New AI era

Complex VFX scenes have always required a tremendous amount of work from all artists to design and then build detailed assets for heavy environments.


Not anymore. We're in a brand new sandbox now, and those new toys are sharp.

Crowd One as a prime example of new ways of working

AI toolkit that we develop basically becomes an extension of the artist's abilities. We can generate assets based on our concepts and these concepts guide AI to create more variations that we later build upon.

This also completely changes the way you work with the client and gives us the opportunity to address feedback faster and more precisely.

Patryk Habryn, Art Director, Supervisor, inni.company

“We started our conversations about artificial intelligence possibilities back in 2021. Our visions for the future were exciting, but available models at the time were simply not advanced enough to integrate them into a commercial pipeline. When the CROWD1 project came up, we decided this was our chance to see in real life if we were ready for new ways of doing things.

We met with our artists and redesigned the processes together by adding generative AI to the existing framework. It’s not easy when you’re trying to reinvent mechanisms proven over the last two decades and can no longer rely on traditional processes that everyone knows and understands, for an alternative workflow search. But we learned where it works best and when fitted right, AI can work in concert with artists, follow their styles and extend their abilities in ways that are even hard to comprehend.

CROWD1 is a milestone, since it will be marked as the first time we fully integrated AI assisted alt flow into a commercial project, and quite frankly, I can’t imagine going back.” 

Michał Misiński, Film Director, Juice

“Just like no one thinks that Avatar could’ve just popped out of a machine without James Cameron at the helm, no one here thinks that this is the end of human creativity but rather the beginning of a new degree of creative freedom. We want to make great visual communications, and tell compelling visual stories together, as a human team, and for that we need to discuss what works for us and gradually add it to the already great thing that we have going here.”

  • City Patio, Shuttle Campus, Rocket Launch District overview - exterior concept art

  • Commander Car - vehicle concept

  • City View, Launch District - exterior concept art

  • Astronauts Room - interior concept art

  • Command Center - interior concept art

  • Rocket Launch Pad - exterior concept art

  • Rocket Commander Seats - interior concept art

“Working with AI on the Crowd One project made me realize how much can be done to improve the VFX pipeline.

Openness on the topic of artificial intelligence is the key to understanding the possibilities of using AI in harmony with the morals and values of the team. We want to build an environment where you can talk openly about concerns, positive potential of the tools we are creating and implement the one we all believe in.”

Michalina Tomczak, Coordinator, inni.company

“It's amazing how machine learning can greatly help artists iterate and adapt to project needs. It allows us, in a healthy manner, to clash many initial ideas and choose the ones that work best. This workflow, that often combines matte painting and compositing stages, enabled us to meet deadlines and budgets that would otherwise be unachievable.”

Damian Fabich, Producer, Juice

Imagination extended

With those new tools available, we also try to close the gap between concept art, matte painting and compositing.

Assets that were used to create concepts go straight through to look development.

Careful planning can enable an alternative way of working, where concept artists create more advanced visuals, that gradually become matte paintings, that we carry directly into the compositing workflow.

Universum design

Details matter. From the beginning of the production process, we planned to create a complete experience of environment that we’re in.

All user interfaces were designed to marry our universe with Crowd One branding and keep a futuristic appearance around the storyline.

Credits

Director:
Michał Misiński

DOP:
Michał Łuka

Postproduction:
Juice & inni.company

Production:
Ro-Sy Sweden

Clinet:
Crowd One Network Services

VFX Producer:
Damian Fabich

VFX Supervisor:

Patryk Habryn

VFX Production Coordinators:

Michalina Tomczak, Serhii Mysak

Team coordinator:

Emilia Dziekan

Art Director:

Patryk Habryn

On-set Supervisor:

Marko Zaric

Editor:

Kuba Tomaszewicz

Color Grading:

Szymon Obrostek

Concept & Matte Painting Artists:

Patryk Habryn, Łukasz Wiktorzak, Aleksandra Wójcik, Krystian Biskup

UI Artists:

Piotr Rudkowski, Oleg Ushenok, Andrian Luchian

Asset Artists:

Bartłomiej Dąbkowski, Piotr Rudkowski, Patryk Habryn, Aleksandra Wójcik, Eugeniy Babkevich, Katia Vasylenko, Daniil Nikulcha

Layout Artist:

Tomasz Woroniak

Animation Artist:

Daniil Pereluka

FX Artist:

Shoohrat Yuldashev

Lighting & Rendering Artist:

Tomasz Gugała

Compositing Artists:

Krzysztof Łucki, Przemysław Czapla, Selim Sykut, Andrey Khristoforov, Kirill Motylenko, Valentine Paritskiy, Krzysztof Dziewiątkowski

Asset Lead:

Mieszko Łaciński

Compositing Lead:

Szymon Jaskuła

Lighting Lead:

Andrzej Sykut

Head of Data Processing:

Tomasz Herbst

Digital Preparation Coordinator:

Vipra Ajmera

Additional Cleanup Artists:

Maksim Arsenyuk, Artem Hohulan

Sound Designer:

Jakub Pietrzak, Michał Wróblewski

Music:

Bartłomiej Spasowski

Sound Coordinator:

Justyna Pawluk

Post-production Support:

M1X, Root VFX, Dash Dot

We became partners with Juice in 2021 and since then we explore new, both in production and artistic side of things. We want to push boundaries to unlock new ways of working for our team and to give our clients best side of things.