a more indirect visual for the manifesto.

i think it's a blunder to go too specific for the visuals. because i can't create anything even with ai that meets my visual bar. like it's impossible i think because i don't even have the vocabulary to express what i actually want. and i can't see exactly what i want in my mind's eye. or even what i can see, i can't find the right references / words that perfectly captures it!

this is a limitation of my mind. i think it's an incredibly powerful skill to actually draw. i don't have that. i'm realizing that one of the reasons miyazaki is such a great creator is because he can literally translate what is in his mind to paper.

the first external representation of his idea is the image he sees in his mind's eye! he skips the language part altogether. trying to describe what i see in my mind in words is an impossible task! and what i see is also not perfectly aligned with anything out in the world, which means that i literally cannot express to AI what i want!

this is crazy. i feel handicapped. fundamentally disabled.

it's a different story altogether for actual film. if i see something in my mind's eye, i can just capture what i'm thinking of on camera. i can compose the shot the way i see it in my mind, get actors to take positions and enact something, etc. and i can get something that resembles what i had in my mind.

i can't do this for animation.

but recently there was this really viral animation (about some french dude in nyc or something? basically he walks around "saving the day" across a bunch of funny situations). that was AI. the creator talked about using midjourney to get the character and then used something like higgs(?) to get the shots?

idk, there's a lot i have to do to get this visually where i need it to be.

and i think i need to take some art classes or something. or at the very least start drawing in my notebook to get a feel for the medium. used to draw quite a bit as a kid. but yea didn't keep up with it. antoine was super good. was a budding professional artist. prob the best artist i knew growing up. so sad he passed.

ok so what can i do as a workaround?

i can do like a montage / collage thing and just get a visual that i know will work. like, not creating something new from the ground up, but more assembling what is already there.

also, get away from blender - the workflow is taking too long. threejs or something is much better for where we're at. or whatever - this doesn't matter rn.

new approach: ok scrap this. we're going to take a much much simpler approach that is guaranteed to work:

we are just going to show the outline of a person - perhaps the famous michaelangelo man but gender neutral - same proportions though and position. and the background is going to be the main scene.

main scene: a lotus flower blossoming as the camera zooms into its center, revealing the same lotus blooming again from its center - looped.

and on the foreground is the sillhouette of a person.

symbolizing the blossoming of the human potential.