Collaged Character Animations with AI

I’m currently collaborating with the NEXUS Experiments lab at Freiburg University to develop playful and creative workshops with AI tools and programs. The work is part of the HRRC (Human Rights Research Consortium) Emancipatory AI project that connects researchers and practitioners across Baden-Württemberg and Connecticut to share ideas and prototypes across different settings. In the fall of last year I hosted an initial meeting with educators from local schools, libraries and youth programs to start sharing possibilities for tinkering with AI. And in about a month we’re facilitating a project week with high-schoolers to continue to develop the projects using scratchlabs, makey makey and other digital tools.

This is a new topic for me so I’m immersing myself in podcasts, books and other workshops that present playful ways to engage with AI themes. Last weekend I attended a workshop from Sonia and Mir Tiwari about “playing with algorithms“ which gave me lots of inspiration for some initial experiments. One of the tools that they shared was the Meta animated drawings app which can quickly generate fun movements from drawings made in the real world.

In the upcoming creative AI workshop I’d like to emphasize the connection to physical materials as much as possible. So I took this app as jumping off point and experimented with making Hanoch Piven style collages with everyday materials and feeding those into the application.

I collected a bunch of random materials including recycled containers, hardware, tools, utensils, scrap cardboard, plastic toys and of course googly eyes. You need to arrange the objects on a white piece of paper with a bit of a border around the edge. Once you take a photo and upload it to the animated drawings site there are a few steps to crop and adjust the parameters of face, arms, shoulders, hips and legs.

After a few seconds there are tons of different animations generated that show the character jumping, dancing and running. The 3D collaged elements don’t always work perfectly which encourages more iteration and playful prototyping. I got a bit addicted to making characters and the experience definitely caused me to start looking at some physical materials in a new ways.

I can imagine sharing this project as a starting point for one of the sessions to show the possibilities for co-creating with an AI tool. It allows learners to reflect on both the advantages of the platform (otherwise making animations are quite time consuming) and the potential downsides (limited animation selection and sometimes glitchy integration of the elements). I’ll keep sharing more discoveries and experiments here as I prepare for the upcoming AI workshops.