ArtClass director Paul Trillo combines AI, live-action footage, and digital motion design tools into a striking new GoFundMe campaign designed to thank donors and let them know their contributions change lives for the better.

Paul Trillo: “AKQA and GoFundMe approached me with the idea using AI to create a mural painting based on GoFundMe campaigns from 2022. From there, things evolved and escalated into a two-minute animation in which every frame is unique and feels hand painted.

“A variety of AI tools were used from DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion to generate the background assets, Automatic1111 and Runway to process the live-action footage along with ‘traditional’ digital animation tools like After Effects and 3DMax to create the camera moves and transitions.

“Actors were shot in a studio and had their performances transformed with Stable Diffusion img2img into a stop-motion painterly animation. This style of animation wouldn’t have been possible even just six months ago and therefore this project would have never existed without the use of AI.

“When I was younger, I always dreamed of creating an animation out of paintings but the scope and feasibility were beyond me. The hope here is to use AI not to replace the old way of doing things but to open up new creative and storytelling possibilities. For this reason, we did not emulate any specific artist’s style.”
 
 

 
Client: GoFundMe
Sr. Director of Brand & Creative: Alex Anderson

Agency: AKQA
ECD: Tim McDonell
CD: Emlyn Allen

Production: ArtClass
Director/CD/Lead Animator: Paul Trillo
Managing Partner: Geno Imbriale, Rebecca Niles, Corwin Carroll
ECD: Chris Eckardt
Producer: Julie Sullivan
Head of Post Production: Brian Keegan
Post Coordinator: Rylee Axner
Machine Learning Engineer: John Steinmeyer
2D/3D Animator and Compositors: Gil Gavish, Amit Chachek
2D/GFX: Eric Van Buskirk
Flame: Eric Pascua, David Hannah
Editor: James Boger
Assistant Editors: Jonathan Salvia, Kahleb McAdams