Animation and AI

Classes are conducted entirely in English.

Course Description

The course explores animation as an artistic practice through its history, principles and relationship with artificial life. Students investigate how movement, symbolism and narrative give personality and apparent life to images and objects. An introduction to generative AI and latent space connects these ideas with contemporary production methods. Through practical experiments, students develop their own visual language and create a short animated work for their portfolio.

Course Objectives

• Explore the history of animation and its different techniques.
• Understand how movement communicates personality, emotion and intention.
• Investigate artificial life and symbolism in artistic practice.
• Become familiar with generative AI, latent space and visual conditioning.
• Develop authorship through direction, experimentation, selection and editing.
• Produce an original animated work combining conceptual and practical skills.

Equipment Required

Computer, internet connection, headphones, paper or sketchbook. Software: a video editor and access to an AI image or video generation tool. ComfyUI is optional. Students work with tools appropriate for their computers.

Course Outline

Introduction, Course Objectives, Students’ Expectations

• What is animation? Movement, life and artistic expression.
• AI as a system, generation as a technique and animation as a form of work.
• Reading: Ethan Ávila, AI Video Is Animation. We Just Forgot What Animation Means.

Animation History

• Puppetry, optical toys and the beginnings of animated cinema.
• Drawn animation, stop motion, cutouts and experimental animation.
• Artists in focus: Émile Cohl, Winsor McCay, Lotte Reiniger and Norman McLaren.
• Computer animation, procedural systems and the emergence of generative techniques.

Artificial Life and Character

• Human projection, symbolism and the Automata meta-archetype.
• Reading: selections from the instructor’s thesis on artificial life and its symbolic nature.
• Works in focus: Cube.ma, The Minotaur and Gaka-Chu.
• Assignment 1: develop a character or animated object through a name, desire and recurring gesture

Movement and the Illusion of Life

• Timing, anticipation, weight, gesture and staging.
• References: The Illusion of Life and the films of Jan Švankmajer.
• Assignment 2: create a short movement study expressing emotion without dialogue.

Generative AI and Latent Space

• Training data, learned representations and image generation.
• Latent space, conditioning and visual variation.
• Character references, starting images and motion references.
• Demonstration: a prepared generative workflow.

Direction, Control and Unpredictability

• Shot design, camera behavior, continuity and transformation.
• Minimal and directed prompts: the cat-jump example from the instructor’s article.
• Intention, constraints, unexpected results and artistic selection.
• Assignment 3: create a short sequence and revise selected shots.

Editing and Authorship

• Shot order, rhythm, sound and meaning.
• Authorship, delegated decisions and the role of selection.
• Training histories, source material and attribution.
• Final Project Theme: Giving Life. Develop a narrative or experimental animated short.

Final Project Production

• Concept development, storyboard or animatic, and individual consultations.
• Production, editing and sound.
• Final Project Submissions: a finished short animation and a brief visual presentation of its development for the student’s portfolio.

Profile

Ethan Ávila is a digital artist, filmmaker and educator with a Master’s degree in Art & Science from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, where he has taught at the graduate level. His work explores animation, artificial life, symbolism and digital media. His teaching focuses on artistic authorship, visual language and storytelling.