Dimension Studio’s Simon Windsor

Last month, Dimension Studio, which specializes in virtual productions, unveiled a new end-to-end AI content production pipeline. While aimed at all sectors of the business, Dimension’s new tool was first deployed at the studio to create Mara & Milo: Magic & Mayhem, an animated short. Two artists utilized the AI pipeline to go from initial ideation and storyboarding to character and environment design, virtual camera control, shot composition and voiceover in weeks instead of months, at a third of the cost of a traditional pipeline. TV Kids caught up with Simon Windsor, co-CEO at Dimension Studio, to discuss how the new pipeline can help animators speed up processes while keeping artists empowered.

TV KIDS: Tell us about Dimension Studio’s positioning.
WINDSOR: We’re interested in leveraging real-time technologies to explore the potential for new forms of storytelling. When Dimension was founded, we were among the early adopters of immersive storytelling, exploring augmented reality and virtual reality. How do we create the experiences that will provide compelling propositions for audiences to jump into and enjoy? Since then, we’ve been on a journey where we’ve seen the adoption of real-time technology, particularly Unreal Engine, for storytelling more broadly. Three or four years ago, Dimension was among the first to help propel virtual production in filmmaking. It’s all predicated on the use of real-time game-engine technology or other real-time and mixed-reality technologies. It’s been widely adopted by the worlds of film and episodic TV. I describe the company as a provider of real-time and 3D technology for storytellers and filmmakers. We started with immersive experiences, and we’ve evolved to film, but it’s all powered by the same underlying pipeline and technologies.

TV KIDS: Why did you choose an animated project to display the tool’s efficiency?
WINDSOR: Much of the work at Dimension is focused on pushing realism. We created photorealistic virtual worlds that have been used in shows from Masters of the Air to Those About to Die. Our work is in pushing gaming technology and rendering the results so they look beautifully realistic on the big screen. We liked the idea of demoing the AI content pipeline using cute and cuddly kids’ animation. The pipeline can be used for any art style and levels of realism, but for us as a team, it was nice to start with something we felt was quite charming to begin with.

One of the things we recognize is the opportunity for AI to be leveraged by the kids’ industry. We provide the tools for artists and animators to scale those productions better, faster and cheaper. That’s what the industry has always demanded, and in the current climate, workflows that are additive to animation are of interest. What we are using with our workflow and pipeline is not necessarily to replace animation in its current form; it’s additive. Whether it’s faster creative exploration, look development, character creation, or it’s beneficial to hybrid pipelines, AI can be used to support the creation of ideas more quickly. Yes, it can be used to develop a new IP with state-of-the-art approaches that go end-to-end, with a generative AI approach. We can go from script to screen, as we demonstrated with Mara & Milo, using a generative AI approach. Producers are looking for where they can benefit from value with existing workflows and productions. We see generative AI as a tool for artists in their arsenal. How are we augmenting their capabilities? How do we enable them to work more efficiently, using these pipelines? This is not to replace artists, but to add and support efficiencies. The film industry as a whole has a history of adopting new technologies. We are constantly evolving. Creatives will adopt tools that enable them to do their jobs more effectively, provide greater creative freedom, achieve results more quickly and ultimately help produce their grand visions with greater ease. That’s where generative AI plays a real part at the moment.

TV KIDS: I recall some pushback at Annecy last year regarding the inclusion of films using generative AI. I know it’s still a polarizing issue, but do you see attitudes shifting?
WINDSOR: Let’s be honest—AI is hugely disruptive. It’s unprecedented in the potential impact it can have on creative industries at large. There’s naturally hesitancy. We talked about the film industry never standing still and always adopting new technologies. AI is the latest. We adopt these technologies to enable new creative possibilities that haven’t been seen before or are difficult to achieve, realize bold new visions and make the process easier, faster and more efficient. Creators today use tools and technologies, all of which have advanced to make them more productive. AI is the next technology to add to our capabilities to empower them. Undoubtedly, it will have an impact on how people at production companies work and create today. But for those who are open to the opportunities, it provides artists with incredibly powerful tools. AI can become almost like a creative collaborator. A force multiplier. And we have a generation of creatives coming through who will be AI natives, versed in AI content creation. They will use it in a way that gets the right results. If that means creating your film at half the cost and in half the time, you’ll look at that. It’s about making a team twice as efficient, not about reducing that team by half. The team is more efficient, we can deliver more work, our clients can see the work more quickly; that’s the net result of the technology we work with.

TV KIDS: What does innovation mean for you, and how are you keeping on top of it?
WINDSOR: One of the reasons we have the Futures team within Dimension is specifically to help address how you innovate and keep on top of changes in the marketplace. In the work we’ve done with the generative AI pipeline, our starting point was an evaluation of all the different tools and platforms available at that time. That formed the basis for us to start working out what the workflow looks like for us to achieve things that are typically challenging. In the world of AI, the pace of change is phenomenal. It’s about continuing to invest in a cycle of evaluation. We have a pipeline that isn’t fixed. The pipeline today, we know it can generate content for various formats and media types. The pipeline next month will improve because there have been advancements to some of the third-party technologies we use. Some of the tools we’ve developed internally will also evolve. So, our pipeline will evolve. It’s a continuing process. We’ve traded on our ability to deliver innovation to order for 20 years now. It’s very much in our DNA.

TV KIDS: Tell us about the policies you’ve implemented around using AI responsibly.
WINDSOR: We have a public-facing policy for ethical and responsible AI. We have an internal-facing deployment policy that governs how we use the platforms ourselves. We’ve always come to it from an artist-centric perspective. Dimension is about empowering our teams to be more creative and productive. It’s not about replacing people; it’s about enabling them to work better, faster, be twice as productive, and we can be more effective as a business. Having the ability to speed up the creative development process and do rapid iterative testing of ideas that you can throw to one side if you don’t like—you get those benefits from working with AI. While we’ve launched an end-to-end pipeline, it’s still about the artist as the director. This workflow is governed by artists. It’s not about AI replacing people’s jobs.