Every change in productivity, while bringing technological progress and higher efficiency, inevitably brings a change of talent. In the past few years, artificial intelligence has made rapid developments, including "image generation technology" based on machine learning and deep learning. The emergence of ChatGPT4 has lowered AI drawing to almost zero threshold, ordinary users only need to enter text sentences to output images with unique style and imagination, the technology is fast and good, and the side effects are the violent turmoil in the animation design, illustration, game design and other industries.
Many game companies are introducing AI painting into their workflows to get rid of the talent pressure and financial anxiety that comes with the gaming industry. Some game teams cut the original art outsourcing team, and some game outsourcing companies directly laid off half of the people, "The original artist uses Al to complete the program, the work efficiency can be increased by at least 50%, before our company needed 38 original artists, now 20 people have been laid off, the company does not raise idlers!" The technical director of a game art outsourcing company that has just completed layoffs revealed.
AI drawing is overwhelming, how do design practitioners respond? At the ongoing Beijing Animation Week in China, animation practitioners discussed this issue.
Some companies have reduced the number of employees from hundreds to 30
"The animation game industry is a creative industry with integrated labor, especially in the current environment, how to save costs and improve efficiency, and improve efficiency is the focus of most animation companies. At this time, artificial intelligence AI appeared, which showed incomparable advantages in the generation of text, the scheme of early art design, and the efficiency improvement of mid-term detail performance. Zhang Juan, dean of the School of Film, Television and Animation at Chengdu University, has been paying attention to the impact of AI mapping on the animation industry.
She introduced that compared with the production process in the middle and late stages, AI technology has the greatest impact on the art design of comics, illustrations, picture books, games and animation in the early stage of graphic creative expression, "especially in the sketch presentation and effect refinement of conceptual art design schemes, AI is very fungible."
"The pre-art design of two-dimensional animation and the main writer of the comic illustration company, and the pre-game concept art design and other positions have also been affected. My colleagues and I have found that these positions have experienced varying degrees of downsizing or downsizing and merging of recruiters. In the investigation, Zhang Juan found a Sichuan original art outsourcing company that participated in well-known game projects such as "Glory of Kings", "Three Kingdoms Killing", "The Fifth Personality", and after the popularity of AI painting, the number of company has been reduced from hundreds of people to less than 30 people, "Not only that, its original art projects are also shrinking, and in the current recruitment of animation companies and game companies, we found that everyone is recruiting AI artists, and it is clearly stated in the job requirements to generate completion drawings according to the project. Proficient in using various AI painting tools, combined with the needs of the project to refine the AI drawings. ”
Zhang Juan pointed out that AI currently has a very large impact on companies in the early stage of animation, and 3D companies cannot adjust its production mode as a whole in the middle stage of the project, so the impact of AI is relatively small. "However, this is temporary, the iteration of AI is very fast, and some bottlenecks such as shortening the digital model construction cycle and optimizing digital asset management are solved, and the impact is only a matter of time."
Can anime students still get a job?
Changes in the animation industry have a direct impact on the employment of upstream animation students. Zhang Juan analyzed, "At present, the probability of basic application talents being replaced by artificial intelligence is the highest, so for the major that implements conventional and traditional animation technology education, the development and employment prospects of this major are the least optimistic." For animation technology professional skills who are familiar with the animation production process, such as illustrators, industry colorists, three-dimensional animation industry modelers, etc., their professional capabilities are mainly used in film and television animation, comic illustration picture books and game production and other aspects of original content production, this type of talent in the era of artificial intelligence some positions have been merged and abolished, and gradually will transition from professional to a professional multi-functional type. The requirements for professionalism have also increased again. For creative comprehensive talents to master the technical links of the whole process of animation production, while having excellent creative thinking ability, professional aesthetic ability and comprehensive coordination ability, such talents have strong adaptability to artificial intelligence, can fully control and take advantage of the advantages of these technical software, the demand for the number of talents will show a large number of growth trends with the reduction of the technical threshold of the industry. ”
In order to adapt to the changes in talents, universities will also adjust the training program for animation professionals. "The difference between ordinary animators and senior animators is that in addition to technique, the latter will also emphasize ingenious creative planning, skilled application of animation principles, and deep grasp of animation performance." Zhang Juan said, "Therefore, in addition to proficient professional skills, we should broaden students' professional horizons, improve students' literary and historical level, exercise their academic accomplishment, story planning ability, and be proficient in film and television audiovisual language and be able to apply it to the creation and ecology of animation games." ”
In addition, Zhang Juan believes that animation students must have aesthetic ability and appreciation and selection ability while facing so many massive generated pictures. Only in this way can artificial intelligence be harnessed in the future.
Cultivate animation talents, teachers teach new tests
How to do it specifically, Ma Hua, professor of the School of Animation of Beijing Film Academy and doctor of film studies, gave four suggestions, "First of all, in teaching, more students should be familiar with AI, whether it is new production technology or technology in the field of design, at present, we are also trying to open new courses for students to understand as soon as possible." “
Second, it is necessary to further strengthen practical teaching. Because only by truly experiencing and improving students' understanding of animation in a practical way can students truly understand the improvement of this content or the second step of content creation itself after the realization of AI technology.
MCA pointed out that practical teaching will also exercise students' cross-border cooperation and teamwork skills. AI is now reducing manpower or reducing the human creative process to some extent. However, the creation of animation has always been based on working as a team, or in the process of each other, to achieve the project forward. In the process of cooperation, the spark of thought generated by the collision of people is irreplaceable by AI, even if there are disputes, collisions, and even quarrels in the team creation process, this part is a precious thing. "You and AI are harmonious, as if AI is always cooperating with you, but it lacks debate, dialectics, and conflict in the process of cooperating along the way." Sometimes good ideas, good ways to achieve them, good results or methods in the process are brought about by cooperation. MCA said.
"The third point, in addition to AI, our teaching will now also encounter more students like fragmented learning, in this case, we must emphasize the integration of theoretical teaching, in the teaching process, emphasize the film history, animation history, film art history, art comprehensive cultivation part, because AI is only in the process of a large amount of data to sample, it does not have the human in the process of film and animation development of continuous iteration, continuous diary of the summary and development of the creative law, This part is a very important theoretical reserve and foundation for you to use and control AI in the future.
Finally, it returns to the story of creation, MCA observes, the current AI can create logical stories, but what cannot be replaced is the human understanding of the role, the presentation of the character's emotions, "This real sense between human beings, we look at the story, feel the story, look at the narrative left us emotional resonance, it is precisely the moment or that moment between people and people emotional collision left you a kind of memory now, this part relies only on big data, only by sampling, It is difficult to replace the pattern they have summed up by reading tens of thousands of scripts. Therefore, returning to the story, returning to the characters, and returning to the part of mining the emotions of the characters, AI cannot be involved at present. ”
Observation: The great change in animation began with the panda "Panpan"
In fact, before the era of AI painting, China's animation industry also experienced the transformation of artificial replacement by computers. Li Zhongqiu, vice president of the International Animation Association, is a witness to that change. In 1990, the mainland created the first domestic three-dimensional animation was the Asian Games (mascot) panda Panpan, Li Zhongqiu was the three importers of animation technology at that time, "At that time, the Chinese industry was zero, so there was no word "three-dimensional animation", I translated it." “
Since then, Li Zhongqiu has been following Mr. Zhang Songlin, the old president of the China Animation Association, to engage in animation industry promotion. He remembers that the first time he went to the American Film Studio, he brought the machine to introduce to everyone, saying that the future animation can be completed by computers, and several seniors in the American Film Studio were very unimpressed, "Teacher Qian Yunda, (Teacher Qian is very kind), he said you don't waste your effort, how can you put a lot of drawings, even so many paints, so many celluloid pieces, how expensive things are they, scrap it, and use your machine in the future?" You do experiments, let's see, it's okay. ”
Zhang Songlin's reply was very in place, he said: "Old money, I tell you, unless we never use this." If suddenly everyone freezes and freezes, and when you wake up ten years from now, do you think you will still use paper? If we were using a computer at that time, we might as well start trying it today. Li Zhongqiu said, "It was this sentence that made me follow Zhang Lao for more than ten years, and even I gave up my company to follow the old man to do an animation association." ”
Around 2003, the domestic animation industry finally completely turned animation hand-drawn into a computer, and then developed paperless animation, VR, motion capture and other technologies... So, what will be the world of the era of AI painting that has arrived? Both pessimism and optimism appear thin, because this era has begun and cannot be reversed.
On April 21, domestic CG veteran Ruan Jia fought against AI with a self-drawn Valkyrie fansketch in "Elden Law Ring", limited to 30 minutes, allowing the majority of netizens to use AI to refine it, and then compare it with her finished draft, many people are paying attention to this war without gunsmoke. "After the war," Ruan Jia said, "I am not resisting scientific and technological progress, but I feel that I should not insult those who fell in this wave." If the times want your life, then I will strive to fight in my own profession at the end. ”
Text/Beijing Youth Daily intern reporter Hu Jingjie
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zu Weiwei