Director Aaron Ray, of mixed media production company Flesh and Bones, partnered with mobile gaming company Skillz to create an anthemic “anti AI” ad in response to AI bots corrupting the gaming industry with unfair practices. The spot, triumphantly titled “Victory”, is an anime-inspired sci-fi short pitting 2D illustrated characters against 3D modeled robots in an epic battle for fair play.
From Flesh and Bones: “Love it or loathe it, AI is taking over our world. Not only has it emerged as a disruptive force in the traditional art and production world, challenging the boundaries of creativity and expression, but now AI bots are dominating industries like online gaming, leaving human players in a state of pixelated shock. The bots, armed with lightning-fast decision-making algorithms and an uncanny ability to adapt, are claiming victories and pocketing the prizes and real game currency. So when Skillz came to us with their idea to create a memorable ad to help combat negative use of AI in their world, we took the mission to heart.”
From Director Aaron Ray: “The thing that excited me most was bringing a physical form to these otherwise invisible enemies. While players see them as just another human with a similar skillset, at their core, these AI bots can sneak in, overpower, and cheat without the player even knowing it was a bot – something I wanted to represent metaphorically with the visuals and the conceptual narrative.
The expansive 'world-building' excited me too, which is more vast than a lot of the projects I’ve directed. To create a feeling that there is more life going on outside of what our viewer can see is something I really gravitate towards. This piece really needed a cinematic film-like approach, so we developed multiple characters in various locations, with multiple mini-subplots.
Being efficient with production led us to create the robots in 3D using a C4D sketch-and-toon workflow. We then added a pass of RGB lights on the robots exported as puzzle mattes (as well as a separate line-art only layer), which allowed a lot of control in comp to dial in the faux 2D look. In addition, our character designer Joan Chung is a talented animator, who streamlined the process of defining detail, mechanics, and proportions for our animation team.”
Flesh and Bones is a creative production company specializing in short form, mixed media content for today’s brands, agencies, creatives and artists.
