Artificial Matt
ABOUT
A one-minute reel of original characters and the worlds they live in, from my 2026 generative work. Close-up portraits sit next to full environments: a warlord in a moonlit temple garden, a masked figure in a blue-flowered jungle, a gas-masked scavenger on an industrial shoreline at dusk, a lone walker in a rain-soaked neon street, a desert nomad among ruined towers. Between them are creatures and faces built from porcelain, paper, horn and feather, and one macro shot of a caterpillar on a wet leaf. Every character is invented, designed and directed individually, and animated so the reel moves rather than slideshows.
SELECTED FRAMES — 8 OF 8
PROCESS
The reel is cut from a larger body of character work, about 100 designed characters across the year, of which these made these sixty seconds. I picked for range first: portrait and environment, human and creature, studio dark and natural daylight. Then I cut anything that repeated a look already in the reel. A typical character took 7-8 generations to reach a final frame. The rule was design logic over decoration. A costume or surface had to suggest where the character lived and what they did, whether paper skin, porcelain armor, oilskin or feathers. Stills were animated in Runway and Seedance as single continuous shots, each with one slow camera move or a held frame and a small physical beat: a turn of the head, a breath, a glance. More movement than that tended to warp faces and fine costume detail. I threw away anything where a face drifted, hands appeared, or motion broke the illusion of weight. The edit runs at about three seconds a shot, so each character registers as a person and not a texture. Dark, quiet portraits alternate with brighter environments to keep the rhythm.
Credits
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