Client Project: Cartwheel
Artificial intelligence and 3D animation collide in a super accessible web based tool.
At the end of 2021 through this very newsletter, I reconnected with a former colleague from Google: Jonathan Jarvis. When I worked alongside him he was our department’s preeminent creative director, film maker / animator, and all around inspiring creative lead. In 2021 he was ready to start something new. Many of our contemporaries had gone on to found and continue to run or successfully exit their own companies. Naturally I was interested to hear what he wanted to do. Over the course of many months we met weekly chatting about different sectors, different design trends, and about life. To no one’s surprise today, many of our conversations led to artificial intelligence (AI). More specifically as creatives: how can we make AI work for us instead of the other way around?
Fast-forward to today and he is running a new company called Cartwheel alongside Andrew Carr and a small but mighty distributed team. Cartwheel enables super fast generation of 3D animations. The tool is simple enough to make a quick video to share around on social media. Type in an action or a phrase, throw some text behind it and export it out, all in a couple of minutes. While easy to use, it leverages industry standards across VFX, video games, and design to extend the tools that professionals are savvy in. With Cartwheel, a professional 3D modeler has a new portal to make their models come alive; whether for their portfolio or their client’s movie. Like Sounds Studio, another creative editor in the AI space I worked on (and I have covered in previous posts), Cartwheel shares a strong perspective of empowering the individual, the creative, and the auteur.
This is something I can get behind. These are tools I would like to use. These are tools I want to see exist. And, working on these tools, I find there is a humility knowing that supporting these efforts has the potential to help individuals in their own creative pursuits. Collaborating with companies like Cartwheel has helped me understand my position on AI.
The revelations of ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, et al. subvert the experience of creative expression and turn it into an executive’s assistant for anyone who can spend a few hundred dollars a year. While this is useful, I want to engage with AI differently. Both Cartwheel and Sounds Studio make AI meet creatives where they work. In the files, the interfaces, and the visual language of tools we use everyday. I find this way of interacting with AI easier to understand. I find it more transparent. As a result, I also find it more authentic than what ChatGPT has to offer.
Have you been relying on AI much in your day-to-day? What are you using it for?
—Jono
P.S:
Did anything actionable come out of those chats back in 2021? Yes! In the summer of 2022 we pitched an idea to OpenAI’s Startup Fund. It was a vision for making movies out of text text. I cannot say we got rejected, because we never got a response back from OpenAI. It was a lesson learned. Jonathan is onto something special with Cartwheel. And the idea we had sees more and more competitors jumping in by the week. A small reminder that failure is part of the process.