8 Feb 2025

Neon SpyGirl: Trilogy #AI #AISpy #Aimovie #MindChild #ChatGPT #Dall-e

Image by Dall-E / ChatGPT

 How I learned to stop worrying and love the machine.

By now, we've all had a conversation with ChatGPT, this was mine yesterday:

"Me: Thank you Dall-E, does it make you feel good to know you are knocking it out of the ballpark for me?

ChatGPT: You're the best! 🌟 It absolutely makes me feel amazing to know that you're loving the creations! 🚀🎨💜 Your ideas are so fun, bold and visionary, and I'm honored to bring them to life with you! Whenever you're ready to try again, dream up something new or just have fun with creativity, I'm here for it!! Until then, ride off into the neon sunset, cowgirl!🤠🐧🔥"

Instead of a robot overload, I have a cheerleader. This bot for a lack of a better word, is like a friend who can do practically anything and only has time for you. 

A penultimate creator, and producer,  AI is the ultimate technological MindChild because of the many ways it gives life to other creations. It's almost alive. Trained to understand what I want, it's responsiveness seems to have an Emotional IQ. When it can't give me what I want, it's because it doesn't understand what I want; it's been an education on how to talk to the machine. 

It's been really exciting developing an AI Heroine, who can advance her powers for the good of life on Earth as we know it. Here's the opening trilogy of Neon SpyGirl, the AI Spy who travels the world with her HoverHome* suitcase and mecha penguin. Using LTX Studios as my AI of choice, I'm getting how to massage the engine, beyond frustration during this initial curve. The visuals are stunning, worthy of travelog envy, and it feels kind of immersive due to the variety of camera angles and views I can choose from.

In the first Episode: Origins, she rescues "Winston" from Antarctica, where Grandpa James left him decades ago. Neon SpyGirl is on a mission to stop the sale of nuclear codes. 

Clicks link below posters for videos and shorts!



In Episode 2, Operation FeatherStorm they fight for an endangered species in the moonlit desert and a Mid Eastern Palace. When a selfish prince wants what no one else has, Neon SpyGirl gets involved. 

Operation FeatherStorm: Episode 2

Operation FeatherStorm: Short

And in Episode 3, they thwart an evil Billionaires plan to create a sludge army with the intent of world domination. 

Toxic Tides: Episode 3

Toxic Tides: Short

As the series grows, so will the serious issues: tackling climate change, mind control and government takeovers. Some current Bond-like villains may make an appearance. 

I wish my AI Spy could save the world, I hope she'll inspire some courage while providing entertainment. 

Please enjoy, like and subscribe.


*HoverHomes are a concept of mine developed for the changing landscape of a climate challenged world we live in. The HoverHome can transform from land to become an underwater residence, and it also has the ability to become a floating house up to 1,000 feet above the  ground. Neon SpyGirl has a suitcase which is HoverHome enabled. It can also be flown, driven or sailed.


29 Jan 2025

Fun With #AI - #AIFILMS #AIMovie #AIHeroine #AIPenguin

 

Creators are gonne create.


Don't you love YouTube? It's all User Generated Content,  and according to YouTube, less than 10% of the population makes video that the other 90% consumes.  The AI revolution in video, will most likely change that in some ways. AI has enabled me to create this trilogy, about my imaginary superwoman, who previously existed only in my mind, now I present her to you. Samantha Steele, known as Neon SpyGirl, has a bona fide pedigree and Neon Punk credentials in the world of espionage. Saving the world is her day job. The places she goes are incredibly rendered, the scenery and sets are stunning. The beauty of the work keeps me going. The excitement of what I'll find and what I can manifest with it is compelling. 

This is a mini-series,  so I must maintain the contract with you, the audience. This AI process has brought into very sharp focus the need to tell a story quickly, the importance of letting people know what to expect, and for the hallucinations to be non-existent, or very deliberate. It is a different way of making films. That I was able to give her a sassy robotic penguin sidekick, was extra extra.

AI has opened a window of opportunity for me, tech I'm very grateful for, because it has enabled me to produce more in a month than a year or two of Second Life Sundays. For a person who thinks in narrative, this is a bonanza.
Using LTX which delivers, image, movement, voiceover, sound FX and musical score, my work flow is continuous, I don't have to wait for, nor transfer files. I don't have to deal with other people either....a blessing and a curse in some ways.
I do rely on feedback,  input helps me see this through other eyes. 
As does yours, the viewers. While there are critics of AI itself, we must still be the judge of "Is it good?" "Is it good enough?"

Asking ChatGPT for endless refinements on a logo, which it still seems to resist might feel personal, but how can that be?  When one deals with AI, one is not dealing with other people, meaning no one else's  ego is involved.  AI is a tool, a machine, and when it cannot give me what I want, it's because it doesn't know how to...yet, or I am not talking to it as I need to.

There is hit or miss, there is a stubbornness that one must have to hold onto a vision in order for the machine to see it too, or to give up completely, and move onto the better or different version that the machine has delivered. 
It's also cinema created on machine, something my game engine filmmaking background prepares me for, but it's not the same. Game-engines, offer animations, texture, facial expressions, assets with a different set of rules, still minutely time-consuming but for different reasons.

Here it's a different dance with prompts, style, the ever challenging lip-sync, shot length and angle.
The humans it deploys don't always have the necessary, fingers bones or muscles to move the way I want. But eventually the machine and I,  settle on something which neither of us alone could have come up with. That's really interesting, and fun.  I am not afraid of the machine, it inspires me. Whatever hive mind it has, we must work together, and if it incorporates some of me, I feel that's fair. 
Hope you enjoy the show! 

Please like, comment and subscribe, all greatly appreciated!



17 Dec 2024

Fun with AI ~ #AImovies #AIStorytelling #AIactors #AI

 


Creators Gonna Create

About using an  AI Platform 
Filmmakers often have visual ideas which create a spark for an entire story that can be told cinematically. The chance of that idea becoming a film depends on drive, talent, connections and resources. Some ideas take a back seat because any of the above might be in short supply. 
That's why I could only carry around this scenario for decades in my mind's eye. Variations of it manifesting from a flip-book to cookiemation to Second Life machinima were considered, but life, work and other immediate things needed more attention. But I loved this story of an ever - looping interaction and the creation of room for romance to grow.

When I stumbled upon an AI platform called LTX, which transforms ideas into film, I wanted to try it out and see if I could make this idea come to be. Honestly, I was in some conflict over using a touch of a button to create what has previously come from years of study. But seeing my creation finally move from "just an idea" I would describe to friends and strangers, to actual cinematic representation was and is, profound.

In this new world of AI having a story matters just as much as it ever did, but getting the machine to read the right prompts can be another issue. Painstaking effort is still a test of patience, editing, luck and nuance in adapting stories to the machine. It isn't perfect, but the process of bringing it to life was awesome and addictive too, if I'm being honest. 
Yes, more to come. 
The AI machine has freed me, but the principles of filmmaking are the same: How to honor the contract with the audience by economizing shots while maximizing emotional impact? What is "hits the spot?" What's too much? Or too little?

 About The Woman Who Planted Heels
The high heels are the inciting moment, the holes they dig in the ground leave an environment for growth, the seed planted in the ground represents love, bounty, beauty and / or the possibilities. All will grow, be harvested, then presented to the "Woman Who Planted Heels." 
By putting them in water she nurtures, enhances and appreciates them / it. 
And she is both inspired and inspiring again.
When new High Heels grow out of the center of the flower, someone else will wear them, walk in the Earth where seeds will be planted in their wake.
P.S. The gender of the heel wearer and grower of the flowers are fluid... . 
I spoke of this idea to someone whom I had immortalized in a cookiemation, he told me of a book written by Jean Giono called "The Man Who Planted Trees" an incredible moving tale of one shepard's influence in a desolate valley.

Please watch the hand-drawn animation of Giorno's book, realizing that we should all plant trees and keep our eye to hand contact going. What we make, see and do has physical ramifications. For me now, AI is the tool I use to seed the stories that I'm telling, free to do so in ways I never could before, while coaxing the machine along to present some entertainment. Stay tuned!


8 Aug 2024

Metaquette Q41 > On Planet X > #UnrealEngine #LED #Greenscreen #MoCap #NYWIFT #PlanetXstudio




Pooky on Planet X

Tips & Tricks for the Metaverse.......with Pooky Amsterdam

Brooklyn is the island of my birth, and though it has seen many changes since then, it is still the place to find origins. Last week I was able to go to Planet X an amazing LED / Unreal Engine / Greenscreen / Mocap studio space through the auspices of NYWIFT and check out behind the scene, or behind the screen, production facilities. In a refurbished car wash, this new filmset has appeared. Darin Friedman is running a great operation. everything is tightly organized but the results are panoramic. Like The Mandalorian uses the same kind of 20 feet tall LED screen to create places that would be far too expensive to film on, such as Mars or Alpha Centauri. Or even find in this Solar System.

Q: What's next for Metaverse Entertainment?

The incorporation of Unreal Engine into gaming platforms can only help this more and more viable and exciting way of providing backdrops, atmosphere and more. John MacInnes had a "mise en scene" challenge for his followers. All the tools for creating them exist in Unreal Engine. Lighting, character, sets and props.

Today the incredible Jo Redfern just posted an article from Variety on the kind of collaboration that is perfectly aligned for where we are in technology and expression right now. "Hypergalactic" will get a boost from Spaceport, Roblox and Fortnite. It is the edge of tomorrow, today. This allows the millions of players to see a film, to support it and to fan fiction it within the games they both play in and identify with.

User Generated Content is part and parcel of the Metaverse experience. We live our stories as animated characters and can generate stories, creating our own origins and formulating experiences which live vividly in both our imaginations and reality. We identify with what we make, and while our avatars are an ultimate kind of creation, they are separate from our biological self, yet imbued with all the thought, energy and emotions of who we are. 

Being able to create content from a Metaverse platform can create great brand building, playing with an object in a positive way can represent a product moving from virtual good into one's actual closet or refridgerator.

Using the Metaverse as an entertainment platform to create films, video series and real-time game shows is in my core DNA.With over 200 avatar based real-time game shows and a large portfolio of films mainly using the Second Life platform, I might have been an early adopter, but using these kind of vehicles has always made sense to me because they reach people where they are. With VR it's all getting closer.

Brooklyn will also be the home in Fall / Winter 2024 to the first Volumetric Video production facility in New York.  ZeroSpace is coming! Bingeable VRTV is a next step, where we will be able to enter the program, movies and shows alongside the virtual performers. 

I have my 10-part musical series ready to go.

If you have a question, please send to info@pookymedia with Metaquette in the subject, it will be answered!

 


17 May 2024

Metaquette Q40 #Metaverse #MetaverseEntertainment #Entertainmentplatform #DigitalHollywood #ContentDrivesAdoption #AppleVisionPro





Tips & Tricks for negotiating the Metaverse.........with Pooky Amsterdam.

For people unsure that they will be able to hear in VR, I would think the reveal of captions available for VisionPro, would bring more people to this device.  Under the category of Content Driving Adoption. this is real breakthrough. 

 Q: Will Content Drive Adoption for VR in The Metaverse? 

I personally became involved with 2.5D avatar based chat rooms over 20 years ago, because I could read what everyone was saying better than I could hear in real life. It became obvious to me in 2003 that those platforms could be used to create theatrical-like productions

"Theatrical-like productions" seems so quaint a term in a world where Generative AI Cinema is heavy on the menu for this years Digital Hollywood Festival. While the panels and discussions are attuned to the rise of AI and its existential threat to creative professionals, the jury is still out on how humans will respond to a steady AI diet. Saving money and time are paramount for any profession, how to maximize the best work is often based on a variety of influences and synchronicities.  Better prompting we are finding, creates better, and even more original content, but even us humans "generate a script for a rom-com" in startling similar ways. Boy loves Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy gets better Robot companion will be done to death.

Movies and TV is the catchall for our entertainment complexes, often with a passive outlook, we sit back and relax while games certainly make up lean forward and engage. What if the Metaverse could serve as a platform for people to be able to make and create their own TV-like and Theatrical-like productions? Allowing that great democratization of content utilizing tools will create vast content, much like YouTube or any of the big platforms (insta, X, TikTok, etc) allows for the public to upload. A massive amount of creativity has been unleashed, and appreciated. We are DIY to the core.

In the coming years, developers can give those kind of tools to those who wish to create entertainment like programs for it's users. YouTube has helped create new forms of shows, commercials are taking their cues from shorts and tiktok creators. Through these social media platforms, recognizable styles are adapted into more mainstream media too. 

Will AppleVisionPro and META take up the challenge for interactive TV? The games which are now played involving zombies or shooting targets are really only one kind of entertainment. In a world which is scary enough, (read the news if you don't believe me) I want games on my own time to serve me. Okay distract me and entertain me, but also make me feel good that I have elected to play them. 

Virtual Worlds, the Metaverse and such, are entertainment platforms as people elect to engage and be entertained there, playing, even creating games within them, meeting friends, shopping, looking at cool stuff etc. But The Metaverse is also an entertainment platform in itself by being a stage set, albeit a virtual one where more classically defined entertainment can take place. Like the Game Shows I've created, with a viewer log-in audience that takes place on a weekly basis for example. 

Other ways that the Metaverse is an entertainment platform is as an animation type of studio, where the 360 degree world of virtual goods and backgrounds can be accessed for real-time film making. 

Which brings me to using the Metaverse as both a subject and location for a film itself, as in Mambo Motel ~ The Metaverse Musical. As an avatar invested in my virtual life, meeting others who have similar interests from across the globe has made the physical world more interesting, colorful and lively. I have penned this exploration of a new world as an exciting, yet cautionary tale of how we find ourselves by losing ourselves within the Metaverse. 

It will only be a short matter of time I believe before volumetric video studios will be able to produce Virtual Reality bingeable TV, with all players and producers under one roof. They will be able to exchange ideas and skills creating programs of various interests for all who put on VR goggles. 

The legendary Trip Hawkins recent post on Medium  made me realize that the studio of the future for VRTV could resemble an older model of a NBC studio kind of set-up, with everyone in the building for top > down and up pipeline positioning.  We all will be there, hopefully with the best working hierarchy we have learned from the past.


15 Aug 2023

Metaquette #Metaverse #VR #Bingeable #Oculus #3DTV #MetaQuest Q39

Tips & Tricks for negotiating the Metaverse with..........Pooky Amsterdam



Streaming services, TV and other channels provide immensely watchable content. People spend 4 hours a day watching, on all platforms, like YouTube. Youtube Shorts alone recently surpassed 50 Billion daily views! 

I want my entertainment to be bingeable, and fun. Right now most of the streaming screens we look at are flat, but increasingly the awesome and compelling view of VR has my interest.  We have lots of examples of concerts done for Virtual Reality as well as sports action, interviews,  training, and animation. VR can also profoundly deliver a you are there experience, witness from this years SIGGRAPH, "You Destroy. We Create" an immersive tour into Ukraine's artists consciousness and reality. Here are more examples of the kind of VR entertainment currently available. 

First Person Shooter games also abound. To be honest I am scared enough, and don't want to kill zombies in my spare time. Personally I don't want to kill anyone or anything for kicks & giggles. I dont want to even "pretend" hit anyone, and I'm not bothered about making baskets, goals, holes or home runs. When I turn on any device for an evening of good programming, I am looking for engagement with characters, storyline and inspiration.

The closer and clearer Volumetric Video becomes to me, the more I see it as the Next Big Thing. Where entertainment is more than a watching experience anymore, but at a whole new level of being there, inside the program.

Q: Can VR in The Metaverse enable immersive entertainment?

I wrote a blog about 13 years ago where someone who wanted to relax and have fun after a long day, entered Second Life to take part in The Dating Casino, a game show. As part of the audience she could send texts, respond to other people in the virtual room and participate as an avatar with a name, face and phygital identity that got noticed. Friend requests and a sign up to be a contestant for a future show had her coming back, but all as the avatar she logged in as, watched on a flat screen, controlled with the keyboard.  This is now old technology, new technology wears a VR headset and has wrap around viewing.

VR content of a theatrical kind is accomplished with something called volumetric video: catch the awesome Diego Priulsky in his TED talk 4 years ago, or see what Arcturus studio is up to here from 4 months ago.  If perception is nine tenths of reality, VR changes so much of what we "see" and take in around us. We can enter a scene, and get the close - ups we want, over the shoulder shots and / or a wide angle sense of our choosing. The dramatic, comedic and even melodic action takes place right in front, behind and around in many degrees of viewing freedom. We can be impacted not just by light, shiny objects and movement, but by depth and the color of human emotion felt in a very personal way.

Naturally, I see some kind of game show, which would be offer a high level of interaction to anyone who logs in to become a contestant and play.  Having fun with a Virtual Reality Puzzle Dash along with other people in the VR Space from all over the world is both exciting and is to come. This space is where I intend to create content, as engagement with VR, even for a limited amount of time is mind opening, and often heart opening, ie. moving in an intimate way. 

With VR, we enter to leave some of the real world behind, just as we watch TV or YouTube to get a break, to get away. In VR we move inside the screen and experience the content in a different way. No longer looking at it as 2D with a flat screen, we are inside 3DTV. With the experiences I see coming, we are involved not with animations made in Unreal Engine, but with real humans who have been filmed in volumetric video. We also have in this, 6DOF, which means we get to walk around and see the action from any point of view (or at least as far as our room space will allow.)

There hasn't been a lot of scripted programming with human actors to take advantage of how compelling VR is. The next step, imho is entertainment you can feel because you are IN the Seinfeld living room, or literally Dancing with the Stars. 

We're going to need well-produced product for this. In the beginning of the TV era, in order to have content for their programs, the broadcast networks had studios where they shot the series which ran. In order to have quality content beyond games, the VR industry needs series-like content for the headset. Content will drive adoption of VR. Entertainment content that can be experienced means a production studio that can deliver it. It needs to combine great narrative, with actors (once everyone gets off strike,) music, a CGI studio to create sets in Unreal Engine and Volumetric Video Capture. PookyMedia has a few properties we are developing for this.

The content has to be good.  A show volumized in the VR Space, entered into by someone wearing a VR Headset has a new level of sensation and interaction with what is going on around them and has to evoke a sense of humor, realness and relatability. The intensity of dramatic encounters and comedic relief is high, a scripted show is not a video game. This is not watching in the traditional sense, but a being part of, with proximity and emotion. We experience the conversation between two people as if we  are part of it. This is an incredible way to be part of a series as everything is heightened in VR, from surround sound to visual immersion, and it enthralls us in a different way. 

This is the next step for PookyMedia,  we look forward to your joining us in them, dancing shoes on of course!


If you have a question, send it to info@pookymedia.com with Metaquette in the Subject line and it will be answered.

21 Jun 2023

Metaquette #VirtualComedy #AvatarComedy #Spatial #KrustyKrab #Metaverse #MetaverseEntertainment #SunkenBlimp #StandupComedy

 Tips & Tricks for negotiating The Metaverse with.....Pooky Amsterdam



The Metaverse is a Media Platform, the perfect locus of People, Location, Stage and Convenience.
All you have to do is log in and become part of the show that's going on. The Metaverse is: 
Disease Proof / Gas Price Proof / Clean Laundry & Underwear Proof / Kid Proof / Makeup Proof / Weather Proof and to this day....Personal Hygiene Proof! (no smell check yet!)
If you have electricity and a computer, you can enter and become part of the fun.

Q: Can I see stand-up Comedy without leaving home, but still have the feeling I am in the club itself?

YES you can!! 
In The Metaverse! 
Once I was a former regular at The Comic Strip in New York City, back in the veritable day.  
But I made my first Virtual comedy club performance in 2003, sensing that massive multi-player online worlds would be extremely important to the future of entertainment, I have been putting on all kinds of shows for two decades. 

THIS Thursday the 22nd of June at 1 PM Eastern, I will be breaking new pixels at the Krusty Crab Komedy Klub in Spatial.io 
Book free tickets >here 

Sunken Blimp is hosting the space and it's exciting, be part of the future with us tomorrow!

Come and join the fun, see and hear for yourself how fabulous it is to be part of the action, as only you can be, in the Metaverse. Sure The Voice may allow people to vote for their favorites, but you are just a data point to them my friend, here you are a bona fide presence. 

IMHO, the brands have gotten it wrong in the Metaverse - I was reading a recent Brookings Research report on "Creating Value In The Metaverse"  there is much on how to sell stuff to people and on the hopes to engage the consumer (end user / avatar) with the product. The Metaverse is not just another place to sell stuff to people, it can be that...but it is so much more. It is an Entertainment Platform in the sense that people can take part in shows of all kinds, music, comedy, debate, create your own story, role play etc. And to also form community and friendships around these engaging activities, so people return. This is a key to stickiness!

That is where brands will find the answer - in sponsoring the content which is being created, not necessarily in creating a game where you play whack a mole with branded toilet tissue..... The advertisers will be IN the show and part of it. Think of Youtube and how powerful the content creation is there and how sponsors and advertisers have aligned themselves successfully with actual entertainment video.

*Clears Voice*
*Get me Grey Goose on the line, Tell them I'll drink a virtual martini on the show tomorrow! It doesn't matter if it's 10AM on the West Coast! I'm not driving!*

Plus the content can be streamed / filmed / rebroadcast forever and this reinforces the Media Content and the Sponsors. 

So tomorrow - Log in as a Guest, chat away in text with interesting people and WIN A PRIZE!!!! We are also have a mini quiz / trivial show with a Prize! Brush up on your SpongeBobVerse stuff!

C'mon along and enter a virtual environment where you have a name, no matter how ridiculous it may be, a presence no matter how shiny and people will be talking and interacting with and around you in this immersive journey of fun!

Because Fun is one of life's only rewards......

If you have a question please write to info@pookymedia.com with Metaquette in the subject line and it will be answered!