Iván Miñambres (UniKo): “AI is going to be an incredible revolution for animation”

Iván Miñambres, winner of 5 Goyas and CEO of the multi-award-winning production company UniCo ('Unicorn Wars', 'Loop'), addresses the present and future of animation, largely marked by the arrival of AI.

The industry of animation, mostly made up of small and medium studios who see how their resources escape in the face of ambitious and inevitably artisanal projects, have been accustomed to fighting for survival. Producers do not avoid the difficulty of making projects viable and carrying out initiatives, which in feature film format require long years of preparation and execution. In this situation, lending your shoulder is essential. International business forums, industrial meetings, a convergent portfolio of festivals and the inevitable breaking of borders through international co-productions help bring forward projects that, otherwise, they would not be viable.

In Spain, this situation accompanies animation in all its expressions. The support of media giants to a few projects (such as Tadeo Jones of Lightbox) coexists with unprecedented bets like that of Netflix con Klaus (The Spa) or HBO by Poor Devil (Buendía Studios and Rokyn Animation). On the margins of the always fortunate distribution of the platforms, there reside dozens of production companies trying their luck in the world of serial animation, throwing projects with award-winning pedigree on the shores of the Pacific such as The Windshield Wiper of Alberto Mielgo, or promoting more counter-current initiatives such as UniCo. With a history of 14 years in the industry, the production company led by Ivan Miñambres bet on projects with a style and themes far from the mainstream, which has given them recognition in the awards of international festivals and five Goyas, the most recent being the recognition of the 2023 edition to Unicorn Wars y Loop.

Awards do not usually come accompanied by certainties, so the fight continues. Fortunately, there are reasons for optimism. Help the globalization of the content industry, which rewards the know-how of studies through projects adhoc to encourage international purchases; also progress in technical processes, which seem to be optimized with the arrival of AI tools applied to animation. In this case, the smoke is not so dense: there are real, proven solutions that are on the verge of standardization that allow several phases of production to be streamlined. The direct consequences, beyond the promised savings of costs and time, could mean the possibility of working in parallel on a greater number of projects, as well as "“free” the creative from the most mechanical tasks of their work.

Animation fascinates, but no one said it was an easy path. Ivan Miñambres allows us to know in more depth UniCo and the state animation industry. As if that were not enough, it provides several keys to its pipeline, recently renovated and prepared to support the high workload scheduled between now and 2025.

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The survival of 2D

UniCo was born fourteen years ago as a production company focused on audiovisual production and post-production services, and its sights set on creation of content for the Internet. It might sound anachronistic now, but back then the demand for videoblogs and the proliferation of new video formats for the web generated a effervescent panorama for all kinds of new proposals.

“Con Birdboy (2011) we traveled many continents, won many awards and we realized that animation allowed develop fantastic worlds with universal roots”.

One day, Alberto Vazquez took to the offices of UniCo a copy of his comic psychonauts, which was the seed of the production company's first animated short film: Birdboy. Only then, when the promotion and distribution of the work began, Miñambres and his team were aware of the “great international distribution capacity” of this type of formats: “With this short film we traveled many continents, we won many awards and we realized that animation allowed develop fantastic worlds with universal roots”.

The rest is history. Currently, UniKo structures the core of its production in all types of 2D works. The choice of this type of finish was, Miñambres acknowledges, “almost by intuition,” since “at that time it was what we knew how to do.” In the middle of 2023, this style allows you to identify the producer personality: “It has become our hallmark.”

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Alternative income for a new audience

The financing is one of the biggest headaches for any animated film. Miñambres states that business forums such as Cartoon Movie or local and international market meetings such as Quirino They are the gateways to international co-productions; mandatory requirement, since “it would be almost unfeasible for a work to be produced from a single territory” given deadlines and requirements of this type of projects.

“Unicorn Wars has generated more than 1 billion views on TikTok, which is a real outrage. The public is there, and there is interest, so you have to know how take advantage of these types of channels”.

Having a solid idea is essential, as is having the right partners. But so are the successive steps, such as finding the opportunities suitable for the works to be seen and exploited by different agents. In this sense, Miñambres recognizes that, given the fall of showrooms as the main means of income, the profitability and viralization that they propose social networks as TikTok or even Discord can be important assets: “Unicorn Wars has generated more than 1 billion views on TikTok, which is truly outrageous. The public is there, and there is interest, so you have to know how to take advantage of these types of channels.”

The audience Miñambres refers to “does not pay for the IP itself,” but they are interested in it. Faced with this paradigm, UniKo does not close the doors to NFT world of that day exploitation of merchandising in all its aspects, whether physical or digital: “Our viewers are a super-native digital audience, accustomed to multitasking in content consumption. In our case, everything will go there: NFT world, artificial intelligence with content chatbox, derived content…”.

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And the platforms? Can't they be an alternative for financing and profitability, just as they have given a new opportunity to film and television series producers?

“It is true that the arrival of platforms has generated much more content, since there is a greater demand. But it is also true that the content has been homogenized and a purchase of more diverse or original content has not been made. There are more opportunities than before, but not so many as to say that it is a bed of roses. “Netflix, for example, has canceled many of the animation productions that it had open: there is progress, but also setbacks.”

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UniKo technology

He pipeline of UniCo faces a new stage from Unicorn Wars, since the production of this film represented a revolution in their workflow. The tools they used to use to shape their 2D short films, which included common elements such as Photoshop or Flash, have been replaced by Grease Pencil, a tool open source based on Blender that “has changed the paradigm of the industry.”

"Apart from being free, the great advance is that it allows customized functional programs so that you can have all the artistic and technical control of your project. The most common paid software did not allow you this level of control," he comments. miñambres about this future “industry standard”, also adopted by studies such as The Spa.

The second great solution that structures UniKo productions is Kitsu, a collaborative platform for animated productions that allows you to identify where each plane is, coordinate the work between a large group of people who may be shaping different functions (story, animation, background, color), provide feedback in real time of each frame and, ultimately, bring the extreme collaboration in animated films: “Without such a tool, it would be impossible to coordinate our teams.”

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AI in animation: opportunities and vertigo

Aside from these softwares, which are already used with all guarantees within UniKo, Miñambres and the animation production company's team have their sights set on artificial intelligence as a solution to very short term. In fact, as the CEO himself acknowledges, he has recently held meetings to study ways to introduce it solvently into his pipeline.

The application of AI to animation, through tools created by private companies, results in the process automation “cumbersome”, such as “coloring, frame-by-frame lighting or breaking lines”. This would just be the gateway to other opportunities that will be glimpsed as the months go by: “Every day a thousand new tools. On a creative level, AI is going to represent an incredible revolution in animation with no possibility of going back. I find it very interesting to think how implement them ethically in our workflow.”

“On a creative level, AI is going to be a incredible revolution in animation without the possibility of going back. I find it very interesting to think how implement them ethically in our workflow.”

The use of AI tools in animation will also cover, in Miñambres' opinion, own developments with internal learning that will allow creating new content or optimizing processes following the visual and conceptual features that identifies the artistic production of a company as UniCo: “We are talking between different companies at the state level to be able to carry out training that allows us to know how to have machine learning in our companies. Using external artificial intelligence, we can generate an architecture with our own material, which allows us to go faster and be more effective.”

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What's more exciting: the implementation of AI tools in the pipeline of an animation project or having to deal with industrial change and the redistribution of human resources that this implies?

“The truth is that everything is very dizzying, but on the other hand I have never experienced such a stimulating moment of technological change. Therefore, it is a feeling of absolute vertigo of not knowing what is going to happen, but at the same time you want to know everything that is happening. If there is something that I would highlight, it is that we make content that is far from mainstream, so it is much more difficult to replicate. (…) It is true that production processes are going to change and, what was previously done by a technician, will now be managed by someone close to an administrator. But I think it will also allow us to contribute greater originality in the proposals that are proposed.”

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Series: another window into creative freedom for UniKo

Until the AI ​​world and its direct applications to UniKo production are clarified, the machinery does not stop. In the fall of this year, the production company led by Miñambres will premiere its next two works: The sultana's dream, an animated feature film directed by Isabel Herguera y ejecutado en coproducción con Abano Produciòns, El Gatoverde Producciones, Fabian & Fred y Sultana Film, y el cortometraje To Bird or not To Bird, another co-production with Abano directed by Martin Romero. In 2025 the next batch of projects will arrive: the feature film Decorated, the next tape Alberto Vazquez, and the studio's first animated series: Titan Tofu.

This fiction, a product focused on the public preschool of comedy and adventure, was born with the objective of channel technical and artistic knowledge of UniKo towards a “more industrial project”, that is, “with much more marketing capacity"Although it will be sold under another brand so as not to confuse the markets, it defines a new era in the production of the Miñambres production company: "We want to generate quality content with technical and artistic standards that we are comfortable with to generate a volume of business that we can invest in content that is more difficult to produce”.

Risky and adult products, with valley phases with easy-to-market formats, but with all the guarantees that UniKo has built throughout its history. Animation, with AI or without AI, continues and will continue to demand smart solutions to ensure their survival and freedom.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijq_UkRKSFw