does that do you it does that ring true to you at all that like blender is just right now it's just kind of more complicated because of that they're they're exposing everything to you and there's advantages but there's actually big disadvantages to it's kind of funny because what max on doing with the scene nodes is like going the backwards direction like they're trying to make things more like geometry nodes and trying to trying to market towards that crowd that I think they already lost to who Dini anyway so it's one of those things where it's like I'm not quite sure what max on's doing with the scene nodes because they already did the hard part now they're they're not doing anything and expanding on that but now you have blender kind of go on the other route where they've built this like really successful powerful geometry nodes setup that can do a lot of things but it's not easy and it takes a lot of step right so I really remember the you know when they announced the array stuff the blender guru guy was like I can pretty much shorten my whole donut tutorial series by like two hours because like that's how long it took to teach like okay well if I need to teach this cloner thing I have to teach geometry nodes like way early and like now he says that he doesn't even have to really introduce geometry nodes at all, which is like, removes a huge complexity to learning a 3D software. So that's what I'm saying, where it's like they're slowly, you know, adding the ease of use back in there. But it's awesome. As someone who knows Cinema 4D, it's on in like, with Elijah, you know, building that Cinema 4 or that Blender course, there's a lot of things where it's like, I think I just know too much because there's things in certain quirks and weird workarounds and sometimes you just can't even do the things in Blender that like is two button clicks in Cinema. So like there's a lot of friction for someone like me and I'm sure there's friction for a lot of artists coming from some other 3D apps that want to get in a Blender. But of course, like if you're doing modeling and you're doing very specific aspects of the 3D workflow, yeah, I think Blender makes a lot of sense. Like if you do characters and you're doing modeling, you're doing sculpting and you're texturing, you want to do the grease pencil stuff, it makes a lot of sense. But if this doesn't mean that if you're doing a lot of mography stuff and dynamics in Cinema 4D, you're not like this array stuff. It's a great first step, but it's nowhere near gonna, I don't even know how long it's gonna take for them to basically recreate that awesome functionality that they've done in Cinema 4D with the mograph stuff because that stuff's had what, a 12 year head start and this is just the first iteration. So it's a good, like I said, it's a good first step. I think it's a step in the right direction. I think this makes Blender a lot more appealing to artists, beginning 3D artists, but yeah. I think there's still a massive opportunity for Maxon to do some grab the-- Counterprogramming, yeah, yeah. Get the euths. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get the euths. Yeah, all right. Well, let's talk about Houdini briefly. We don't teach any Houdini stuff yet. We invited Urban Bodesko who runs Jump Start Academy. They teach really high end visual effects. I think before he started that company, he was known as the Explosions guy. I think that's actually like his handle on social media. So this guy knows, like, intricately, like how Houdini simulations and all the really complex stuff where you are typing code and all that. He knows how that works. And you know, what he said was actually interesting because a couple of years ago, I talked to him and the first time I met him, and he was really kind of nervous about AI and what it would mean for visual effects and the explosions and stuff like that. And to me, that actually made sense because, you know, like, you can train an AI model on explosions and it can probably get pretty close and then you can just click where you want to, like, it makes sense. And then this year, he started a visual effects studio. And I was like, why did you do that? And he talks about it in his answer. So we'll play it during this. But Houdini is still very much like the tool for all of that stuff. And you know, it's still difficult to learn. I know a lot of 3D artists that they make the jump, they spend a few years struggling, they start to get it and then they're like, I'm never going back, right? My name is Urban Vardesco. I'm an artist/entropener. I'm the founder of Double Jump Academy and also Krispy K. and VFX. It's Double Jump Academy. It's an online place where we teach people how to do, you know, high end. We do high-end CGI and VFX workshops. And Krispy K. is a small boutique studio that specializes more in explosions. We have a bunch of proprietary tools that we made. And Houdini that, yeah, just they just make our explosions a bit more crispy. The reason why I opened up Krispy K. and VFX, because almost like every week I was getting a job offer from all of these big studios, like places I would, you know, that were my dream to work at. And I was just saying no and no all the time because I was running Double Jump full time. So I was getting so many job offers to the point where I was like, what if I just hire there, because I know a lot of people, what if I just hire them and they work under my supervision. And that's how Krispy K. VFX was born. And now I'm talking to a lot of really, really big vendors, like top studios in the industry to start doing work with them. When a lot of these big studios started collapsing, like technical or access studios, the mill, NPC. I did a post on LinkedIn essentially saying, oh, are you guys going to open up, you know, especially the producers? Are you just going to open up a lot of smaller studios now? So instead of having one studio with 500 employees, I predicted that we're going to have 10 studios with 10 to 15 employees. And I think that's kind of happening. I did it to put my money where my mouth is. I did it with Krispy K. and I saw a lot of other studios did the same. So my prediction is that we're going to see more of that. So I think it's going to be the, this is, I think the era of small studios and the era of freelancers for the next few years, probably. And then obviously, you know, small studios are going to form and they're going to get bigger and bigger. So for instance, with Krispy K. and we have like two or three people, but right now I'm talking to a lot of different studios for different projects. So the logic would be, oh, let's grow from three to 15, right? So immediately you go and then once you're at 15, you get a bigger project and then you go to 20, 25 and then you become too big of a studio again. But I think for now, there's going to be a lot of small studios that are going to be opening up and just a lot of freelancers or like studios that are going to have two or three people in it. But Houdini has also added a ton of new features this year. They're all kind of specialized things for that world. So EJ, have you messed with Houdini yet? Have you dabbled? Like, what, you know, are your friends using it? I know already been shooting uses it a lot. They do amazing stuff with it. Yeah, I'm not smart enough to learn Houdini, I don't think. But yeah, I think the, like, Houdini is definitely gaining ground. There's, it plain and simple. There's things you can do that you can only do inside of Houdini. So, you know, any advanced simulations, anything like that, like it's, there's just nothing else out there. Like Cinema 4D can do some of the things, Blender can do some things, Maya. But yeah, man, Houdini is, is where it's at. If you really want that high-end look and that's what, you know, you talk about how Rive is opening a lot of things for 2D artists. Like I think Houdini's that thing for 3D where if you know how to do the Houdini stuff, like you're getting a lot of jobs because that buried entry is super steep and studios like already been shoot, they're killing it because they've kind of jumped on the Houdini train like well before a lot of these other studios I have, I feel like. And so, you know, that's why all their stuff just looks killer because they can do whatever they want to do, it can be done because they have the Houdini wizards on their team to be able to figure out how to do it. Yeah, it's a talent for sure. Yeah, yeah. That's the secret, yeah. Yeah, that, yeah, that tool has a learning curve. Side effects is always pushing and creating new tools, which is great. For instance, at Crispy Chicken, we have our own proprietary tool set for shaders, explosions, just a lot of tools to make explosions look better and more realistic and organic. So inside of Houdini, you can create your own tools. So if there's something missing or you think that there's, you know, like we don't wait for side effects to release something because essentially they've made a software where you can create your own tools inside of it. So every studio that is using Houdini had, they usually have their own pipelines and proprietary tools. In terms of new features this year, it wasn't anything super exciting for me, but they keep improving their compositing pipeline and animation pipeline, which I think is going to be a huge and all rendering, which I think is a really, really huge thing for essentially the whole industry. If you are on a team of three or more reach out to our team so you can learn about our all-access team training program, you and your team get access to every course at school emotion, unlimited critique on your projects, access to our 24/7 community, you get the portfolio reviews that the live workshops, you get everything. And we offer both individual and floating seats so your team admin can manage who is currently using seats on all access. And for you admins out there, you also get a dashboard to check the progress of every member of your team that's in the program. And if you're into this sort of thing, make sure you ask us about our custom workshops that we started doing this year, they've been very, very successful and we're going to be rolling those out even more in 2026. There is no better way to upskill your team and unlock the superpower of motion design. So reach out to our team, we are standing by to answer any questions, give you a tour and to tailor your all-access experience for your team. All right, well here's another tool to learn in curve. But our own, you seem to have, you know, you've ascended that learning curve pretty quickly and made some crazy short films this year and I know that this is like your current hobby horse. So what do you tell us about Unreal this year? Yeah, I mean it's funny because you know you talk about getting burned out, we talked about that before and this kind of re-injected me with a lot of the vigor for what I do. It's partially because of the real time, just the real time feedback, you know, being able to see things immediately but also because Unreal has a like just like blender, Unreal has a very large, you know, ecosystem of not necessarily like really big plugins but there are tools and then there's like assets and things. There's just like if you're not doing something you can quickly, if you're willing to pick up a little bucks you can quickly have something in there and then have something to work with and I found it like look. I'm not a great 3D modeler, so having these tools, that having these assets that are designed to work perfectly, or characters are designed, that are already rigged for Unreal, that makes things a lot easier. So I would say that Unreal had two releases this year, 5.6 in May and 5.7 in November. And really, if we're being honest, it's really one release, 5.6 was rushed, 5.7. It was the kind of thing where they're trying to do things faster, and they used to do double the amount of beta time on stuff. And now they're just doing them six months apart, or whatever. I don't know if that's a plan thing of every six months, or if this was just how it worked out. I feel like 5.7 was a response to a bunch of stuff in 5.6 that was broken. Plus, they did add a lot of stuff in 5.7, but I feel like they were mostly there in 5.6 and couldn't get it done in time. And I feel like some decisions that have been made there to release things before they were ready has been, I don't know, what's motivating it exactly, but you saw that with Fab, right? Fab this year when the store launched, man, what a freaking disaster, right? Like it was, it infuriated anybody who had content that they bought from the store. And I was like, I couldn't find my own assets, things I paid for, I couldn't even find them in the store, or find them in the browser. It was just so frustrating. It's gotten a lot better since, you know, like I was just going to release a 5.7, but they've integrated things a little bit better into the launch, or so. So it's like that whole experience of either browsing your own library, or just buying tools and buying them is much, much better. You know, we can talk about the motion design tools, but I'll say that like, you know, it started with 5.4, it feel like it's a little rough. You know, there was a vision for it, but it's been carried through, and it's definitely filled out a lot. Is it where Cinema 4D is? Absolutely not, but it is ready for broadcast for a lot of things. It's definitely being used in broadcast now. They're really pushing hard on the real-time pipeline. I think that companies like Vizarti should, like, I don't even know how the company still is, but it's only because of a competitor, not having one. I think that's going to be gone pretty quickly. We've, you know, people we've talked to have said that, like, they've used it, and for the real-time, there's this whole real-time broadcast pipeline with transition logic and run-down remote. All of these things that are making it possible to run things quickly, and to like, just throw data in and have it come up on the screen, that is going to make a big difference. So I think people wanted that, and that will, in a way, sort of open a gateway for people like, hey, if we're already using it for the live stuff, we should probably be using it for the not-live stuff that goes along with it, which will then cascade. So I think on real future, this year, is looking, I think, a lot more adoption. Even though it's already definitely been adopted, I know it was a joy. They did the super-world, the Olympics. There was definitely some stuff. Both. So it's getting used in the real places that people would do these kinds of things, but it's not going to replace-- it hasn't replaced red-- anything you're doing with redshift that you wanted to look like, super real. It's not quite there. They have a path tracer. They've gotten better. It's gotten better and faster. There's a denoiser that makes-- because previously, anything you would render with a path tracer, which is akin to redshift or octane, not nearly as robust, but that you wanted realistic glass and realistic shadows and reflections that really reflected real world type situations. But it was so noisy. A lot of it wasn't usable. But now they've got a much better denoiser in there, so that's been added in. Character rigging's gotten a lot better. If you're doing character work, 3D text actually-- I was frustrated with it, but I discovered, as I was using 5.7 recently, because it just came out, and I was really getting into it. I noticed there's a lot more there. It's still not even close to Cinema 4D. If I'm trying to do really good-looking stylized text, I'm actually going to Cinema 4D and then just bringing in. I lose the ability to animate some of the cool things that you can do with the motion design tools in Unreal. But if you want a logo that looks really solid, you're not building that in Unreal. But you are using it for little plain text that you need to come up and move around. You can totally do that. So I think that's pretty cool. They filled out, actually, they had cloners. It was all sort of there, but it was all in this one cloner, and you had to dig deep for all the different kinds of cloners. Now they've flushed them out as their own thing. Even though you can use any cloner to be another kind of-- you can say, oh, right now this is set to be this kind of cloner. I can just change it to the other kind. But still, having it sort of default to that, hey, this is what it does. They added in one particular cloner that I think was super useful as the-- I'm trying to remember the name of it now, because it's like I used it in my tutorial on the building the light cycle. It allows you, instead of using clones, you can take an object that's in separate parts and put it in the cloner, and then all of the cloner tools that are there, such as the effectors that can make things move around and pulsate randomly or change size, those can now work with a regular 3D model, which is pretty cool. So you can have an object assembler or disassemble trying to build a car and how all the pieces come down. You can have a thing that comes through, and then all the parts just build onto it. So it's pretty cool that way. They've really updated lights. There's mega lights, which was a beta originally. Now it's, I think, it's either-- maybe it was in alpha, and now maybe it's in beta, but it's like beta is already a real thing for them. Lumin quality's gotten a lot better. They've tried to make the sequencer because of the motion design thing, I think, especially. They've gained a lot of-- there's like smooth scrubbing with audio so that you can hear what you're doing, which you couldn't do really before. It was pretty janky. There's other stuff with virtual production, which kind of falls outside the zone of what are. Obviously, I'm not talking about-- I'm not even touching the game stuff. There's a lot of game stuff that we're not going to talk about. PCG-- so the big things I would say-- so Nanite foliage. So if you don't know what Nanite is, basically, if you have a 3D model, there's two ways of handling. There's three ways. You could either suffer when you have a very detailed 3D model, and it's in the background, which you don't want to do. You can use levels of detail, which you have versions of the model that are lower detail. And that requires you have different versions of the model. And then there's Nanite, which can actually lower the quality, but not enough that it looks bad, but still using-- it's very clever, sort of like triangulation. And it makes it so that your faraway objects are less geometry, but they still look pretty good. And when they come close, the geometry gets multiplied. And so it looks really good up close, too. And with trees and plants, they did not have-- and he good solution for it. So if you try to populate something with plants, obviously, you don't just put one plant in. You put in hundreds of plants to build a forest. That can really slow things down. And by having them now fall back onto Nanite, where they can, rather than try to go into lower LODs, which require having one model loaded and another one of a lot of load and another one of the all at the same time, this allows it to fall back on a lower geometry without the overhead hit. So it's really nice. Basically, you define how the environment should be when you place this thing in there. And then it puts the trees or plants or rocks. It spreads them across the environment based on rules that you create and deciding what was in there. I don't love PCG because it's very hard to-- it's complicated. I use tools like the dash tools, which make it super easy to just throw that stuff out there. But I reached out to them about Nanite. And they said, listen, we see the Nanite foliage thing. We're looking at that now and how we can integrate that into our thing. But for now, that's still only available within PCG, this system that-- again, super cool. But building it from scratch, not so easy. You can-- but hey, good news. You can go to the marketplace and buy a forest that uses PCG boom, you're done, right? Really, truly. That's the beauty of it. Also, they added in-- they added in AI assistance. I have not touched that. I don't know anything. I really am curious. If anyone's used it, I would love to. If it's hallucinating in solutions, or if it's really giving good solutions, half the time, I feel like with ChatGPT, I'm working with it. And it's like, ChatGPG trying to help me with Unreal is having an older sibling that knows just a little more than you, but really doesn't know a lot. And so you're like, hey, how do I do this? And you try to-- that didn't work. I'm like, oh, right, you're right. Because in the latest version did this. And like, nope, still not right. They're like, yeah, you know what? I may not have that correct. It's very much like that. Like about 20% of the time, it gets it right for the complicated stuff. I feel like I'm just having a nice conversation with someone who has a little more about it, but doesn't really know. So it would be really cool if their AI assistant was able to really leverage the help docs and be able to answer the questions and actually formulate not just what's in the help docs, but to be able to say like, OK, if you're doing these two things together, which there is no help.com, can it reason it out and help you find the solution? So I would love that to be true, but I haven't tested that. And one last thing I just wanted to mention is materials. They've always had like PBR materials. But they had this new thing that kind of came out and had a lot of promise. It was substrate materials, which is like multi sort of layered materials. And it looked really cool, but there was literally nothing about it. You could barely find any instructions about it. You could download some samples. Nobody was making anything substrate, almost none of the materials in the marketplace. There was one guy making one substrate thing. So I think people don't know how to use it yet, but I think we're going to see that. It's much more complex materials that can do really interesting things. But it's just never caught on in the beta phase because it's like, yeah, that's cool, but I don't know how to use it. And there's literally nothing about how to use it. So hopefully that will be the next thing that they do. Yeah, I feel like those AI agents may help developers more, like it can help them because there's a lot of code when you get to the game side of it. Yeah. I'm Dan, co-founder. cartenhorse. In 2025 we have done a fair amount of animation work with pre-rendered animation. We kind of break it up a mix between pre-rendered and real time. Real time mostly has been a lot of virtual production work, but we also just do a large variety. Basically any screen, shaper size, we kind of pipe a lot of that through Unreal through both workflows, but anything from sports and broadcasts to immersive events to just animated videos. At least with our philosophy and how we look at it, it's power, speed, and future-proofing. Powerful between all the things they've added over the years like NANI and Lumen and Megalights and whatever. Unreal can crunch a lot of data really quickly. Procedural tools for doing like quick landscapes or even motion or animation. Even working together as a project, it's just really powerful and there's a lot you can do with it. As far as collaboration goes, working all within the same project together, we can kind of work on different pieces and they're all assembled together. That's allowed us to divide our workflow and work on the same things at the same time, which can be really nice. In addition to it's been a little slower for our adoption, but since it's a game engine and they're all relies on programming, you can start to build in logic and programming and all this stuff into your workflow, which not so much procedural, but it's a different way of thinking and there's a lot of power that goes into that as well. As far as speed goes, there's a few areas at which speed really helps us excel. Render times are pretty straightforward, although the render is not as great as, you know, octane would be your redshift offline, but it is crazy fast. So when we need to hammer out a lot of frames, especially if at 4K, we can render those at 6K and it can push those out pretty quickly at good quality. Also speed of the viewport. So we can kind of do our look dev and make creative decisions and tweak stuff all in real time, and we can do that together. So it allows us to make a lot of quick iterations from speed standpoint. And one of the biggest ones is like looking at this from a future proofing perspective. Currently we use it for a lot of work for offline rendering, and that lends itself well to pre-rendered video content, but there's also a lot of new technologies coming out that really rely on real time. So we may not be making games right at this point, but there's a lot of different experiences that can work. Virtual production has been a decent one for us. We're actually running this in real time and using this more the way that it's intended and not just relying it as a render engine. As we think like this, it just gives us a lot more options as to depending on the project that comes in. We don't have to think through different ways of delivering. We don't have to be hamstring by just thinking that we can only output frames, and that's what we have. We can be a bit more flexible with what that is without having to jump software. Even using stuff like Nanite and Lumin are not new, they're constantly adding more features that help enhance these. So mega lights just came out, which really opens up the doors of the amount of lights you can put in a scene without it having a huge impact, allowing you to do more and still move quickly. Omega plants just came out, looks super cool having real time high quality plant assets that are in there. You know, mega scans, mega everything. It's just all mega. All the mega steps good. Other things as far as finding new ways to work, the control rig tools, they're constantly making those better and faster and more plug-and-play. Being able to control and manipulate and animate more assets and unreal just allows less work that would have to be done in Cinema 40 or Blender, and then export it out and kind of back and forth. So that opens up a lot more options in the animation front. They've also added a lot of new animation features and updates. They don't highlight them a lot, but just a lot of little quality of life improvements that makes things a little more simple. You know, as simple as you can get with that. As far as like the updates they keep making Tanana and Lumin, they still have its issues. It's by no means perfect and it doesn't hold up to the plug-and-play quality of Octane Redshift, but they keep making it faster. They keep dialing it in more. So having that kind of spanned your different pipelines has been helpful as they continue to optimize it. Why has it had low adoption? It's hard. Oftentimes it can be really hard. So I think that can provide a bit of a barrier to entry. The other thing too is, you know, if you start learning 3D from like a Cinema 40 standpoint, unreal functions vary differently. So I think you have to learn a bit of functioning like a game artist or someone who, you know, understands that workflow a bit more. And then also there's a lot of things that could rely more on like programming. There's a lot of little gotchas and irritating things that pop over like why is this not working. Honestly, you know, as much as they've come a long way with their render engine, you know, using Lumin for lighting and even using Nanite, still has a lot of little issues that you have to troubleshoot. That being said, there's also a lot of stuff that they're still making progress on like caustics and glass and there's, you know, there's some hacks, but it still has a way to go. So compared to, you know, Octane or Redshift or, you know, offline renders that we've used in the past, it just doesn't do as much as you can in those. And at that point, I do think that adoption will continue to be slower until they have a real-time path tracer, which appears to be coming, but without a solid path tracer, I do think that's going to hold things up a bit. I'm Chris, co-founder of Carton Horse, a small design studio based out of Michigan. We're utilizing Unreal and the pipeline, as well as lots of pitching, quick renders, pitch decks, things just with the asset libraries out there, with fab or CG trader or Sketchfab or to be honest, KitBash and the GraceKelgerilla. We can get things into an Unreal scene really quickly and pipe out renders or do live working sessions with directors or clients and they are really impressed. What I've noticed as far as differences in this last year of types of expectations or things from clients or directors is almost getting more and faster. But not necessarily more expensive. I wouldn't say necessarily cheaper, but I don't know if it's the impact of AI and image generation or just knowing that there's real-time tools out there, as well as just, I don't know, like GPUs and things getting faster so people can create content quicker and the tools being more accessible. But I know that getting stuff, getting it fast, getting visuals up and reference and seeing what potentially this could look like, whether for pitches or client approvals, it seems like the expectations of getting something looking nice quicker is more than it ever has been in the past. So that applies not necessarily because they're Unreal projects, but just projects in general. Although Unreal does help us get there faster. It's almost like cheating. You get lighting and materials quicker than you ever would with gray renders with a traditional pipeline because you can render those things fast out of Unreal versus. Well, I'm not going to render this in 4K with really nice lighting out of Redshift. You might get a 540 version and it's going to look like crap, but you'll get the idea. So now in Unreal, it's like, "Well, I want this to look better and why can't this look like almost final out of the first draft, or even during the concept-to-concepting phases." I mean, real-time is kind of a big deal and we're wondering how it's going to seriously impact the industry. And I guess it's just in general impacting the production pipeline in a major way for us right now, as well as to be honest, it's very similar. It's just different, it's like just different way to cut it. Jumping into Unreal wasn't like starting a new language. It was just how what's this new way to speak or the way to deliver the things that I kind of already know. I guess I would compare it to maybe building a house or doing a home remodel. If you had a hammer and nails and different tools and then you found out about power tools or a different type of power tools, then you might approach the thing differently. But it's still the same concept of building the walls and running the wires and these types of things. That doesn't change. But the learning in Unreal, being that it's a game engine, has been kind of a completely different battle if you will or game understanding LODs or the lighting system in Lumen and how to optimize these settings and kind of control that with NANI and virtual textures and different source control. How to get assets in and out of the pipeline or how to get assets in and out of the tool migration, tweaking textures and UVs, adjusting models and topology. All these things, there's lots of different considerations for how the pipeline works, how the tool works and what it's made to do. Compared to Cinema 4D or After Effects or even Blender, Unreal projects seem big, they seem heavy, they're slow to open. It seems like Like it crashes a lot. What I need as emotion designers often like ease of use, I need the feel of the tool. I need to noodle, I need to iterate and improvise. I want to, I want things to be procedural. I like effectors working with the cloners and parenting. I like plugins that make things just have sliders. And all these things are capable and unreal. It's just definitely been different in how to get there. And to be honest, the tool is still getting there. I know that there's been a lot of advancements over the last few years and these tools that are being adopted. So and things like making things feel cinematic, easy presets or just simplicity, speed and minimal technical hurdles. That in general just doesn't exist. And to be honest, the one thing that's been in the back pocket for Unreal has been the community and then the networking with people and asking questions and forums to solve problems. You know, I feel like Unreal is kind of right at the cusp of being able to, you know, when we went to CBS Sports and they were really interested in Unreal, they're using it for a lot of different things. And I was kind of quizzing them. I was like, so what would it take for you to like switch? Because I can't remember what system they used for their live stuff, Kyron or Vizartee, but you know, those are the two big ones. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of people that use those systems and they're in a way they remind me of like when flames were a big thing, right? Like in our industry where they're super powerful, they can do a lot of stuff, but they exist on this island away from Adobe and away from all the kind of standardized ways that we do everything now. And so you have to have this very specialized knowledge and it only accepts these kinds of file formats and the hardware. You can't just go by hardware forward, it's specialized. And, you know, Unreal, you can call Puget or you can go to Best Buy. You can like get a system that'll run it. And it's really just about making the software because I think it, honestly, if you're clever enough, probably can do most of what you need it to do to run a live broadcast now. It's just the way you have to build stuff is not it's not until it's still game. It's still two game design oriented the software, but the tools are now there, which they weren't before. And that's the thing to think about is that like two years ago, they didn't have the tools in there at all. Now the tools are there. They're still not simple to use, but they are getting easier. And there's templates that one can build or, you know, that you can maybe hire somebody to build for you that will make that even easier. And, you know, they're not showing any signs of stopping to develop those tools. I mean, I would love to see text get like I would love to see them do some real work on text because text is just too important for motion design. Yeah. Cannot have those tools in there. It can do a lot of basics that you already need, but, um, you know, I think that I still think that you're going to be developed. You're going to be modeling like logos and stuff outside of Unreal and bringing that in. It would be cool if they could do more there to allow motion design to really take place. The design part of motion design, they place in there as opposed to the animation part of motion design. Yeah. One interesting thing that I feel like this probably adds way more complexity, but, um, rive files work inside of Unreal. So you can have a rive file on a plane or any piece of geometry, you can wrap it in matter. Uh, and you can, you, you can trigger, you know, like anything you want, you can change the type out. And, you know, rive has like one of the fastest 2D renderers on earth. Unreal, you know, everything that looks 2D isn't actually 2D. It's 3D like on a plane or it's a texture on something. Um, I want, there's probably some interesting things that could, that could be done with a very technical clever person to combine those two tools, to give you the things you would need, you know, for broadcast package, maybe some of the type is 3D, but a lot of it's 2D, you know, it's my, though, I would never have pegged, uh, Unreal to be to get SVG's in before Adobe, which Adobe did this year. Yeah, I did. But right, like, like, that's pretty weird, right? Like, because, well, you can use SVGs to generate 3D geometries. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's essentially like an illustrator file with all the splines and stuff. But like, you know, after effects only got it like, what, like a couple of months ago, maybe, yeah, right? Like, that was, that was like, how do they not have that? And I, and I'm betting that the reason I finally went in there is because there's intention to use it for 3D to be able to extrude in the next iteration of, in the next iteration of like in 3D and after effects. That's probably why they did it. But like, yeah, you know, for, for over a year, you know, unreal a program that does not generally you think of using like that format, like it's, it had it in there. And so you can do some cool stuff with SVGs there too. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, we, you know, we're talking to, uh, Mr. Windbush. I know he's been a little bit delayed on his next course because we're kind of waiting for the motion design tools to stabilize enough. Um, but there will be yet another unreal course out, uh, hopefully soon. Uh, okay. So I'm going to blast through these last ones. These are tools that I don't think a ton of people are using. They should probably be on your radar. There might be some use cases for them. The first one is LaughtyLab. I already mentioned it. So LaughtyLab is just a web based tool where you can create simple animations, um, and they export natively to Laughty. And, you know, the good thing about it, first of all, it's very simple to use, right? So if you're not an after effects artist already, you can learn LaughtyLab very quickly. It's not very complicated. Also, there is still this issue with after effects creating Laughty files, even with the Laughty files plugin, which helps you is that because of the way After Effects works, certain things that look correct in your review port will not translate correctly to Laughty files. Um, you know, there's work rounds and most of this stuff has been fixed through the plugins, but like if you had a shape that had a hole in the middle, that hole would disappear when you export to a Laughty file, right? It wouldn't calculate the clipping path correctly. And so you have to like double check everything when you're making a Laughty file from After Effects with LaughtyLab, you don't. If it looks correct, it's going to be correct. And the reason I bring it up is because I'm seeing a ton of like front end designers, UI, UX product designers using it. And, you know, coming from the world of like linear motion design, where you need all of the power that After Effects gives you, I look at something like that. And my instinct is, well, why would I use that? Right? Why would anyone use it? Just learn After Effects. But, you know, given what we were talking about hours ago now, um, motion design is a toolbox that now a lot of different people are carrying around to very different places than we're used to. And they don't necessarily need After Effects. And why would you learn After Effects if you don't have to? If you're just mostly working in Figma, designing interfaces, but you want a very custom animation, LaughtyLab does that for you. And so there's probably opportunities out there for people who know After Effects who could learn LaughtyLab in, I don't know, like a day, um, and get that kind of work. And also, I think there's, you know, hopefully those designers and those developers realize at some point, you still need to know how to animate, right? Because those skills kind of translate one to one. It doesn't matter what app you're in. There's also Simulon, which finally launched. Are one. Have you played with Simulon since it launched? I, not since I was really like loving the stuff they're posting. I haven't used it. I do want to because it's actually, you know, it's pretty freaking cool. It makes the, the compositing aspect, like getting 3D into an app and using AR, like, like that kind of thing, you hold up your phone and you can see like Amazon. If I want to see what furniture looks like in my room or 3D model looks in my office, I can do that. But the level of compositing is absolutely bonkers that they have in that app. Yeah. Well, the full vision of it. And if you want like a deep dive, we interviewed the founder, I think last year, Devesh, brilliant dude. And the full vision of it is, is crazy to me. And it's brilliant. There is, I think there is some AI in it. But mostly they're just being very clever with all the sensors and everything that the phone gives you. Basically, the idea is you want a dinosaur to run through your living room. You don't know how to do that. Well, you can take the Simulon app and you can basically get a scan of your living room. You can send that to a blender artist who can animate a dinosaur running through your living room. And you can kind of tell it, okay, I think the camera's going to be here. So make sure it runs past that. And then they can send that to you. You can go back in your living room and hit record. And it's if you're recording live, a dinosaur walking through your room. And you can literally shoot it as if it's there. It's almost like virtual production, but kind of in reverse. And then when you're happy with your, the camera shot and what you got, you hit a button and it uploads it to the cloud. And you can capture an HDRI and it renders, I think it's actually using blender on the back end to create the scene and render it. And it creates compositing and all these things. And then you can basically gives you a composited fully done shot after that. But you can also then get the blender file and go in and change it if you want to. It's a really neat way of thinking about doing visual effects that it's like pretty, it's pretty innovative, right? And what's cool about it to me is it's one of those things where you know, all of us have some origin story of the gateway drug that got us into this, right? Like I saw Jurassic Park, that led me to visual effects, that led me to editing that led me to motion design, right? And everybody watching this and both you will have your own, your own version of that. Simulon is going to do that for a lot of young people because it's that easy to use. And they're setting it up so that even if you don't know someone who can model an animated dinosaur, they have prebuilt things that are automatically animated and you can make your own scene and it looks real in it. It's smart enough to do rotoscoping and all those things. It's kind of like wonder dynamics in a way. What even easier? So I think that's amazing. If you're unfamiliar with it, you can go check it out. I recently saw a post from a design technician developer at Disney who's just raving about it. So I don't know if it'll make its way until the really high-end professional stuff like that. It certainly seems capable of it, given that in the end, it gives you a blender file or whatever you need to then change it and recomposite it and do whatever you do. It's spline. So EJ, you were big on the spline train last year. And then they launched HANA, which is like their 2D, it's almost like their answer to arrive. It's a different tool. It's not built to do the same things, but it's pretty cool. But I haven't heard much from spline. Like the 3D spline app that they were initially known for. Have you heard anything? Yeah, I mean, they added the timeline and so you can now do basic animations and have stuff trigger more complex animations than just scale 50%. And that's all it does. So they have added with, I think with HANA, you can make full games inside of Rive now. I think you can build somewhat interactive games inside a spline as well, all 3D. And a lot more interactive tools that go way beyond mouse over events and stuff like that. So they are building in there. That's the thing that interests me is, like, would Rive have any interest in getting into the 3D space and importing 3D objects into there, like how After Effects is allowing for that? I don't know. Because if so, it kind of makes spline kind of moot at this point. But at this point, if you want to do any 3D interaction stuff, that spline is the way to go for sure, because it's easy to use. Yeah, I've heard from webflow developers that they like spline and maybe this has gotten better. But like, just whenever you're using something on the web, whether it's a Rive file or a Loddy file or whatever, you have to load that file. And I'm sure a spline file isn't that big. You also have to load the code that plays back the spline file. And that is actually a lot of memory. The Rive player is very small. And that's why developers like it because you can add a Rive. You load it once and you can load 20 Rive files and Rive files are typically small. So it loads almost instantly. If it's on an iPhone app or something like that, it doesn't matter. It's just going to load off a hard drive really quickly. But for spline, because it's primarily it was aimed mostly at the web space initially, you can use it in products and apps too. But it was aimed at the web space. And I think the extra bandwidth it takes to download that spline player was actually kind of an issue. In terms of the interaction stuff, it's really cool actually. And it's much easier to learn and use than Rive. Rive is built to let you do anything. And it's kind of like Houdini, right? Like with that power comes more complexity. And there's always a balance. And Rive is kind of, I think, found a really good balance where it's not the easiest thing to pick up. You kind of do need to be taught it, I think, especially if you're an animator, if you're a developer, maybe it's a little more intuitive. Spline is built a different way. It's built where it's very quick. And you can click to select the interaction. And it's much simpler. You can't do nearly as much. But you can do some complicated things. Hanna's interesting to me, because the last thing I heard about Hanna, which is basically another apps, spline launched, that looked initially like they were trying to kind of compete with Rive a little bit, was that you can now use 3D assets with it too. So now it's a 2D and 3D real-time app. And they've kind of leaned a little bit more into these neat filters. Like there's a progressive blur filter that Rive currently doesn't have. And it's got-- you can make it look like glass. And you can add chromatic aberration in these neat effects. And it's all real time. It uses a different rendering technology than Rive. So it's cool. I haven't seen or heard of really any opportunities for motion designers for that yet. I think it's still pretty niche in the web design space. Something to look out for. Another company that I haven't really heard about in a while is WAMP. I know they added 3D printing last year. So you could model something in WAMP, 3D print it. There was a course I think motion design school came out with last year or earlier this year, where they showed you how you can bring a WAMP model into After Effects using the new 3D system, which is kind of cool. Maybe there's some animation features coming to WAMP. So but I haven't heard really much about it. I'm guessing it's one of those VC stories where maybe they're starting to think they're not going to get a return. They're starting to turn off the money's bigot. I don't really know. Have you heard anything, J? I had a chat with the CEO of WAMP earlier this year because they just launched the 3D printing service. And I was like, oh, let me learn more about that. And I think I did a short video for them to-- or I did a full blown tutorial on WAMP on school motion. And one of the interesting stories was she said that the web 3D thing was basically a side thing because what they really wanted to do was become this 3D printing service, which was interesting. So the 3D printing thing was something they wanted to do all along where they can prefab stuff and make it really easy. So what's really cool is if you don't have to buy a 3D printer, if you don't want to get into resin and deal with chemicals and stuff, you can basically using the service. Build your 3D model and port it into the WAMP browser app. And then you basically prep it for printing. And you send them the file you press print. And then a week or so later, you get your 3D model, like your 3D print-- It's awesome. --physical 3D print in your hand. So I think it's really cool that they're making that 3D printing accessible. I can see that they're trying-- we don't really work in this world. But for prefab or testing prototypes and stuff, it's a really easy way to get that in your hand super quick and super affordably too, because otherwise, you're paying some company in China. And you have to do the barrier to entry to just create a mold is super expensive. So if you're into 3D printing, I would give WAMP a spin. But yeah, I think they announced the animation features are coming soon too. I think it's a fun app to mess with, to create 3D models. And they got the little WAMPy blob modeling thing. And basically, I think it was a project neo from Adobe's kind of ripping them off in that respect to-- because you can kind of-- it's almost like modeling with clay and things just kind of doop and blend together. So it's a super fun app. But yeah, as far as MoGraph goes, it's still super niche, I would say. Yeah. It seems far more like a toy, you know, for like professional art or something like that. It's interesting. I didn't know that that you had that conversation. And now it kind of makes a little more sense because feature-wise, it didn't seem like they were aiming at, like, you're going to be able to use this in like video games and 3D projects. It is really-- what's the technology? It's called signed distance fields, SDF modeling, where it's somehow different than hard surface modeling, where it mushes things together and then calculates a mesh around it, which is cool. And you can get more organic stuff a lot easier. Yeah, I think I've said this before on the podcast. But like, you know, EJ has a 3D printer. And he turned me onto that one. I bought it for my son last year. This year, he doesn't know yet, because Hanukkah hasn't happened as of this recording. But we got him the four color material system for us, and I can print multiple colors. But I've tried to get him into modeling his own stuff, because he mostly just prints things that already exist. And 3D modeling is really hard. Womp is not hard. Like, you can make something with Google AI's and two little legs pretty easily. So that's kind of cool, actually. And I think that's one of the things that maybe people that don't follow the way businesses get started sometimes. Like, it can be weird when you hear stuff like that. Companies like Womp that raise millions of dollars. A lot of times they start with a vision. That vision is secondary to get the investor's money. And so if it turns out this isn't actually the direction that's going to do that, they pivot. And we've seen that a lot. Like, Laudie Lab has investors behind them. And they went on this side quest to try and make an AI auto animation thing for Figma. This terrible. It's awful. It's completely unusable. And I say that with all love to the team. It's just really bad. And trying to do some other stuff with AI. And I suspect a lot of that came from an investor saying, hey, what are you doing with AI? Hey, this thing's like not-- we're not really-- we're still burning a lot of cash on this thing. So maybe there's something going on like that with Womp. Speaking of modeling. So we'll talk about the two modeling tools on the list. And this is another one you turn me on to, EJ Nomad Sculpt, which I got into this year. Dude, I love it. It's so fun. Talk about Nomad Sculpt a little bit. I don't know if it's updated this year, but I think some of those things a lot of people don't know about. And it is infinitely easier to learn than ZBrush and fun and get you into modeling. Yeah, it is super fun. This past year, they added a lot to the UI. So it's a lot easier to access things. And I believe they have a-- I can't remember when they added it, but you can do UV unwrapping and stuff like that. So they're slowly trying to create parody of ZBrush is on the far complexity end and power end in Nomad's on the lower end of-- it's not very powerful, but it's really easy to use and can do a lot and has really great sculpting tools. And so I think Nomad's trying to add new brushit, you know, sculpting brushes and stuff like that. But yeah, it's so easy to use. It's got, like honestly, I'm surprised that ZBrush for iPad doesn't function like NomadSculpt because what NomadSculpt does, and probably why it clicked so easy for you and for a lot of people that maybe are familiar with Cinema 4D is it has a very similar object manager to Cinema 4D where you have no object, and you can group objects underneath that object, and that's a group, and you can move that stuff around. And so it's so much easier, like ZBrush, you can't do that. If you want to, you can't create groups together unless it's destructive, or if you want to select multiple things, it's like click this button and then click this, and then it's a temporary group, and oh my God. But yeah, I really enjoy NomadSculpt. It got me into sculpting. It got me into 3D printing because before I just, you know, I would pick up ZBrush and my brain would melt out of my ear, but they did just announce that they have a desktop version, which I, it's very, I don't get the get fab, the get hub, whatever the hell, you gotta download the app, like some certain unpacked way and figure it out. I'm like, I don't know. So I think they have like a desktop version that's in beta, but NomadSculpt, I believe, is just like one dude. So if they're not very great at promoting what they're doing or anything like that, but for anyone that wants to get into sculpting, or if you want to get into 3D printing stuff, and you got an iPad, like I love NomadSculpt, for sure. ZBrush 20-pad is getting there, but. - Yeah, I just wanted to call it out because, you know, I'm not, I've never been a 3D model, or 3D is like my second language, like 2D is my first. And sculpting always, especially, I used ZBrush a little bit at my studio, and it, you know, for very specific things, 'cause like it's so hard to, you can't just figure it out, like every, you have to be told how to do everything. And NomadSculpt, also because it's on a tablet, it's just, there's something about gestural sculpting that feels so different than like using a mouse, and you can sculpt and see 4D a little bit. It's got some of the same concepts, but you just don't make the same stuff. As when you're sitting there, and you're rotating it around with your finger while you're doing this with a pencil, and it's just, it's pretty awesome. It's like, it's a totally new discipline to me. I'm not good at it. And you kind of have to think about, it's different than 3D modeling. You don't do things quite the same way. But if anyone's into 3D, especially like 3D artists that aren't using sculpting tools a lot, for 20 bucks, this is like the gateway drug. It's really cool, especially if you have a 3D printer. Because then it exports to GLTF and all those formats really easily too. - Yeah, and ZBrush for iPad, for anyone that uses that, they just this year announced they're adding export for STL, I think for 3D printing too, so yeah, that's kind of on the way. But yeah, it's a good time to be getting into any kind of 3D sculpting, because you have a lot of options available to you. But yeah, no matter. - Yeah, and so the big ZBrush news is the iPad app right, and then, and now they've announced some more stuff for desktop. - Yeah, Z, well, they, yeah, the Z Modeler came to iPad, which is a big deal, 'cause that's one of the things where it's like, yeah, no, it's called Scrape, but you can only do organic modeling. There's no hard surface kind of stuff in there, which, I don't know, I never feel like I need to do any hard surface stuff. But yeah, ZBrush has Z Modeler, and then one of the biggest pieces of news that has been like, been in demand, like the highest requests for probably a decade or longer was what you alluded to, which is ZBrush's UI has to have been, has to be one of the worst, most convoluted UIs in modern applications, and they, ZBrush team announced that they kind of learned a lot developing the UI for the iPad. ZBrush for iPad, and they're kind of taking those learnings, and they're gonna totally re-refresh the ZBrush for desktop UI UX, so that's super exciting. - But my understanding is that like, I never remember where I saw this, there was like a discussion about it, but my understanding is that they will let you, at least in the first iteration, switch between the two UIs. - Yeah, 'cause there's a lot of people that, you know, they learned how to do things the hard way, and Goddamn it, don't you screw that up. - They have a 20-year history of giving away updates for free, so they're gonna have people who've been using it for, whatever, now there's no more free updates, which is one of the many problems that you have when you get acquired by a publicly traded company, you just can't do that anymore. So there's laws actually that, like, we can get into it, but there's laws that, that's why subscription is such a better deal. - Yeah, yeah, well, when we get to the AI thing, I think we'll probably come back to that idea of, I learned to do it the hard way, and now it's easy, I'm mad. (laughing) We'll get into that. - All right, so that's most of the software that I feel like I probably cut, like, five or six from the list, 'cause they, you know, just weren't used enough, but God, there's a lot of software. I bet next time, this time next year, there's gonna be more to talk about, maybe autographs out. So we're gonna talk about some industry news and trends that's gonna lead us into talking about the economy, which is gonna lead us into talking about AI. So this is gonna be a little bit all over the place, okay? But these are just some things that I've noticed that people have said to me, some interesting, you know, things that happened this year. So one, and we'll talk more about this in the economy section, but this is one of those things that I think most artists that, you know, maybe you work at a company or maybe you're freelancing, you've got your clients, you don't really think about this stuff, but this has been a trend for decade plus now, which is add industry consolidation, okay? So sounds really boring. So basically what that means is, like I remember coming up in Boston, where you had like four or five big ad agencies and a couple of those were worldwide, meaning they had New York office, London office, right? And then you had a bunch of these tiny ones, right? And so what would happen is you had all these different kinds of clients you could work with. You could work with the big one and they'd pay you a lot, but you know, they'd beat you up and all that kind of stuff. You go work with the small one, they always had less money, but they were friendly or more fun to work with. Maybe they'd give you more creative freedom. And there's just been this trend and it's not just in advertising, it's in a lot of things, of consolidation. You've got larger ad agencies swallowing smaller ones, you've got holding companies like Publisys acquiring, like big ad agencies. And so now you've got these ad agency conglomerates that maybe like take up 10% of the ad agency world, right? Like for one company. And so what does that mean for artists on the ground doing work? Okay, so these are some thoughts that we got from some of the guests that we asked to contribute this year. And you know, these are studio owners, these are people that work with freelancers, like they're experiencing the effects of this and reporting back to us. So we can tell you this is happening and then later on we'll talk about like kind of what to do about it. The biggest trend, and this came up a lot, is that artists, especially older ones, you're trained to spend weeks perfecting one thing, right? That's kind of like the old, that's how we're used to working, right? I remember freelancing and spending a month on one commercial and just dialing in everything and really looking at the details and you're on render version 27 of this shot, right? And now it seems like there's a trend and this is what I'm being told, and I don't think this is a surprise anybody that now it's more like we need hundreds of good enough variations of this thing. And so this term was, this kind of like broke my brain a little bit. The craft focused mindset becomes a liability rather than an asset, right? So if you're the kind of person that loves to nuance over the details, there's still work like that out there. There's still prestige projects. But even studios like Serovsky, Aaron's on his podcast, you know, they've done Marvel movie, main title sequences and they're being asked, can you, the quality doesn't need to be that high, can you just make more of it? - Hi, I'm Aaron Serovsky, owner and creative director at Serovsky. The big holding companies are continuing to like gobble everything up. And I think it's a big race to some end that has nothing to do with creative. It has to do with the AI bubble and media buying. So also like what is even media buying anymore? I know that obviously people make a lot of money doing it, but everything is so dispersed. It's very hard to create creative that is going in so many different places in so many different ways. And as a result, we've really seen the diminishing of really big brands. We've seen total shift from like brand popularity to personality popularity to people being popular. And I think just as an industry, we're going to have to kind of watch it implode. And what I think will happen as a result is that there will be like a real rise of kind of old school agencies, the independent agencies that develop personal relationships with brands and clients and really make them be able to stand out in what is a very average landscape of work and communication about brands and their personalities. So while I think we're watching a massive implosion, I also think there is an amazing amount of opportunity for people to like develop relationships with brands, with like CMOs and key figures at brands to do creative work that really stands out because the work across the board that we're seeing come out is like aggressively average or below average. So I'm curious, EJ, if you're hearing anything like that from your studio buddies, other artists, are owned as this track with you, I mean, I don't feel like this is a new trend, but it came up a lot from our guests this year. So EJ, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, I would, I'm wondering what change, because my skepticism with all of this is the good enough. And I see that it's like maybe for internal stuff, but like I've never met a client where good enough is good enough. It's always got to change this one thing, got to tweak this. Can I see, like I've seen the, like I need a variation of XYZ. Can I see that, like I could see that's where AI could help out a lot. The only way this makes sense for me is if the client understands that things are much cheaper to do. And so they're not willing to pay to get that higher end thing, but also on the other end, my client experiences, they don't give a shit if they're spending $600 or $6,000. They want the best goddamn thing you can make. And good enough was never good enough. So that's my big pushback with all the AI can get it good enough, which the clients, or the clients just not have the eye for it, where maybe AI looks like shit to us, the trained artist's eye, but to them actually does look good enough. And is that the missing piece? Or is it not the clients at all, but is it the people consuming it outside, the, you know, who's watching it, like that. And it came back to this, talk about last year was like, is what we think is not good enough going to be just totally fine. I mean, I see what my kids watch on YouTube and I realize that like I can't get them. It's really hard to get them watch narrative of any kind, but they'll watch, you know, a guy screaming, playing a video game and it's like, that's good content. So I'm even knowing that. Well, so maybe here's a way to kind of like think about this, right? So what my mind goes to is when I was freelancing kind of like if I guess the peak of my freelance career, you know, I would do these projects that were internal videos for Bank of America through an ad agency that like maybe 50 people at the company we're going to see. And they'd spend $30,000 on it and they'd beat me up over the transitions from, and it was fully animated two minute long thing with voice over and music and sound like everything, right? And like, you know, the work wasn't award-winning, but I put a lot of work into it and it was way more high-end than I imagine those jobs kind of look like now. And the, I guess the market force that we're being told is driving this is added industry consolidation, right? So when you're a solo ad agency, you want to make money, but there's also this big drive to win awards and to do work you're proud of and to give your juniors a chance to become seniors and do things to push them when you're owned by a holding company, you're a line on a spreadsheet, right? Now that's kind of the very extreme like story I could tell about this, but you know, that trend has just kind of been continuing and I think that you know, this kind of leads into our AI discussion later, but we also heard from a lot of people that AI is not a capable of making good enough stuff all by itself, right? Like it can be used and is being used by 100% of people we talk to to try to help do things faster and maybe even scale creative variations a little bit because you can do that now. But the perception that the bean counters have is that shouldn't this be cheaper now, shouldn't we be able to get five versions of this for what we paid for one version last year? My name is Peter Trudeson. I'm the ECD director and co-founder at Laundrie based out of LA and yeah, also by night digital artists 3D enthusiasts and maker of all kinds of colorful things. We see this come up over and over and over with AI. Listen, it's always a game of like do a lot faster and cheaper than any other time with or without AI. But with AI in particular, what we have seen is that I think people think that they can do it faster and cheaper. They try, they convince clients to it's not great. It looks very AI. It doesn't get over the uncanny valley, but they can't fix it. We get a lot of calls like that and being like, hey, we want one of this other vendor of the AI. It's it's, but now can you can you make it good or the other and the really the big misdower and we hear it from agencies and we experience ourselves is that AI doesn't save you time or money. Maybe five or 10% of you're lucky, but often it costs a lot more and takes a lot more time. And so this trend so that there's another kind of insight here for prestige artists. And I would imagine, you know, those are the people that like the names, you know, the aerial coast as people like that, who've probably avoided most of this so far. You know, the entire value proposition is excellence. You're going to hire me. I'm a cost more than the other person. You're going to get something excellent, right? You could submit this to an award. It's going to make you look really good. You know, yeah, your profit margin won't be as high on this project as if you hired somebody else, but you know, you want that quality. And now I think PJ said something like the market is actively selecting for mediocrity at scale. I don't think he said it exactly like that, but like I've heard that from enough people now where I'm like, OK, I guess this is kind of a thing. Now I suspect this is really impacting legacy motion design vendors who are used to being able to like really craft award winning stuff and all of that. And now it's just another marketing channel, you know, for these big brands and the holding company that's paying for it wants to pay less. So I don't really know, you know, where I'm going. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. It's funny. There's like thing that went through my head just now is like where you know, you say you can have it. You can have it fast. You can have it cheap or you can have it. You can have a good, you know, good. But one of those you pick two, you can't have all three. And I'm like, and then like, well, it turns out that they want it fast and cheaper. Like, oh, really? Yes, you want that. Yeah. That's not what I want to do. Yeah. I don't like like the used to one of three. They used to insist on all three, even if you secretly you were only giving them two. But yeah, it sounds like you're making them choose, but now you're making them choose. They're like, yeah, it seems like they're choosing, you know, yeah, I mean, the two, you don't like at least one of the ones you don't expect to exist. Yeah. So I know that this is very unevenly distributed, but like, you know, Serovsky, or no, sorry, PJ from a long time, he said, you know, his budgets are down sometimes 40% right from where the same project would have been last year. And so you can still do it, but something has to give. And so, you know, one thing is the caliber of talent that you can put on it, right? Like, if you have a junior artist, you can put them on it. You can't go higher G month to co-direct the thing. You know, like, like that kind of thing. And it seems like clients are becoming more okay with that. Now my my instinct about this. Okay. And this is this is where I'd love your take is an Aaron, Aaron asked this question. What is what even is media buying anymore? Because, you know, you've got, you know, you've got marketing budget that has to be allocated, right? And when we all got into our career, a significant portion of that would be into videos that would either go on like TV, cable network, eventually the internet. Now it's spread way thinner. You know, I mean, even look at like where school emotion spends money on marketing, right? We we have a lot of like ads we run, right? These little thumbnails ads that run on social media platforms. And for what we pay for those, you know, we could put out two school emotion manifesto videos a year, right? Like an entire badass studio to do it. But that doesn't give us the ROI of having Instagram ads, you know, or Facebook ads. And I think that's that's a big part of it. So Aaron, I'm curious about like, what do you how do you feel about? You know, I mean, really, you've got a finite amount of marketing budget. And for better or worse, if your goal is to get people to buy shit, the beautiful 30 second prestige commercial or 60 second Super Bowl ad cost as much as like, you know, a million impressions of of Facebook ad. So we struggle. I mean, you struggle that every day when you're an artist, you struggle with the idea of producing work that's not good because that's what it's going to take to get it done. But it's it's I always come back to that, you know, that 80, 90, 100% rule, right? You know, the 80% getting at 80% quality is is easy, but getting it to 100% takes twice as much work is getting it to 80%. And you know, when you think about it, like we all, like, there's a lot of anger and around AI that's related to the ethical aspects of it. And a lot of it is about, well, this is crazy. But you know what's funny is that people love re-sharing that kind of thing which costs like a few bucks to make right and they love Re-sharing it because it hits you and it doesn't cost anything to make that for the most part and still have an impact and have people remember something and so There's a lot of that going on which is just that you know if you can get people's attention for a few minutes and It doesn't cost you as much like as as before you made something beautiful and it also only got people's attention for a few minutes Why do it expensively right? I mean, I don't I want to see cool things me personally I want to work on cool things and I want to see cool things but Realistically the whole like just again like what people Where people watch their stuff their YouTube whatever it's not geared towards a high level of quality right so making ads for TV and film you know Something that might show up before movie whatever fine, you know, but I think I think that like there's so much else in the market where you can Put your product or put your stuff that does not need that level of quality. It's just really that simple I think that in general we're seeing budgets go down by at least 40% which is insane because you know Our budgets are our budgets where they have been historically because that money is required to produce that work very few Studio owners have yachts, right? So we're all just normal people trying to make a living as well and pay people well and so as we see like budgets tighten up you'll see definitely studio owners and studios in general starting to tighten the amount of time they could spend on jobs the Level of talent they can put on jobs and you're gonna see a lot more negotiating with freelancers and vendors beneath them and all of that like that come later in the process That's what I mean by but because I look at it as like a process where a pipeline So it is going to be an interesting couple of years. I do hope that the value of our work nudges back north Or we're all gonna have to find a way to position ourselves as super premium and basically to less for more which Is a great idea in theory Well, Joel Pilger kind of has an answer to this And kind of a theory about what this is doing also and basically what he says is that You know and again, this is a trend that's been happening for a while But it really is kind of amplified over the last couple years with like the economy not being great and a lot of uncertainty and then technology kind of headfaking clients like oh, this should be cheaper now Um, and that's this idea of bifurcating the industry right so you know studios that are used to Making money doing really beautiful work for title sequences TV shows commercials, you know high-end corporate videos and stuff like that Those budgets are coming down When someone's coming to you and saying I need a video that I need this video. Please make it right and what Joel calls those is order takers I don't think he means it in a mean way. I mean that was meme all of my career pretty much, right? The people who are who are really Doing well right now right? They're the total opposite. They're buck. So they're saying you have a business problem We have all of these resources anything visual to help you solve that business problem and we can do the whole thing for you Right and at the very least we can come up with an idea for not just the video But the campaign behind the video the making of the campaign Which is also going to be helpful for your social media team and basically Just going more up the food chain to become really and this is like a cliche term But it kind of fits your creative partner Rather than just I'm executing your thing for you. Hello from New York City I'm Joel Pilzer and thank you Joey in School of Motion for asking me to share my perspective Who am I what you need to know about me is for 20 years. I ran my own studio and possible pictures After I exited today, I lead hundreds of studios and production companies inside forum So I have a front row seat to the global Motion economy if you will I see the patterns in real time and then this year Those patterns started getting pretty loud this year 2025 was the year something big happened or should I say continue to happen This is what Ryan Summers and I have been calling the great bifurcation Okay now and its simplest Terms to describe that It's the same industry Same tools basically same economy overall but totally different outcomes On the one side you have studios doing the best work of their careers Landing better clients and actually committing bigger budgets and then on the other hand you have studios and shops watching deals collapse And opportunities dry up Sometimes overnight and many of these shops felt replaced There was a difference that became impossible to ignore Experts got rewarded Order takers got punished Now the studios who thrived weren't the ones with the most Capabilities the most services know they were the ones Who showed up with clarity with a point of view With the ability to translate creativity into business outcomes They didn't wait for direction they gave direction And they didn't service projects so much as they solved problems Now meanwhile the order takers still reacting often still waiting for permission Still competing on craft Don't miss that they felt the squeeze Yes, I don't know if you've if you've talked to anybody or have any insights there But that that's Joel's taken it feels correct to me Well, I mean I feel like you know if you if you have If you've got nothing and you go to somebody who can do everything that you you know rather than have to go to lots of little Places that's going to make that easier first of all there's a level of responsibility that that company then has to take In executing all of that right so like if you're hiring You know you're saying fuck and they've got they got people who are on print who are on every like and it all comes together There's not going to be arguing between the different groups and communication issues like any problem that comes up is like That's their problem and if they want to be a high-end Dender right then they've got to solve those problems and be Nothing but perfect for these these folks who are who are coming to them with a lot of money So the rest of the people you're going to be like you say there's this other part of this this part that's breaking off That is probably more of the industry right um which is just lots of little things I need to get done You know the the I too was an order taker so I don't have a problem with that I you know like that's how I Tell I paid my bills and I enjoyed it actually because I actually found that like I liked Jumping from project to project. I don't think I honestly. I think if I had to sit on a with a client most of the time I usually end up hating them by the end of it because they're like because of the people who are so picky they want you know They want stuff they keep asking because I've once you done like you finished it. They're done like hey. Thank you. Good. That's perfect, you know I mean from screw's a total aside is I worked for I must have been several weeks on an animation of Of like poblano peppers that were dissolving and a stomach it was for for I think it was for a pepto bit small or something And like we just three. He was early, you know like back when he was cheap and like that everybody could do it And we were all working on this thing I was doing particle effects to have the thing coming get dissolved and and I remember The like we did one for America which was hot dog and then we did one for like they wanted also for Mexico So they did poblano peppers and I just remember that the that the person that we dealt with on on the Mexican one His family actually like had like a poblano pepper farm And he was like that. It's not a poblano pepper my families for generations like wow that was like We don't we do that several times until they were happy till it was perfect And like sometimes you're gonna deal with people like that on a long project You just and like you got no choice you're you're there right so I even know that I just remember my experience of working on longer projects I did not love that I preferred like you know come in for a week work on the thing the designers You know you work with a bunch of designers who've already designed stuff get it banged out get it knocked out It's good But again, you're right like there's a lot of people who do what I do then. Yeah, so it's just you know That's work ethic and other things making me more attracted to them But these other companies that these bigger ones that can do this high-end work and also provide all the other stuff Like yeah, there's something to that for sure Yeah, and there's just kind of two intersecting trends. I should I should stress that what I'm talking about here What we're kind of talking about with with Aron and I is like this applies to companies Right if you're if you're a studio and and you know Again, this is the not not a new trend, but it's like if you're a small studio if you're yeti pictures Right, which I believe is two people and probably a group of freelancers they hire all the time um You can your overhead is tiny You can be nimble and you can lean into like I want to do this kind of thing and You know like saying I'm taking an order for this video kind of sells it short That's maybe there's a better term for it, but like if if if if a brand comes to you and says I want a commercial Here's our idea Here's some storyboards our art director did can you flesh this out make this look really great cool. There's still room for that Then you get into like you know 15 person studio 20 25 person studio and that's that really difficult middle mid-size studio and those have been Getting a lot of pressure for years, but I think it kind of feels like this year is It is one where it's like starting to really you're starting to feel the cracks Then you get into these bigger companies the bucks in the territories and companies like that that really can handle everything for individual artists There's a different dynamic right so for an individual art You can be an amazing Houdini artist and get plenty of work and do what you're told to do by the VFX Super or the creative director or a director whoever you're working with, right? Like that's still a thing. But with this economic pressure and there's also uncertainty which we'll talk about in the next section. What I'm also hearing is that what companies want? Studios maybe it's a little bit different, but for like a company if you're gonna go work at a Google or you're gonna go work at Apple or you're gonna go work for an Oracle like any company you could think of that hires creatives They really want you to be a generalist. That's ideally what they want. They want What they really want is unicorn. They want someone that's like amazing at design who can animate also Comfortable and Figma can maybe whip up a UI if they need to it's not their specialty. They can make an interaction thing and Rive if they need they can also animate something for us in After Effects and You know like from the beginning that's honestly kind of what we try to build at school motion is we try to build generalists because Even 15 years ago I was a generalist like with half the skills that I just listed And that really set me apart just being able to do multiple things and plug into more places and now It's that on steroids, right? Because you know the companies that are bigger and doing more They don't want to hire a specialist for every single thing not just for costs But also because coordination costs gets really kind of gnarly So yeah, so EJ I know like you You talk a lot to artists you go to a lot of events Like what are you hearing from like freelancers and people like that about you know What they're trying to do to just kind of stay busy? I think there's just a lot of just anxiety over Because it's it's it's what do you like what software do you learn right like because there's so like we just went through the software Section and it's like expands exponentially every year. So there's there's stress about what do I even need to learn to be attractive Where the industry is going like It's not great to hear that like some of the top people at some of the top studios like they don't even know what the hell's going on either so But there's the anxiety with just tool choice and then put on top of that the bulking Hulking question of you know, what what do I what do I do with AI should should I use it if I do how do I feel about that? How do I use it in a way that's Authentic to them because I think where you're having a lot of Just like bad vibes overall is just the you mentioned earlier. What's the stuff that Got us into this field and I feel like slowly increasing acceleratingly quickening The things that we love about this job are kind of being stripped away You know we're becoming less and less attached like we're not allowed to you just mention about how Good enough is good enough, but sometimes like we love the process right like we love tweaking things and making it the best We possibly can if we're told like actually it looks like it looks like half-ass but that's fine Like we're not gonna feel proud about that like so I think there's just a lot of There's the what we love to do as artists. It's more of like a very just like philosophical artistic Probably like thing that people are going through and like I feel that a little bit just working here and talking to people all the time I can only imagine like you know in the trenches like just like real identity issue with like what the hell Not like what do I do but sometimes it's like what the hell am I even doing here anymore? Like we talk about like there's industrial revolution and duttered-ah but like we've never seen the ground shift as fast as Even two years ago when we thought was moving fast with like the first time we ever saw Sora Like we thought that was like holy shit and you look back at that is like that was garbage. That was nothing Yeah, so I think it's just people are just trying to Things are moving so fast people are just trying to figure out what to do and these top level things like I don't even think people are even Realizing what's going on with like the top level like studio and the ad agency consolidation I think people are just so focused on like what the hell do I do? So that's what I mean I think that that I think you know talking about that sort of separation of bifurcating that there is this thing where You know with each change first there was you know hand-drawn animation right and like that took a like that took a talent right that you that that It's very hard to master right and and then we had you know 2D animation that was digital Which you didn't necessarily even need to be able to draw but you had to have good taste and be able to like You know set up like draw on the app at like there were tools that would help you do that and that made you know like or motion design right suddenly Like things that you used to do by hand or with real film you could do in animation and that took a bunch of people in Knocked him out of the industry but a lot of but it really did open up the field to a lot of other artists who maybe were not as Talented in those areas, but still had other talents and we saw that then with 3d You know I've heard from people who work in studios that transition from the transition from like 2D to 3D or whatever Or just from work traditional methods into 3d that people could not make that they mentally couldn't do it But again, it wasn't like the quality of their work lowered It was like they had a whole bunch of they had like a whole bunch of new talent come in and do that And I do think that for the first time we're seeing you know with obviously So I'm forgetting cheaper for sure has always been a thing that is made possible for people to to like at least use the tools But I think that like look we're gonna get to AI But you talk about that coke ad and you realize that that the end result was not nearly as good as what's been before and People were oddly okay with it, right? Like I I mean the artist community certainly wasn't but not like and we could say part of it It was because they felt threatened by a part of it is like frankly that thing is a pile of yeah Like there's so many things wrong with it that like and I had to like have conversation where people were like You're wrong you don't understand AI. I'm like no, there's wheels missing from the truck We could talk about this to the end time about whether AI is a tool or not But it's missing the freaking wheels from the truck like that's not and you know or a squirrel just lost its tail in that shot like that's weird Right, but it's most of the audience is like oh that's fine. So like yeah We're suddenly seeing that like having the end result be good is not as important. It really is not and that is that is a Little bit of disappointment, but it's not for everybody that that's case But it's definitely making room for people who don't necessarily have the talent or the taste To do something awesome, right? So you know, I think that's new that's new It feels really new essentially in professional spaces to me all right So we're gonna sit we're gonna save the rest of this topic for the AI section because I can feel it's pulling us in It is it is I get it let me just quickly be kind of like the the the positive counterpoint to Because I think that Anytime there's a big revolution like this and I talked a lot about this in my Portland talk Like it's if you're being intellectually honest you have to say yes There are winners and losers for sure, right? Like and so there will be this time too Whether we're talking about AI or add industry consolidation or middle, you know mid-sized studios getting squeezed anytime something changes There's pain and then someone else Capitalizes right what I'm hoping we can do and in the economic section, you know Joel has a lot of advice Haley has a lot of advice Justin Cone has a lot of advice The trick is you try to figure out what this rhymes with right so yeah the AI thing is happening very quickly But also like the the technology is developing very quickly The application of it to what we do day to day is not actually changing that fast and You know I've actually started arguing with people in the YouTube comments about AI because I'm at the point where You can hate it for whatever reason you want and and your reasons are valid, okay the ethics of it It uses too much energy whatever it is I'm at the point where it's like look. I just want people to who are willing to like change and take a risk and take a leap of faith I want you to succeed and you're gonna use AI like it and by the way again 100 people 100% of people have talked to not 99 100% are you ready? I Scribe a comment that you got that was something like I really wish you would stop using the AI for those dumb jokes And first of all that's exactly what AI is perfect for right now. That's the best case. They're right Yeah, yeah for those five seconds on jokes and you're like I will not stop Yeah, no, I'm not Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I think you know what what I would hope people take away from this is you know Going through something like this and you know for what it's worth like I went through this in 2008 there was like a big crash You know that was very scary totally different kind of dynamic to what's happening now This isn't really a crash This is more like whoa it feels like the ground is shifting and at the same time like our little bubble is growing at this crazy Rate into things that I we don't know about and there's these new tools right so that it's not just AI It's like there's there's a lot of things going on If you if you look to history, I think that there are answers to this and if you listen to the people who are on the front lines running studios And and you listen to what they're saying there is a way through this come out on top and your career is better than ever And there are artists that had the best. year they've ever had this year. Lots of them. And studios that have the best year they've ever had. And I think it's useful to learn from them. Leant letting, you know, what's the line fear is the mind killer. Fearing all of this stuff is natural, but I also don't think it's 100% necessary. And I think there's just a lot of bitter pills to swallow. Like, you know, I get it. Like if you're if you're used to being valued for the technical ability you spent 20 years developing, this really crazy, horribly complex, who'd anything. And now the AI is good enough to get that. It still needs taste. And you have that taste. And so maybe it's like, wow, maybe I never have to set up like some crazy vex code or whatever what's called. I don't have to do that anymore or I only have to do it 50% as much. And if you can find some other way to get your your value internally from that, you're still making cool shit, right? And it's still about ideas. And I personally think it's going to create an explosion of work in the next few years. All right, we've got a few quick ones I wanted to go over before we get to the economy section. We're going to blast through these. Okay. The mill closed this year. So I just wanted to say it. Poor one out for the mill. That's one of those companies that I just assumed would be around forever without Livasol. It had nothing ironically to do with what we're talking about. Nothing to do with AI. Nothing to do with the economy. It was pure mismanagement, a large company bought it and then went bankrupt and then put a bunch of debt into the mill and basically just had to go away. Now it's come back. There's a company called TransPerfect that I guess acquired the assets or the brand or something. Lots of artists are unpaid and most likely will not get paid for what they were owed and for it's like five figures for some artists. So really crappy ending to the mill. The only silver lining there is out of the ashes. The heist has arrived and a bunch of mill artists went over there and started a new studio and you can go to their website the heist.com. They have incredible work, which isn't surprised you. And I would I would expect that the artists at that studio probably learned a lot from their experience at the mill like the good and the bad and I have a feeling that studio is going to be one to watch. So big news in our industry. I thought this was kind of interesting. I don't really know much about it but there was an executive order to make a national design studio. The president actually made like an order that we should have a national design studio and it's headed up by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebia. So I don't know if like government websites are going to start looking good or something like that. I don't know. I just thought that was kind of interesting maybe like maybe you could point to it and say, oh wow. So design has been elevated in public consciousness. I don't know. That was just fascinating to me. Here's a cool one and I don't know if you know this guy, EJ Ben Frick. Ben Frick, awesome 3D artist. And what he did, which I think is cool, is he designed and launched a keyboard like a physical keyboard. It's absolutely beautiful. It's called I think it's called knob and it's like the I'm not a keyboard guy but I almost bought one. They're pretty expensive but they're like really really cool looking. And I just thought this was awesome because now I have a soft spot for any motion designer or 3D artist or artist that does something entrepreneurial right like like like EJ you've launched like vinyl toys and stuff toys. I mean, you know, you've got that bug in you. Our own you've launched a bunch of asset packs over the years, right? And I just I think that having that vision and that business sense is going to be more important than ever, right? You don't have to have it to succeed in this industry but if you do have it, I think it's easier than ever to do stuff like that. Do you know Ben, EJ? I just know him through being online but yeah, I agree. Like I love like what's really cool about it is and I say this in a lot of my talks is like we don't we we so often undercut the skills we already have and don't understand how how much value we have that applies to other industries whether it's making products or something. Like if Ben just had the idea for a keyboard, he would have to hire himself three different times like 3D design it like make the ads for it, you know, make the website. So like these are yeah, like these are all things where like if you want to talk about glass half full, it's like we we actually have a lot of these skills that like AI prompt bros don't have and I don't think they ever will because I don't think they give a shit enough, you know, because it's hard. This is the super part. AI prompting is easy. So like even me personally like I know a lot of illustrators that make vinyl toys and they can't they have to hire a 3D artist for that. So even for myself, I'm like, you know, sometimes I get discouraged, like I'm never going to be a big vinyl toy or is but it's like wait, I have way more skills than some of the people will make it big. Like that doesn't you know mean anything as it's all about the idea and the taste as we keep alluding to. But yeah, like it's really cool to see that. I'm glad I hope Ben has all the success and I love that he's been so like he shared so much about the process. Like he's been working on this for years now. But I think if designers and motion designers have anything to learn from this, it's that we need to recognize the skills we have and how they translate to other places, whether that be a keyboard or a rive or Figma, whatever it is. Like we have a lot going for us. We just artists are notorious for selling ourselves short and the whole imposter syndrome and we need to we need to stop and actually know how much we can apply to many different areas. And that includes all this AI stuff too. You just take a moment for affirmation and say you're good enough. You're smart enough. Hey man. Yeah, I think you're exactly ready Jay. I think you know motion, the motion design toolbox. We take it for granted. You have some you're almost a full stack entrepreneur once you've been in this industry for a few years because you're going to be exposed to osmosis to marketing. And marketing is going to be downstream of a product. And because you're a designer and an animator, you're going to have to develop taste or you won't go very far. And you're going to have to have a pretty technical brain because the tools we use, even something relatively simple, you know, Photoshop, it's still pretty technical. And you put all this together and it's like you kind of have a talent stack that a lot of entrepreneurs would be really really like envious of. And that doesn't mean that to be successful, you have to be an entrepreneur. What I the way I look at it is like there used to be these big obvious doors with blinking lights around it. Here's how you make money as a professional doing this. And it was very easy to say, oh, you want to make money animating stuff in After Effects because you like using it cool. Here's what you do. Now you can still do that. There's more competition budgets might shrink there. There's seven other doors you don't exist. And there's probably 20 other doors that I don't know exist, right? Heratory studio is a great, you know, when we talked about them earlier, it's a great example of like the fact that like they did something and that's how they were doing it. And when that stop being the primary way they found like ways like some ways are obvious like, you know, oh, you go to like, are you doing animation? You're doing like, you want to do visual effects? You do motion, you know, motion design. Some of it's like car interfaces. You're like, wow, like that's just like like a skill that is not necessarily like they, you know, they're going to blaze that trail a little bit. And then, and that, by the way, is also going to make it possible for a lot of other people who have been interested in that to eventually get, because all the other companies are going to want that too. So, you know, they get the work, they do that. And then opportunities open up for other people just, they people become aware of the door and other people want to use the door to get their own skills into their own company and their work. And a lot of that work didn't come from them going after it. It came from them doing it for movies. Real company is going, whoa, that's cool. Can you do that for real? And they're like, sure, well, try. I mean, Ivy Studios, another great example. They, I don't even know if they do animation anymore. Maybe they do, but they're a board game company now killing it from what I could tell. And you might not see a direct path from like motion design studio to board game company, but I see it, you know, like how do you promote a board game? How do you design it? You know, they did a video game before that too. All the skills transfer over and you add one or two more and you're good to go. Okay, two quick things. And then the section is over. This is going to be really quick. One, there's a company called Contra that essentially, it's like a talent marketplace and you can go set up a profiles and artists and companies can come find you. And I'm always very skeptical of these things. You know, I started one with my buddy, Joe called a rollo. And they're very difficult to do. It's a two sided marketplace. Rollo is very narrowly focused on motion design, contrast kind of any kind of visual creative thing. I got to say they've actually executed really well. And one interesting thing they launched this year was a community. So if you go to Contra.com/community, they have what looks like the Facebook newsfeed. And you can sign in and it's free and you can set up a profile. But it's as if they removed all of like your uncles like political posts and the random like having a hard day like, you know, vague posting. Just remove all that. And it's just artists posting stuff. And you know, other people have tried this but Contra is like heavily funded. They've got a great product team, great design team. I gotta say I'm actually really surprised how nice that community is and the caliber of work that's on there. And I think for anyone listening that's like, okay, well, I know the old linear motion design world really well. I kind of want to learn about this new one. It's actually a pretty great way to do that because you've got a lot of UI. UX designers, interaction designers, Rive has a big presence there. They ran a contest this year for like $20,000 in prizes for the best drive interaction. So it's kind of a cool thing. I haven't joined it yet. I'm not like active on there, but I have a feeling if they keep pushing it that in 2026 that could actually start to become a little hangout for designers. Again, I know we're all missing that. And on that same note, you guys remember Vimeo? When Vimeo was cool. Yeah, and you'd go there and they had the artists, the staff picks and you could follow in after coffee. So it's interesting how like certain ideas bubble up in the zeitgeist at the same time. So at the, basically the exact same time. I think within a day or two of each other, two people have announced that they're gonna try to recreate that with a new video hosting service aimed at artists. So one is my friend Tyler Williams for Motion, right? He sold Motionary years ago and he's started other businesses, but he always just had like the soft spot for creatives. And so he started and it's in beta now. It's called framerate, framerate.tv. And it's basically Vimeo, but like the old Vimeo where it's gonna be inexpensive video hosting with a ton of like branding options to customize your embeds, get data about who's watching it, people can comment on it. You can make it look exactly the way you want and put case studies on there. And there's going to be a discovery feed. So you can eventually go there when enough people are on it and find cool work, tagged, curated, maybe they do their own version of awards. I think it's awesome. You can actually go there and sign up for the beta. It may be out of beta by the time this runs, but go check that out. And then like literally I think last night before I was like ready to go to bed, I saw something called the Friendor. It was a LinkedIn post, we'll link to it in the show notes. Exactly same thing. (laughing) Like exactly the thing with really, really nice branding. So there's now two people going after the same thing. So I know, 'cause I kind of previewed your predictions, EJ. And I know that you're always big on community. Do you think this is kind of like that old community feeling? It's like the want is there and it's kind of bubbling up? I don't know. I think, 'cause I'm still in the, I still put up with Twitter to some extent, just because I feel like I've tuned my feed perfectly that I don't get the garbage. And so I haven't really spent much time on anything else, but what I see is that, for example, Twitter, Blender seems like they've got a pretty cool community there. Like I see a ton of artists always posting there, I'm seeing a ton of cool work. Same thing on my Instagram. Like that's where I think it's like the days, like I hope this isn't true and I'm not correct, but I think the days of one central area are over. If you see everyone just breaking into their little niches and that's where they're staying. I don't see people have their reddits and stuff like that. And I think there's actually big reddit communities, people are broken off in their own discord communities. I think people have already found those places that have the right people they want and the people they don't want, they're not there. So I think it's going to take a lot to create something new and bring everyone back together because I think those people aren't the same people and the community is much bigger now. So I think it's already fractured. I think everyone's already found their home and I think it's going to be hard to pride people back. I don't know. I think with video, I think the challenge is going to be is that there is a free place to put video that's infinitely shareable and embeddable and all those things. I mean, Vimeo was, I remember, I liked it like in the day because it was the best content. But the truth is that sharing that video was a lot harder and YouTube just has that. So I don't know. I think it's going to take a lot to get people to commit to it. So see. My take is that, I think you're right, EJ. As far as communities go, I don't think the days of like there's one place where kind of everyone who does this thing goes there. Maybe that's gone. I think from a utilitarian perspective, I just remember going to Vimeo and seeing three or four amazing things in like five minutes, being able to watch them. Maybe I discovered a new studio. I'd never heard of a new artist. And then I go on with my day. And there's, you know, you've got stash, which is awesome. You've got behance, but you know, behances is really spread out. It's not like Sully video. You've got motionographer, which is still around, you know, some of their content's really weird now. So it's a different company now. And there's really nothing. There was something about Vimeo and how just like, I just want to please my eyeballs for five minutes before I start my day and see something I haven't seen before or see an artist I'm unfamiliar with. And I know there's other places. There's Instagram. I don't think YouTube is actually very good for that. So I don't know. - Yeah, for sure. - Yeah. I think there's a spot forward if they can pull it off. I agree it's going to be very difficult. And also it's a very technical thing to build a video host. But we'll see. - No, I mean, I would love it if I had a place that I could go to to find really great work and just really just immerse myself in that. But yeah, I mean, it's going to take people doing it. So, you know. - Yeah. All right, so now let's talk about two really big topics. And I think this is probably like the two biggest conversations that our audience and our crew have had over not just this year, but the last two, three years at least. And that's the economy. And then we're going to talk about AI. And everyone's probably been waiting for that. Okay, so let's start with the economy. So, you know, it's really, I found it very hard to get like what I feel like is accurate data about this. You know, because there's not like a really scientific way to do it. I have a bunch of data points, and then I'm going to ask you guys just what you've been hearing. So, I did two very unscientific polls, one on LinkedIn, one on X. Came up with very serious result, very similar results. And basically what I asked was, you know, how was this year compared to 2024? And 37% on LinkedIn and 46% on X said better than 2024. And then 22% and 17% said the same. That didn't really surprise me. Everybody else said worse. So, you know, the minority of people said it was a worse year. And I think what we've seen is, you know, the high water mark was probably 2021. And then 2022 things started to slow. 2023 was the worst year. A lot of people have had in their entire career. Last year was better. This year slightly better, okay? So, I think that's kind of like the landscape right now. And by better, what I mean is the amount of money that you can earn. And sort of like the overall vibe of how this has felt. - I think it's been an extension of 2024. A lot of uncertainty, technology shifts, economic factors of, you know, we have nothing to do with. We're also watching some industries restabilize from the advertising industry and the tech industry and the entertainment industry. So I would say it's still a little bit chaotic. A lot of peaks, a lot of alleys. But another year of, yeah, just trying to see what the new normal looks like. Yeah, I think that's the big thing that we're all waiting for is to see where all these industries shake out and how the work is gonna shake out from that. - What's the studio again being like, it's been the same as it's past four years for us really up and down the first half of the year was really, really busy. June, July, a little bit slower, kind of August two. And then the fall and going into the winter has been released by the keyword. It's been crazy slam, have a little for a week and then crazy slam. It's just, it's very, very stop of going sudden in terms of how busy it's been. I would say it's different. It's not better or worse in 2004. The project has contained a little bit first. Both terms of the ask stylistically a lot. It's still a lot of out of home. A lot more 3D than even in the past for us. Friends that I'm noticing less AI still floating around. It's kind of exactly where it's been in the sense that like I think a lot of brands are waiting to see what happens, CMOs want, you know, think it can get done for 10th of the price, 10th of the time, but it isn't. But a lot of people are just pausing people being clients being waiting to see where it's all going to go. And but I feel like that that pauses kind of lifting, especially in the back half of 2025, particularly with the trends. I think I'm seeing a lot more, kind of a return to like after effects motion graphics, motion branding, still some 3D of course all over the place. But like type and motion and brands and motion seem like it's having a bit of a surge right now. 2025 was not great. It wasn't horrible either though. I'm creatively, we made some amazing work, maybe some of our best work ever. But on the business side, things were just so kind of stop and start and you could tell that our clients were dealing with a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt, you know. Project timelines were getting chopped up and spread out. Things were getting killed at the last minute. And it was just a kind of a rough ride. rougher than I think anybody wanted or expected. - So I also got a lot of quotes from our guests that contributed and also from a lot of people that commented on these posts. Before I get into that, I'm curious what you two have heard, what kind of vibe you've been feeling, EJ, you talked to a lot of artists, you've traveled a lot this year, talked to a lot of people. What's the vibe out there on the street? - Yeah, I feel like earlier this year, maybe around like NAB time, things were a lot more dicey, I would say. But yeah, I feel like it's just been, and it reflects what we've heard from a lot of the guests is it's just been really choppy. I think there are some instances where like specifically, like I talk to Windbush all the time and I wonder how much his story is becoming more and more common, which is he's had all these clients for years and years and years and they're all asking to use AI in the workflow and he ended up having to learn comfy over the past like, couple months to be able to keep pace. And for him, that was kind of like demoralizing a little bit and it's like, oh man, I was good enough this whole entire time and now I'm getting outbid by this kid that knows comfy or AI thing. - Getting squeaky. - And so yeah, so I think that's, I think it's probably the same percentages and stuff but I think the reasons for the worse than is probably a little bit more to do with the AI stuff and what that effect is on the economy and just jobs and budgets and stuff like that. And I've actually seen a lot more people, I feel like this was last year too, where freelancers becoming less and less of a sexy thing anymore for people because there's so much more uncertainty and people are just like a lot of the people, a lot of the artists I know have jumped to a full time gig in-house somewhere because of the at least perceived stability there and at least you're kind of, you know, a little bit more what to expect. - Hey, I'm Hayley from MotionHatch and I help freelance motion signers to build systems in their businesses so that they can make more money, have more free time and work on more fun and creative projects. So I think that the general sentiment around 2023, 2024 and 2025 is that they've probably been the hardest years on record for freelancers and studios. Now, although I feel like it's been very difficult, there are still people out there getting work. I did a poll a couple of weeks ago to ask like right now who is busy, you know, who has got some projects on and who is not busy at all. So from that poll, there was around 650 people voted and 65% either said they were extremely busy or they had some projects on the go. So I think that this tells us that there are a lot of people who are busy right now and probably I think it's getting a little bit back to normal where sometimes you'd be very busy but sometimes you're not busy at all. And what I teach my students is to help them to not have this kind of crazy up and down you have on the freelance roller coaster where you have no projects and then all of a sudden you have too many projects and you can't focus on the business side of your work. And I think it's really important actually that we do focus on the business side of things because when you get your head down on a project and you don't continue with your outreach, continue to post on social media and stay top of mind with your past clients even and new clients. What happens is then the next time you finish up project you won't have any work lined up. So I think it's really, really important to build systems around the things you need to do in your freelance business for example, doing client outreach. The best way to do that is to have a CRM which is a client relationship manager. What that helps you to do is to know when to reach out to your past clients for example, when to try and move people more closer to working with you who maybe you've had a conversation with or you've met a conference. And then finally how to turn the people that you already know into advocates or fans of yours so that they can help you to get even more work, get more case studies and testimonials which obviously helps you to get more work. And I think the problem is a lot of freelancers and even studios don't have systems around some of these key things in the business. - Yeah, I mean, I would say that by the way, I personally when I was working freelance I really enjoyed that ability to jump from think to think my wife definitely did not enjoy that at all. She, when I was in house somewhere she was much more comfortable and happy. I totally understand that. But it's like, you know, like a lot of times you get very complacent when you're in house. So like I like sort of having the challenge of doing new things but yeah, there was, there was, you know, especially earlier in my career like it was super dicey and you know, if you wanna know what I've heard from people, it's really interesting because I've had a lot of people come to me asking me to help them find artists for projects, right? But on the other hand, and I recommend like a lot of it's unreal which is, you know, I have a few people that I definitely can recommend. And then like a lot of people I know are struggling. They're trying to, you know, they're looking down, they feel like they're looking down the barrel of a gun. And it's, it doesn't, you know, I wanna say that AI is part of it but I don't know how much of it it really is yet. I know that there's this expectation from studios that it should make things cheaper and whatever. But I think the reality is not necessarily there yet. So I don't know what's happening. I can't say but I just know that there are people I know who are definitely feeling the heat. And then I know that there are people who are looking to hire people and can't even find people that have the skills they need. - Yeah, so I, my gut on this, and I've been thinking about this a lot because this is like, you know, our conversation on AI, I think is gonna be really fascinating. But, you know, that's a little bit more speculation and trying to connect the dots. This, it's like we're living in the middle of this and everywhere you look, you could find a different reason for why things are the way they are, right? So, you know, EJ, you mentioned AI, like I know that that's having some pressure. But I feel like the way it's doing that is probably by warping client perception of what's possible in certain time frames. Like that's kind of created this reality distortion field when a client hires an artist or a studio and they expect that now the thing that used to cost whatever 150K, maybe it's only half the price and they can do it twice as fast because AI, right? And so I think that's like a perception thing. There's also a bunch of just macroeconomic stuff, right? Like, you know, we had a crazy bubble during COVID and companies were hiring like this fast as they could, interest rates were zero. I mean, there was like all these things that, you know, most of the time like artists are just not thinking about. And those things trickle way down. So like since the heyday, you know, if you remember back then, school motion had more than twice the full time staff that we do now, right? So, and we're not alone in that. So a lot of companies have had downsize like not a little bit like significantly to correct for the economy just kind of coming back down to earth. And I think when that happens, marketing budgets tend to get like locked up pretty quickly like things that you can reduce costs with, tend to have reduced costs. And then on top of that, a bunch of artists get laid off. Now there's more freelancers out there making more, so I think like some of that is probably a huge part of it. And I also think too, this I think is the overall thing, this is my core thesis is that the way motion design is positioned is very different now. And the way clients are looking at it and what they're looking for is different. And you know, like most of it, like I don't know that many freelancers who are in their like early 20s, right? And I'm sure they're having a different experience than most of my friends that are my age. There was a way that this career worked and that freelancing worked. And that's just changing, right? And so the scariest thing you can do, and we just did this this year, right? So you guys got to see this up close, is like the thing that we have been doing that worked so well, I'm sensing it's not working anymore. Let's try a risky new thing and hope that that works. And that sucks. Like I mean, it's good in a way, but it's also just terrifying. And I think a lot of artists are feeling that too. Like, you know, if you're a cinema 40 artist that was hired specifically because you know cinema 40 well, and you're getting storyboards from someone, you don't have to do the design, you're just kind of executing and maybe technical directing. I know there's still a lot of that work out there, but there's also a lot more people out there that can do it. You may need to, you know, if you want to stay as busy as you were, you may have to expand your skillset, you may have to learn a new tool. You know, I mean, there's just like a lot of factors. So I don't know, I'm just gonna throw that out. I think AI is probably 20% of what's going on right now with the economy. I think it's mostly just company still puckering, you know, like trying to hang onto their dollars. There's also, I'll throw this out one more thing too 'cause it actually came up. Serovsky, Aaron Serovsky mentioned this that there's a ton of uncertainty with the economy period. Like, you know, what's gonna happen with tariffs? You know, tariffs like motion designers aren't directly affected by tariffs, but their clients aren't. And so that's a big question mark. Are rates gonna get cut in, like are they gonna stay low, are they gonna say higher, they're gonna come down? And all of these things, so a lot of bigger companies are waiting. And so who knows, maybe next year, everything's amazing, but right now everybody's waiting, and so that slows down work. - The other bucket, macroeconomic uncertainty. Now I don't wanna over index on how important the US economy is here because globally, there's a lot of nuance going on, but with tariffs in the United States, and with just a lot of kind of like fast moving, political and economic changes happening in 2025, it created, I think, a kind of chilling effect across a lot of the creative services industries, because it made it hard to forecast, what was gonna happen, and how much money our clients should spend on creative and marketing, and advertising, and branding, and all those things. So there was just a lot of playing it safe, and kind of a wait and see attitude with a lot of things. And that's not great, usually, it's not great for creative, it's not great for business. I think it's gonna continue in 2026 to be out of, I don't see any reason why that's gonna change. - You know, there's also been this push to bring people back to like a location, like to office and office, and that means that a lot of people, the work is not available to freelancers when they're not in location. And I noticed because I was actually, when we talked at CBS, I mentioned that I had a friend that worked there, and she ran one of the animation departments, I ran into her the other night, and she was telling me that the company is really pushing hard to have people come back to the office, and the artists are pushing hard back. But we met one of the animators there, lived in Mexico and works for CBS, and does it work from Mexico, and another one was like, "How'd I get two hours, three hours commute to get in just for our training session?" Like, I don't know how that's gonna work. There's a lot of people who, I think that work is not available in some cases to people because now where it used to be, you could just go online and work remotely, now that's not as much available. - Yeah, that's a good point. That's been a big debate. Like, I follow a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, people like that, especially people in Silicon Valley, like those startups, and that's become a really big debate in the last two years. And, you know, by the way, I forgot to mention that you guys have to move to Florida, we're doing that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - We're sure we'll take the snow, I'm good with that. - I'm worse to worst things. - Yeah. You don't have to shovel heat. Yeah, no, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, like, school motions been remote literally since day one. I'd never, ever thought, "Oh, we'll get an office, and everyone will move to one place." And, you know, if I'm being like intellectually honest, like, there are trade-offs to that, for sure. You know, and you have to, and you have to work a certain way to work with a remote company. Like, you can't manage the same way, you can't project manage the same way. We've tried that in the past. It doesn't really work. Everyone's in different time zones. And, you know, people work from home for different reasons. But part of that is the flexibility, especially if you're a parent. You got, you know, you're juggling your family and stuff. And to then reverse that, I'm not even sure. I mean, there are companies doing it, but typically there's a lot of attrition. You have to reorganize how you do your operations and all that stuff. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, that is interesting. I didn't think of that as like a factor in the economy, but, you know, people did kind of disperse during COVID when work from home became okay for 100% of companies. And now, I think a lot of companies are like, "Well, we're not really set up for that, and we're losing productivity. We need to get everybody back." - We've been productivity, and they're also spending the money on the look. Like, you know, CBS, and we were there. The floor was empty, man. Like, I'm sure that lots of floors are like that my wife, you know, this company, you know, I've seen that too. And it's like, yeah, we've come to like, I've worked remotely for 20 something years, you know, and I felt when COVID hit, I was like, "Come gather round, Trude, and let me tell you how to do this." You know, I was gonna, I was really, for me it was not, it was like, "Oh, it's Tuesday, you know?" But I see, you know, I think there's a certain mentality also the person has to have to be able to work remotely. And, you know, maybe not all artists have that level of focus and maybe more distracted, and so the companies feel like they have to be in because they can't keep an eye on them and their time and all of that. But, you know, I like to think that like, look, you know, people have a job to do, and if they get it done in an expected amount of time, that they're doing what they need to do, but, you know, companies or companies. - Yeah, so I think, you know, I wanna try to give some advice and some of the guests, the contributors for this, have advice to give, but I think in general, you know, like a really big kind of thing that's happening is, and we've talked about it already in this conversation, motion design used to mean a certain thing, and there was a pretty clear cut, you know, one or two or three roads you go down to kind of find your way in this industry. And, there was this big run up in the COVID days of like, everybody realizing, "Oh my gosh, like, we need more animation, "more animation," and there's like infinite money in this field now, and we get all these new artists, some amazing ones, and new studios that spring up, and so, and then when that bubble pops, now you've got way more people, and so at the same time, you've got more competition, you've got more noise on social media, like competing to like get clients, and then on top of that, all of the, like everything's changing all at once. It's like that movie, everything everywhere all at once. It's like, not only do you have that, but now you also have every tech company on Earth wants animation all over everything, like on their website and their apps, and there's like 10 different technologies, and they're all still kind of competing, which one's gonna win? And so there's opportunity there, and so some people are capitalizing on that, like Joey Judkins, but the ones that are kind of, I think it's probably the older artists who just been working longer in their way, looking at that and feeling like, "Oh man, am I missing out? "I think there's a lot of FOMO." So let's talk about like what, I think Joel Pilger, he kind of framed this for me in a way that makes a lot of sense, right? So what he said, basically there's two races happening right now, okay? So we just talked about like all the effects, all the things that are happening. What's the result of this? The result is there's kind of two races happening. One is the race to the bottom. Probably don't want to be in that race, but it is an option, okay, if you want that. - It's always existed, man. - It's always there, right? - It's always very cool, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, right? So let's talk about that for a minute. I mean, you've got the way, is what he talks about to be part of that race. It's like whatever you're doing is a commodity. - So let's look at the motion economy in 2025. The work didn't disappear, it moved. Budgets didn't evaporate, okay? They shifted upstream. Clients certainly didn't vanish, but they simply stopped awarding projects to replaceable vendors, and that's a big word there. What became obvious is that our industry now has two races. There's the race to the bottom, low trust, low margins, short timelines, commoditized execution, great craft. I know, I hate to say it. - I do think hyper-specialization, again, disassociating from like, we're a motion design shop that makes promos and makes broadcast graphics and makes title sequences for independent films. I think it's gonna be more about going all the way in on the very specific niche that resonates just for you and works particularly well in your space and allows you to find and define a very particular voice to differentiate yourself from everything that's out there. - And I remember when I started my freelance career, just being good at After Effects was rare, like in Boston where I lived. That's no longer the case in most major cities, and now you've got remote work maybe contracting a little bit, but it's still a thing, right? And so what are you competing on there? And so maybe we can just kind of like, just bat this around a little bit. If someone, and this is what I worry about mostly for junior artists who don't yet have the taste and the skills and the broad skill stack that they need to go up market, they just need someone who needs the skills they have right now, right? And so I'm curious, Aron, you've had a long history career, like what, if you had to start as a young Aron or been withs right now, and after Effects, let's say, you haven't learned 3D yet, you don't know Unreal, right? How do you think that would go if you were trying to compete? Like what are the things you could do to maximize your chances of getting a job, getting booked, if you're freelance, those kinds of things? - Well, I probably switch over to training stocks, by the way, from living, that's just, - Yeah, probably market. - Listen, there's a lot of ways to make money, and this is not the best way to do it. I mean, for sure. - Sure. - Yeah. - But if we put that aside, you know, I would say that there are two things that have always been really helpful to me, and I think still continue to be helpful to people is have a lot of skills, right? You know, like that's always been the thing, like, you know, look, I didn't get into this industry to use After Effects, I got into this industry to animate, and so finding new ways to do that, finding new ways to design and be creative, I would say that 90% of the things, the paths I've gone down, have given me something back that have helped me in my career. Not everything, you know, some of it was like a waste of time, and you tried something, you know, you wanted to learn something, but almost everything, like, yeah, like I got a musical keyboard right in front of me here, that did not, in any way, and all the money has to be done for the insurance. Did not pan out in any way, I thought maybe I could use an animation, but you know what, like, okay, put that aside, and say that my raw career is never gonna happen, and I'm just gonna, but for real, you know, I've always invested myself in, in learning, like always, that's hands down. And I don't just say that 'cause I work for an education company, like I, this is a relatively new gig for me. Like my entire career has been about teaching and also learning while I'm also working because you grow in that process. So the more you know, the more you're gonna have opportunities 'cause that whole idea of like, you know, luck being a thing is really like, preparedness meets opportunity, that's what that is. And I really do, I really do believe that. You know, the other thing, and like, this is just not, kind of, this is not really, it feels obvious to me, but when you do the work, you freaking show up on time, you work hard, you know, you just, like, you put in the work and you actually act like you wanna be there. I don't know what to say, like, how that would necessarily work today in terms of like all the opportunities and the way things are changing, but I would say that like, for me, when I'm still hiring people, even right now, I hire people with occasional jobs, I'm always looking for somebody who's got a good attitude and who just comes and treats it like it's the most important thing. You know, that's, to me, these are like basic things, but you know, it has to be said anyway. I hope that makes sense. Like, I don't, I don't know what you're looking for, man, in an answer to that. Like, I don't know that the advice is to give somebody who's starting out today, other than to just, you know, know a lot, like, learn as much as you can, and then also be somebody people wanna work with, right? - Yeah. - And a lot of that work. - Yeah. - Yeah, I think, it's pretty crazy because, you know, if I think back to, I think probably when we all got in the industry around the same time, like maybe mid 2000s, early odds, was that the early odds? What is that called? It was a lot harder, like, I, there was no grayscale grilla, maybe there was a, there was an R1 with bitter wits and there was a creative cow, I think, and that was about it. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's funny 'cause I saw, Ron Stern talk about how he did tutorials and it was 240 P QuickTime videos and trying to see the interface and stuff. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, oh my god, that was a thing. And now it's just, there's so, everything is so accessible. And from what I see going to events and just, you know, if you're online for a little bit, you can just see there's a flood of young people that know a lot more than I did when I was that age, for sure. And so I think there's no lack of talent, drive, creativity, like the things I'm seeing from coming out, like in school, coming just out of school, it's insane the level of, like, kids are learning blender in high school or middle school. And so I think there's, it's easier now, it's way more accessible and you're seeing that. So I think it's more that there's a lot of talent out there, but it's a lot of self-taught people more than anything else. And I think that's where maybe the disconnect is with, you know, Aaron, you're saying that you have these people that run companies and they're looking for artists. I think there's a lot of them out there. I think it's just there's, there's that disconnect of, maybe these, these kids just don't know how to market themselves. Because that's the one thing that I see a time and time again, like even with our, our, our portfolio reviews, where it's like, you know, look, oh, what are you trying to do? Like I'm trying to get hired and you look at their portfolio and it's like, it's great. Profolio is like, but how do you have an Instagram? And they're like, no, do you post on LinkedIn? No. Well, how are people going to find you? And I think that's, you know, maybe one of the missing pieces there too. Now what I see working for artists in 2025 and beyond hasn't really changed since I started MotionHatch in 2017. It's changed a lot in the way that's different social media platforms we use and different algorithms and obviously that updates on a daily basis and it's extremely hard to keep up with. But what doesn't change is really, ultimately, how you get clients is you build relationships with other human beings. And I think this is super duper important to remember because it's all about relationships really. And when you're networking, it's often, maybe we feel kind of cringey and we don't want to do that. But if we think about like, okay, well, how am I just building relationships with other people and how am I almost just making friends? It really helps you to do it more naturally in a way that works for you. And I think this is really, really important. And the people who are really good at getting clients are just really good communicators and also people who put themselves out there and try and actively build relationships with other people. And also just keeping up with those relationships is extremely hard, like we all know, even from, you know, in our personal lives with our friends at home. It's extremely hard to stay in touch with people. So this is why it's really, really important to have a CRM because it really helps you to keep up with those professional relationships that you build. And you never know where the next project is going to come from and having opportunities where you just plant these seeds every day. So through like posting on LinkedIn, for example, or keeping up with a pass client or even just a friend and keeping in touch with them, like these things develop into projects. Some of them might take years to develop into projects. Some of them might take weeks or some of them might become projects straight away from a new relationship. And you don't know when that kind of seed is going to grow that you planted, you know, that little seed of opportunity that you planted when you kind of reach out to someone or you went to an event and met someone or you, you know, DM someone and LinkedIn, you don't know when that's going to develop into a project. So I think the best advice that I can give to everyone is think about how can I do some of these steps of, you know, working on the business side of things little and often, you know, and having a CRM in a client outreach system really helps you to do that. So what I teach my students, instead of sending like hundreds and hundreds of cold emails once every six months is to actually do these things little and often and also to warm their clients up. And what I mean by warming them up is, you know, maybe potentially commenting on their posts on LinkedIn, for example, and of course, you can't just take a big company or something like that. You've got to think about who is actually the piring person at that company. So for example, for a brand, it could be a marketing manager or it could be a head of video or an exit producer or a creative director or something like that. So it's like, if you see a brand that you want to work with, how can we find those kind of people on LinkedIn? And how can you go and kind of comment on their posts? And it works for like bigger studios too. I was looking at LinkedIn the other day with one of my coaching students and he was saying, "Oh, I really want to work with this kind of famous studio." And then we went on to their posts on LinkedIn and like no one was commenting on their posts. And this is a little opportunity, you know? You can be that person. And it's not just about saying, "Hey, great work, I love it." It's about actually putting thoughtful stuff out there. And people see that and they notice it. And then maybe when you go to email them, maybe that person has seen that comment and then it's not so cold, you know? So I think this really, really helps because it means that you can spend more time building those relationships properly instead of sending hundreds, thousands of cold emails that really everybody hates getting. No one likes getting those emails. So if you can warm your clients up in some way, like building the relationship before you email them about working with them, then this really, really helps. And you can do this, like I said, with direct clients. You can also do this with studios. Well, like if you're the person that is going to the locomotion design meetup and you meet a studio owner, they're much more likely to hire you if you email them after that than if you just send them a completely cold email. And especially, you know, personalizing these things a little bit of these emails and not making them feel, you know, so generic really, really helps. Like I've heard from studios and as before, and creative directors that sometimes they'll get emails and they'll have like the wrong name and everything like that. And it's really, really off-putting. So do you put in that a little bit of extra work and have this kind of cadence of little often, I think really, really helps you to get more clients and really build a successful system so that you don't have these ups and downs in your freelance work. What I think is really important is once you get a client, you should focus on how can you help them to achieve their goals? How can you help them to make their lives easier? You know, because this is all reputational kind of stuff. And your reputation, they will refer you to other people. And we all know like lots of people are getting work from referrals and word of mouth. And I think it's really, really important to think about how can I take care of this client, you know? And it's not about just doing all the feedback they ask for and things like that, but it's just little things. Like if you said, okay, I'm gonna do two rounds of revisions and that's all you get, that's absolutely fine because you're setting the boundaries up front. But when they come close to that two rounds of revisions, you want to be telling them before they get there. So you're kind of helping them to spend less money, you're helping them to solve their problems. You don't have to wait until you're on the fourth round of revisions and then you're like, oh, by the way, I'm charging you for this. Like that's not building good relationships. And it's all about communication. I think that often it's communication skills and these soft skills are kind of overlooked. And everyone focuses very much on, you know, their technical skills, and all that kind of stuff, which is really, really important. But think about, you know, how am I really developing those more soft skills, you know, more communication skills? How can I be, you know, proactive with how I work with my clients? How can I set boundaries? Yes, but how can I also be adaptive and take care of them at the same time? And I think the most successful motion designers, that's what they do. They're really, really good at working with their clients, running their business and, you know, really just taking care of them. And that builds a great reputation, which will get you hired by more and more clients. I've, I just, I got to tell you, like I come back to this thing though, like communication, like I know it seems crazy, is that like I've hired people and they don't communicate with me. I'm like, I'm never going to work with these people again, because like, like it's not even that they take long time to deliver something. It's that they don't let me know how it's going. And it just didn't even occur to them that that's something that they should be doing. And I don't mean to be like this old man who's like, you have to just like these things seemed obvious to me when I was working. Is that like you stay in touch that you that you constantly like, you know, that's it's a relationship that you have when you're working. So that's maybe if you even get the job and I recognize that that is, that that's a thing. But if you ever got a job and then they didn't hire you again, and you didn't say like, I wonder why that happened. Like you should be thinking about that too. You should say like, what happened with that client? Like, you know, clients might say just because they don't want to have a fight with you and say, Oh, you know, things are not great. Whatever. But you see that they're still making crap somewhere, you know, for for other clients. So like, you have to ask those questions and you have to really say like, what is it that I might have not done that I needed to do and always be working to sort of improve your ability to have relationships with people, whether it's the community, like going to events and things like that and really meeting people, or when you're actually in the workplace and working with people and and or, you know, in our case, we're not working in the same workplace, but we're, you know, online and making sure that you have clear communication because that's people just uncertainty is bad for the economy. It's also bad in a working relationship. You just don't want to not know how things are going. Yeah. I don't know if you guys ever had construction on your on your houses or apartments or anything. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And the and the contractor like disappears and like, you know, if you just told you, Hey, I'll be back in three weeks and I'll plug that whole. You'll be like, All right. Fine. But it doesn't do that. You're like, you're anxious and angry. Yeah. I think, um, so what I what I what I've been thinking about, you know, because I would my main concern with all of this, right? Like there's there's studios that are having a tough time. Um, but I think it's a little bit clearer what's going on there. And then for freelancers, you know, we'll talk about that in a minute, but for junior artists, those are the artists that I worry about the most that the people that are trying to get their first job, get their foot in the door, right? Because I think what's happened is there's more competition, uh, there's more marketing channels. There's so much noise. There's all these different avenues. And so it's kind of like the, the table stakes have been raised, right? Like it used to be if you knew, like back in my day, it was like, if you knew Final Cut Pro and After Effects, you could probably get jobs somewhere. Like just know you never mind. Are you a good editor? Are you a good animator or designer? You just do know those two things, right? And now, right? Like, I mean, you know, even like five, 10 years ago, now you also needed some artistic talent, right? So the stakes got higher. And now you might even need some more specialized skills. And the thing that gets talked about a lot in our circles is that stuff. What you're talking about our own is actually how you're really good job, uh, which is like marketing yourself, being a good communicator, sales, God for bid, like thinking like, okay, how do I actually get them? How do I get on their radar? How do I make them like me as a person? How do I stay top of mine? So when they are hiring somebody, like they, you know, uh, they think of me. And so Haley Aikens from MotionHatch has like, you know, she's a whole course on this and, and you know, you could read the freelance manifesto. I mean, basically, I think what would be really good for young artists who are trying to break into this industry is, you know, if you're spending like whatever percentage of time you're spending like getting better at animating or designing or using software, cut that in half. Okay. Still do it half time and the other half of the time market yourself, right? It doesn't matter if you're, if you've never had a real job, if it's all student work, if it's all personal projects, you need a website, you need some social media presence. I think that's just kind of required these days. Like if you're a new artist, if you're established, maybe you don't need that. But if you're new, you need that, you need to be reaching out to people. You need to be connecting, go to MotionHatch, like Haley's, like probably the best person I've ever heard talk about that stuff and teaching that. One thing that I noticed about some of the most successful motion designers and studio owners that I work with is that they tend to be doing something differently to make them stand out. So for example, one of my previous students, Max Phillips, is absolutely killing it now on LinkedIn and also TikTok. And what he's doing is he's actually filming himself talking, which I know is very, very scary. Sometimes I'm still scared of it and I mess up all the time. But what he's doing is he's filming himself talking about the behind-the-scenes process and things like that. And that is helping him to get clients because he really stands out. And also people get to know him and his personality, which I think is great. And he told me recently that he actually got a big US drinks company client from one of his videos on TikTok, which I think is amazing because I haven't heard many people get in clients on TikTok. So I think that possibly TikTok is one to watch for 2026. And I know it can be difficult to put yourself out there, but I really, really do encourage you to do that and to think about, you know, what makes you and your personality stand out to your clients? And who exactly are you trying to help? You know, what specific clients do you want to work with and how can you make content that would be helpful and stand out to them? And so I think that like overall because the industry's gotten so mature, I mean, motion design is kind of a mature thing now, which is weird to say because I'm not mature. It didn't happen to me, but it happened to the industry. Joey, some men grow up while others just grow old. And that's why I dress. Come on. I dress like a child. But anyway, I'm literally wearing pajama pants right now, by the way. So, but yeah, so I think that like the basics of, you know, like if you're trying to get a job in some other, if you're trying to get a job as a consultant or a lawyer or an accountant or something like that, you can't just be good at it, right? Like there's other steps you have to take and you have to get good at those things and applying for a job is kind of a whole skill in its own. And I think motion designers, you know, up until maybe like five, 10 years ago, like you probably could be a little bit of a slacker on that because it was still relatively rare skill and specialized. And it's just kind of not anymore. It's gotten more mature. And so one, another thing Hayley says is, uh, is to niche down. I don't think for a junior artist, that's probably the best strategy, but for a freelancer, niching down might might be the way you differentiate. And it doesn't mean like, okay, I'm only going to work with, you know, medical device companies for companies that make blood-drong devices. Like, doesn't have to be that specific, but you know, it could be like, I work with music brands, right? Like, and you tailor your persona to that. And so that way when you reach out to those brands or those companies or the studios that work with them, you're the obvious pick, even if someone else has just as good of a portfolio as you, because they're not, not specialized. In my case, I specialize more in explosions, right? So when people approach me, they approach me if I want to do shots with explosions in it, because they trust me that I'm going to deliver. And it's easier to market yourself. You know, so I started marketing myself as the explosions guy. And all I was showing were just explosions. People have a very short term memory, right? So give them the least amount of reasons to not forget you, or the other way of saying it, you need to create the best option for yourself for people to remember you. And people will not remember you if you, if you start explaining, oh, I can do this and I can do a bit of that. And I'm also good at animating, but I can also, you know, if you need me to render, I can also render. They're going to be, they're going to be like, oh, that's the guy who can kind of do everything. But if you're the guy who can only do explosions and you specialize in them, then when people need explosions and they're, they're willing to pay way more, they're, you're going to be able to charge a premium because you're a specialized person in that field. It doesn't mean you don't know anything else. You do. You still have to know all the other stuff. You just kind of in, it's a thing I try to explain all the time. It's called a skill stack. So you have a bunch of skills like, like in a video game, right? There's like a bunch of areas where you, you know, a lot of them, but just have one skill stack that's like way above the others and market yourself as that, market yourself on that skill. It's going to be a lot easier. And the other thing is make yourself visible online by you start a podcast, you know, just do do something. Look at people. He was creating one art per day, right? For the longest time. And by doing something like that, people are going to notice and it doesn't even have to be good art, you know? It just has to evoke an emotion and you need to be consistent with it. And it was so simple to remember, you know, people is the guy who makes one art work per day. And that gave him value. And then, you know, he sold the damn thing for like 70 million. And do something like that, you know? Just be creative. You need to become the lighthouse, the magnet to attract others towards you. And when you figure that out, you're gonna be well on your way. - Right, well, I'll say this is the second, when you get the second job, right? So the first one, let's say wherever you nail it, if you say you wanna work in music and then you do that, when you go to work for that second job, you're applying for it, you say I worked at this other company, they know that company too in the space, you know? I mean, I've seen resumes for people that had the names of companies I've never heard of in all sorts of weird startups and things like that, and it doesn't mean anything. Like, yeah, you were an animator for this company, I've never heard of that didn't amount to anything. I don't know what that actually means, right? So people move from company to company, they're very niche and you have these groups that people that know each other, and obviously if you decide you like something and that's where you wanna work, you actually can put the effort to it and then build relationships in that area for sure. And they don't even have to have to have to listen in the workplace, but events for these things too are good places to meet people. I've, for sure, you know, met a lot of people who were, you know, in different spaces, like, you guys might not remember this, but I worked for a software company that made, not medical animations, like you mentioned, but video games for doctors, for periods of helping my friend launch a product. And during that time, and it was really cool, like, you know, I learned a lot of cool stuff 'cause the technology they're working with was incredible. It's got used to run direct exit Microsoft, so he really knows his stuff and he's, anyway, the interesting thing was as soon as I started focusing on the area of this company, 'cause we needed the animators for marketing animations there's a world of people who only do medical animation and like they know each other, and when they can't do it, they recommended the other guy, you know, like that was really interesting to see. Like it was like, there's, by the way, Super Nation, not enough people, that's to the point where they were like thrilled to recommend. I can't do it, but my buddy, this guy can do it. You know, I think picking a space that you're interested in and getting good at can for sure help. Yeah. Being open-minded too is a big thing too. We talked how many times, I think this is tattooed on Joey's chest is like, learn, rive. You know, there's things to niche down as far as, yeah, like specific industries and stuff like that, but there's also, you know, there's so many other ways to, I don't know, maybe it's niching up and just taking your skills and just applying it to another industry, whether that's, you know, learning, rive, or maybe that's simply just being able to do cool stuff quick that's actually useful using AI. Like I know, I have a few friends of mine that, like they really went all in on AI and they are constantly getting gigs because guess what's the hot thing right now? It's that and if you know, if you put that on your resume, that you can do all these things and you're showing that off, you know, on Instagram and stuff like that, on LinkedIn and you're one of the, I don't wanna say, thought leaders in this kind of thing, but you demonstrate that you are one of the few people that are like, yeah, there's a bunch of AI BS out there, but I've actually figured out how to practically, you know, speed up my workflow. In the moment you say you can save money in time for a client, like you're getting hired. So whether that's, you know, getting a new skill and being able to develop for web or app using rive, or it's just being more efficient, like those are the things that, you know, if you're a junior artist, those are the things you really have to be, you know, looking into or Unreal Engine. Like, well, that's what I was saying when I was saying earlier about sort of making sure that you're constantly learning, it's not learning the same things over and over again. Like, expanding is for sure. I've always, I mean, personally, I really love to learn new tools. It's always fascinating to me. Well, partially because I like to see how much of that skill I have transfers, which often so much of it does, but also because, you know, you get new ideas by just doing that. So even if you're like, I don't really wanna learn another piece of software, you may find by doing it that, first of all, you actually love the thing once you get into it and you think differently and it gives you different outlets, but you may also get ideas about how you can bring some of that stuff back to, like, you know, you're working in Rive doing UI animations, is there a way to bring that into 3D and do some cool stuff that's maybe not even for real UIs, but could you, you know, bring that over and create some interesting kinds of animations that you haven't thought about before? It's always, it's like, they always feed each other. So like, always be trying to learn if you can have, if you have the time and you can find it. And let's say, if you're not working, you kinda have the time. So, yeah. So, you said something I think is a perfect segue into the next piece of this. So you're talking about, okay, learn Rive or maybe learn something, but think about how you can bring it up, like into, like, you know, an organization or an industry that they're not even thinking of, right? And so, you've got the race to the bottom, you know, another thing that came up was that, you know, there's this thing that isn't really talked about for obvious reasons, but, you know, a lot of bigger studios when these smaller jobs come in, 'cause budgets are being compressed right now, they'll outsource it overseas, but it's white labeled is what it's called, where you hire, I won't use any real names, but you hire like an A-list studio. It's actually a company in Indonesia doing it, and they're kind of creative directing it from, you know, LA or New York or wherever they are, and paying them, you know, probably a quarter of what they would charge. And, you know, it kind of feels gross when you think about it, but also it's like, well, what's the alternative? Like, if you're an LA-based studio or Chicago or something like that, there are certain budgets, you just have to say no to, because you can't make money with it, but when the big budgets aren't coming in, well, you gotta do something, right? You gotta pivot. So that's the thing that's happening too. So, what EJ was talking about, it made me think of, okay, the other race you can get into is the race to the top. It's basically, you know, if you compare it to like, what you're doing is a commodity, you're taking orders as Joel would say, and now you're essentially commoditized, you're competing on price eventually. The race to the top is, what EJ's talking about, where it's like, you're solving a business problem, okay? That like, in the end, and this is something that maybe, everybody who does motion design should just ponder once a year, just really think about that, because that's not how artists think typically, right? Like, none of us got into this to solve business problems. That's not why. All right, I know that's not why I own a gun, and I'm pretty sure that's not why EJ got in. That's not why I got in. You get into make cool stuff, and it turns out that you can abstract away the solving business problems thing early in your career, 'cause that's someone else's problem, that's your boss's problem, maybe that's like the producers problem, or something like that. It's kind of everyone's problem now, right? Because when work is harder to come by, there's more competition. People aren't hiring you to make cool stuff. That's not why. That's, they hope you do. They want you to make cool stuff. That's desired, but it's not why they're hiring you. They're hiring you because they have a story that needs to be told so they can market their thing and sell it and get revenue. - And then there is the race to the top. I trust, I value strategic partnership, and of course, real money. Now inside forum, I watched studios switch races. And of course, the moment they do that, everything starts to change. Now, if you wanted to help with diagnosing which race that you're in, you can DM me race, and I'll get you some answers. Now, some insights from brand direct. This was a course that Kevin rep and I led. Now, Kevin and I spent this year teaching studios how to break into brands directly. And here's what we observed over and over that brands aren't looking for vendors. They're not looking for craft. They're actually looking for partners who can stay with them. Now, when we taught founders, studio leaders, how to reframe that conversation, speak the brand dialect, if you will, and lead with diagnosis instead of deliverables, this unlock happened. And we saw multiple studios inside forum land their first six figure brand direct engagements, not because they added capability, but because they actually added clarity. Now, there's some insights also I'll share from lead flow generator. This is what Ryan Summers and I, okay, took a whole group through several times this year, where we built a system where Summers and I, quietly tested a small group. And the discovery found was really big. That studios don't have a problem generating leads. They have a signal problem. Because the best studios, they're not chasing leads. They were creating them as strange as that sounds. So when they shift this point of view, they tighten their positioning and their messaging, they clarify outcomes, the opportunities, and the connections started coming. And lead flow turns out, is it luck? It's signal strength. All right, so if you're curious about that, of course we chow. Now, there's something also that happened that I learned with my jumpstart students, okay, these are studios that doubled their prices. Yes, I know. In this era, that's wild. They did it by becoming more confident and shifting their identity. They stopped being vendors, they stopped selling deliverables. Okay, so they started selling outcomes and leadership and expertise. You see the theme here? Now, one studio literally wrote, "Hey, we doubled our rates." And our clients didn't blink. That's the power of mindset, okay, if it comes to a place of confidence where you're not just servicing projects, but solving problems. Now, there's another thing I'm really excited about because this year, a big thing we're gonna be rolling out is this idea called sales scout. This is a beta that I'm doing where we're taking studios out and helping them generate sales by collapsing all of the guessing and all of the ambiguity. Okay, it's like this infinite riddle of sales is finally starting to be figured out. What we're learning is that studios are servicing timing signals, okay, they're spotting the warm signals that buyers are putting out there. And if you can see the patterns, you know what happens is sales stops being mysterious, stops being guessing and it's way more predictable. We don't usually think of ourselves as an agency. We think of ourselves as collaborators with clients and this is what they need and want from us. So I think we're gonna be doing a lot more of that in 2026. We have, we're establishing kind of long-term relationships with partners, big brands, you know. The other area for growth is something that we've kind of been steadily working at for at least the last five or six years. And that's just our kind of brand design offering. That is everything from launching a brand new brand, you know, from nothing, to doing, you know, kind of incremental tweaks and adjustments to existing brands and then providing all the kind of strategy and the tool kits and all the things necessary so that our clients can take what we do and then really run with it. I think we have an interesting approach to that because motion is in our DNA, it naturally comes through in all of our brand work. And that's a big differentiator for buck. But I think for the industry at large, there is this growing opportunity, this growing awareness from the client side that motion isn't something you tack on. You know, it's not something that is a line item in your scope of work for a project. It's core to an offering. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of imagining design systems. And so it's great for motion design. I think there is this awareness that motion designers can, in many cases, provide this kind of service. The other thing that's starting to happen more is when it comes to product development, I'm seeing now some kind of like what I would call traditional motion design studios start to flex some new muscles in that space, you know, working on UX and UI. And this is partially, I think also because clients are opening up a little bit more to working with outside partners who may not be the kind of traditional product development partners. I think clients are starting to experiment a little bit more with what does it mean, you know, for a motion design studio to approach a product? How do they approach it differently? We tend on the motion design side, right? We tend to emphasize storytelling and character and delight and surprise, right? So that's what we're experts in, right? And so I think there's an interest, at least from some clients that I've seen, you know, in trying to bring some of that mentality to product development. So there's kind of an opening there. It's not, it's hard because the product teams on the client side are often very separate from the marketing and advertising teams. And sometimes, you know, even the brand teams, you give these three silos, you know, a lot of times they can happen. So it can be hard for motion design folks to figure out a way in, you know, but once you've found that way in, I hope that you're able to kind of expand, you know, on the client side and find some new opportunities 'cause it is a fun space to work in. It requires a different way of thinking and not all signers and animators are into it, but if you've got those chops and you wanna develop them, I think 2026 and beyond, there'll be some good opportunities for that. - There is so much cool new stuff now, AI included where I'll see a new thing and my brain immediately goes, oh, I can't imagine how that would help this client or this industry, right? And I think a lot of artists have those insights too, they just keep them to themselves. And I think that the studios and the artists, you know, I think Ryan Cornel is a great example, right? He figured out this really cool thing, how to make puppets in Unreal, he didn't keep it to himself. He was posting them like once a week. And it turned out that that solves a problem for, you know, like somebody else and then now they have, now they have this company, right? And it can be used for video games. Joey Judd, Kins, he started, we write it done. It's a Rive studio. And, you know, he started it because he loves Rive, he's since the opportunity and now that he's out there, he's put himself out there, he's posting stuff constantly. And now opportunities are finding him because businesses are saying this solves a problem for me. So for a junior artist, I know it's hard to do early in your career, you may not have the context to do it yet, but I would recommend at least trying to start thinking that way. That's actually the way most people in any normal job probably think, like, okay, I have to be good enough to generate incremental revenue for my boss. That's like, you know, if you really put an economic definition on what a job is, and it's the same thing if you're an artist or if you're building a house or digging ditches, it doesn't really matter. There's, you're solving someone's problem, right? So the studios that are winning right now, and some of them have had their best year ever. Actually Graham Hutchins, he's one of our TAs and a freelancer, he said this is the best year he's ever had. You know, so like, even though like, when you get online, there's a lot of doom and gloom right now. The people that are killing it aren't going online and saying, man, I'm having a great year, right? Like, so keep that in mind too. For every negative comment, there's like 100 positive ones that weren't posted. But it, you know, Joel said this, Aaron said this, PJ, you know, at Laundrie is doing this. Basically, the studios that are doing well right now and are set up to do well over the next five years, they're diversifying, right? So while we have seen like a pretty big contraction in work, there are a few areas that I have seen growth. One is with AI, like how do you expand the work you do so they can go further faster and give people the volume and scale that they need quickly? That's one. The other thing is just experiential. People want to be out in the world, they want to go places. So I'm seeing like a massive rise in calls for museum projects and just like being in a space in the world. We're going to see that I think explode. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for growth in that area. It's pretty interesting actually, because as motion designers and as we visualize spaces, like we offer a really unique perspective to be partnering with architects and other people that design these spaces that they always think, like, oh, that's a video screen, they can figure that out later. My question is like, well, what if we figure it out as you're figuring out the space? That could lead to greater opportunity and maybe have it be more than a screen. Maybe it's an experience that happens in a different way that's more dimensional. So I think there's a lot of just like creative innovation in that space. And I think motion designers are right for it, like totally ready to take on that challenge. Super cool. It's so critical to me that motion designers look for opportunities to get into other spaces or other verticals outside of traditional motion design. And then find the way that motion design is applicable within that space because motion design, it's such a sick discipline. You could do almost anything with it. And it's really easy to get people impressed and excited and passionate about whatever it is that you're creating when you've got some beautifully executed motion design helping to convey your points. I always feel really strongly about a generalist approach being able to understand as many different techniques and tools and approaches towards accomplishing any of your end goals. And to me, that's why motion design is a superpower because you can't just know easing and keyframes. You also need to know color and typography and particle effects and whatnot. And so I think the more you can wrap up and kind of unicorn yourself by blending motion design with new and unexpected spaces or disciplines, I think we'll always see growth in those spaces. They're not just doing what they're doing, what they did five years ago over and over again. They're figuring out how can we do that in a different way? How can we do that with new technology? AI, how can we do that for a completely different type of client? Clients are asking a lot for tons and tons of variety. You need to be able to build systems to create something cool, but then scale it. I think Coliseum, Conor Henkel's company, is a great example of that. They're doing in arena sports graphics, but they need a ton of versions. And I believe they're using Templator from Data Clay with After Effects to scale that stuff. And if you're doing that kind of work and you're not using that new technology or relatively new, you're wasting a much time and you're just costing you way more money than it's costing Conor to do it. And so that's helped him find this niche. We're now like, that's the studio you go to if you need that stuff. They're working with everybody in every major sport. And then you're up too. So yeah, so I think that diversification, that's going to be the big buzz word in this industry for the next 12 months. I'm curious, what does that mean to you guys? Diversify. I think it's something you describe as diversification, but at the same time, finding a lot of efficiencies and making that a thing, right? So it's not just like trying to learn all these new things. I mean, look, there's reason some of these new technologies are here specifically for the purposes of making things more efficient, right? So like, we're going to talk all about AI and the good and the bad of it. And there's plenty-- there is plenty to say. But there are some-- Yeah, the good and bad. I mean, for real. But there's plenty of places where it's efficient. I had a family thing for Thanksgiving and I met this guy who-- he spent-- he's very successful investment banker type guy. He was retired now. And he said to me that he still helps clients and he uses AI. And he's like, if you don't sit-- if you write something by hand, if you're like spending and writing emails or these long explanations of things by hand, rather than dropping it into an AI thing to like, you put the bullet points in and puts together a nice little thing that somebody can read. He's like, you're an idiot, right? He's like, I didn't-- he's like, my daughter's wedding that we just went to. He was like, I wrote that speech myself. because I wanted to do that. It's like, but if you're writing like reports or you're getting large emails and you're not having an AI boil it down to something that you can process very quickly, you're being stupid because these tools help you do things faster and better. And they don't like, there's some things don't need to be creative, you know, whatever. These are the things, like you have to be open to the idea that yes, I wanna be creative, but there are certain places where I can do that without sacrifice, you know, I can speed up things without sacrifice and that was like a very interesting kind of conversation that I had with him. And you know, look, that's also made me think a lot about all these other things. Like we make our show motion Mondays without AI could not happen in the space of time that we do it. And I don't mean the stupid jokes that we drop in there at the beginning. I mean, those are human writing. Right? Those are human writing. Human made just AI generated. AI enhanced. Right. AI and yeah, bad ideas, AI enhanced. But mostly what we're talking about is like, we take the time to gather all the information and then we have to turn that very quickly into a script that we produce and then we edit this thing and you know, in the script which I got to use for the first time when I did it, which I found fascinating. Like it got rid of all of my long pauses that I had that just made it easier for the editors to then get it. There's nothing bad happening there. I mean, the editors don't wanna spend the time working on that. Like we have to get it on on Monday. And so like they need, like we help them with AI to do it. So I think whatever it is, efficiency, whether it's through, you know, the tool you talked about with After Effects, you know, a template or if it's AI or it's anything else, like becoming familiar with those tools and using them and being able to like bring that to the tables also gonna be very valuable. - Yeah, I think there's ways to even, like if your problem is like I just don't know what to post. I don't know how to market myself, which is something I hear a lot from both veteran artists and young artists coming in. You know, like when we do tutorials or if I have ideas for certain things, like I go straight to chat GPT or clawed and I'm like, hey, what's like a good idea here? Like and you can brainstorm with it. So it's never been easier to kind of number one, come up with ideas to solve answers to your problems to once you do a video like to edit it, like, you know, using premier and all the AI tools in there. So there's really becoming less and less excuses to actually getting yourself out there and just making stuff. I would say the other thing too that I'm seeing is, like I've never been like this in my career. Like I've got to work on some cool stuff, but a lot of the stuff that I've worked on throughout my like freelance career is not very sexy stuff. Even the stuff for big brands, like one of the biggest brands two of the biggest brands I've ever worked with, you're never seeing that work on my real because it was got awful internal stuff, but I'll slap that logo on my website or whatnot. And I think what I'm seeing more and more and I've, you know, through my career, I guess I've just been like, I don't know, I've just been the guy just like doing the work and I'll do the cool stuff in my free time that, you know, makes me happy. But I'm seeing a lot of people that are taking work personally when they should just be doing the personal work. I feel like I heard that phrase before, but they're trying to fit their vision and their passion of what they want to do and their style of art and stuff and they're trying to cram that into a client project and they're finding that. And we've said this before, "The client doesn't care about what your hobby is "or that you like eight-bit style "and you wanna cram that into a client project." No, they just want you to solve their problem their way. And there's an attitude shift that I feel like some people need to make where it's like, they have to recognize that and not take that personally, that that's like an affront on them or their ability or their tastes or their likes or dislikes, but they just have to, it's a job. Like you just have to make the client happy, you're selling candy bars or whatever it is, like just do it the way they want to and if you wanna feel creatively fulfilled, you gotta do that in your own time because if you are actually getting creatively fulfilled fully through client work, I would say you're a very lucky person because that's not everybody. - Yeah, so. - That's very accurate. I remember at the first Blend Conference, I led a panel with Ryan Honey, and one of the founders of Buck. And I think somebody in the crowd asked him, Buck's got all this amazing work on their website and this was years ago, so I mean, they're probably 10 times the size that they used to be. But how much work is not on the website that you guys are doing? And it was some ridiculous number. He think it was like single digit percentage of the work they do ends up on their website. They're doing stuff. You wouldn't even guess what's Buck and that's paying the bills, right? Yeah. - You know, it's funny 'cause I've talked about that Pepto Bismal ad that I worked on. You know, like, I can't tell you, like how many toothbrush, like teeth brushing things, and like these kinds of things are like not. - Yeah. - But you know what, like you spend two weeks doing that and pays the bills and you're like, move on to the next thing and like, yeah, not everything goes on the real. Although I have to say the Pepto Bismal thing totally was on my real 'cause I enjoyed having like the bubbles like dissolve the, but never. But yeah. But a lot of the stuff I worked on never saw the light of the outside of the companies that I worked for. You know? - I love this. - Okay, so to wrap this section up, I think, you know, the advice I would give to like the individual artists, right? Like, especially junior artists is, I think we have to start treating this career a lot like other careers are treated, right? Like you have to have the skills to do it. But now there's like more competition. I remember when I was in college, my friends who didn't know what they wanted to do. Most of them decided to go to law school to be lawyers because you could make money, right? And everybody had the same idea. And then there was this period where there was like 10 times the number of lawyers out there that you actually needed, right? And so a lot of my friends just left the law field, but the ones that didn't went into very specific areas of law, right? Or they became like the lawyer for local card dealerships and they're like, you know, there's a million versions of niching down or becoming more specific, right? And I think that for younger artists, the earlier you start thinking that way, you don't have to pigeonhole yourself when you're in your early 20s, right? I don't mean that. I just mean like start trying to notice where you sense opportunity, where are you seeing like other artists that are a little older than you migrating? And maybe, you know, if you see a lot of people starting to do a certain type of work, maybe you should like dabble in that and see if you like it. And then I think the big advantage younger artists have over older ones is they're probably better at social media. I think it's more native to them. And in this day and age, I don't think you can overestimate like how powerful that is. Now for companies, right? And I would say this would include pretty much any studio, even the bigger ones. Justin Cohn had a couple of really smart things to say. So he reiterated what we already talked about, like that a lot of the economic turmoil, you know, it's coming from the uncertainty clients feel with like the economy as a whole and AI pressure. He definitely mentioned that, you know, this unrealistic AI hype. And what he said he thinks is gonna happen in 2026 is that growth is gonna come and this is probably more for big companies, campaign level creative. So this is going, this is the other race, not the race to the bottom, this is the race to the top. You become a creative partner and really what that means, I think a great example is Newfangled Studios in Boston run by my friend, Michaela. You know, they really, if you go to their website, it's very clear what they do. And it's not motion design. That's a tool that they have. What they're doing is they're getting their clients like measurable marketing views and impressions. Right, that's the business problem they're solving. The tools they used to do that are video and animation and design. But like, you know, they've leaned way into that and they are very, very successful, like scary successful, right? I'm sure they had a great year. - I think we're just gonna continue to see that as our clients build their in-house teams and those teams mature, it really changes the way that they expect to work with, you know, outside creative agencies. So there's simultaneously a need for more specialization, you know, in specific kind of offerings, but then there's also this kind of broader need to really partner with them to understand and even question their business challenges and how they think that, you know, creative executions are gonna serve those challenges. So it's a strange kind of combination there, but that is something I think we're gonna continue to see through 2026. - Right, so I guess to put a bow on it, I think that, you know, the general trend is things are getting better. I know it's not happening as fast as everybody wants. I don't think what, probably not in our lifetimes, I don't think we're gonna see a boom like we saw during COVID. I think that was very artificial and, you know, just money being pumped into the economy. So I wouldn't expect that, but I think we're on an upward trend and, you know, I'm pretty hopeful about next year and I also think, and we'll talk about this a little bit, I think the AI hype is starting to quiet a little bit as the realization sinks in with a lot of companies. Oh, it's not this magic bullet. So with that, why don't we talk about AI? - Wait, there was one thing I wanted to just say. - Oh, go ahead, already, yeah. - Yeah, right, which is, I don't know if this happened to you in your career at all. I imagine that you had a moment or several of them like this, but I actually know the moment where I decided that it was time to sort of switch things up. Like I love what I was doing. I was working at Nickelodeon Digital Animation Labs and I was like in my late 20s and I was sitting next to a guy who was in his mid 40s who was doing the same job that I was doing, right? So like he was an animated and the same work I was doing and, you know, And I heard him on the phone with his friend saying, "Yeah, I got the beer, it's gonna be awesome," whatever. And I was like, "I don't wanna be this guy when I'm that age, right?" Like I'm fine being that guy right now, 'cause I'm young and whatever, you know? But like I want my life to be different at that age. And so I started to look at like what could I do differently while still doing what I love? And that's how I got started with tutorials that motivated me to do that. But like when you hear that voice, don't ignore it. Like take that moment to start thinking, even if it's just a very quick thought and just remembering to like come back to that and say, like who do I wanna be in a few years from now, that's what you have to be aiming to. So, you know, I don't know if you guys had an experience like that, but for me it was like, I can point to that one moment and saying like, that was when I made a decision, even though I had no freaking clue what I was gonna do, I was like, "I'm not gonna be that guy, I'm not gonna be doing this exact same thing at this level of my, you know, of responsibility for the rest of my life." So. - Yeah. Yeah, for me it was when I read the four hour work week, I cracked my brain open and I quit my job and I moved to Florida. - Yeah, do you work four hours a week now? Is that how that works? - You know what, it turns out it's false advertising, but it's in fairs. (laughing) Start a business they say. All right, so AI stuff. So I wanna start by just doing a quick rundown, it's gonna have to be quick because there's so many tools that are out there. I think it's really, really important. I'm gonna say this a lot in the section. You know, there was, I'd say like three years ago, all of us who were, you know, kind of like speaking publicly around motion design and AI, we were all hedging because we weren't sure is AI gonna like, in one year replace all of us. Okay, turns out that's definitely not happening. If I say the word AI, am I gonna get canceled? Right, are people gonna like hate me? And I'm at the point now where I feel like I have to just tell you, you should be learning as much about AI as you can. If you're a motion designer, if you're a 3D artist, if you're a designer of any kind, and you are still hanging onto AI is, I hate it, it's slop. I get it, you can still feel that way. I'm just telling you professionally, you should be learning this stuff. And I'm just gonna say that a lot, like all 2026. There's a lot of tools that are out and there's a lot of tools that have been announced. Way more than I could possibly go over. So we just kind of found some that we thought are useful to know about. And a lot of these are like categories of tools. Just so you kind of know this is a thing and as you begin dabbling in AI and learn, at least learning about it, even if you're not using it right away, know that these are things, okay? Are you curious about our all access program, but not quite ready to commit to a full year? Well, you're in luck. We also offer quarterly plans so you can try out all access for three months. You'll get 100% access to all of our courses, unlimited critique, our community, the life portfolio reviews and workshops, you get everything. And in the middle of your term, if you decide that you actually want to upgrade to the full year, you don't pay anything extra, we just pro-rate you. So this is a great option for those of you that have short term learning needs or if you just want to dip your toe in and give all access to try. You can get all the details on our site, the link will be in the description. And we think that if you give all access to try, it's gonna be very hard for you to ever go back to any other learning platform. Reach out to our team with any questions and we hope to see you in class. So we already talked about Adobe stuff when we were talking about software. I think obviously they're all in on AI and I think they're just gonna keep adding more and more and more. And you know, at Adobe Max and the Sneaks, the interesting things to me were they announced a tool called New Depths, which is their first foray into Gaussian Splats. And if you're unfamiliar with Gaussian Splats, it's this like amazing technology that lets you render full 3D scenes in this way that plays back in real time and it's super photorealistic, right? And now there's techniques, like there's a plugin for Unreal, I forget what it's called, it starts with V, it's got like a funny name. But it lets you re-light Gaussian Splats. So you can capture a scene, you can actually use a Metacrest headset now to capture like a Gaussian Splat of your room. You can now bring that into Unreal, you can re-light it, you can do VFX with it. And these tools are being used on VFX. So that was cool. Project Graph was I think the most interesting thing. And have either of you played with Comfy UI or WeeVee or either of those? - No, but I'm aware of how it works. - Yeah, same thing. I actually think that these are the future of like the way AI should work in a professional setting. - Yeah, I think they are the current kind of state of the art for how you work with AI. Basically, Project Graph is the same as Comfy UI, which is the same as WeeVee. There's three tools, basically the same. Project Graph, as of this recording, isn't out yet. I don't know when it's gonna be released. But it's a node-based image, you know, kind of processing tool. And so if you've used, you know, any kind of node-based thing, it's kind of intuitive, except the nodes might say Google VO3.1. And the input will be a text prompt. And maybe you can also input some reference images. And then that will output. And then you'll output that into a Topaz upscaler AI. And then you'll port that into a lip sync specialized AI with an audio track. So now you're changing with the, you know, and so you can build these workflows that require at this point multiple AI models and a lot of fancy footwork. And frankly, maybe some compositing. You may have to like, you know, you may have to use a mat to cut something out and place it on a background that's also generated from another anode. You can build these really elaborate workflows. So Project Graph is that. It's not announced yet. But what I thought was cool about it was, it's not just gonna be AI nodes and prompts and stuff like that. It's also gonna have like Photoshop tools in it. So you'll have the levels of fact, the mosaic effect, you know, you'll have a noise generator. And when you start, I think it's gonna take a while for people to wrap their heads around what you can do with it. You know, a lot of what we do is knowing the recipe. We've said that before in this conversation. And I think that there's gonna be a lot of recipes that are gonna have to be figured out. Like, what can you even do with this? If I generate a fire visual effects element, and then I wanna tell the AI to put it there, what do I need to do to make it look real? Probably not, you probably gotta do some other things, right? You may have to actually use some compositing knowledge, but in this new way. Now, the other thing that I find really fascinating with AI is we're seeing so many tools, they're all coming out so rapidly, and we're seeing different tools from different teams and different groups. And I'm starting to think of AI, especially when we get into generative video as the new render engine, if you will. And there's certain models that are good at some things, and worse at other things, there's some models that are specialized towards very specific tasks. And I think it's going to quickly become something where experts in this space are going to be juggling between multiple different tools and bouncing back and forth and saying, oh, I'll generate this asset, but then I'll convert it into video using this tool, but then run another pass with this, and then maybe I'll recomposite things using my existing techniques, or, you know, I'll say, oh, let's regenerate this asset, but make sure it's on a keyable background or whatnot. Right, we're going to be mixing and matching AI models and tools, almost like we do different render engines, 2D packages and 3D packages, versus compositing tools, versus specialized particle tools, and whatnot, we're just going to be mixing and matching these things more and more often. After Effects owes much of its magic to the plugin, script, and extension ecosystem that extends naturally also to AI tools as well. So I sure would love to see native AI effects and After Effects like maybe object masking, some death tools, a better upscaler based on AI, a better denoiser as well as a sharpening tool, but think about it, we already have all of these via 3rd party plugins from affordable gems on a script.com to full-blown ML tools in Boris FX and Topaz. I love the fact, by the way, that Boris FX called them ML not to upset anyone, but it's the same thing. And I think these options, which are already here, often without subscription or credit fees are really great. They're not the most stable in the world, but you definitely should try them. I also want to say that Adobe's approach to AI and so on After Effects is actually to my liking, comes to think about it. They seem to be using it to enhance and improve the workflow, not to turn everything into a text box when you just type a sentence and expect magic to happen. So maybe the fact that After Effects still doesn't have any official AI tools built into the application, maybe this is a good thing. And no, I'm not counting Rotor-Rosh or content to where feel which clearly show their age. So right now when someone says, yes, I did it in After Effects, to me it still means that the human was involved. And maybe I'm not ease, but I appreciate it. Adobe has obviously been focusing on AI a lot. And to an extent, it's just a buzz word that everyone has to say at this point. I think some of the features are a lot more useful than others. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in generative stuff. I poke around on it to try to keep up. I have a lot of mixed feelings about generative extend, which allows you to extend a clip using generative technology as the name implies. Now, I think that's OK if you're creating something it was already fiction and you need 10 more frames of it. Now, should you have just shot it right? Yes. Obviously, the real world is where we all live and sometimes things just don't work out. And so being able to pull out, you know, 10 or 15 frames of something that just didn't quite get there or you just need a little more for a fade, that's okay. And I think that makes sense. Now, where I have a lot of issue with it and there's really no way to police this, like, sure, when you're cutting an interview, sometimes you wish you had, you know, another 10 frames before someone starts talking again, or you just want to be able to hold that shot a little bit to kind of sit with that last thing that they said. But that didn't happen, right? So if you are starting to manufacture reality with that, I think that's extremely problematic. And I would recommend against doing that. So that's really interesting. I'm curious. I assume you guys saw most of the sneaks. Was there anything that jumped out to you? Well, I freaking my head was spinning afterwards. Sorry, you're adding me to cut you off there. My head was like, I watched it. And I felt like, first of all, I didn't even know that I was like, at some point I just realized, like, am I even watching like a software demo like for a company like Adobe, like every year, it's like Photoshop. It wasn't any more Photoshop or After Effects or literature. And then that it was just like, this is AI, and this is how we're putting in the thing. The Gaussian splats was pretty freaking cool. Although, I feel like it was presented at first. Like, oh, look, it's so easy. Then it's like someone she asked, did you take a lot of pictures? Like, oh, yeah, I had to take a lot of pictures. So that kind of like, at first it was presented, like, look, we pulled all this data, but it was more like, yeah, traditional. At first I was like, holding moly. Can they really do that? And they're like, no, no, they just look into that. That's fine. I thought that was really cool. Project graph looked cool to me, but I have to say that like, do we, I imagine sort of AI working with nodes and it makes sense like in a photo type setup, right? But when I'm thinking about it is like, and you're talking about filmmaking and these animations, it's going to be like nodes also, but it would be like, you'd have a scene node and that scene you would plug in like, what does the environment look like? Then what are the characters? And you'd have images and different vendors are the characters that you'd put in. And then you'd have like a dialogue node where you would say this is what the characters say. That's long term. What I think these tools will look like. I don't think we're there yet. I don't think we have anything like that yet, but I feel like for this stuff to become usable, that's what it's going to take. And it'll be, look, they're taking the first step for like sort of like a Photoshop approach. Like, how do I make photos with this? And how do I use traditional things that Photoshop artists already know to continue to use those skills while also integrating AI rather than replacing it? And that's actually how it's going to, I think Adobe is doing it the right way in that particular case because that's how any of this stuff is really going to work in production. It's not going to be a prompt image. It's going to be a part of that getting that prompt is going to be a small part of it. And then using the methods that you know how to use already that are part of the traditional workflows will stick with it. Yeah. The project graph thing kind of is, I think, is the way that artists are going to be using AI because it's you, you can, you're still part of the process. And I feel like that's the big thing is like as long as I feel like I'm part of the process, not feel, but as long as I actually am part of the process and like I have an input that I created with that's a 3D model like West showed, West McDermott share some really great stuff if you want to, like if you're big into 3D and you want to see how AI can be used with it, definitely go follow him. But he showed that he's got this like 3D character that he totally created himself, he modeled it and then he plugged it into project graph and he's like, hey, animate it with holding this guitar asset. And in this room and there's this 3D model of this cabinet that I want in there as well, also textural that thing, all those objects, here's the reference materials. So you're basically, it's basically the recipe thing, right? Where it's like, here's the 3D models that I want you to use, but instead of having to manually place things around and manually texture things, you just kind of prompting it. And here's this 3D character, also animate that. So this character is strum in the guitar in a specific way and like swaying his head. And also he's, you know, talking and so I'm seeing a lot of very, it's the thing where there's the disconnect between the hype and the actual usability of it. The graph is the first time where I'm seeing like, okay, now I'm seeing how this is actually usable in an actual production pipeline. And I think, you know, I hope Adobe really nails this because using some of these other apps like their like mid journey and stuff like that, they finally got their interface looking really good. But a lot of these things like they're not very intuitive and they're very isolated. And they, it's very hard to see how they work into our workflows that we currently have. So I think the most powerful AI, even if it's not the best AI is going to be the AI that is easily integrated or just plain integrated into the apps that we already use. Yeah, I think the word that popped into my head and I've been kind of converging on this idea is like what I don't like about AI right now, like mid journey is a lot of fun and you can do cool things within you have some control, but it's not deterministic, right? Like if you have a vision in your head, there's a certain amount that you want to get as close to that as you can. I think if you think about it, there's already a certain amount of randomness that we're cool with. Like if you're a Houdini artist and you're going to do some crazy simulation, you don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but you want enough control. Like you just want the right amount so that you can control enough. Simulations of the thing that come up every time I have a discussion about AI and saying how not having control is a bad thing. They're like, well, you run simulations and I'm like, okay, let's talk about, wait, just for a second, which is that simulations, it's true. They can go completely crazy if you don't wrangle them. But generally speaking, you set up rules for how the thing works. And within a certain framework of what I hear to hear, it's going to work, right? It's going to do the thing. And yes, you can totally, you can totally, if you occasionally go off the rails and do something, but generally you can predict within a realm of possibilities what's going to happen. Also with simulations, you can eventually, when you like it, you can lock it down. And that is still a problem with AI. Like still that's not a thing. It's very hard to lock down. I just want to address that because I get that all the time from people when I say that it's not controllable. They're like, yeah, well, simulations are going to be, it's not the same thing. >> No one's setting. >> Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think what I was getting at was like, it'd be nice if AI was like simulations, though, where, you know, if you're doing a building and it's going to break into 600 pieces in crumble, you have a general idea of what you're going after and then you tweak the settings and you run it and you tweak the setting. And eventually you get something you're happy with and you feel like, I made that, right? Even though, you didn't pick every single piece and how it's going to fall in this one bounces. Oh, wow, that was a happy little accident, right? And I think if you look at AI that way, that's probably the end gain. That's what we're aiming at, right? So like, with, so I'm going to jump to wee v and company UI. So I haven't used company UI as much. It's, I found it kind of difficult to use. Company UI is open source. You can run it locally on your machines or you can use a cloud version, which you can pay for, which I would recommend doing. Because if you want to run it locally on, on your machine, you have to have like a really good GPU, otherwise it's super duper slow. And you have to manually download every single model locally and some of them are like humongous if you want to use that one. But if you have a good setup and you do that, then you can generate for free, basically, which is kind of cool or for whatever your electricity costs are. Wee v is way easier to use. Figma just acquired it. We talked about that. And I've actually been using that quite a bit over the last month. And it, I really do feel like for the, the thing I'm doing with it, there's just enough wiggle room where I'm like, I'm aiming at this. If it gets close enough, I'll be happy. But you actually have some control. And the way you control it now is kind of weird, right? Like you have to run one model into another model with a different prompt and a negative prompt. And you got to play with it and tweak it. Okay, I, I used this word. Let me try a different word. Ah, now it works. And you, you kind of heard the cats, you know, in a way, I think eventually you're going to be able to, you know, generate a 3D character, turn that into, I mean, there's, there's nodes in Wee v where you can take an image and it will generate a 3D model. And then you can add a camera and move it. And, you know, you can't pose the characters yet. But eventually, I'm sure you'll be able to pose them. And then you'll be able to use that as a reference for a moment. And in the end, it's like you're actually getting a fair bit of control. And you can have more if you decide I don't want to generate a character, I want to bring one in or I have a brand asset. So I have to bring it in, right? So I don't think I can't really see how AI ever gives us the, the total control of just doing it manually. But that's always an option. This is kind of like, similarly, I don't know that there's kind of a weird thought I had. Right. Well, I mean, I think that as, as like, I've worked as a director and what I would say is that what I would love to have it be able to do is to work the way that like when you do multiple takes, but you don't do them randomly, right? And again, it's a discussion I've had a lot with the AI community where people are like, well, you know, you're like, I say prompting over and over again gets different results and I can't control it. And they're like, well, isn't that like prompting is just like, you know, do multiple takes and film it. You hundreds of them sometimes to get it right. And I'm like, but the difference is that that is a, that is sort of like a collaboration between the director and the actors and maybe the crew as you try to get closer and closer and closer to what it is you're trying to nail down and to have a shared vision that you all collaborate on to, to complete. And right now, you know, prompting doesn't really work that way. And if we could get things or tools that would help sort of wrangle that so that like, it does feel each iteration gets better and not randomly worse, right? Which is right where we are right now. That is where I think that's like again, going to be it's controllable. But even if it's not perfectly controllable, 'cause the best things kind of happen spontaneously in these moments when directors are working people, but still it's about the vision and getting it there and not about like hoping the dark hits the dark board that's constantly moving. - Yeah, I also think so much, I think if I watch the Super Bowl every year, and if you look at the average commercial, that's pretty much the only time I see commercials when I'm watching football now. And when you see the average commercial, they're so simple, like the storytelling and stuff like that. Like there used to be really good commercials. I don't know if that's a thing anymore. But like, okay, I could see AI probably getting pretty close to doing that. Like when you're talking about like, what AI, like the real AI evangelist out there, the AI bros, what they're claiming is currently possible and is certainly not is like making something at the level of a David Fincher movie using generative AI. And you know this aren't 'cause you've worked on 20 short films and directed stuff. The nuance, the timing of when the camera stops and how long the pause is that the actor waited before saying the next word, those are the things, in my opinion, as someone who's never directed a movie, those things make the movie, right? It's those little micro decisions. It's not like, oh, it looks like an abandoned warehouse success. Like it's like, it's the little thing. Yeah. - The other thing I talked about with takes by the way, and then that's a part of it was that, was that when you're prompting a lot of it, like prompting gives you, you can control the macro. Pretty well, right? Like the environment, like whatever. But when you get down to the, that really small level of detail, that's where prompting or any AI really right now still fails is on those moments that you're talking about. And so again, I'm not anti, like I'm really not anti, you know that I use AI for all sorts of stuff, but I recognize that it is what it is. And I wish, you know, when you talk about these AI bros that are out there, that is the part that's killing me more than anything is, number one, they're just, they're telling people that they don't need to learn traditional techniques, like AI is a future, and the fact is, all AI is gonna eventually, like as it gets adopted, it's gonna be slowly brought into the real process of that we're already using, it's gonna take time for AI to become, like, part of everything, but like, it's gonna become small parts of different parts of production. And the other thing is that like, yeah, that it's as good as it can do all this stuff already. And people believe it. And they're like, your industry is cooked, and the worst part is, like you said, for all this stuff is that, is that none of that really matters, except for the perception of clients who are starting to believe this stuff. - Yeah, that's the damage they're doing, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. My name's Caleb, I'm the co-founder of Curious Refuge, the world's first online home for AI storytellers. I'm also a very proud former employee of School of Motion. A lot of people think that AI is actually not that helpful for motion design. But I think that's really because we're thinking about artificial intelligence as a soup to nuts tool. If you wanna type in a prompt and get this incredibly well-crafted piece, it's really not going to do a good job because I think the purpose of artificial intelligence and where the tooling really shines, is when you put it in the right hands of somebody who is very creative and who has those existing skills. So whether it's creative inspiration on the front end, helping you with storyboarding or coming up with your idea, or using it just simply in your day-to-day productivity when you're communicating with clients, negotiating rates, and things like that, I think that artificial intelligence can help with that process. I do think that there are scenarios where if you are short on time or budget, you can use artificial intelligence to help you with creating assets that you can go in and comp inside of After Effects later. But that's all down to the individual taste of the artist who is using the tool. At the end of the day, it's all about executing a really well-rounded project and typing in a prompt and getting that project is simply not a reality at this time. I do think AI tools and platforms are going to make it easier for people to take a motion design mindset and create things with new levels of flexibility and articulation that they haven't before. There's all sorts of other layers to the AI story, but I do think that motion designers embracing certain AI tools as ways of supercharging their own existing process and not just saying like, oh, I'm going to use an AI tool, fire in a prompt, get my result and then hand that off to my client. But using that to create assets, to create passes, to create textures, to create all these different elements, I think we're just going to keep seeing more and more of that. - I think the big difference that we've seen is that it's not like we're using the exact same workflow. We have traditionally with AI and somehow it doesn't faster. It's a completely different way of working. It's more of a slot machine of art. There's some control, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of situation, there's no control and it's just a guessing game of art making and trying to convince clients that that's and make them understand that that's how that's going to work. It's just a pretty magical obstacle. - In the end, the back and forth is exactly where it just doesn't really save any time or money. I think clients are slowly starting to learn, but it's still a buzzword at brands and agencies to find the AI route. - So how is AI changing things for us at Black Box? Certainly one of those things is definitely client expectations changing. And it's not across the board. I think there's still spaces where we find some of the folks that we work with are really surprised and impressed by what happens when we introduce AI into certain workflows. And it may be things like, oh, we're creating a style frame and then taking components of that, just making a style frame the old fashioned way, but then taking individual ingredients of that and feeding that into a generative video model. And all of a sudden now the style frame has like living footage mixed into it or whatnot. And there's things like that that I think can really surprise and excite folks when we're going through a traditional process. Now of course, the opposite of that, and I'm sure many other folks are experiencing this. And I find this particularly with like, start up CEOs, they will have this mindset of just like, can't you just use AI to do that? Like, can't you do AI to solve that problem? Like right now on this call while we're discussing it? Like can't it just, can't AI just make that instantaneously come together? And there are folks that their perception of AI is just looking at it for how is it creating maximum efficiencies everywhere in my business or my organization. And so there's a bit of time that will spend where we'll try to do a little bit of coaching or educating of those folks. I've also had instances where a client will say, hey, we just need you to do a slightly better version of the generative video that we generated ourselves. And then they'll share what they've generated. And it's like horrific melting nightmare fuel that we have to then guide them through, well, yes, this stuff looks terrible. It is not usable. And although we might be able to improve it, I don't think we're going to quite be able to hit exactly what you're going for. So for me, one of the most important things when it comes to AI in the business and in the workflow and particularly when working with clients who have expectations around AI, you just need to make sure everybody understands what it can and what it can't do. And that, you know, listen, when we start entering into AI workflows, we're now playing Russian roulette and you're not going to be able to point at one particular element and say, oh, can we just adjust that piece? It's going to be no, no, no, we're going to we're going to spin the wheel again and see what comes out on the other side. Have client expectations changed in the wake of AI? Of course, they're expecting more for less faster. The thing that's more challenging is, is that we're still developing those tools. And certainly they're not common to After Effects and Adobe and like all the normal applications that so we're working on creating custom tools to be able to do those things that in like in two or three years, you're just going to be able to click a button in Adobe. But in the meantime, we are developing those tools. We're investing in them because they're a big part of how we are going to be able to survive and thrive in the new landscape. But for me, I think their extensions, I don't think that they replace the core creative that we do. So yeah, client expectations are changing. And I think it's because their leadership's expectations are changing. They just think like, talk to AI, I can handle that. What we do is pretty niche. And there's a lot of opinions and thoughts that go into things and feedback that the AI isn't really prepared for because it's not niche enough yet. All right, let's talk about another tool. And I tried to pick like a wide variety, because AI is doing a lot of things. Movie AI is interesting to me. There was a minute where school motion owned a recoco suit. And my gut is EJ, but you know, probably the most about this. I don't know if you've messed with Movie AI. But like our mocha, our-- [BLANK_AUDIO] What cap suits gonna be necessary in five years? Is that still gonna be a thing or is MouveI and companies like that just, that's how it's gonna work? - I think there's very specific things that MouveI can't do where it's, you know, if you have fingers, like so one of the things that I think is a perific example of where MouveI and some of the AI stuff at least right now, you always have to put that little disclaimer, at least right now, isn't good for is like, for example, when Bush did a thing with mixed master mic, which is a DJ and he's, you know, on the turntables and stuff like that, a lot of stuff with the hands and the fingers, there's a collusion of the hands. So for a lot of that stuff, you actually need a, if you have a character and he turns his back to the camera, you don't like the AI doesn't know what's not there in the footage itself, right? 'Cause it's, the thing that a lot of people assume about MouveI is at least with the single iPhone camera, that it's using some kind of depth data from the iPhone. It's literally just using the footage. So it's not getting any depth information, nothing like that. So there's a little bit of limitation there. Now you can get like multiple cameras and like triangulate and stuff with the MouveI and get much more accurate stuff and that solves that occlusion issue. But yeah, the foot contact, the finger tracking is getting better and better. But I just feel like for a lot of this stuff, I see at least, mography kind of stuff, like MouveI is like really all you need. Like it's getting very, very nice. I used it on Guardian, I used it on Guardian, my animated short for school motion. Almost all of the motion came from me. I literally acted it out in front of my camera here in this office. - That's awesome. - And which is, feel sometimes, if I go look at the, I have like cameras that, - Please post it, please post it. - I'm gonna get a picture. - Yeah, it's embarrassing, you know? But like EJ said, the fingers, I actually, they're gotten better, but I did the fingers by hand. Like I actually, which is a weird thing to say, but I took them back into Unreal, and then I did, I have tools in there for animating the hands separately, and I just did those with keyframes and things like that. I didn't need very complex motion. I think you're absolutely right. Like you can't get the fingers and stuff like that and foot contact is still an issue, although it's getting way better. But yeah, I do think it's the future. And as far as the cameras go, it's like on a higher tier of move.ai, they have like, you can set up multiple cameras and do it, and that will definitely give you much better or more accurate stuff. But I think that like, you know, it's just a question right now, is the suit more expensive or is getting a whole bunch of cameras more expensive? Like it's all, then you have to space for that. So yeah. - If I'm not mistaken, there was a behind the scenes, I might be wrong about this, so someone should check and fact check me in the comments. The severance season two opener, I believe the artist that did that used an app, probably, move AI or something like that, to mo-cap for the character that he used. - Well. - Yeah, yeah. And the reason that I like talking about this stuff is like, motion capture up until you had something like this. Like the Rococo suit when it came out was like revolutionary. Like this $3,500 motion capture suit, and you can, you know, and that's kind of like good enough for a lot of things. Whereas before you'd have to go to a studio, like a super specialized studio with a super specialized hardware, and the cleanup was a pain in the butt, and Rococo made that way better. And now this is the next level, where like literally with an iPhone, you can like get usable motion capture for various things. - Yeah, I usually have to take that into like another AI program called cascader, or cascader. - I was gonna bring that up next. Talk about cascader. - I usually bring that in there and clean up the work. - Yeah. - You know, they have tools for, they have tools, like cause you know, there's a lot of shake that gets caught and so they have tools for sort of smoothing that out. And I use those. I'm not like a cascader has done some, really recently has shown some pretty amazing stuff. I'm still not old on it. I would love to be using it more and learning how to use it, but I don't love their tutorials or trainings a little, so like it's been hard to follow it and to keep with it. But I have uses for it and it's definitely, I mean, it's definitely next generation animation tools for characters for sure. And each, I know you've been looking at it too. - Yeah, they just, I tried it on the iPad and I was trying to get things to work. And like I ran in the same problem as you. There's just not enough information out there. Like they have a YouTube and there's like, they just are posting marketing videos and not educational ones. So hopefully there's a gap bridge there. But one of the things that we were just seeing, which I think just came out a few days ago was the AI in-betweening, which was like crazy. Basically you have a character at pose one and you have it at pose two and it just tweens everything in-between and you can kind of change all the positioning of things and it respects real world physics, which is the huge thing that was able to do before. But yeah, this makes me so happy because how many Mixamo, just stock Mixamo animations have we seen throughout our careers? And I feel like that's, hopefully dead. Also Adobe. I know maybe someone there's listening. - Run, come on guys. - Do Mixamo, can we update that? Like you got all the AI stuff you got going on? Like can we just move it a little higher? - If we're taking a moment to rant about it, Mixamo before Adobe bought it, you used to be able to upload your own, BVH files or your own motion capture files. And like use it with their characters. Now you can't do that at all and you only have the stuff that they have up there and they have not done anything with it since getting it. I don't know what the point of them getting it was, but I've definitely seen by the way in some big budget films, the walk cycle totally from Mixamo, like dropping it there on a character. - Well, so cascaders really interesting to me and the feature that you were talking about, EJ, it came out right before we recorded this. Well yeah, basically you could have a character in a chair and you pose them and then that's a key frame. And then they're standing up and they're at a desk with their hands on it, that's a key frame. And it will tween, like the character gets up, walks over and say, - Right, it wants to like slide them off the chair and suddenly have them standing at like, nose that the person needs to stand up first before it walks. - It's aware of what a character would do. And of course, it's like, you know, it's not perfect and it doesn't give it all the nuances that a great character animator would add, right? But, you know, and I'm not a character animator, so I may be talking out of my ass here, but you know, I know, 'cause I've read this that like a Pixar animator, like a good one will animate I think like five seconds a week. I think that's a lot, like five finished seconds of animation or something. It's so, so tedious. Like it's just like to get good animation. Did you crap the animation? I can do that really fast. But if you want good character animation in 3D, it just takes a long time. Anything that can speed that up, I think is good. And there was an interesting reaction. I think I saw the thread where you two were commenting on there. And what was interesting was a lot of people were like, this is super cool. It's gonna save so much time. And then there were some character animators that were like, no, I don't like this, right? And they were complaining about it. And I thought that was interesting, because you know, another kind of lens I look at this stuff through is you've got like, you've got like the deep thinking that we would like to do and that makes things good. And then you've got the shallow thinking that you just have to do to like get something done, right? Like, like, Rodo. Like, you have to know how to do it. It is a skill. You can be better good at it. But it's like shallow thinking. And when you're posing a character, when you're working out the timing, when you're adding the squash and stretch in just the right places, you want a really good character animator to do that. When you're figuring out like the arc that the foot should go through on every single step of a walk cycle, maybe there's a tool that can kind of get you 80% of the way there and save you a day or two, right? And yeah, so Joey, the, like, I think about it is like, there's a tool like when you're making a Pixar movie, you want a Pixar animator. When you're making like an architectural rendering where you want to get up out of his chair and walk to a counter, if you're using a Pixar animator, you are spending way too much money doing that. Right. You know, and that's the point. I think this could help Pixar animators eventually. I don't know enough about that level of character animation, but I just seeing that it just kind of struck me that like, that's got to save time. At least getting you like the tweening like halfway there or 25% of the way there, which at that scale is a lot. It's a lot of money save a lot of time. - It's like even with AI rotoscoping. It's not going to be perfect, but man, it does probably like 90% of the job for you and then you clean it up. Like with animation, I think it's the perfect way to think about it. It's like it's not replacing the, what you bring, an animator brings to the table. Like you're gonna, you're gonna take that very stock boring animation that you would have had to hand keyframe anyways. And you already have that base that you can then go and add on top of it. Like if you're skulls, - As long as you can build on top of it though, EJ, right? Like that's the point. The point is that like where I think a lot of people are so frustrated by AI is that like it takes away that ability to like, like it jumps from start point A to point B and as long as like, and this tool cascader gives you like, you're not like, you don't put it in and get it out and there's no control. Like you can actually get in there and start adding and start adding more subtle motions and stuff like that build on it, which is the point. - Yeah, I was gonna say, it's almost like if I, if I was a sculptor and like a lot of sculptors, they start with, they have like a preset head. Like that, like if you start with a preset head, that's not cheating, that's not, you know, you just did, like you were gonna do that anyway. So I don't see any downside in, like this is the preset character rig, just just put stuff on top of it. Sculpt on top of it. - Agreed, agreed. Okay, cool. So I wanna talk about, I'm kinda, just kinda lump all these in. So there's a bunch and there's many more than this. Let's talk about image generators. Then we'll talk about video generators. So image generators. So this year, OpenAI launched, you probably know it even remembers this 'cause nobody uses this. 40, you remember that? And everyone was making jibbly knockoffs. So that happened this year and then kind of went away. And what was interesting about that one, was the quality was nuts. When that came out, that was like the state of the art for like you could give it a very detailed prompt and it would catch almost all of it and it could even have some text in there and it wouldn't totally butcher it and you could upload an image of yourself and look like Studio Ghibli or whatever you want, right? And it fell off very, very quickly and I think it's because it is so slow. It takes multiple minutes to generate stuff in 4-0. So I used it like twice and was like this is way too slow I'm never using it again. Did you guys ever use that? Did you Ghibli yourself? I did Ghibli myself. Is that personal question? I do. But I don't know if it fell off because it's slow. I think it fell off because everyone had their five seconds with it posted it and then moved on to the next trend and I think that's with a lot of this AI stuff is the thing. Yeah, but well, the counterpoint to that though would be nano banana, which is still blowing everyone's mind like how good that model's gotten and it's fast and it's super powerful and it can do text. And it seems like at the very least maybe that'll fall off too but it seems like at the very least that's had a much longer kind of moment in the sun. That's because of that for some reason. I think that's because the main strength of nano banana and it's amazing if you've not tried it out. It's actually a hopefully AI is you can input your own work into it and the image consistency is incredible. So like I put in a 3D model and I was like give me some variations and poses and like variations and proportions as well and like it matched the lighting from my 3D render that I inputted in there. Like it animated it perfectly. Like give me some animation because it actually didn't animate it perfectly. It was terrible. But I think that's where things like nano banana, it's like the the comfy AI. Like that's not a fat. That's something that is actually very useful. Unlike the the 4-0 that we're talking about where it's like everyone's doing the Geble thing and it's not very useful outside of just doing a meme thing and okay everyone's onto the next thing. I mean, let me say the RHA without being able to make memes in AI we would have note like AI would not - You have no insurance. - Which is not motion- - There wouldn't be much interesting. It's funny because in some ways like I don't know if you've ever heard this but like a lot of technological revolutions in the video space totally revolved around porn, right? Like, like that's the thing. - Like for real. Like, you know, I remember when Terminator 2 came out on DVD and they had these multiple angles and that was not made for Terminator 2. The multiple angles on a DVD, they were showcasing it with Terminator 2 but it was not made for that. - That feature was used elsewhere for a Scottie. - Right, it was definitely used elsewhere. But I really think a lot of like what's driving the tech right now and what I could do is social media and like five second like super consumable little pieces of you know visuals and funny things. - Yeah, 100%. I think the most impressive AI tool that I've seen this year is a Google Gemini 2.5 Pro. Now why is it impressive? It's not because of just like Nano Banana where you like upload an image and you can edit it. That's pretty cool. But what I think is even more impressive is you can upload a video or an image or a PDF or really any creative asset to the platform and it will actually critique and give you feedback on how you can improve that piece. I think that having a virtual art director in your pocket that can give you creative feedback and ultimately help you refine your taste in the early days of your career is incredibly helpful. It is sometimes challenging to connect with people that have real world experience like the TAs at School of Motion. And so I think having access to AI feedback mechanisms helps you as an artist to simply refine your work. - So what I've noticed I guess with these image generators, it's very similar with like basically all of the different kinds of AI there are. So you've got you've got 4.0, I'd never use that one. You've got mid journey. Mid journey's actually gotten pretty great this year. It's you know you don't have nearly the control that you want as an artist, but for certain tasks it works fine. And it's kind of developed reputation is like that's the one you go to if you need something abstract and cool and weird and you're looking for inspiration. Like I actually think it's useful as if you're doing like a mood board for something. - Yeah. - And you have an idea of the kind of thing you want but you don't maybe have the words to describe it. You can go to mid journey and you can kind of like find your way there and then you have at least something visually to reference or to show your client, right? - I had a project this year that I wanted to work on and I needed to model something and I couldn't quite get it. I'm not a good 3D modeler and I wanted to hire somebody to do it but I didn't want to start without any kind of direction. So I used mid journey, I took the model that I had and I put it into mid journey and I described some of what I wanted on there. And it did a not perfect job but it gave a couple of examples that I was like, I could point to squares and the thing and saying this area is what I want here and this is what I want here. And that really helped the modeler who was a real artist, a real 3D artist, sit down and build the thing for me. And so without having to go through the process of like him having to revise because he charged me a price. He had to revise because it was a problem. He has to eat that a little bit, right? That's kind of how this all out of this works. And so by giving him a clear picture of what I wanted we were able to very quickly get to what I wanted as an end result. - That's an amazing use case, yeah. And so mid journey's also added video generation this year. And it's not bad. The only thing I've used it for is for memes and sending goofy stuff to my friends. It's not nearly controllable enough. The quality's not as high as the other ones. And mid journey, and I hope they do fix this, mid journey doesn't have an API meaning you can't integrate it into weevee or comfy UI or any of these other tools. Whereas nano banana, you can. Nano banana is inside a firefly. It's inside of weevee. You can use it, it's probably 20 things it's in. And mid journey did add some editing capabilities, which is kind of cool. You can generate something or you can upload your own image. They kind of have a smart selection tool. You can select something and then move it and then it regenerates. So you can almost do little photo bashing inside of mid journey now and then generate on top of the kind of like janky result that you've got. So that's kind of cool. I think the best thing about mid journey is just, it's really fast. They've added a turbo mode where, and you can generate 16 images at a time. And it takes like five seconds and then you can pick the one you want and iterate on that. So that's like my favorite ideation one. If I'm like, I need a cool visual idea or I'm looking for like a look for something. And I don't know where to go on the internet to find that reference. Mid journey's become like pretty indispensable for that. - Yeah, I mean, I would say that the speed of it is really great and the ability to edit. Like I was working on something and I wanted to zoom out and like you can do that. And then also you can erase things and say, replace it with this and try and it'll do its best. It's always perfect, but it definitely has capabilities that a lot of other things don't. - Yeah, yeah. Okay, and then we've mentioned nano banana. If you haven't tried it, it is completely mind blowing. Like to the point where it's like, I wanted to make like a LinkedIn post the other day about something and I wanted an image of, I don't even think I told it what to make. I was just like, I'm making a LinkedIn post and it's about, I think it was about our Black Friday sale or something and I was like, I want a motion design Black Friday image just come up with something. And the cool thing about nano banana and this is different than mid journey and different than a lot of the other models is that nano banana is, it's not just the image model. It's actually tied into the Gemini like large language model and it's tied and Google's expanding it to include things like search results and stuff. So you can tell nano banana make me a thumbnail and it will think up something and then it will give it to you and then you can tell it what to change and you go through four or five rounds of revisions and now you have something pretty close and then I brought it into Photoshop and I fixed the parts that weren't working. But I cannot tell you how much time that would save. It's like I can either, and I've talked about this before too. What these tools really do is they open up design for things that previously you would never spend time or money to do that level of design on. Like one social media post, I'm not gonna pay an artist to design a post for my personal thing that I want to make. It's just not happening, like no one's gonna do that. But I'll ask nano banana and if it gets close maybe I'll use it, right? And it's so art-directable, it's nuts. Like, so EJ, you've played around with it like a lot? - Yeah, like I had a character design that I was kind of working out and I basically started with like a nomad sculpt character and some concepts and I was like, hey, just give me some very, 'cause I always like to test variations and stuff but like to do that by hand and sculpt each of those iterations is kind of a pain the butt if you're just trying things out and you're sketching things out. And so what I use this tool for is just rapidly iterating off of an initial concept. Like I had a specific look that I wanted and I fed it in there and I think that's the thing that I really enjoy about the nano banana and its image consistency is because I can actually put my own art in there and it doesn't completely just distort it. And so I was able to do things like, okay, here's a character, it had nubby arms. I was like, give it thumbs and it was like, there's the thumbs and I was like, okay, well now give me like different colors for the mittens and the shoes and it did that immediately. And so it was something where, you know, I was like, give me different poses and all that kind of stuff and it nailed it most of the give you multiple iterations Well, Firefly boards, but in collaboration with Firefly boards, it's like super, super powerful because then you can start remixing multiple images together using multiple reference images to influence something. And those reference images can be all the things that you either modeled or created on your own. And so it's again, it's maintaining the thing I say it again. The thing I like the most about it is that it maintains what, if you have an artistic vision, it maintains it and kind of keeps it intact. I haven't played with it. I just haven't had time, but I want to now. And I was thinking about the fact that when you said give it thumbs, right? Like two years ago, it would be like, oh, I've got thumbs for you. I've got thumbs for you. Yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about, okay, so we'll talk about Firefly boards, but I want to talk about Firefly first because that's the other image model probably everyone's familiar with. At this point, I mean, they've done a lot of development on it. I think they launched a new version of it. They've integrated it into Photoshop and honestly, the quality is so much worse than all the other ones. It's just, it feels like two years ago, you know? Like the nano-bnanode versus Firefly. I mean, it's like the difference between like a Ferrari and like a bicycle. I mean, it's so drastic, right? And so I was thinking about this because when Adobe announced, hey, now we're allowing you to use other models inside of Photoshop and Firefly, to me, that was them just tapping out. Like, you know, they had this thought that we could train an ethical AI model. And I want to talk about the sort of ethical part of this in the next part of this conversation. But I keep hearing this thing on some of the podcasts I listened to called the bitter lesson. I don't know if you guys have heard about this in relation to AI, the bitter lesson. Basically, you know, some companies think I can make a better AI by being smarter, more clever than my competitors. And this really helps. But the bitter lesson is that pales in comparison to just having more data to train on. That's it. That's really all you need. The more data you have to train on, the better the AI gets. Period, full stop. And you know, when you come to large language models, now they're trying, they've run out of data in some cases, or they're like finding, they're like going and finding old archives to give it more stuff and making synthetic data, which I think is still controversial. But for Firefly, they have to, you know, that they've made this decision. We're going to have to have a license to train this thing on this image. And Google's not doing that, right? And Google on YouTube, so they have way more video. So I think, I don't know, I kind of predict that, you know, Adobe is not going to abandon Firefly. They're going to keep working on it. Maybe it gets better. Maybe, maybe they start doing some shady stuff like they, you know, sneakily they're like training on some other stuff, but they're so far behind. I don't know if you guys have used Firefly recently, but with Nano Banana, that's probably the only one I would use other than mid journey. I mean, is the turntable illustrators that technically just Firefly? Because I think those are the things, those are the very specific use cases where maybe Adobe does have enough data to train on to get something looking fairly decent. Like think of all the stock illustrations and illustrator files and stylized things that they got. I don't know, but I accidentally, I'm not sure what aspects of AI are like, you know, there's AI and there's machine learning, which are not exactly the same thing. And like, you know, I'm not sure which of those that falls into the, yeah, like, you know, their Gaussian splathings. I mean, it's not using, like the data it's using is the data you provide for the splathing. It's like that. It's not using like that. But for what I understand, splats are created through a machine learning model that like analyzes the image and, you know, using, and I think I honestly don't know the difference between machine learning and AI. I think they're probably the same thing because, you know, or they're both just like marketing terms. Yeah. That's probably more accurate. Yeah. But, yeah, as far as the turntable thing goes, I know that they probably call it part of Firefly. I have to imagine that's a totally different model than like the one that makes pixels because that one makes vectors. And it's kind of doing a different thing. But even for that, I have to think nano banana would do a better job. Yeah. You know, like, even if it, and with weavy, you can, I mean, this is the kind of crazy stuff that it opens up, right? You can, you can take a vector, load that into weavy, run that into nano banana and say, or actually first you'd run it into a model that would turn it into like a 3D image. And then you'd rotate it and you'd feed the original vector into nano banana as a reference. And then you'd feed your like 3D kind of rough view that you created and you'd say, hey, nano banana, make this angle but look like this and it'll spit that out. I guarantee it would do a better job. So I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Firefly. Now Firefly boards is pretty cool. So I've used it to EJ. What do you think of it? Yeah. I think it's one of those, that's why I'm excited about the project graph because I feel like it's a much more beefy version of Firefly boards where you can kind of, if you're unfamiliar, it's like it's a millenote kind of style set up where you can like import your own images and you can even like take a eye dropper tool and like sample an image and be like, what would this prompt be to create this image? And you can kind of even use existing images to create prompts. You can grab multiple images and remix them together and stuff like that. So I found it a very unique way to a much better way to work with AI than that typical like clawed kind of chat window thing where I can have multiple images at the same time. I can have generations and kind of like, okay, well, it's spit out five images. Every of these suck, I'm going to keep these two and like use those as references. You can kind of keep iterating. It's very, very easy. And I've found it a much more efficient way to kind of think creatively and use existing images and stuff like that. It's funny though because there was what you can use all these different models in it, right? Whether it's, you know, nano-bidana or you can use, you know, the runway, video models and VO and stuff like that. So you can also generate video as well, but it was funny because I'm talking about Firefly. I was using nano-bidana this entire time in Firefly boards and one time I forgot to change the image model from nano-bidana or from a Firefly to nano-bidana and it used Firefly. And I was like, it was that bicycle Ferrari thing like, oh my god, this is terrible. Like what happened? This has been amazing. This entire time. So you want another difference between ML and AI? I looked at it. I had chat GPD explained it to me while we were sitting here talking. But basically with artificial intelligence, you want the machine to make intelligent decisions, reasoning, planning, recognizing objects, understanding language, playing games, things like that. But with machine learning, it's just like straight up recognizing it, like looking for patterns in data and using that. So all AI uses machine learning, but machine learning alone does not have that aspect of reasoning and thinking it through. So I think the answer to your question then about whether or not Gaussian splats or AI is really or is it machine learning? I think it's probably again, someone may fact check us on this, but I think it's probably more machine learning than it is, than it is like reasoning things out and all that. Yeah, you might be right. You might be right. All right, let's talk about the video models now. And again, there's probably 20 out there. There's so many. And every model has different versions and different things that it can do. I've played with a bunch of them. I'd say, you know, the big headline this year was VO3. It's kind of insane. So it's the state of the art. I would say after that, you've got Sora. Runways got run, I mean, runway right before we started recording this came out with a new model. A clean came out with a new model. And what's crazy to me, these things are doing stuff that I really would have thought impossible. Like, a couple of years ago, I really just thought I don't see how it ever gets this good and then two years later, it's this good. The thing that shocks me, tell me what you guys think. Like the first time I saw two characters talking to each other and the words match the lips and they sound like voices. And I know that those voices are also AI generated. That kind of freaked me out. I'm curious, like, did you guys have a no shit moment when that happened? You know what, when I did the Muppet Outakes, I was doing some Muppet Outakes for fun with Sora just to see if it could do it. And by the way, I was amazed at how fast it could capture my voice and my likeness, right? Yeah. Um, it turned, like, I, I, I just said here, I'm doing an outtake from, uh, from a puppet show and, uh, I didn't even, I didn't, I said, like, I gave it some dialogue and it nailed, not, not only did it nail the, uh, the, the, like, the looks, but it got the subtlety of it just right. Now, the other 100 times I tried it after that, like, trying to get it better. It got worse. But like, like, every once in a while, you put it in and just, it spits out something and you're like, holy crap. Like, I can't believe right, it can do this. And that's the scary, to me, that's not the scary because not because I think about jobs and stuff, but because we cannot trust anything we see. I'm constantly looking at videos where with people with animals and saying, this lion, you know, we saved it now. But let's come to our house and it drops the cup off. And I'm like, you know, like immediately you can check in and say, I, but you could not tell visually that necessarily was, you have to have a brain in your head and say, lions don't do that. So, you know, right. I don't know if you saw this, but Tim Belan announced that he's like going to create the, he's, he signed an AI artist to his label and then he put out all these different videos of like, here's the new song and it's this artist and she's dancing on screen and stuff like that. I'm like, holy crap. And at first, I was like Tim Belan really like, you're not talented enough to just sign a person. And so they, he had everyone believing that he signed this AI. I mean, while it's just a real human being, but every, like, I was going frame by frame of that video, like, actually, it looks really good. I can't believe this is it. And now it's just like, yeah, you can't tell. You just can't tell. - Yeah, it, it, what's funny, this is off topic, but I was thinking about this the other day, I was talking with my wife and I was like, you know, all this like image video stuff, you know, I, I become a lot more comfortable with it because I know, I've been using it a lot and I know motion design intimately and I, and I'm getting more comfortable with AI and I can see where the gaps are and where humans are for the foreseeable future, like, gonna be a part of it. And I also had just to have this kind of optimistic outlook about how this is all gonna turn out, which we'll talk about in a minute. The AI music thing bothers me a hundred times more for some reason, like, I hate it. It's fun and I play with it, but like the thought of like, oh, we don't need bands anymore. I mean, every single video I'm wearing a band shirt, like, yeah, I don't know, there's something about that and I haven't explored my psyche enough to unearthly. - Do you think about all the content that you can go to that are just your computer, like standing in front of your computer now, that's it. - Oh my god, yeah, it gives me a pit in my stomach. There's probably something there if I'm willing to explore it, we'll see. (laughing) Okay, cool, so I mentioned VO. Really, it has the same control issues as every other video generator and I think that with video generators, this is gonna be the hardest thing to solve, not just technically. I am convinced now that like, these companies will figure out how to make video models that are a hundred percent realistic and have film grain and you can't tell. I mean, they're almost there, some shots you cannot tell, especially if you can pause it a little bit, you grade it at some grain. The hardest thing is the control. And, you know, this is something that we kind of touched on last year on, like, how much control do you really need before these become useful professionally? I mean, for B-roll, you need a shot of it, you need a drone shot over the G-Zapier mids, you're done, you have it now, right? But when it's like-- - B-roll and buck footage are, you know. B-roll is solved as far as I can tell. Even B-roll where it's like, hey, we shot, you know, we shot in this location and interview and got the wide shot. And now I realize it would have been cool if we'd gotten some kind of close-ups to some of the neat stuff in this room, but we didn't generate it. Like, it will look exactly like the room. I mean, VO3 is that good. You can use Nano Banana to generate the first frame and then VO, like, well, I mean, it's solved, right? You still have to know how to do it. You still have to have the idea, know that that's what you want, but it will do it. When it comes to character animation and, you know, actor saying lines and stuff like that, I think it can do all of that and actually does it pretty well, but the nuance and the taste is not there. And that's where you really need that fine grain control because that is some subtle stuff. And I don't even know what that would look like, you know? Like, what would the UI or the UX for that look like? I don't know if you've thought about that at all our own. Like, you know-- I can't describe like setting up a scene that I have in my head. I think setting up a scene where you have nodes for the different actors, for the dialogue. Yeah. But I think that some of that subtlety is going to only come through large language models being integrated into this and then being able to communicate some of your thoughts and having it understand what it is you're really trying to get out of it and not just produce it, right? So I think that's the end-- I don't say goal, but for that to work, you're going to need the ability for the thing to generate imagery, but also to have a real conversation with you. The same way that you would have it with an actor on set and explain to them, here's your motivation. Here's why you're thinking this. And like, have the AI be able to sort of characterize that into a person's actions and sort of subtle behaviors? Yeah. It really is. And I've heard this metaphor before that, you know, if you're using AI for design, it's really like you're an art director. And you're trying to get a designer to give you something like you want. You're not telling them exactly what to design, but it's like do something like this. No, that's not quite there. And I guess for what you're talking about, it's like being a director, right? You don't have your hand up the actor using them like above it, right? Like they're a human. And the camera man's the same thing. Like, camera man's going to do what you tell him, but it's not going to be exactly maybe what's in your head, right? And you have to use words to get there. It's kind of an interesting way of thinking about working with a computer, but if you replace that with a person, that is how you work, typically. Right, but the big question of are you an artist, at this point, which I think, by the way, is like a, it's an interesting question, but it doesn't even really matter. I just want to say that like I don't think if you type in a prompt and you get an image, you're not an artist. It's just not even a hands down. Like that's not even a question to me. And I think that there's, but then there's, there are people who say if you use any gender to the AI, you're not an artist. And that's also stupid, because like what's the difference between me using stock footage from action VFX or using an explosion that I generated in AI? And the person's like, well, that's, you know, well, you're stealing, it's ethical. I'm like, I'm like, time out. You're not wrong, but also that has nothing to do with the question, right? Like that doesn't mean I'm not an artist. That means I'm using something that's, that is possibly stolen. And that's a good other point. But like you can't say that anyone who doesn't use, who uses any gender to the AI in their work is not an artist. That's just, that's just blanket doesn't make sense. Now then there's good artists and bad ones. And we can talk about the Coca-Cola commercial and get into all of that. Like there's taste and also the ability to say like, hey, a truck should have more wheels than that. That kind of thing, you know? - We'll talk about that. So another honorable mention I would say is runway. Runway was like very early on these video models. I think they've been completely lapped by VO, but what they've done is I think they've started to make more specialized models. So there's one, they have like, I don't know, a pry five models, but they have one that's specifically meant for taking existing footage and adding things to it, which is kind of cool. And underarm are actually used it for a commercial. And you've got these athletes running all over a field and you've got fire streaking behind them. And they used runway. And there's this great right up, we'll link to it in the show notes for this. And you know, for something simple like that, like as far as visual effects go, that's relatively simple. We're adding like a line of flame, you know, like here on a soccer field or something like that. And you know, okay, traditionally what would you need? You'd need an element for that or you'd have to like simulate it, but you'd probably just like shoot something on black or you'd find something. Then you'd have to composite it the right way. You probably have to roto out if someone goes in front of it. Like there's all those things you'd have to do. But in, but all of those steps, really like, you know, for something that kind of simple, you probably don't care very much. Like you want the right fire element, the right size and all of that, but like, you know, you could find 10 of those and anyone will do. You got to roto it, but you're not excited about that. You got to composite it. There's got to be some taste there, but you know, how you composite fire on something is kind of a solved problem. And now it's just like you draw a line on the frame where you want the fire and you type in, put a streak of fire there. And maybe you put a little reference image. And boom, it's done, right? And I really think that like certain types of visual effects are gonna be so accessible to people. And I think, you know, I mentioned in my talk in Portland, the idea of Jevin's paradox, which I'll probably bring up again in a minute. But I think that like, you know, like if I was a VFX artist, does that kind of stuff I might be worried until I realize there's probably gonna be a thousand times more visual effects happening. And maybe I can just focus on the cool part, which is like, how big is the fire? Where does the fire go? Like how much heat distortion is there? Like should there be some smoke too? And making those decisions, actually executing it, maybe you don't have to do for very long. - So I had experience trying to pull off a visual effect shot with OLLIF. And it's a really interesting story. I'm gonna just kind of like talk about it because it's what's funny about it is is that like I had to work with the CEO of runway to make it happen, right? And in the end, it was fine, but not exactly what I want. So basically we wanted for our Puget Systems video. There was a comment where I said like, oh, it's like having the predator, using the heat scanner. It's like having the predator work at your, like beta tester computer. And the camera whips to the side and there's the predator standing there. Like he appears like whatever. So I tried doing it with OLLIF. And every time I did it, it was like, it was like I kind of know what the predator looks like, you know, and it kept giving me something, it didn't look like, I was like, I was talking about it on Twitter and the CEO was like, hey, send me the clip. Let's see what we can do here. And sure enough, they actually got a decent result out of their people who knew what the hell they were doing. And I don't know how much they dove deep into the model or anything, but like by the end of the day, he sent me a clip that had it. But of course they have a limit on how long could be and it wasn't long enough and I couldn't get it to work. So how do I handle it? Like ultimately, the help of friend suggested this is, I used, I mean, basically mid-journey was used to generate a picture of the predator, then animate it, but it was over a green screen. Composite, track the shot, like using traditional tracking methods, composited it in, used like different kinds of tools to make it like some of the predator appears I'm using. So how do you use very traditional methods along with AI to get it done, rather than just blanket dropping, you know, OLLIF onto it and having it finish the shot for me. It just didn't work. - Yeah, well, and I think that's a good example of, you have taste, our own. And so like, yeah, like someone who didn't have the same level of taste and expectations as you would have been happy with whatever I'll have spit out the first time and be like, "Yeah, it's close enough." And you're like, "No." And if there was a client, they'd say, "No, that's not good enough, right?" And so, you know, until maybe the day comes where literally it can be perfect with like, what it's generating. But even then, everyone has different taste. And there's always have to have a little bit of control. So these traditional compositing skills and stuff like that, I can't see them going anywhere. I think it's gonna be that plus these new things that we're all kind of like, we're all swimming around. And one other model I wanted to call out was Moon Valley. We interviewed a lot of people. I read the founder earlier and I love what they're trying to do. So they kind of did the Firefly thing. We're training an ethical model, we're paying artists and filmmakers for their footage. We're only training on that. The thesis was by starting with higher quality stuff 'cause they're curating and hand picking and getting really great stuff, their model is gonna eventually be better than others. And I was really rooting for them. And they, you can go on their site and use it and they've got kind of a cool interface where it'll generate like a still, it'll generate a frame and then it'll create like a depth map of it and kind of extrude it around the depth map and then you can fly a virtual camera and create a camera move. And then it uses that to generate the video. So you sort of have some control over the camera and practice didn't work that one when I tried it, but this was months ago. But I think they're gonna experience the bitter lesson, which Adobe's experience with Firefly is that in the end it's gonna be the amount of data you have. And Google, I think Google's gonna win this video generator race. I don't see how, I think we're gonna have a lot of models that are specialized like Runway. Sora's kind of doing its own thing. Sora's a great video model, but it's designed for comedy and memes. And I can't imagine using it for like a professional thing. It's not really, I don't even think that's what they intend it to be used for, but I don't see how Google loses this. I think VO, PO4, whenever that comes out, I think it's gonna be insane. And I think that we just need to start figuring out, okay, how do we get more control of these things? Like when are they usable, when are they not? Can they do this part and then we bring it into After Effects or Nuke or whatever and fix it and cut the piece out that we like? And I think that's how these models are gonna be used at least for the next couple of years. It's my take. I don't know if you guys have a different take. - You know, OpenAI is already, like Sam Altman said, like 2026 is gonna be rough, 'cause they're seeing like Google coming in hot. So even OpenAI realizes they're kind of losing ground here, which is crazy 'cause they've been the ones that have been the lead horse this entire race, you know? - All right, so you said something interesting that I wanna touch on, which is OpenAI, right before this recording, Sam Altman, he sent a memo to everybody there. And I think he called it a code red, in his best Jack Nicholson impression or something. And basically what they're worried about is they're realizing that Google is starting to take their lunch money a little bit. So there's all these like benchmarks with models and stuff. And I think the newest Gemini beats a chat GPT on certain benchmarks. But I think, you know, I think the bigger issue that OpenAI has is a financial one. Google, as of now, doesn't need to make money on AI, right? There, and no one's making money on AI. These big model companies are not making money. OpenAI, I heard a crazy stat today. They've been burning billions of dollars every year, but they're projecting by 2028. I think they're gonna lose $76 billion that year, right? So yeah, it's just a money furnace, but investors were giving the money because they thought, well, this is obviously gonna be the winner in the AI race. Look how great all their models are. Google caught up very, very quickly. And I think as far as motion designers are concerned, it's not gonna make a huge difference because OpenAI is not really making tools for artists. They're really focused more on the LLM side of things. Yeah, they have a video model, yeah, they have Sora, but neither of those are really, they're not really designed to be kind of like artist friendly creative tools, right? The more interesting thing is, you know, eventually these tools are gonna have to make money. Like you can't, I mean, maybe you can run them at a loss forever, I don't know. But right now, I think they're astronomically expensive. And the biggest issue that that's creating right now, I don't know what that'll mean in the next few years, is that in order to use all these tools, you have to buy credits. Mid-journey's a little different in that, you know, you have a certain amount of generations, it's not really clear what that is. If you make too many of them, they'll tell you you have to wait, like till the next day or something like that. With VO and with all these other ones, even nano banana, you have a certain amount of credits. You're paying a provider for credits, and then they're, you know, like with Weevee, you get 5,000 credits on the plan I'm on. And using nano bananas, 15 credits, using VO3 to generate videos like 120 credits. And then if you're not, you gotta buy more. Adobe is doing the same thing. And I already mentioned how crappy it is to be in Photoshop and you wanna use the harmonized tool, and you have to think how many credits to have, how many is that gonna use. If I'm using content or a fill, that uses a certain amount, you know, or a generated fill. So, you know, maybe we can start there. You know, do you think that that's hurting adoption of these tools? I mean, nothing else we use works that way. Like if you're buying a stock model or something, you're used to paying for usage. But not for a tool, right? Isn't that weird? - I kinda talk about this in my predictions where, where I think if there's a different story to the first half of 2025 and the last half here, where it was all the hype and then it's like, the check, the check has come and it's like, well, this isn't worth it. And this is why all these companies stocks are taking as well, 'cause these investors are thinking the same thing. And so, that's the thing is, no one talks about the cost of like what it actually takes to get a decent generation. You know, Aaron, you were talking about how with using the Sora social media thing, like you created this really great TED talk, using it, but you're like, I made 100 videos. And it's free for right now and that's how they get you, right? It's like, here's the, like for Google, Nano Banana for Firefly, they're like, oh, you can do this for free, unlimited until, I think it's still going for like the next week of December. And that's the thing, when you actually use this in production, like an actual artist trying to get generations, like it's just too expensive. So I mean, I would rather spend my time making it from scratch. I know what I'm going to get. I'm going to get something that's usable versus spending time and money and being left without holding the bag. - Yeah. So, you know, for what is worth that, on that particular video, which I made, so for just one month, I went absolutely crazy 'cause I was working on another project. I wanted to see, I was using it for something else entirely, but I ended up having spending like 200 bucks on the tier for that gives you, like, so I got 100 generations a day. And I used 100 generations. I used that entire day's worth of stuff to make this like, to make this three minute thing that was a total of 19 clips, right? The, like, it's, it costs our astronomical right now to do it. You know, and the problem is, is that each time you do it, you really just don't know if you're getting any closer to the end result that you want. It was frustrating because, you know, actually took two days because, you know, I used up some other stuff in that morning and then I was like, you know, I ran out of time, so I had to wait till the next day to finish this thing. If I didn't feel like spending a crazy amount of money on more credits, right, it's just a pain. - Yeah, yeah. I think that that's gonna come, you know, that's, I think in the end, artists are gonna have to, at least in the short term, get really good at knowing when it's worth it and when it's not, you know? 'Cause sometimes it is gonna be worth it. I mean, if you're, you know, if you're a studio and your artists are getting good at this and using tools like weaving and stuff like that, it may make sense to have a $200 a month subscription so they can essentially generate whenever they need to. If you're a freelancer and you're thinking, maybe I can do this job faster, well, a $200 a month subscription is a lot. And if you're not sure you can do it faster, and if you get halfway there and you're like, God, this is, first of all, it's boring. Like, you know, if you're, like using Sora as boring. Like, it's fun to watch the thing it makes. Yeah. But like, you're copying and pasting the same prompt in a hundred times, I'm guessing, and changing the dialogue yet. And when I was done, I don't know about you, but when I was done making stuff with Sora, like, as fun as the results were, I felt completely bereft of any enjoyment in the files. Did you feel dirty? You felt a little dirty. (laughing) It's dirty, yeah. You know, I mean, like, like a little dirty, a little bit like depressed because on the one hand, I was depressed because, because, yes, you know, like, no creativity whatsoever involved in this, outside of just the idea of it. But also, that like, it kind of bums me out that you can make stuff this, like, like, you can generate something that looks cool. And I can't necessarily do that in Unreal myself. That looks as cool as that, but that, you know, it's five second clip, right? Yeah. But it bugs me a little bit that like, I can't use the current tools, but the knowledge that I have to do it. And the only way to do it is to put it into a black box, and that really bum me out, man. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and it's, I mean, that aspect of it is still a total slot machine. You have no control over, like, you know, I mean, it is pretty amazing how close to your likeness it gets sometimes, not every time, again, like a slot machine. Yeah, and so I think that that leads into probably like a big topic we need to discuss, which is like the vibe shift, right? We talked about it last year, and I started sensing the vibe shift, like, okay, I'm hearing more people talk about AI, so maybe it's becoming okay. Like the Overton window is shifting, right? Because the term I always hear are like political stuff. So I think this plays into two big things. One is just the fud around AI, okay? And just kind of like, just to kind of label something, I really do think that if the three of us did not have social media accounts and never looked at social media, we would probably feel very differently about, you know, we'd probably, there'd probably be less pessimism. I don't have much pessimism, but there's some, You know, and so I think that's part of it too. I think that the loudest-- voices are always the most negative ones, right? But this year the Vibeship has been palpable and a lot of our guests mentioned this that, you know, even their clients who are still thinking AI makes things cheaper are starting to realize it doesn't really. PJ actually said it makes it more expensive in a lot of cases and they've had to redo things other studios did or other artists using AI. They had to just redo it because it wasn't good enough. And then artists are having this reaction of, oh, it really isn't good enough. So I'm still needed, right? And I think that you can go too far, like you were saying, aren't you can go too far in either direction? Like, this solves everything I don't even need to learn after effects or how to composite or anything. Or this thing is like useless and I'm never going to touch it. I'm just going to live the rest of my life never touching this thing as I hate it. Somewhere in the middle is the right answer, right? I'll try to be reasonable here. I'll play the devil's advocate as well. I have a good grasp of how AI can be helpful and what in what way is going to be it's very destructive. So I think machine learning in general for VFX for upscalers, for rotoscoping, for accelerating simulations and anything in that realm is great. Those are kind of redundant tasks that no one really wants to do. You can compare them to cleaning up your apartment and taking out the trash and all of that, right? Washington Dishes. Please, yes, take all of that away from us. Those are non-critical thinking tasks. No logic needs to be applied there. But where I think it's really, really harmful, like extremely harmful is the generative AI space. So all of these models that are creating images or videos, I think that's so harmful to the whole of humanity. And it's because it's robbing us, especially new people, but everybody, it's robbing us of the opportunity to develop our critical thinking. It's essentially taking away the most important part, which is critical thinking and logical thinking and artistic development when it comes to taste and your artistic development, like the artistic language that you develop through the process of creation. And it's robbing that away from anyone who is using generative AI tools. So I personally don't have a lot of fun when I'm using Gen AI tools. So I try all of these tools. I'm a Houdini artist, and I'm quite technical. So using some comfy UI note system, to me, it's like I do that every day. It's not impressive or difficult for me to use at all. It's actually extremely simple. When I'm creating something in Houdini, when I'm creating a logical system or a toolset, I am using my critical thinking. I'm actually thinking I'm putting down the the train tracks. I'm putting down the logic, right? When it comes to a lot of these tools, everything is kind of pre-built for you or like you don't really have a lot of say in it or how the result is going to be like, it's all very dry. Like it's just so, so dry. It does nothing for me. But I think for a lot of other people, what is happening is, and you can see who these people are, and it's usually people who've never been creative or think that they are creative, but they're not really, or they think they're artists, but they're not really. But these tools unlock, like for the first time, they acquired the concept of creation, and they can show that creation to others. They can share that. And I think we as artists who are actually creating works of art and have been artists for a long time, the reason we are doing the work is because it overflows us with dopamine. Like our brain is just like, yes, yes, yes, this is amazing, right? So you make new artwork, you draw, and you enjoy the process, and then you post it to the world, and you're like, oh, I made this. And people are like, this is amazing, this is awesome, and you feel really proud of yourself. I get that when I do actual work. It's, you know, it's kind of the struggle that's important here. Like that's a huge part of this equation. You need to struggle a bit. You need to actually feel like you've acquired something. When I use these gen AI tools, I get none of that. Everyone is talking about how AI tools can be disruptive, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, AI is just changing the way in which we approach our craft. For a long time, the process of creating an animation or a motion design project has followed a series of steps. AI is just coming in and changing what those steps are. I think the best way to think about it is the production workflow that we're used to at this point, where we have pre-production, production, and post-production is shrinking. You now have the ability in the post-production process to change some of the creative assets and to get different shots and angles and things like that in the actual editing bay. And so it kind of changes the way that you think about it, but at the end of the day, again, you really need existing skills to get the most out of these AI tools. While I think it's more disruptive for, I would say, monotonous, boring tasks like the ones you might get hired for on Fiverr, I think it's less disruptive for really refined professional projects that have a very narrow and specific scope. Of course, in that workflow, you can find and utilize AI tools to help you save time and really help you to creatively iterate, but it's all about using the existing skills in your arsenal. So, EJ, I'll start with you. When you talk to artists, and I know everyone secretly is using AI, I'm not talking about it, have you sensed the vibe shift? Like, yeah, actually, I'm not as afraid of this thing as I was before. I wouldn't say I see a vibe shift in that because artists are still feeling the financial ramifications of that. And while some of the top-end clients are maybe realizing this, I think there's a lot of other clients that don't realize this stuff. Because I mean, how do you come to that conclusion? You have to hire a studio as a client. You have to hire a studio and tell them to do AI and you're hire some AI influencer, bro. And then you get burned and then you learn your lesson. So, I think that experience is going to have to ripple through the industry a little bit more to really have that kind of conclusion come where maybe artists are feeling a little bit more confident about where they stand. But I would say that, you know, I think artists already finding the ways that they're using AI that's really helping them out. So, we talk about move AI. There's already like, firefly and stuff like that. I think those are like the the less sexy ways to use AI. Like because you talk about social media. If it's not hyperbally and if it's not trying to get a lot of engagement, like it's just not sexy. So things like move AI, you're not talking about move AI or firefly in terms of GG artists, and if you're not talking like that, no one cares. So there's all the actually helpful stuff that needs to be talked about that isn't just because it doesn't, you know, it's not hype. It's not a big deal. And so it's the same thing with like the blender and the C4D stuff. It's like, well, it's not that sexy to talk about, hey, C4D is easy to use. It's way more sexy to be like, oh my god, look at this cool thing about blender and it's free. It's funny because EJ, you mentioned that blender thing and how like you got the most engaging around that. For me, the most engagement I've gotten recently has been around three posts, three or four posts I've had about AI. And so one of the posts was like very, you know, you might consider it to be very anti-AI and it was about how like it was like, you know, so here's how it went. I posted something like a sort of like a my thoughts on AI and the immediate response I got from the AI community was you don't understand AI, you feel threatened by it, you're trying to keep us out. So then I went and made that TED talk that we talked about earlier and suddenly that part of the conversation disappeared. It became a conversation, right? Because they couldn't say, oh, you don't understand AI. I made a three minute video that was fairly convincing, although not perfect because it falls apart. And it's kind of meta because in the video I point out how like everything's not working the way it should and all of that. But the conversation really shifted to a much more intelligent sort of like reasoned conversation because no longer like the extremes, but like the people who on the pro AI side were saying, okay, he's using AI so he has some knowledge of it. The people on the anti-AI side were very comfortable with it because I didn't get a single like how dare you use AI, which you know, usually you get. It was like, ah, you're using AI to critique AI, right? And my whole point in all of that was to say that like, what in that conversation was that this culture of around AI of like this, of like what it can do and it's the best thing. And like all of that's the toxic stuff that's actually taking away from our perception of what AI can actually do for us. And it's like making it like a them or us kind of thing, which is driving me crazy. The other part of it is is that through those conversations, I tried subtle things. I said, hey, people don't want to hear this, but there are some things you can create with AI that you can't do right now with traditional visual effects or anything like. And immediately people are like, "What you can do with, you know, I think it was Houdini." And I'm like, "Show me a thing with Houdini." Oh, it has tools like that. I'm like, "Show me a thing that does anything like this." And I'm like, "I want you to prove me wrong." But like, I'm not saying, and I said, was like, "I'm not saying AI is the right tool for everything, but like, I can't do this in any other way." So like, we have to recognize these things and have this discussion instead of being like, it's all, it's totally bad, it's totally good. And so it's just like this, there's like so much toxicity around the discussion that that's why people have been hiding for so long. And I feel like I'm trying to have these nuanced conversations. And like, once I get them started, I start to see the nuance come out amongst the community. Like, "Oh, you know, you're not saying that all AI is bad, you're saying that Coca-Cola ad is really janky and strange." Okay, I get that now, I get that. And so you have to kind of talk both sides off the ledge just to even have the conversation at all. - Yeah, I think the Coca-Cola spot, which we'll talk about, I mean, it wasn't bad because it used AI. It was bad because it was bad, right? I think you're exactly right, and I think the conversation that mostly gets the clicks and the views is the total wrong conversation to have. I'm anti-AI, I'm pro-AI. I have yet to meet anyone who's stopped using AI because of a comment they saw on social media that talked to them out of using it, right? That doesn't happen. And anyone who's decided that I'm dug in, I'm never using it, it's unethical, I hate it. I don't know that anything I say or anybody's gonna say is gonna convince them otherwise. I'm trying to ignore that as much as I can and just be pragmatic, right? I do think it's important to point out things like every single person we've talked to is using AI. There's another term of trying to remember what it is. There's a preference falsification going on where it seems as if artists and studios don't like AI because that's the in thing. That's what social media would make you believe. It's not really true. I think there's fear around it, which I think is natural. And I think there are ethical concerns which are reasonable. But in the end, if you're gonna make a living doing this, I think you just have to ask yourself one question, is there gonna be more or less artists using AI in two years or three years, right? And I don't, even the people who hate AI are probably gonna admit, yes, more people are gonna use it. So the big question is, is AI being used on actual real world professional projects? And the answer is a resounding yes. I train artists at every major studio and at the world's largest ad agencies. And I can tell you definitively, they are 100% using artificial intelligence inside of their work. I also attended a recent event at Buck where they were outlining how they used AI inside a few of their most recent client projects. So it's pervasive in the motion design world. It's used across the film industry and the ways in which it's being adopted are only expanding. And not only is it helpful for the pre-production, the pitching, the spec process, it's also very helpful increasingly for pixels on screen. We've already seen it used inside of the visual effects world. It's being used in the documentary world. And of course, we've seen it inside the advertising world as well. I'm sure if you really look at the commercials that are on television, you'll begin to notice that some of them kind of have sharp edges. It's because they're using Google V03 to create their visuals. We also get the question a lot of whether or not AI is replacing jobs or creating new jobs. I do think it is changing the creative pipeline. So inevitably jobs will just have to change. I will say that at Curious Refuge, we have a huge jobs board with tons of roles that still are unfulfilled. We place artists in full time, part time, and contract gigs every single day. And we would love to do the same for members of this community. We had a motion designer who got laid off of their motion designer job about a year ago, not because of AI, but simply because they couldn't find work for the studio. They started using AI, and now they have an incredible full time position in the industry. So I think if you're feeling the weight of the changes that are going on, I would highly recommend checking us out at Curious Refuge because we would love to help you upskill and create a context for how you can use these AI tools inside of your work. And if you're ethically against it, like I get it, but even if you yourself work on a thing that doesn't have AI, it's going to be integrated amongst them a whole bunch of other stuff that uses AI. So if you're ethically against it, then you're really-- like what you're saying is essentially is, I'm not going to do it, but I'm still going to participate in a thing that totally does it. And now you have to ask these other questions you have to ask, because I think so many people are against it in part because of the ethics of it. And like, I mean, listen, we're at the situation. Like the ethics are going to be debated for years. It's being used, and it is going to be used. And that's the thing. You've got to recognize that. Yeah. And any kind of ethical argument like that, there's a real slippery slope there where-- I think it's a valid feeling to have. And maybe there's a valid argument too, but it's like, where do you stop? Should I never work for a social media company? Should I-- because I think that that's probably harm society more than it's out. Should I check out the carbon footprint of companies where does it end? And the way I really feel about it is that most of that is actually a deflection. I think most of the people are afraid of AI. I think they're afraid that it's going to take their livelihood away. I could be wrong. Please leave comments. I'm really looking forward to reading comments on this part. Joey, I would say that one of the most interesting conversations I had with where these AI-- let's not call them influences, because these are not the people who are like-- you have to use AI for everything, but they're making art with AI. I had a conversation with them. It was just a great, really eye-opening thing, where they were like-- someone posted something that said, we've been kept out of art for so long and whatever. And I was like, hey, nobody kept you out. The last 20 years, there's been free resources online, there's free software. And they're like, you didn't understand. That's because you have talent, and that's because you have time. But I don't have time and talent, and I still want to make art. And I realized that so much of this culture of getting it out of why it's so awesome is because these people who have-- who really, they acknowledge, I could never make a picture in my life. And I certainly, even if I could, I don't have the time to learn it, but this allows me to do it. And so they don't-- on the one hand, they don't know what they're missing out on. The creative process can be so freaking rewarding, right? You get so much-- I learned so much in that process. And that's what actually, for me, gives me the joy. But for them, it's not about that. For a lot of these people, it's just about creating an image. And listen, and you ever, if you guys watch Ever Watch, The Daily Show and John Stewart pulls the camera up and he has a nice little talk with the-- I need to do that for moments. Joe, I'm hoping you can expand my space on screen for just a moment when I want to do this. OK, guys, listen. I know that you want to create stuff, and there's all this anti-positive and anti-AI sentiment. But here's the thing. You want to create art, do that. But the way that it's going to work in a professional setting is you're not going to be prompting. You're not just going to need to know AI. As much as those tech bros want to tell you that all you need to know is AI, that's not how it's going to work. Make your art-- don't let anyone tell you it's not art. Just do whatever you want to do. But recognize that the way that things work in the industry is that this stuff will slowly get integrated into professional workflows. And it doesn't matter how much experience you have using AI, you're going to need to know things like lighting and composition and animation and things like that that will help you to do this. Because otherwise, no one's going to hire you. So if you want to use AI, great. But you will not be able to use it alone professionally for quite a while in a real production environment. So learn some stuff about animation and visual effects and all the things that it matter so that you can actually tell the AI what you want in an intelligent way and get better results. Yeah. AI doesn't have taste, right? Like it can produce things that are tasteful, but it's an accident when that happens, right? There's no mind in there evaluating this is tasteful. I'll show it to the user. That's not happening. You still have to have the taste. And that's why I think, you know, I think taste is going to be-- It's going to be used a lot on School of Motion Channel. The truth is, AI tools are only going to get better. And so as artists very similar to whenever the computer became popular, it's just up to us to learn how to use these tools to help with our creative expression. Of course, you can type in a prompt and get something in return in the same way that you could use a Canva template to create a graphic design project and get something in return. But that's going to be very generic. At the end of the day, it's all about your taste and storytelling. And when everybody has access to these AI tools and can type in prompts and get things that look pretty good, it's increasingly going to be important for you to understand what resonates with the minds and the imaginations of your target audience and ultimately the target audience of the clients that you're working with. Now, on the artistic front, the prominence, the story behind the story is going to become increasingly more important as well. So sharing with your community, the behind the scenes, of how are you putting the project together? What is your thought process? That is only going to help to increase the value of the piece you are working on. And I think we are going to have a big resurgence in a big escalation in the value that we put towards art that has human hands tied to it. But taste, you know, taste as important as taste is, sure remember that like all of this AI stuff is built on the work that other artists, if we're arguing that it's built on the work other artists have done, that means speaking the language of an artist, whether it's a filmmaker or a graphic designer or a director or any of that stuff, like you need to know that language because the AI can produce better results from somebody who has experience doing this stuff in the real world and understand how lighting, a little bit of lighting change can change mood, or how, so it's like a partially taste and it's partially the knowledge of how these things work to create a final result. So like you could say make a picture of a dragon and it might make something awesome, but sometimes it won't and you won't know why it doesn't look good and you won't be able to direct it to make it better. That's the key. Yeah. You see too many parallels to the NFT conversation where you had so many people there like, "Oh, it's all about the community, it's all about the art and dut dut dut." And once the money wasn't there, that went away. Correct. So that person that you're talking about how it's like, I totally get, listen, if you have always wanted to create art, like everyone is creative. Like everyone has an ounce of creativity in them when we're all children and stuff, and then that's beat out of us for this. Yeah. Most of us, right? So I totally get the joy. Someone with zero artistic talent and you know, zero time can like create stupid memes and stuff like that. That's great. But the person you were talking to, it's on social media. And the point about social media is to get engagement and likes. And I guarantee that person loves to create that stuff because they get engagement. And once that goes away, if that person is really honest with themselves about, I have always wanted to do this and they're actually getting joy out of the process. If the likes go away and no one's seeing it, like, are they still going to do it? I doubt that person because it doesn't sound like that person specifically is in it for just the enjoyment of it. It's for the likes. It's for the engagement. It's all the NFT bros. It's the crypto bros. It's just all the bros. Yeah, I wish we could ignore all the bros and all the young people who are trying who don't have the time to learn art and just are making stuff with, "Hey, I stopped making it about that," which we are doing too much of. There's a lot of like, you're not an artist. I mean, like, I don't think by prompting your artist, but I don't care enough to tell somebody that they're not like, "I'm going to waste my time and energy on that." You don't know what you don't know and you believe what you believe. All right? This is, we're Bon Bradesco original quote. And this ties into my next point, which is the CEO of Google AI. His name is, his name is Mustafa Suleiman. He said in a tweet that he can't believe that he also underwhelmed and unimpressed by this technology that, you know, AI can generate any image and video is just mind blowing to him. And I was sitting there. I was like, so this guy is the CEO of Google AI, right? And he's saying this. And to me, it just shows how much, you know, he doesn't know. I'm sure he's a really smart guy, you know? But he probably doesn't know what he doesn't know. He should go into a big studio, like where they do actual proper stuff and be there for a few weeks. And people would explain to him and show him that we've been, you know, we've been able to do good, really good CGI and VFX with the current tools that we have for a really long time now. And it looks, and maybe I'm going crazy, but like freaking David Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean looks so freaking good. And all of these movies like the Matrix and even freaking Jurassic Park and all of these movies. And even if you start looking at the animated movies like the Spiderverse or there's a new Indian movie that just came out and or or or or freaking arcane. Have you seen arcane and then you can compare arcane and all these good, really good movies to what the current AI can do. Like it's so far away, it's not even in the same freaking level man. Like I get confused. He's confused. I've even more confused. Have you seen any freaking good movies? Like all of them look 10, 10, a billion times better to whatever any of these freaking tools can generate like by a long shot. So I'm actually confused. Why are people so impressed by this? And to answer my own question is, you know, because of all the things I've been explaining so far. But yeah, I essentially replied to him. I was like, well, it's because you never worked in a studio before with proper artists, so you don't have the knowledge to understand why it's an impressive. But it is an impressive and it's killing creativity and critical thinking. That was my reply. So like I said, you just don't know what you don't know and you believe what you believe. Yeah, well, let's talk, let's talk for a minute about the actual utility of all of these things. Because that, you know, that's the thing that is still putting downward pressure on budgets because of unrealistic expectations from clients, right? But there's been a couple interesting things that happened this year. So, fortune magazine put out this article that kind of took the AI world by storm when it came out. I think this was back in August. They looked at this study. I think MIT did this study evaluating the ROI of all of these AI pilot programs that all these large companies implemented. Because when chat GPT came out and AI started to become a big thing, all these companies, you know, the promise was, you'll be able to hire 10 people to do the work of 100. You'll be able to have automated agents that like handle all your customer support. You don't need humans anymore. And so these companies, like they have hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at it. And they did 95% of those pilot programs failed. That's not a small number, right? And, you know, those are probably not mostly like using generative image generations and video generations. They're using LLMs. They're trying to integrate with their accounting systems, HR, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I think the less than there, and what I've heard people talk about who've been part of these programs and the people that really understand AI is, AI, the term I've heard is, you know, humans are like a beginning to end problem solver, right? You have the idea or you recognize the problem. Then you figure out how to solve it and solve it. Then you validate, did I solve it? Could I have done it better? How could I improve this process? AI is only the middle part, right? For now, right? I'll add that caveat, but for now, that's all it can do. And I think it's exactly the same thing in our creative world, right? Like if you don't have good ideas, you can use AI to help you get good ideas. You still need tastes. You need to still need to have something, right? And, you know, I have a feeling if you gave like the average AI bro unlimited VO3 credits and you gave Steven Spielberg unlimited VO3 credits. What Steven Spielberg comes up with is going to be way more watchable than the other person. I just think, you know, that there's a piece of it and you can really get philosophical here metaphysical even, spiritually even. I don't know that like that. I don't know that the current models of AI the way they work can ever truly solve the beginning and the end problem, right? And so a lot of these companies what they're realizing is, okay, yeah, we can use AI to like do these middle parts that are kind of boring or tedious, but we have to check every single thing. It does. You can't rely on anything. Developers are finding this out the hard way. There's this all this talk about vibe coding which is basically asking an LLM to make code for you. I've done a lot of that. My kids, I'm trying to get them to learn their time's tables and I couldn't find like the perfect little app for them to use to like practice the ones they don't know and then time them at the end and see if they got it and make it fun. And I vibe coded an app using cloud. It took about 15 minutes, okay? It works. It's up on a website. Anyone could go use it. Maybe I'll put the link in the show notes and you guys can go try it. AI vibe coding that has really shifted how I work and how a lot of other designers work of instead of just creating a clickable prototype and Figma, I can take these Figma designs, put them into a vibe experience and create like a real thing. I can use my actual motion specs into the thing and so it feels as real as possible using actually like web code that helps the concepts be way more feasible and also helps with the handoff from design to engineering that like the thing that they're looking at is actually built using some sort of web code and so that helps just bridge that gap a bit more. And this helps you iterate through different ideas way quicker. There's been many projects recently that I've not even touched after effects or Figma and I'm only AI vibe coding and it's taking it from like concept all the way to production. And so it's really shifting the way that you are able to work. Figma make is also a wonderful tool. I haven't used it personally but just all the things that I've seen it just makes vibe coding a lot easier and a bit more accessible. Just you're working in the design software that you're already in and then just vibe coding on top of that. It's amazing. And then anti-gravity from Google which is a new coding environment that really integrates a lot of like agentic coding experiences into this one coding tool where you essentially just act as like a project manager or a product manager and you're just like messaging back and forth with an AI chatbot or an agent that just like goes and does all the things that you want it to. I've used it a little bit so far and the features of it are very, very promising. Just like all vibe coding tools like there's still some things that it just doesn't get right or just kind of errors out as it's still like an early tech but the promise of it is really, really exciting. But if I ever wanted to like turn that into a product and charge people for it and have customer support like the real world is so messy. It's so much messier than people pretend it is and creative projects just multiply that times a thousand right. There's so many new I think PJ from Laundry, he did a really great job when he did our live workshop talking about this. Like, yeah, it can make a pretty picture, and it can even like render it and make it move, but then you notice all the things that aren't right. - Yeah. - And first of all, you have to notice that yourself. The AI doesn't notice that, it can't, right? It's just a statistical model, like doing math basically. Here's another interesting one that I just found. Disney apparently spent $50 million with this like test to try to integrate AI into their production process. And, you know, I think, and it just failed abysmally. And the reasons that they stated where, you know, employees first of all didn't like it, right? That's predictable. But, you know, there's also like, they weren't sure legally what they were gonna be able to use, like, okay, or if we release something and charge money for it, or are we gonna get sued by somebody. But really, the technical constraints of this thing, you know, a company like Disney, like, their reputation is staked on the taste that they bring to every project. And these tools don't have that. And in order to imbue your taste and use the tools, it takes just as much work sometimes, as doing it the old fashioned way. So, and this has been my experience using AI over the last three years, like, it is super useful. I use it every day. We use it on lots of stuff at school emotion. All of our YouTube thumbnails are using AI in some way, but they can't make a thumbnail for you. It doesn't know what a good title is. It doesn't really know what a good composition is. It doesn't know that we want the blender logo in the corner. It doesn't know those things, but we can tell it, you know, make Joey at a three quarter angle and his mouth is open. And I don't have to go take a picture and shave before, 'cause I have to shave every time I'm on camera, 'cause I grow beard. You know, that saves a lot of time. It's super useful, right? And you can turn EJ into a pug and you can turn me into the Hulk. I mean, you can do all these things really easily. You still need a human to have the idea and to design the thing. And like all of those steps, nano-banana is good as it is. It's just helping you make the assets that you want, right? So, I kind of want to throw that to you guys. I mean, you guys have experimented with AI in different ways. To me, it's really the world's fastest asset generator at this point, which can save a ton of time and money. It's very useful. It's not doing projects for you at all at this point. - You know, when Seth and I were gonna on films together, we would have this process at the beginning where we joke that like, but if you're like, "That's a great idea," we're like, "Yeah, you should hear all the bad ideas." We would throw out bad ideas until we stopped having bad ideas and then started having good ones, right? And like, AI is the fastest way to find out what you should not waste your time on. And in fact, one of my friends, she's the showrunner for a TV show that was on Hulu last year. And she wanted like, she wanted to like, have at the end have this thing with her dog and all of that. So I just very quickly mocked it up in mid-journey and she's like, "Oh, I don't want that at all." That's terrible, right? And it wasn't the picture was bad. It was that once she saw the concept, she's like, "No, no, I don't want to do that at all." So it's a great way to throw stuff out, but the brilliance of listen, the thing I predict, but the thing about when you have limited resources, you spend the time making the best things because you only have so much time. When you have unlimited resources and the ability to iterate and everything, you get a lot of bad stuff. And that's what this stuff is very good at generating a lot of content, but a lot of bad content. And if you have taste, you can find the best stuff in there and then use that, but that's where like you say, that's where the thing breaks apart. Is the minute you have to have the thing have tasted, you've done. - Know the part where the clients, like, I know what I like when I see it. Like, I think this is the biggest win for artists is that you can throw, you could put a lot of stuff in the front of a client's face and get that, get to the right answer quicker. And I think that's real, it's the less sexy, I guess the thing where it's like, you almost need to not pay attention to social media because they're not telling you the actual ways AI is being used in production. So you almost have to think for yourself or talk to other people in the industry, in the trenches to actually learn how it's being used. Like, you know, Joey, you mentioned before about, how PJ did a workshop for our community here at school motion and like, it was eye opening. - Very nice. - Even the stuff about like how certain specific tech companies will not allow you to use AI as a final result because they're afraid of getting sued and the, and they're the ones making the AI. So it's, you know, it's pretty nuts how that works. But one of the things is like, at the end of the day, whether whatever tool you're using, you are trying to solve a client's problem. And most of the time that client's problem is to sell more crap. So for example, the Pepsi, or the Coca-Cola ad, which might be a really good Pepsi ad, if you think about it. Like that's just selling sugar water. - Yeah. - So they always do the Christmas thing. Is that AI ad, is that probably achieving their goal of at least you're talking about it? Like maybe just because you see it, like I'm thirsty for a Coke, that's probably achieving a goal, right? They're probably selling as much, or maybe more, maybe not, I don't know. There's statistics EJ about how people trust companies less when they use AI in their image generation stuff. Like there's some strong statistics to say that people, like even if they don't care about the quality of the image, knowing that it was AI actually makes them trust the company less. - So another thing that like someone just sent me earlier this week was they, someone worked on a St. Jude's Christmas ad with an AI Santa Claus. And if you've seen the St. Jude ads, they're very, it's all about like tugging at the heart streams. You see the children in the hospitals, with the tubes up the nose and stuff like that. And this was all AI generated. And this is where it's, you almost have to pull back and it's like, wait a minute. What is the point of this St. Jude ad? Like number one, I don't know if St. Jude actually hired this person to do it. And if it's gonna be airing locally, it's something, because you know, local ads are always a different breed of them. It's always terrible quality and stuff like that. But even so, is someone gonna watch that and see all the weirdness and not actually have the heart strings being pulled? Because I was watching and I'm like, these are all fake people. But I know that there's actually, children with cancer and stuff that need help. But like this is doing nothing for me. So at the end of the day, I think you have to use AI to solve the problem. And I think for Coke, maybe no one cares that at that level. But if it's something like you're raising money for children's cancer research, this is not an area. - Yeah, you better show cancer on camera and not show like AI generated people suffering because it makes people think the money's going to the wrong way. - It's like the extremes that we're seeing. - Let me take the other side of that. So you know, my gut is not even seeing that spot, is it like to make, like I was talking about earlier with 3D, like to make a 3D render that's like, makes you go, oh, it's gross, is really difficult, right? There's like such a level of subtlety that you have to achieve. And to make someone really feel something in a commercial, like everything has to work, right? The music, the editing, the performances, you know? And if you're using real people, like real kids with cancer, then like obviously they don't have to act and that's gonna come through somehow. And when it's an AI generated thing, like if it looked 100% real and you had no way of knowing if it was AI or not, if it did the same thing emotionally, then from a purely like pragmatic perspective, maybe it works, right? I don't think it's there yet. And I think it, it's not even that it doesn't look like real footage 'cause it's pretty darn close. It's just something's not quite right. Like if you had a good director that like specializes in that, they could tell you exactly why that shot's not making you feel something, right? Also, I think it's true that knowing that those aren't real people, that they don't even exist, probably has something to do with it. But I mean, a lot of times, like, you know, when you see an ad for a drug and you see someone talking about their diabetes or whatever, a lot of times those are just actors. You know, they don't have diabetes, they don't have those things. But if they're good actors, you know, when you go see a movie, you see Al Pacino, "Incentive Woman," he's playing a blind person, he's not blind, right? But he makes you think he is 'cause he's a great actor. And I think AI just, you don't have the control yet, the nuance, or maybe we just don't have the high enough caliber of directors using it. I think it's just not there. I think it could get there, but I don't know what it will take. It's like, because again, it's this little micro details. It's the little, the little twitch, you know, of the eye or something that, yeah, you know what I'm saying? - Something we haven't talked about though, 'cause I know we're trying to ultimately get there about motion design though, is that with all this stuff with film and with characters, like it's close. But when it comes to the work that we, that our core audience is doing, it's not close at all. Motion design. Like, there's no, like, I think it's worth just saying that, like I've seen not a single thing that was motion design-y of any kind that looked in any way usable in a professional, like anything, whether it's software that's trying to do it, or whether it's just people's examples of it. I don't know if it's not trained on motion design, but every time I've tried to say, like, just completely random, that's where the hallucinating, the old school hallucinating stuff starts happening. - Yeah, yeah, I didn't mention it when we were talking about Adobe earlier, but one of their Mac's sneaks was MotionMap, which was you feed it an image and you describe the animation you want and it creates motion graphics. And what was wild about that one was, they showed you, like, there was a tech demo of, take a video and you just tell it, remove this surfer from the ocean and it's perfect. that just totally removes it with camera. It just looks perfect. Whoa, the Gaussian spot thing. Whoa, project graph, holy crap. Then they showed that thing. And it is awful. And I mentioned I don't want to pick on LaughtyLab, but they released this Figma AI animation tool. It's terrible, right? I don't know why those things are so far behind. Maybe they just haven't put the resources into it. Maybe it's a harder problem to solve. 2D animation is-- I mean, with some exceptions, I've seen some 2D animation that looks like a cartoon where it's pretty darn good. And there's very elaborate techniques, like these AI wizards using comfy AI. They can make pretty-- it looks like 12 frames a second animation on twos. They can do that now. But when it comes to the abstract stuff that when you hear motion design mo-graph, that's what you think of. I haven't seen AI do anything that looks good there. I'm not confident enough to say that that won't get solved too. But again, you can give me the same design as Jorge from Ordinary Folk. And he's going to make it move better, because he's just got that taste. We probably know a similar amount of After Effects. And I know the graph editor really well, but he's just-- he's got that eye in that taste that I don't quite have. And I think that that's-- in the end, that's what's going to make a difference. It's going to be the artist using these tools. Joe, I think what we're seeing with the AI stuff is that it's the more realistic stuff that is looking really good versus the super stylized and super abstract. And I almost wonder if that's just due to the fact that think of how much video training data that AI has versus like mo-graph stuff. Mo-graph has only been in existence for what, maybe 20, 25 years at this point. So there's just a limited amount. And it's so abstract. But to get anything, VFX, or there's just so much real-world footage and stuff that there's rules that are applied to things that aren't necessarily a product. Right. The fire behaves a certain way. The motion design is let alone-- Yeah. Like fire behaves a certain way, water behaves a certain way. But then you're like, how do squares behave when they're moving into motion design environment? And how do we-- Yeah, it's true. That is actually a really good point. Is that the data is probably not there to even train the AI on right now. If you get into the right pockets of community and discussion, there's been something really wild that's been happening. At the time of this recording, which is a bit before, this is being shared with the world, there is currently a major tech giant who has every staff in agency in existence all on a hunt to find hundreds, possibly thousands of artists to do a six-month contract to generate material that will be used for training AI systems. And this is fascinating to me for a number of different reasons. I mean, you could-- there's a whole argument or discussion to be made for. Are you going to work for this company for a certain number of months and you're going to be building the death star that will be wiping out the planet that you came from, right? There's also just something fascinating to me about a single brand consuming this much of the freelance marketplace. Like, I remember 15 years ago if CYOP was making a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial, like it made it tangibly difficult to find freelance artists because, oh, they had to hire 45 artists at the same time to work on a project. And it was like, oh my gosh, there's now an industry-wide drought of talent. What I'm hearing about is 600 to 1,000 artists in the United States alone and more internationally, that could have really weird implications to have that many people just sort of like a, in a Thanos snap, like disappear off of the freelance market and could make the first half of 2026, like an especially odd high demand time for the industry. And then probably even more unsettling will be when that Thanos snap is undone and this contract all ends and 600 to 1,000 people are puked back out into the freelance market all at the same time, all desperate to figure out what their next gig is. So there's some possibly unsettling things that are just happening around like the scale of these giant projects and initiatives that right now we hear a lot about data centers and the scale of data centers that need to be used to make AI tools even work in the first place. And this for me is the first time that I'm hearing about this like human component happening at this sort of scale. And so it just gets my wheels turning and makes me think, well, interesting, if they do that, does that mean this is the last motion design gig ever? Or does it mean that every year they're going to have to do this? Because styles are evolving and updating and we need to keep up with them. And does that mean that that's maybe even the trajectory that the industry is on at large, which is less about, we're creating the project and more, we're all working and using our creative ability to train the tools themselves. So let's talk about the Apple. I mean, the Coke add a little bit more. So it apparently took 70,000 generations to make that. And I found an interesting thread on X about it where an artist chimed in who had worked on the SIOP, I think it was called the Dream Factory, or the Imagination Factory. It was like a famous Coke spot from like, I don't know, probably 15 years ago, the hey day of SIOP. And they were commenting that like, you know, they weren't as, I mean, they said it sucked, obviously, right? But what they were responding to was, you know, people saying like, well, why didn't Coke just hire artists to do this? I mean, they have the money, this and that, which is true. They could have just hired artists that would come out a lot better. But the point that this person made was basically that like, hey, I worked on a spot that was like a similar sort of like prestige thing for Coca-Cola back in the day. You would not believe the amount of money and resources and time that it took. And so I think that Coke, like a lot of these clients that have unrealistic expectations, they're trying to get more bang for their buck, right? Like in the end, that's what they're hoping this turns into. And it's never going to get to where they want. They want it to be like, I prompt it, make me this year's version of the Santa Claus ad, and it just does it. I'm not sure. And people on our podcasts who are building AI models don't think that that will ever really happen. You're not going to get something good from that. But I do think that like, we're probably going to have to meet the clients somewhere in the middle. Like, okay, well, if you really do want this to be faster and cheaper, here is how AI can help us do that. So we're still going to need a 3D model of a truck, because otherwise, it's going to have eight tires. It's going to have 16 tires. It's going to have 40 tires in this shot. But what we can do is if you want to know, well, what is the truck going to look like? We can concept that out really fast. And then maybe, eventually, those 3D generators, like Meta launched a new one this year that was really good, called SAM 3D, or SAM 3D. And maybe it can give you a base model. But then you can bring into substance a trader to get it to look exactly the way you want. And then you can animate it. And maybe the characters you can use cascader to make the animation a little faster. And I think if you start layering these things up, you probably can do these things faster and cheaper. But I think Aaron, you said it really well. It's like to just discount it completely, because you saw something you didn't like. That spoke-- that spot's up. Like, it wasn't good. I don't think that means you should just not use AI. I think they just used it the wrong way. I think they-- and I'm sure I don't know. Like, I don't know anyone who worked on it. I'm sure there were real artists trying to make a good thing. But they were probably told you have to use this. This is going to be part of the PR for this, you know? I know they put some stats out about what was actually required to make the Coca-Cola Christmas AI ad and the sheer number of prompts that were required to make this thing. And the huge team that was needed to actually clean it up to make it all usable. Like, it's still not a viable tool. Yeah, it's improving. And it's improving fast. And, you know, seeing what people can make with Sora is pretty incredible. It's still not there. And it's still weird and scary and probably dangerous in a lot of ways. Maybe we'll actually see some regulation around some of this, probably not, even though that would be a great thing, I think. But, you know, I don't know. I'm certainly not the one who's going to be able to accurately guess where any of this is going. I was going to say, it gets to the point like that Adobe Sneak where I said that West actually fed in the exact guitar model and the exact furniture he wanted in that scene. Like, you could actually hire an artist to make the exact model of that truck, the Coke truck, any other questions? the exact actor that you want dressed to Santa and the exact animal models and all feed that in. And then it's, yeah, it's like Cascot or you're just like, it's all automated. Now you have that truck driving through and it looks exactly like that model that you want with the exact amount of tires that's realistic, you know. - Yeah, I think so much of that debate around the Coke thing was people responding, artists responding to that, mostly that it was bad and having logical reasons. Although there were people who were like, it's bad because it's AI, again, I kind of discount that. And then the AI, like evangelists saying, you don't understand AI, that's like, you know, and what's interesting is that like they Coke released the amount of, they said it's 70,000 generations, it was a lot less people and they were really touting that, but they did not talk about how much it costs. Like if they were, like it makes me think it did not cost much less than it would have cost to do it the other way because, because other ways they would have said, we also saved, like because we, listen, they're already bragging about using less artists. Like why not go the full way and say it costs less money? Right? Like if they're talking about the efficiency of it. So 70,000 generations is not cheap, right? I don't even know, I don't even know what that comes out to, but it's not cheap. And, you know, like, yeah, maybe years ago that, you know, the artist's talking about how they could have done that, like it would have cost astronomical, but I suspect that with something similar, they could have gotten something pretty good. Although not 100% sure, it's hard to know, because without the numbers, it's really hard to know. But I think that they didn't release that number because it's negligibly different than the actual doing it by hand or by traditional methods. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about a few more things in this AI thing. So, you know, one thing that I thought was interesting hearing from guests is like how they're actually using AI. Like, you know, PJ did this awesome workshop. If you're an all-access member, by the way, it's the recording is in our community. So you can go watch that right now. I've also done an AI workshop showing some ways that we use it at school motion and things I'm doing. How has AI been impactful for our studio? Well, we're leaning in. We're using it wherever we can, whenever it makes sense, whenever it's a legally viable thing for our clients. I think that the broad term of AI is a little bit alarming to some people, but I think if you think about AI as, you know, a lasso tool that pre-selects a phase. That's AI is machine learning. You know, where it's making us more efficient, which is good because our budgets are going down. So the more efficient we can be in doing some of these, like, erroneous tasks that we don't like doing anyway. Like, that's great. So not necessarily speaking to like the full, I'm going to create a shot or a whole piece using like video generation or something like that. But I do love the idea of training tools and we are leading into training tools. So creating our own art and then using that art, characters, design, product, packaging, all that stuff to train models with boars. So that is something like we're really investing heavily in and building out some systems so that we can essentially kit our work in a different way for clients that are building engines to support massive, larger iterations for social and for customizing things. So they're two specific people, really building tools for our clients that are trained on our work and on our creative so that they could go further faster for them. And then kind of monetizing that a bit differently. So that's super exciting. I think that's going to be a big, big, big part of our 2026 year. It's offering that to our clients because that's a product that we have ready to go. And we're doing a whole bunch of cave speedings about. And so yeah, people have been really interested in it. I know Longer has leaned into AI as a question. How impactful it all has been to see a huge huge huge huge huge of so many of our ways. We use it of course for concepting and for coming up and enhancing ideas like what people do. You see those boards from clients all done in AI. We definitely utilize it for that. Two, we use a big thing for me lately is using AI audio and voiceover to experiment with different types of voices, different tones to see what one delivery could look like a few different ways totally and show that and see that quickly. Share with clients, get them to buy off on it way early on. And then hire a proper real artist to take it down the road that way. I'm using I'm doing an all AI explainer video right now all with live action, which has been pretty interesting. And I think one of the things I like about it is that it lets us play and adjust and pivot on our story and our shots in our storytelling and kind of run into having accidents with that. The only big challenge of it is it looks very AI. Even though what we're doing is very photorealistic. And you can just tell, I sort of become kind of a style. We use a lot of other different ways. So we've been using running AI models to output typography, explorations. We've been using it for AI errors and glitches and for some of our motion graphic stuff for almost like plug-in effects and sort of stuff to video to still textures. So that's a pretty cool play ahead. It's really kind of an enhancement of a workflow. It's not really replacing our work in any major way. It's just more like a, I don't know, some sort of like a paintbrush of hell-bun steroids. A one thing PJ said, which was cool, was like, I think a lot of AI right now is just being used on the front end of a project. Because there's always this process of finding the style that you want, finding the music you want, trying out different things. And one of the things that AI has gotten very good at is human voices. It's getting better at acting. Vio, I was a Vio artist for a while, I had an agent and stuff. And the best ones, which I was not, but the best ones are actors. They know how to inflect and do things, right? But so in the end, we're still at the point where a human Vio artist is far superior to an AI. But when you're working out a spot and you're like, does this work better with a young voice or an old voice? Female voice, male voice. Should they be quiet? Should they be loud and upbeat? And the way that you used to have to do that was you'd have maybe someone at your studio that can like fake it and do like a scratch track. Or you'd get a Vio agency to send you a bunch of auditions and you'd cut those in. Now you can use 11 labs. And so that's what they're doing. They're trying out different types of voices. Finding the one that works the best. Then they hire an actor that has that voice that they can then direct and actually act. I think that's pretty amazing. And I know Aaron, you've messed a lot with 11 labs, right? Yeah, I've used like for trying to get, like if I'm doing animation with characters and stuff. And like again, for the same reasons, just trying to like hear what's gonna sound like if I do that. And then, you know, like I made a short film what was called Homecoming. And for the initial test I had, I just used like, wasn't a live, I think it was, Art List has their own voice generator. And I used my voice. Like I acted the part out and had it transform the voice. But then I threw it like when I was ready to actually make the film, I threw it to Marta, who works as our part of the team. She's Marta's someone who works at School of Motion, but she's also the voice of many characters in video games, including Five Nights at Freddy's. And she actually did the real acting. Because like there's no, they're not comparable, right? Like she knows what she's doing. She can throw a voice and she can take the feedback and give me more of what I wanted. But I just wanted to see what it would feel like, you know, doing it. So like I've used it for a lot of that. I have not used it for, like I haven't released anything, like that I would say professional that used it there. The one time I used it that I thought was, it's like, I don't think I could have found somebody who did it. They have like this voice on Art List that sounds like, it sounds like, you know, the famous British, you know, nature guy. - That's the name, bro. - What? Richard Antenborough, right? And I did like a dinosaur video that was like, the dinosaur and it was like, just, it worked perfectly. And for that, it was like, that was just like a little thing for social media that I did. I would not use that in a commercial, but I was like, this is fun. Why not just do it? So there are places that you can absolutely use it. And I think eventually people will be using this stuff when it gets better, but it really isn't quite there yet. And every time I hear it, I'm like, now I can tell that's AI, I'm gonna percent. - Yeah, I know Pentagram used it. I think this was December of last year. And I think it happened before we were, or after we recorded so we can even talk about it. But Pentagram did this cool project where they needed to generate like hundreds of icons for some brand. And so what they did was they had their artists like design the look and make a bunch of icons. They fed that into mid-journey as a style reference. So now, okay, now we need a house, now we need an apartment building, now we need an airplane, now we need a clock. And when you do that, that's the kind of work. And this is one of the things that does worry me about like being a junior artist and trying to break into the industry 'cause that's a junior artist like traditionally, right? You've got the art director and the head designer and they kind of nailed a style. This is what it looks like. Now we need 400 of them. And that would be really expensive if you had to pay even a junior artist to do it. Now you can make as many as you want. Now you still need taste. You have to look at every single one and see is there an error? Does this actually fit? Does it actually feel like the style? But you can think about, there's lots of stuff like that that it's obviously useful for. And I know Laundry, PJ talked about using it. You can feed it a 3D render like you've done EJ. And it's like, I wonder what it would look like in this environment, in this environment, in this environment. environment. And then if you're actually going to make something with it, now you need to make that environment, but you didn't have to make it to see if it would work, right? So to me, that's kind of like the most useful thing about AI right now. There's more technical things like using it to help you mix audio. It's amazing that it's getting really good at cleaning up audio. There's some other interesting things too. And then I want to talk briefly about the ethical thing because there's been a little bit of movement on that. There's something called model context protocol. I don't know if you guys have heard that term, but it's basically a way that a large language model can talk to an app. So rather than having, like if you want to have a chat GBT, talk to our Stripe account where all of our money comes in, it can now actually tell us like what the top countries are. And it can actually talk to Stripe, right? And so it can do things for you. And now they're being built into apps. So people have built plugins for Blender where you can type in, you know, make three spheres, you know, oriented this way and there's one for After Effects, Rive has one. It's an interesting idea, an interesting way of using AI, the idea being you can tell it what you want to happen, even if you don't know exactly where those buttons are and it just does it. Or if there's something really tedious, like I need to set up a grid of 60 by 60 something, but every third color is this, it can just do it for you. I think that could be useful. And right now, those things are very clunky and they don't work very well, but I think that's kind of interesting. I do want to touch on the ethical thing because I know that this is like the number one, you know, kind of anti-AI thing that you hear is like they're unethical. And I honestly think you can, I got my gut is there is something that just feels kind of gross about like scraping the internet of every artist that's ever made art and now you've made this thing that can recreate art. And I don't know, I'm still kind of trying to figure out what my thoughts are exactly on that because the truth of the matter is in the end, it's going to come down to copyright law, right? I mean, in the end, this is a legal question as far as what's going to happen, right? Like one of my, the hardest question my business coach asks me when I'm like talking about some problem is like, well, what do you want? So if you think AI is an unethical and you rail against it, what is it that you want? Do you want it to go away? It's not happening. It's just not, right? I don't think anybody thinks that. The only thing that's going to make it go away is when the money runs out and the companies cannot make it work anymore financially. That's the only thing that's going to cause AI to disappear. That won't happen because Google has infinite dollars and they're going to, they're going to keep it going forever. So anyway, so the ethical part of it also is more complicated than it seems because if you really dig into the technical details of how these models are trained, it's not as if, if you're an artist and you have a JPEG of some work you did on your site and mid-journey scraped your website, grabbed it and trained their model on it, if you could look at the file that represents mid-journey's model, your image is not in there. It's not. It literally is finding statistical correlations between pixels across trillions of images, building a set of rules that when applied can create artwork tied to the language you feed it. That's what it is. Yeah, but I think it's worth, but Joey, I see like I hear that a lot that like, you know, that ultimately the data that it is initially trained on is like terabytes, petabytes of data. And then it's reduced down to these very small files that are just rules. That's totally true. But at the same point, like if you ask mid-journey to make a picture of Spider-Man, it makes a picture of Spider-Man. It knows exactly what Spider-Man looks like and it recreates that, you know, so like clearly there's like while it's true that you know like that the data doesn't even look like that anymore, but it's clearly trained on data that is not something it should have and it can generate, right? I mean, that's like it's like telling me that the burger I'm eating is made from a bunch of different cows ground up and you can't tell which one it's still I'm still eating cow at the end of the day and that's what I have the problem. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the that's like the instinct I have, but when I look logically like I sometimes I'm too logical, my wife hates it. Like when I look at the actual way the technology works, like and you're you're right on, but what I would say to that is if you then use the model to breach copy, right? By making an image of Spider-Man that you don't have the rights to, that is wrong and illegal, right? You can't make an image of Spider-Man and then monetize that. Although there are fair use rules again around that people has made a career out of that obviously. So anyway, the legal question comes down to was the training of the model of breach of copyright and there's actually been a couple of court cases. There's many more that are going to be going on for years. There's a big one. I think it's getting images against stability AI that hasn't resolved. The one that was interesting was Anthropic who makes Claude. They were sued because they had a bunch of books that they trained their model on and it ruled that it was fair use because the books themselves, the text of the books are not in the model and the model while maybe capable of reproducing the book. If you do that, that's illegal. But it's but the way they're mostly used is to make other things that have nothing to do with the book. There's a little bit of a question of does that compete with that author now because now you could write something that that author may have written one day in the future but now they can't because you use AI to write it. So that's another legal argument. But the main argument that the anti-AI crowd throws out is that you stole the, you're basically doing copyright infringement, right? But the judge said no and you have to really get into the weeds with the way these things work to see legally why they felt that way. The bottom line though is that I think that that's the way these court cases are going to go. There's also a lot of settlements happening like open AI is paying certain people who've sued them to just settle the case and say, okay, now you've paid me something so now yes fine you can, I'm not going to sue you for having trained your model on my thing. I think the bottom line is that these models are not going to get like derailed by these court cases. I think there was a question maybe three years ago. I didn't know like was mid-journey just going to shut down on one day. It seems pretty clear now that that's not going to happen though. And so I think everyone should at least exist in that world, right? Right? The world of reality. I think we're going to get a lot of anger from this video if people manage to make it this far into it. I just I think it's worth it. I just being prepared for that. I get that and listen, in a lot of ways I'm angry about it too. I say having used it, having used a lot of gendered AI, I feel like I feel gross. It's just from the like it's not creative, whatever, all the bad stuff that comes with it and knowing that yes the data was great, but it's our job to, like this is the thing. It is our job here at School of Motion to educate people and to prepare them for a career in motion design and design and 3D. And like the fact is that this stuff is all being used and you just like it would be wrong for us to not be talking about it and just saying like recognize the reality of it and to convince you the opposite about the tech pros. The AI tech pros want to convince you it's the only thing that you should be using. Like we're saying no, no, no, like they're not 100% wrong. They're just not right. You know, like, like, you got to ignore their hype and recognize that like there is some element of truth to it. And as much as you don't want to hear it, like I don't want people to not have work when they can just because they, you know, they're convinced that it's wrong. Like this is the nature of how it is going to be. Yeah. Yeah. I would, and I expect that some people will not like what I'm saying. That's fine. That's how I feel right now. And my views have evolved, you know, they, and they will probably still evolve. And maybe next year I'll feel totally different. But I'm also just, I'm really leaning on the pragmatic side. And I love that you guys are, you're a good counterpoint to me because I'm very logical. And the bottom line for me is like, I would feel like I'm committing malpractice if I told people, yeah, these things are an ethical don't use them. You can feel that they're unethical. I do think that intelligent people could disagree on how unethical. I wouldn't say that it's zero. Like I definitely wouldn't say that. I also don't think it's the same as stealing someone's art. I feel like that, that feels a little too far for me. I don't know how you guys feel. But in the end, I, it's pretty clear. These tools are here everybody's using them, right? And this is not like this is going to happen. It's happening. Not everyone's talking about it yet. I'm trying to help push that. I wish more people would talk about it. I wish more studios would in their breakdown page explain exactly what they were doing. So that everyone could see like, look, you know, if the biggest studio is on earth and they are using AI, like on lots of things, maybe it's okay if I test it out, I dip my toe in. And then what you'll likely find if you haven't done that yet is it's not as useful as you're going to think from like reading the internet. You're going to figure out really quickly, oh, I have to use it as just any other tool that has strengths and weaknesses, you know. Yeah, there you go. All right. I think, you know, we've said a lot about AI. And there's probably more we could say, but we also need to land this damn plane. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're each going to make some predictions. Okay. So I broke these up into easy and harder predictions and a little bit of advice, easy predictions. Blender is going to continue to dominate the 3D news cycle. This morning, before we started recording, Maxon did release their December release. And there was a lot of cool stuff in it. It wasn't like, yeah, it was actually pretty cool. But what it's cool, if you're like a professional doing motion, is that like they added a bunch of really neat options to the cloner. We're now you can like distribute things in cooler ways. And there's a stack mode where it'll like automatically like close the gaps between clones. size books or something. I mean, there's a lot of useful stuff. So I would love to see Max on, like, have a really strong 2026 and beef up C40. But I think Blender's just going to continue to dominate there. Rive I think is going to have a giant year next year. With the release of scripting, they basically completely closed the gap between them and Flash. And now that real developers can come in and build anything that they can code, you're going to see some crazy wild stuff coming from Rive developers. And as more developers are pulled to Rive, you're going to need more designers and animators doing the same thing. And so I think it's, I keep saying it. You know, Rive is the most important motion design app of the last 10 years. I think next year is going to prove that to everybody. Unreal. You know, I think it's, I don't think much is going to change. I think it's going to get better and the motion design tools are going to get better and more people are going to use it. But I don't expect explosive growth next year. I feel like there's just so much work to be done to really make it usable in our space. And that's just going to take time and it's going to take user feedback and all that. But a lot of networks are really leaning into it. And so I think that, you know, it'll just see like more steady adoption. Adobe is going to release more AI stuff. Some of it's going to be really cool. Some of it's going to be, you know, kind of gimmicky. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with now affinity in the mix. But I think Adobe, you know, if you look at social media, there's people yelling at them all the time. But if you look at their revenue numbers, not their stock price, but their revenue numbers, it's up into the right. And I think a lot more motion designers are going to start using Figma and probably cavalry too because they're starting to really break through the noise and a lot of companies are Figma first. So even if you're using After Effects to animate, I think Figma is going to be more and more expected that you know it. And the good thing is we have a course coming out next year teaching you the basic fix of Figma and it's not that hard to learn. Okay, harder predictions. I think the AI Vibeshift will continue. I think we'll start to see some really big studios be very like, you know, you already got Sraski, you got Laundry. But I think we're going to start to see hopefully like one or two big studios like the name ones, the names that I won't say right now, admitting and talking about how they're using AI. And hopefully that makes it less scary for everybody because when you see how much work it still takes, even with AI, you're going to be like, "Oh, I'm going to do this." You're going to realize, "Okay, so I see how it saved them some time. I see how it let them scale this a little bit, but it's still a ton of work." Like no matter how you do it, right? Good work takes time and a lot of effort. The economy, this one's impossible to predict. I think PJ actually had the best take. He said he doesn't think much is going to change. It's still going to be uncertain. We're probably still going to get a little bit better next year, but I wouldn't expect like, "Ah, everything's fine again," or some terrible doom cycle. I think it's probably going to be kind of like it is now, but a little bit better. One big thing that I've mentioned, I'm nervous about it, is just the junior problem. As companies, it's not just because of AI. That's part of it. Companies are all trying to get leaner now and be more efficient. One of the ways you do that, I mean, like our own, just to say this for everybody, at one point, we could use some help with marketing. You can go out and you can find a brand new junior person that's within our budget for that. A lot of times, it's better to get someone who's just awesome and maybe get them for 10, 15 hours a week, right? You're paying the same less hours, but you're getting more output. I think a lot of companies are doing things like that. It'll be interesting to see how that trickles into motion design. That's kind of a more just general business thing that's happening. I hope that some of the younger artists listening to this, take some of the advice we had about, don't just focus on your craft. Focus on the business side too, because it's more important than ever, the basics, learning how to market yourself, learning how to do sales, then have to be that scary, and just networking. That's honestly the secret, and Haley will reiterate that, I'm sure. Here's the advice. Stop thinking about motion design is a career vertical that you enter. It is a toolbox. That toolbox, when you're young and new at this, maybe it only has a couple tools in it, but the more tools you have in that toolbox, the easier it's going to be for you to adapt. We're in a really crazy change period right now, and everyone feels that. If you have five tools in your toolbox and you're really good at three of them, that's way better than being amazing at one tool right now. It wasn't always the case, but I think that's the case now. I think that there are really three paths if you're an artist entering this field or if you're one that's your work start and a dry up. I think there's three ways you could look at this. You could be a full-stat creative generalist where you can design, you can animate some after facts, enough about UX and UI, you can use a little bit of Rive, how lot he works. You can plug into a lot of places. What we aim to build here at school motion is that kind of artist. You can come into all access and you can just focus on just 3D if you want. There's still a place for that, but in terms of having the most options, the generalist is what companies are looking for, even big tech companies that have giant teams. Path 2, and I think Joey Judkins would agree with this, is sort of the developer adjacent interactive specialist. UI and UX motion is just exploding. It's everywhere, if you're in the motion design bubble, you may not hear about it as much, but if you're in the tech developer bubble, it's wild how many times I see the term motion design pop up in those circles. It's wild. I think that's actually a really good career move. There's something that we already see, but I think we'll just see a lot more of it, especially as more powerful and capable AI models are released, is the rise of unicorn looking designers. What I mean by that is that someone that can code, design, implement all of those things as a single person. Well, as people exist and they're incredible, but with the AI tools, as it augments all of these weaknesses of the everyday designer, it makes everyone appear like they can do that end-to-end process. And some of them can, some of them can do it really well, but I think we'll see the industry kind of flooded with everyone that looks like they can do all of these different things, but not actually be able to do them well. And so what I mean by that is everyone is kind of a motion designer now because the AI tools integrate motion when you click a thing, transitions are happening, animations are happening. But they may not actually be like, good motion designers. They have not developed the eye of what good motion looks like. The AI tools are kind of like looking at all the stuff that they have and making a thing based on all that stuff and it may just be like generically like, okay, but I think that's where we'll also see a differentiation of folks that are actually trained with the eye for good visual design, good motion design, good UX that will be able to harness these two incredible experiences. And so it will be a little bit harder to filter through like what is actually good and what is something that is just kind of pretending and looking the part, but is just a little bit flat as you take a deeper look. Because at the end of the day, you need to have this strong firm foundation of a good idea to build upon and these AI tools kind of skip that step a lot and create things that look incredible, but the idea at the end of the day is not that great. Another thing is just what do we actually call ourselves as motion designers as these tools augment all of these weaknesses of now we're able to actually create an entire website or an entire app. Are we just motion designers? Are we UX designers? Are we all just problem solvers? So I think having clear terminology of how do we actually title ourselves as motion designers. I think we'll be helpful, especially as we are job searching as we're positioning ourselves in our current like jobs and companies or marketing ourselves as freelancers like what are we actually doing? What are we actually still offering because we have the opportunity to do all of these different things with these new tools. And so I think just getting clear on that. So it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out over the next several years as these tools become more and more prolific and accessible. And then another big thing that a few people said is actually expanding is experiential and spatial design because we were kind of cooped up for the COVID years and now everyone's still somewhat separated. We haven't quite come back together the same way and people are craving being out in the world in environments. And so there's actually like a lot of those projects happening and you've got things like the sphere and every stadium now has 50 screens all over it. And there's actually a lot of work for that too and that's really fun rewarding work. I think and hope that the industry in general is maybe going to stabilize a little bit. I know it's been a tricky couple of years for a lot of people, especially in the freelance world, weird tech layoffs and you know financial instability and things like that. I don't know how much that second one is going to stabilize but people still need video stuff and I also think that a lot of people are kind of realizing that AI is not just the easy button solution to everything that it was marketed as. So I think people are going to realize that they still need a lot of stuff and humans are still required to do a lot of that. But I think my biggest prediction/hope is that people are going to see more and more that you know generative AI tools are not really a good fit for the workflow when it comes to high-end visual effects or CGI. You know it's really hard to fit them in movies or as well. or video games, I know Ubisoft is now trying to create a full AI pipeline and I think that's going to fail quite a bit. I'm talking from experience like I worked on big video games before. I just don't see how they're going to be using these tools. And again, AI was around and like machine learning was around for the longest time. In video games you have AI agents, they have their own kind of set of rules and they're making things. And in that kind of way, 100% use the technology. Just don't use it to replace the artists and don't use it to replace that process because then well, yeah, I just think that's a slippery slope. I mean, my main prediction, people are going to keep making cool stuff and they're going to keep valuing what humans can actually make. Are the number crunchers going to value it? No, but guess what? They never did. All they ever wanted was the cheapest thing that anyone could make, right? And they didn't really care what it looked like. So that's always going to exist. And hopefully we can all make good things that are actually meaningful and require your creative human brain to do it. So I would say become AI fluent. You don't need to be dependent on it. That's not a good idea, but I think you really are kind of nuts at this point. If you're not familiarizing yourself with what it can do, testing a few things. And you might find that for some specific thing, you do a lot. It can save you time or help you make your client happier. And here's the big one, develop taste. And next year, I'm going to be harping on this and we're going to try to find more ways we're revamping our design curriculum kind of around this idea. I've heard from a lot of studio owners that this is the missing piece. There's a lot of young artists who are amazing at Blender, like 14-year-olds that know the whole thing, right? It's scary. People who have watched every After Effects tutorial and they're 18 and they know it inside and out. Without taste, you can get work, but you're not going to get good work and it's going to be hard for you to grow. And taste is a hard thing to develop and you really need to make an effort to do that and go out and find stuff and reverse engineer and figure out why you like it. And once you can start naming why you like it, now you've got a little bit taste. And if you just keep doing that, I think that's probably the biggest unlock other than being good at sales for anyone's career in the future. So there you go. My predictions, my advice. I do predict that there will still be a lot of instability in 2026. A lot of policies that are going to be slingshotting around that are going to, you know, people consider marketing at the end or towards the end of a product cycle. And so they're not going to be thinking about marketing if they're thinking about how they're going to make things or where they're going to come from or what they're going to cost. They're not thinking about marketing them when they're on shelves until all that other stuff has figured out. So I think it's still going to be very rocky for us. Which means that there'll be a lot of like hurry up projects. So what I mean by that is, people will call last minute and say we finally got the green light go go go, you know. So I think where it's going to be like really quiet. And then all of a sudden the phone's going to ring and it's going to be like go let's do this. On the entertainment side, that's more brand product, CPG kind of stuff. On the on the entertainment side, we're going to see all those kind of platforms stabilize. So I do think we're going to see a rise of work out of them. All these big ones that are consolidating are going to kind of go from reducing in contraction to getting to the vision stage of that. So I think we're going to see a lot more aspirational jobs that are like, okay, now that we're done with the wreckage, like what are we going to build. And I'm really excited about that. Because I think that's both brand and entertainment when you think about all these studios and how they're going to rebrand and how they're going to push content in the world. And they're going to not just rely on legacy work that's been created, but lean into creating some new stuff. So I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities there for people like us. What else would be good to talk about? On the advertising side, I think we're going to continue to see the consolidation of really big organizations. And I think it's just like a giant black hole of all the of all the advertising agencies. So we'll see them continuing to consume themselves into one mammoth thing. And and they will absorb all the work and keep all of it internal and create AI tools to to crank out super subpar work into the world. So while that's bad, it's also an opportunity for brands to think a little differently and to work with smaller medium size agencies and companies or if they have internal agencies work with organizations like our studios to to create beautiful work that allows them to stand out in what is a bland landscape. A landscape. So I think that is somewhat optimistic. I do think people are being very cautious when it comes to budgets. So unless something is an emergency or a response to something where they have to spend, I think we're going to continue to see budgets contract contract contract. And so that's not a good thing. But you know, in situations where people are looking at growth and new brand vision and all that, I think we'll see an expansion of budgets because I think people are going to be excited to invest in new visions for things. So yeah, that was a little contradictory, but I mean both of those things. So the everyday work I think is going to continue to get tightened, but the big picture thinking stuff, it's where there's white space and people really want to invest in something that stands out. I think there are going to be bigger better budgets for us. And yeah, I just I hope I hope for the year that the work is a little bit more spread out that it's consistent and we can kind of get a sense of what a new normal is. I'm not sure that that's going to happen because there's still so much settling down of the industries, but I am optimistic that there will be some bigger projects out there that we can really sink our teeth into. So why don't we go? Why don't we go to EJ? He's got some thoughts. So we we mentioned how Max on just kind of came out with their new December update. And so I'm very encouraged that there is a lot of new mo graph stuff in there because literally just to you know, earlier in this podcast, I said about how they really need to double down and focus on that area and focus on their strengths. So hope and they can keep pushing in the right direction there and lean into what got them there, which is the mo graph stuff and the ease of use. I agree with you on that like, I think there's something bigger behind the scenes, maybe with the whole autograph thing. So maybe we see that first iteration of whatever that is in 2026 and hopefully they didn't just kill it, right? I think that 2026 will be the year where AI becomes less of a scary headline and more of a boring useful tool. Not in a bad way. In the same way that we do not talk about generative feel every day, but we use it all the time. I think we'll see AI baked into more workflows, especially cleanup, tracking, relighting and rotoscoping. And people will finally stop arguing whether it will replace them and start asking the real question, how much time did it save me this week? I also predict that 2026 will be the year motion design gets more real time. AI will stay strong, but more workflows will move towards GPU acceleration. I think tools like Unreal Engine will get more users and hopefully easier workflow for newcomers. We'll also see more code-based animation and interactivity and things like Rive are going to shine. More apps will be used online using a website without the need to download and install a desktop copy. I think we will see more hybrid artists. So not just motion designers, but people who mix 2D, 3D, AI, photography, illustration and maybe a bit of coding. Who knows? The job titles probably will get weirder. People will introduce themselves as visual system designers or content alchemists. I don't know. The industry is changing fast and the artist who know how to glue multiple tools, this one will thrive. I also predict that in 2026 someone will tweet that After Effects is dead. And the entire industry will stop what they are doing for full 24 hours only to return to their AE timeline and compositions and continue working like nothing happened. I also predict we will still not have folders in the timeline. But we will probably get at least three new features nobody asked for yet will quietly use every day. But seriously, my real prediction is that 2026 will be the year of clarity. The last few years were a roller coaster for new tools, new AI models, new workflows and general chaos. I think we are finally settling into a rhythm. Artists will figure out what they actually want and what fits into their pipeline instead of just jumping on every new shiny things, or thing, and studios, we will probably rediscover the value of experienced designers who knows how to tell a story and not just press buttons. - I really think AI is getting ridiculous, I think with the launch of Nano Banana Pro, I almost call it Nano Banana, so I'm glad I didn't. But now I told myself, so that's fine. But Nano Banana Pro is really exciting, it's very, I've seen some demonstrations of it, and it is amazing. It's a little scary, but it's amazing. I personally really enjoy the videos of the dogs that are on the kind of ring doorbell feed and they open their mouths and water shoots out and an old lady, I'm an avid consumer of those types of videos, and I think that's the perfect use of AI. But so the AI video generation, and image generation is getting out of hand, it's ridiculously good. The Gaussian Splat is super cool. I am too dumb to fully understand it from a mathematical side, but from an artist side, it seems really neat, and I'm happily and excitedly cheering from the stands for the people that actually understand it. I think Rive is doing some really exciting things. Unreal has had some big moments this year. Obviously, school emotion has done a lot with them. And I feel like I see a lot more people, either moving to Houdini, or Houdini's just getting a lot more love in the public sphere. So it means one of two things, either normies are starting to be integrated into the Houdini pipeline, and they're starting to appreciate Houdini, and so you have normal people now kind of taking over that space, or the Houdini users have been outside, they've breached containment, they've touched grass, and they're starting to gain a social conscience. So between those two, it's kind of cool to see Houdini and the limelight a little bit more. Now when it comes to AI starting to get better, and perhaps taking our jobs, especially in the 3D field or in the design field, perhaps this is my own hubris, perhaps this is a product of me just being young, but I really have no AI anxiety. I don't really care that much. Again, that could be because my brain just finished developing, and I'm still a little bit of an idiot, but I don't have a whole lot of anxiety about it. I think that the world works in patterns and pendulums, and it's bound to swing back the other way. The better AI gets, and the more convincing it gets, the less need there is for kind of the low barrier 3D work. And perhaps that means the market gets a little bit slimmer, perhaps that means there are some artists that are put out of jobs, but it's only gonna happen if they're unwilling to adapt. And I know that might be a controversial statement, but I think that adaptation is a large part of the artistic community. I think you've seen it all throughout history as new technology gets introduced, as new things become automated. There are always gonna be people that are put out of a job, but the people that are willing to adapt and learn the new tools, or to become better at their craft, or find a niche in there, they're always going to survive, and they're always going to excel. So I'm not really worried about the introduction of some of the new AI technologies. I think if anything, it will just help us get better. And hopefully, everybody watching this is fully aware of all the tools that are out there and are willing and able to adapt to fit the model as we push forward. As far as predictions go for Blender in 2026, so we're going forward. With the launch of Blender Lab, I think it's safe to say that there's gonna be a lot more experimental features and some new pioneering done. And that way, I, whether it's stylistically or actual new tools, I think it's gonna be cool to see a dedicated space for artists to experiment and to kind of break the rules and break the technology. I think that's a huge thing. So hopefully that means we're gonna get a lot new technology or a lot new, a lot new workflows. And I think that will be really exciting. Blender has always been very good on presenting new ideas. So that's exciting. And it might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I am very hopeful and a little bit confident just based on some things that I've seen. That Blender will be taking a few more steps towards the MoGraph space and starting to open up tools to that. Now, they're still great on MoGraph. I think they're still great on kind of supporting the add industry side of the aisle, but I also think that there is a larger space for hobbyists or character artists or perhaps even some small studios or game studio spaces. I think that's probably, if you look at like a pie chart of the makeup, that's probably where the majority is, but I think that as it becomes more ubiquitous as we get a lot more user-based and as the clientele kind of grows. As I convert more people, you're gonna start seeing a lot more motion designers using Blender. And so it would be really exciting and I'm very hopeful that they lean into that and they start producing tools that kind of cater to that. As far as general predictions go for 2026, I think we'll have a big year. I think maybe the first three-fourths of the year will go business as usual. You'll have some ups, you'll have some downs, which will be presented with new technology, but really we're not gonna have anything monumental happen until November 19th, which is the drop of GTA6. I think the industry will come to a grinding halt. People will stay home, they'll take sick days. Everybody's gonna stop what they're doing and play Grand Theft Auto, which is really a beautiful thing if you think about it. So get in your beds, get in your creative briefs, get in your requests before the 19th, so that artists have plenty of time to get those done before being locked away, playing Grand Theft Auto into the holiday season. I kind of agree with Joey about Unreal. I think it's one of those things where there's been a lot of hype on it along with AI, but the more people try to use it in their workflows, they're finding either they can't use it at all, that they're struggling with it, or they are finding the ways that they can do it. And I would say that if you're a cinemat 4D artist, for example, or maybe you're a blender artist, and you're like, maybe I need to learn cinemat 4D, or I don't need to learn Maya, or whatever. I would say if you're stuck between Blender and Unreal Engine, I would almost always recommend to do Unreal Engine, because there are things in Unreal Engine that is just not possible in any of the other kind of app. So to kind of lean into what Joey was saying about how you have things like the sphere, you have adoption like that, I think there are. I agree with Joey about how there's going to be a lot more in-person experiences that people want to do. We're coming out of the pandemic, and I don't see that whole thing about we need to get more outside. We went through the pandemic. Now we're going through almost like a loneliness epidemic or pandemic where people are spending too much time online, and I think the pendulum's going to swing the other way. And the interactive experiences, the human connection, the wanting to go to these events in person are going to lead to a lot of work, and a lot of that stuff, like I said, can only be done using things like Unreal Engine. Those are things that can't be done with a Blender or Cinema 4D. So as far as the AI thing, Polygon, or not Polygon, but yeah, Polygon, the Blender Guru site, they did a 2025 state of 3D for 2025, and they said that only 22% of artists regularly use AI, and I think that's going to shift a ton. But I think where the shifts going to happen is because we've been talking about this whole entire time. You're seeing this hype and then the dust settles, and then the truth actually comes out of like, how can we actually use this? And it's probably not in ways that are going to make millions and billions of dollars for these companies. It's going to be a little bit more nuanced. And so I think many artists are going to figure out those ways, just like I was talking about with Unreal, that are actually going to help them in their workflows and kind of fit in there. Because of the fact that it is something we talked about before, of how expensive, not just time, but also the expense of using AI, and how it doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of people. So I think where you are going to have the best return on investment with AI is going to be the more specific technical tasks that, the ones that do those things very well, like move AI, your cascador, your rotoscoping, like wonder dynamics, and what's going on over there. I think the ones that promise to do everything, and anything are not the ones because they might claim to do that, but you're going to have to do a little bit to clean up a lot of stuff. I have a feeling that at some point in 2026, we're going to see a foundational breakthrough in generative AI, probably in the video space. I just feel like knowing how fast things have been developing, we've kind of hit a bit of a plateau. There's been these incremental improvements, and I have a feeling that there's going to be some kind of new breakthrough that's going to change the way that we do things. Another prediction is maybe that some of these new node-based workflows for working with generative AI tools. I think we're going to start to see some of those tools mature. So wevey is one, they were I think acquired recently by Figma. There's a few others. It's just a new way of working. It's not all text-based. It's a little bit of what people might know from Comfy UI, but then made a little more user-friendly and plug-and-play. The gap between the text-based approach that we know from LLMs, and then the, let's call it, hardcore approach of Comfy UI. There's that gap there, and that gap is being bridged. 2026, we're going to see some interesting products that maybe change the way that we approach, working with AI and video. Another prediction for 2026 is that I think you're going to see more people experimenting with different corporate structures. So again, Buck created residents about three years ago, and I think we were ahead of the curve on what we're trying to do there. And now I'm seeing some other groups, other companies that are toying with new ideas around funding and structure about how they're going to grow. Some of them are private equity based, some of them aren't. And I think people are really trying to figure this out because they see just how complicated and uncertain the future is. And so we're all trying to kind of diversify as a way of being resilient. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that. So we're going to see I think different companies kind of playing with this. That doesn't mean that you know the era of the small independent shop is gone. In fact, I think we're just going to see this growing gulf between, you know, a collection of really good small specialized studios. And then there's going to be like a big gap. And then you're going to see, you know, much larger entities like Buck, for instance, you know, in residence that are going to get just stronger and stronger because of our strategic strengths. Like we're just built for resilience. We're built for, you know, being able to deal with a lot of different situations. So that gulf is going to continue, which means that a lot of the shops in the middle make it squeezed, right? It might be a really tough time to be kind of a mid-sized shop where you've got, you know, enough overhead. You got to feed the beast, right? But then the shape of the work that you're getting is changing. Is it, you know, are you going to be able to sustain yourselves at that level? I don't know. And so there may be strategic contraction to a smaller, more niche down size. Maybe that makes sense for some shops. And then some shops are going to say, no, let's go bigger, go home. And they're, you're going to look for funding or alternative business structures to try to help them scale up. So it'll be an interesting thing to watch is going to take longer than one year to play out. It's already underway now. But I think in 2026, you'll see a little bit more of this kind of experimentation happening. 2026. Let's look ahead. Prediction number one is, I think the project based studio is going away. The five years from now, we're going to look back on that business model that we think as so normal and it's going to be quite. We're going to say, wow, the good old days, that's circa 2015. Because clients, they really don't want vendors executing isolated projects. They want partners that are solving ongoing problems. Prediction number two, the wolves. Okay, this is a model. It's a term I use for shops that are helmed by one, two, maybe three elite veterans didn't exist until lately. Okay, there used to be this idea of a studio that's too small to be a studio, but not anymore. Because these wolves walk straight into the sea suite. They diagnose big problems. They sometimes pitch million dollar solutions. And then they will win that job and go out and hire other studios or elite freelancers to execute the job. And they are fighting for scraps. They're actually hunting big gain if you think about it. Prediction number three is the middle is going to get eviscerated. Okay, so here's a question. What rises to fill this gap between the race to the top and the bottom? International white label studios. Because for half the cost and twice the capability and way less risk, many studios are realizing it beats maintaining a big internal team and staff are hiring external expensive freelancers. So this isn't just a trend. It's a structural shift happening in the industry. Prediction number four, brand direct. If you can't speak brand direct that dialect, you will eventually be invisible. Prediction five, clients want diagnosis, not obedience. Okay, so when someone says, we have a project. I want you to assume they have misdiagnosed because the studios and shops that reframe the ask they win the work. If you're curious about that, just DM me 2026 and I'll send you these predictions. Okay, here's a few things I need you to stop doing. If you want us to survive in the year ahead, stop doing these things right now. One stop charging for time. Time is the least valuable thing that we sell. Okay, and never compete on rates. Number two, stop accepting client diagnoses at face value. They're almost always wrong. Number three, stop selling deliverables. Okay, if deliverables define your value, AI will define how you get replaced. Okay, start doing this. Here's what studios in 26 must start doing. Start diagnosing. Okay, this is where your value begins when you rewrite and reframe the ask. Start leading. Okay, so replace what do you want with here's what we recommend. Here's what we find works best. Also start owning outcomes, not tasks. Start selling expertise over execution. And most of all, start choosing that race to the top. Intentionally, everything in this commodity tier at the bottom, everything that's replaceable, everything that's order taker is about to get annihilated. So I hope you aren't listening. I hope this is helpful in closing. Here's what I'm going to say, 2025 was the great bifurcation. 2026 is the year that that divide widens and we're not going back. But the studios and yes, you artists who adapt with soul, who diagnose deeply, you own outcomes instead boldly into expertise, you're going to rise. Firefly boards, I'm really, I'm really looking forward to see how Adobe kind of expands with that kind of thing and their little projects that they tease with the sneaks. I said in 2024 that we'd see the first use of firefly and after effects. Let's maybe kick that prediction to 26 at this point. I don't know. It's interesting. It's probably it's really surprising to me. That was like the fact that after effects got nothing is like there's a whole bunch of stuff they could have used AI for in there that are truly tasks that are like that don't take away creativity at all that we could really like rotoscope and get so much better. There's like, oh man, so many things. But yeah, premier's got it. Like premier got a right. I wrote it's go open. Yeah. So I don't know. Well, keep our fingers crossed there. So community, I think I say this every year just because I think every year community is going to be more and more important as Joey alluded to like networking is going to be huge. Like how do you stand out from the slot because the slots and the noise is is only going to increase on online. So it's going to events like NNAB or a camp mo graph or just being in as part of a community somewhere where that it's a discord or school motion community. Like we have people that get jobs through connections that were made on just our your community platform here at school motion. So it's only going to be more important to kind of plug in and not just be isolated. So like the community is great. Like we're friendly people. So don't hesitate to reach out and just chat like we love to learn out about this stuff. Like everyone loves learning about they're not about design and stuff. So don't don't be afraid to kind of plug in find your people. We're a bunch of weirdos. So we're your people. So my predictions for 2026 are that soft skills are going to become extremely important and also how we communicate with our clients and our potential clients. There's a huge amount of people out there who don't really understand what motion design is and how it can help them. And I think that is a massive opportunity for us. So you could think about who are some of the ideal clients that you would like to work with and how can you communicate to them in their language that they use what their problems are and how you can use animation to solve them. I think going forward motion designers will have to become more a bit more like creative directors, a bit more like strategists because by doing that then this is really helping you to elevate beyond potentially what AI could do in the future. And I think that that's going to become more and more important. People will always want to hire people that help them to solve problems. So really focusing on that and how you can help your client to solve problems is going to be really really effective and really really important in 2026 and beyond. My second prediction is that I think we're going to see a lot more motion designers and animators making their own content. And what I think an interesting idea is because we have a lot of brands paying influences, a lot of money to share their products on their platform. I kind of wonder whether there's an opportunity for animators and motion designers there because instead of kind of showing a video of yourself talking about the product or something like that, a window if it's more about motion designers using animation to promote products but also then promoting it on their own platform because if you had your own audience and a brand really liked you in your audience and your style, then it makes sense that they would not only pay you to create the animation but they would also want you to share on your platform and you could charge for that. So I think that's a new idea that's kind of interesting, and there's probably some animators out there doing that, but I don't hear a lot about it. So I think in 2026 and beyond, that could be something that's really, really interesting. - I wanna kinda talk about anxiety, and I think what we've seen is like a lot of anxiety, and I feel like hopefully maybe listening through this podcast is a little bit cathartic 'cause I hope the message that you're hearing overall and it's something that I like to talk about a lot is that if we've learned anything from the beginning of this 2025 to the end, is that AI is not all that it's cracked up to be, and that we are still very valuable. The skills that we have, Joey likes to talk about taste, like even that is super, super important. The skills we have, the tools that we use, the barrier, the entry that we have right now is so low, it's even easier to learn things if you really wanna learn them. Realize what you have and what opportunities we have as artists that set us amongst people that think that, you know, learning art is a waste of time, or is it important or is too hard? Like we love that we do it, like that's a leg up we have on a lot of people out there. - So obviously AI is gonna continue to have a strong effect on things, but thinking about it on just the way that we look at or feel about the content that we see everywhere, we're definitely going through a pretty intense, like, slop cycle, like I feel like every time a new wave of VO or Sora rolls out, you get this flood of, like, lizard brain content that you almost can't turn away from when it's like, you know, Mr. Rogers smoking a blunt with two-pock or a chiropractor that's working on an elderly person and, like, you know, breaks the table in half while they're on it or whatnot. Those things all, like, appeal towards these just, like, basic psychotic things that we all have in urge to see or witness, but we're also seeing that, like, any kind of fidelity or, like, production value, it can all be generated somewhat effortlessly. And I think it's really going to change the way that we relate to or think about sophistication of execution and production value and visual effects and, like, epic scope and scale when we're inundated with that sort of content and material, it can be overwhelming. I mean, I feel like these sort of tools, and, like, I really don't like the idea of the AI tool itself also becoming its own mini TikTok where you're just swiping from one AI-generated video to the next one to the next one. Like, it's sort of, like, saying, like, we've now concocted a formula for Coca-Cola that's, like, we just fill a glass 90% of the way with pure cane sugar and then pour a little bit of, like, soda on top of it. Like, it just, it gets to be too much at a certain point. Like, and, you know, like any Arrogenist's zone, there's, like, a point at which you're just like, "Oh, I actually am now uncomfortably overstimulated with what you're putting on me." And I think we're going to see trends that start to shift away from just fidelity and spectacle and scope and scale and production value, being things that we put value in, right? Like, they may even be devalued altogether, which is possibly weird or creepy for an entire industry where so much of the work that we do is just to, like, make sure that things look expensive and look that energy has been put into it. But there's always also bin spaces where, in motion design, the point is not to make something look expensive, but it's to make it look gritty or edgy or unexpectedly natural or unusual or whatnot. And there will be some really fascinating opportunities in those spaces because I do think, like, yeah, we will just, we'll see amazing spectacular visuals and even if it's something that's created by Christopher Nolan and it's all in camera, you know, my kids may look at it and just be like, "Oh, it's probably AI." And, you know, that's sort of soul crushing to a certain point, like, we are just going to start to not care as much about that impressive fidelity or execution. Now, the other side of that is going to be that when people want the takeaway to be that this was expensive or there was a significant investment put into making this happen, we're going to see a whole other level of craft and care that's applied to the creation of these things. You've probably seen the Apple TV logo animation which is shot practically using plates of glass that are immaculately lit and prepared in a practical real-world studio setting. And to me, that's just as much about releasing a rebrand as it is about releasing the behind-the-scenes story of how much care and craft went into that rebrand. That came out while I was midway through a project that by the time this is out, this project will have just been released. I've been really fortunate to spend the last few months working with the amazing team at FX Works or FXWRX, this incredible studio in Brooklyn who do amazing things like they will on their stage, they will build massive cotton ball clouds that they're filming for Wes Anderson to use in his latest film or miniatures or in-camera effects or optical effects that are used to just create natural assets or elements or components or sequences within films and all sorts of other content that has this incredible, beautiful sense of like craft and intimacy to it. I'm very confident that the team at FXWRX they're going to all of the sudden become the hardest to obtain commodity in the space because those at the absolute tipi-top of the market that want to make sure that the takeaway is that this was a spare no expense production, they're going to want as much tangible proof to convey that. And I think we're going to start to see a very quick shift that in order to convey that level of expense and effort and craft, it's actually not as digital as you thought it was or we're going to do things that you would think at a glance would look digital and the thing that we're working on right now. It's amazing, it's a 3D city that could at a glance just be something that was generated in CG and would have been effortless to, not effortless, it would have taken a lot of hard, difficult work to put that together, but we decided there would just be this whole other layer of charm and fascination and interest in doing it practically and building miniatures and having a stage set up with incredible lighting and all the different touches and imperfections that we bring through this process and our client that we're working with, a major technology brand, they're enthralled by this. Their imagination is overloaded by what's possible when we're building something like this and the project is now not just about creating this incredible end product, but it really is about building and designing the process and the circumstances to get there that for all of us involved working on it, like it's the most fun and most memorable project we will all work on all year because it just taps into completely different parts of our brain in the process and unlocks something new and expected every time we get into it. - I think the real game, Change of AI is going to be when it's art-directible and if you think about that, why is that powerful? Well, because if you want to art-direct something, you actually need to have someone behind the scenes that's actually good at art-directing and it's not going to be the AI, bro. So again, another feather in our caps of people that have been in this industry for a while and are more art-focused. AI can't teach you tastes. So that's another leg up on there too. Only you can teach it by going through the things and just looking at enough stuff and thinking about it enough to apply it to other things. I would say the most impressive AI that we're going to see from here on out is just going to be the ones that have the most impressive inputs. And right now, those are the inputs we talk about. If you have Steven Spielberg using AI or just a schmo on Twitter, like guess who's going to come out ahead? So I want to leave with this one last thing and something I said in my motion plus talk in New York this past year. And it's that we live in a world that has AI and there's a lot of things shifting and stuff. like that. But we also live in a world where a small team this year using a free software available to anyone, Blender, one in Academy Award. So we live, those two things can be true. So I hope in 2026 we can kind of enter in there with some, with some being inspired and feeling a little bit more encouraged about what's going on because if, if anything, 2025s taught us that the skills we have are going to be even more valuable as we move on from here. All right, our own. Take a somebody. Yeah, thanks. And I want to just, you know, like, I don't have much more to say than the two of you have already said because like you really covered most of it, you know, just kind of dodging on the blender thing. The fact is that it takes one big event to sort of change an industry like that and Blender having one, having one, you know, an Oscar for best animated film will for sure change the landscape. I think we will see more people using Blender and I don't just mean, I mean, like companies using a people that are accepting that it's a real tool. And that, like, I think about this with, with, with Premiere, you know, for a while, Adobe, when they, when they Premiere was, they wanted to push it. They finally, there was a point where they finally got a film that was made in Premiere Pro and they pushed it really hard. And like, I don't know if that was the thing that did it, but certainly it helped in, in, I think it's films called Monsters. And, and like after that, like Premiere was talked about regularly in the film world as being something you could use professionally. And I think that's just, there's a hump that it had to get over and that we're there. Again, you know, Maxon having done with what it's doing with motion design. I think it's great that they're, that I totally miss the news cycle about that today just because we're doing this. And I'm excited because like, you know, they are, MoGraph is still really awesome in, in Cinema 4D. And I love what you can get out of that. So I want to, you know, I, like you, I want to see them succeed. But, but for character stuff, I think, you know, character stuff and modeling, like Blender has really got a lot for, you know, a lot for itself. So I think we'll see, we'll see how it goes. I'm excited for it. I actually think Unreal, when they have a little more pickup than you guys do, but only specifically in the live broadcast area because they're really, they're bullish on that right now. Like, like as much as sort of stuff is falling off, they're not pushing as hard. And, you know, Epic went through this big, you know, letting go of people and their budgets and all of that. They're still putting a lot into making it so that it works really well for live broadcasts. And then they release that free template. And they had all big, you know, promotion around that near the end of the year. So I think, I think that they want that to succeed more than most other things they want from motion design to succeed in. Like, I don't think they expected to replace Cinema 4D as the, you know, the beautiful kind of stuff that you can get out of, out of really high-end stuff. But I think that for sports and, and e-sports and any of your kind of, like, graphic like that, like, there's something to that. And maybe the news as well. And I think they're pushing that. So I think we'll, we will, we will start seeing more of that this year. So I personally think that the main buzzword of AI, I think is calming down a bit. I'm seeing a lot more jobs where AI is being generated. And then, compositors are being brought into clean it up and make something with it. I still think that there is going to be an adoption for real time. It's still growing. There's more needs for it. I do think it's going to take a while as much as the, the title wave of real time is coming and it's going to, that's going to be here and it's going to take over. I like a lot of things. I think it'll, it's, it is coming, but it will be slow. I do think that AI will continue to help enhance, where I do think it's really sinking in as helping learn and problem solve. So for the unreal standpoint, there's, you know, a billion settings in there when something goes wrong. It's a lot nicer now to not feel like I'm hung up with all these learning curves where I can ask something like chat, GPT, various specific questions of like, how do I do this? Or what is the problem with this? And it can walk me through steps, which is way faster than watching tutorials for a lot of these granular one-off problems that continue to arise. And I also think to the, you know, AI as far as asset generation, whether it's images, chunks of video, or models, I think is going to continue to grow. And I think in an environment like Unreal, where you're pulling all these pieces in into a library and then assembling, I could see when that gets, the quality gets there. I could see where AI is going to help smaller teams be able to do more with less. I do see more AI tools. Like everyone just seems to be AI powered. I don't see unreal being any exception. I know they're even talking about a new version of the engine in a year or two. And some of the road map that I'm seeing for that looks pretty crazy if they can do what they want. So I do think it's going to continue to get in and help absorb a lot of these small obnoxious tests, which there's a lot of unreal. So really looking forward to helping that streamline that. Like you mentioned, like we've talked about before, autograph, like if we don't see a final product out, we're going to start seeing hints of it for sure. Like it to me, like it's so obvious, like the moment they bought it, like I was like that is like people are like, well, why would they want that? It's so obvious to me. They have so many tools that are right now reliance on another big company that they cannot control. And they have this tool, even if it's not going to be like as robust as After Effects, it may be a really good compositor and you might use it for that. And then have all these little effects in there and maybe for editing. I'm really curious to see what happens. But I know that they've got these tools and they want to put them somewhere. And so I really believe that we'll see something from them there. And as far as AI, like we all said, you know, look, it's being used. It's going to be used. There's still a strong public resistance to it, but the studios are using it and that's going to fall off very quickly. It might be 2027 before it really lands, but it's landing like sometime really soon. And I think that the thing to remember is that whatever else the hype you hear, all of that, it's going to be very different than the way the tech companies are pitching it. It's going to be used by pro-level people who understand complexities of production, who have knowledge of how cameras work and lighting and all of these things that we've talked about. That is what is going to ultimately be in desire. So like, yes, learn AI, but it's the only thing you do, like we said before, it's not enough. We always think there's some big change to your idea that's going to happen. Based on the patterns that I've seen, I don't think we're going to see any giant changes to see. I think AI is still going to, you know, sort of enhance things. It's still going to be the buzzword. We're still going to be doing 3D and 2D projects. They will get faster and more efficient or more optimized things with AI tools, but I don't think like, you know, I don't think there's going to be a new AI that we don't know about this here that does this. Like the way AI did with NFTs, I think it's just going to be like a grinding year of AI and enhancing and just, you know, the industry kind of elevating and doing way more creative things with way less resources. Mainly because the economy seems like it's kind of holding on at least in the state and maybe even getting a little bit better, but we're definitely seeing that trend of like, you know, doing a lot more with a lot less. And often this sort of nuance of that trend is there's a lot less risk being taken creatively and or those creative jobs or projects are less abundant than they were say, you know, four or five years ago. And I kind of see that happening. There's no realistic scenario where AI Proimters with no other experience are being hired instead of skilled arts. There's not like, I can't imagine the situation where any but like, you know, if you worked like I've been in the industry 25 years, there's never a time someone said like, hey, you know, like one of our players in this baseball team is sick. Does any kid in the crowd have a baseball mitt because you're coming down here and you're playing right now. It's just not how it's going to work. Right. That's just not how it's going to be. So that's my, that's my thing here. Um, I wish I had more to say, but you guys covered it also. That's it. If you watched this whole thing and made all the way to the end, then I have a coupon for free high five or hug or chest bump. It's totally up to you. If you see me in person and you actually watched this whole gigantic thing, please let me know. Either way, I hope that whatever you listen to got you thinking maybe inspired you, maybe pissed you off, but that's okay too. Because I think that there's a lot of difficult conversations we're all having in this industry right now. And my goal with this is really to kind of solidify my thoughts to figure out what am I even thinking about all this stuff. Share that with you because I had kind of a weird perspective on this industry. And the ultimate hope is that it puts thoughts in your head that are going to percolate over the next several weeks and months. And maybe lead you to some decisions that are going to help your career, help your life. That is the mission of school emotion. And I really appreciate you being even a small part of our community. So that is it. I hope you have an amazing end of your year and an incredible 2026. See you on the other side. [BLANK_AUDIO]