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"The Sorrowful Figure": A Great Example of Generative AI
The Sorrowful Figure is an animated short depicting Don Quixote's battle against his imaginary giants, which are really just windmills. 🌬️
It premiered in Madrid on September 23, 2026, and was produced between July 1 and September 20, 2026, by a team of ten. In other words, the whole thing was made in under three months by just ten people.
What makes this short particularly interesting is the prominent role AI played in it. As the credits note, the film was produced entirely with AI tools as part of the creative and animation process, in a collaboration between Contanimation Films and Magnific Originals.
I found the result to be of great quality and visually stunning, with spectacular imagery and impressively well-crafted character expressions and transitions. It's proof that we can now achieve results on par with, or even better than, those achieved through traditional methods, while spending far less time getting to the final product.
If you have 11 minutes to spare today, I highly recommend it. Here's the link to watch it on YouTube.
Personally, I see this as a positive development in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it makes it possible to get results with much less effort, which also opens the door to more experimentation, comparing more options along the way and arriving at a more polished final product. On the other hand, much like we've already seen with image generation, it "democratizes" the creation of these works of art, making it more accessible to the general public.
That said, there are also many voices critical of the changes AI is bringing to our society. It's a complex issue...
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