(I’ll put the disclaimer here ahead of time: NOT ALL OF IT IS AI GENERATED. THERE ARE DEFINITELY HAND-DRAWN AND VECTOR ANIMATED SCENES HERE, BUT THERE IS DEFINITELY AI GENERATED CONTENT HERE.)
I’ve noticed that the s keep removing the AI tags. I initially wanted to believe that at the very least they were relying on AI interpolation, but that usually blends frames together. Upon a closer look, it’s really looking like a decent chunk of these scenes are AI generated, or in a main case, AI generated sprites/animations imposed onto a background.
The scene at 0:20 is a big tell with this. There is odd distortion when the astronaut turns his hand, as well as when Luna gives him the rock. The astronaut just before that picks up a small rock and places it on top of the rock in his other hand, and suddenly that rock is now gone.
Looking directly at their last ed video prior to the Hugging Compilation, the Chrysalis video, there is a huge difference in animation quality. Their previous videos had a combination of vector animation and hand-drawn animation, and the hand-drawn animation wasn’t bad but had a distinct style to it. The sudden jump in animation quality in just 7 months despite these guys having a consistent style for years is a little fishy.
Then there’s of course the scene at 0:25 with Luna on the rover. Look at the wheels frame-by-frame. They smear and mesh into each other not in a way that makes sense. Oh, and I guess the fact that they suddenly go from 3 wheels to 4 wheels, one just morphing into existence. Mitosis on the Moon, oh my!
0:18, the astronaut picking up the rocks: His hands go from 3-4-3 fingers to crab claws. Again, that warping of lines that animators would not do… unless the animator was a machine.
0:54 has a few parts where lines smear together and shapes distort in a way that should’ve been noticeable.
But like I said in my disclaimer, this doesn’t mean the entire thing is AI generated. I can clearly see parts that were drawn or vector-animated, such as the lil Luna holding the boulder. The astronaut running from the boulder, however, is AI generated.
The ending sequence, from the rocket launch to the astronauts and Luna waving goodbye, I think is mostly vector-animated.
Seems like in some cases they also take AI movements and have them operate as separate layers, and some of the models are definitely drawn, such as the solar /rover floating away, as well as the lander at the end flying off.
But there is absolutely AI involvement here, if only at the very least AI assisted.
And if you don’t believe me, look at this video DoubleW made for GalaCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLhPFuXtDwQ
NONE of what I mentioned above happens in that video. You can tell right away that they drew those characters, animated it themselves. That was TWO MONTHS AGO.
Why the wall of text that has a chance of getting deleted? Because they say they animated it themselves, and only some of that may be true. It feels disingenuous and dishonest, and it’s disappointing coming from creators who had, up to this point, been pretty consistent with their work. For them to suddenly rely on AI for their content just feels wrong. There’s nothing wrong with using AI as a reference, but as a replacement? No.
Also I can’t convey my points in short sentences worth a damn. Long story short, they used AI for this and I wish they were honest about it.
