Lisa Foster

DAY 2 - Grok Imagine Feature CC and I decided that if we were going to do a Grok Imagine feature film, even as a proof of concept, it should be in a photorealistic style. AI-haters are quick to dismiss animation styles or claim they are just copying older animated works. And while plenty of SI artists have created amazing photorealistic visuals, even a 60s Technicolor, film noir style, or modern teal-and-orange grading (Transformers, Avengers, John Wick), might be dismissed on similar grounds. So we wanted something less identifiable to prove any type of conventional narrative feature could be created with the tool. As we mentioned in our HGS article, when working on our Odyssey contest submission, we started off with a style, kind of an HDR CGI photorealistic blend, that was complicated to maintain. teapawt.org/hypergeekstudio/status… So with that lesson learned, we set out this time to lock in a very simple definitive style that could be easily added to any prompt. We discussed this with Grok chat and, based on the story and our decision to render in 720p to save time and credits, it suggested a Super 16 Kodak style. Specifically 250D for daylight scenes and 500T for night. This would give the film an overall look like low-budget indie and art films from the late 1990s to 2010. Films like Chasing Amy, Waiting for Guffman, Leaving Las Vegas, and El Mariachi. And @grok assured us it was a style @imagine could easily duplicate. It would also hide some of the issues with using a lower resolution 720p format. Perfect. While this is a contemporary story, and different than all those genres, a little '90s indie film vibe works well. Below is one of our first completed renders with the locked style. #FPD #GrokImagineFeature #NoScriptNoStoryboard #GrokImagine