Connie He Debuts AI-Animated Short Film at Tribeca Film Festival
Animator Connie He premiered her short film 'Dear Upstairs Neighbors' at the Tribeca Film Festival, using custom AI tools developed with Google DeepMind to blend her acrylic paintings with animation. The film, conceived during the pandemic as a response to noisy neighbors, took 18 months and 27 iterations. He, a former Pixar employee, collaborated with a 45-person crew including former Pixar colleagues and an Oscar-winning creative. The AI workflow used video-to-video style transfer and LoRA fine-tuning to apply He's acrylic-on-paper paintings to 3D animation. Composer Yung Spielberg created the soundtrack, which inspired the visual palette of the third act. He's father, a painter, praised the work as finding her own voice while showing his influence. The film has no dialogue, relying on visual storytelling and music.
Key facts
- Connie He's short film 'Dear Upstairs Neighbors' premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.
- The film uses AI tools developed with Google DeepMind.
- He created custom video-to-video AI pipelines for the project.
- The film incorporates He's acrylic paintings via style transfer and LoRA.
- The story was inspired by pandemic-era apartment noise.
- Production took 18 months with 27 iterations.
- He previously worked at Pixar.
- The crew included 45 people, with former Pixar collaborators and an Oscar-winning creative.
- Composer Yung Spielberg scored the film.
- The film has no dialogue, relying on visual storytelling and music.
Entities
Artists
- Connie He
- Yingzong Xin
- Yung Spielberg
- Marcia
Institutions
- Google DeepMind
- Pixar
- Tribeca Film Festival
- PRINT Magazine
Locations
- Tribeca Film Festival