New AI-powered animation company Cheehoo has brought together a team of top entertainment industry names and Silicon Valley data scientists to revolutionize the minutiae of making 3D-animated projects.
The Big Picture: Making movies is expensive, and making high-quality animated movies is typically very expensive. That usually means that these movies need to make a lot of money to recoup their investment — something even Disney has struggled with in recent years. Finding a way to bring down costs, while also empowering human artists, may seem like an attractive option.
Behind the Scenes: Cheehoo — named after a Pacific Island exclamation of excitement — is making waves right out of the gate.
Its founding team includes Netflix film chief Dan Lin, former president of DreamWorks Animation Chris DeFaria, former Apple scientists and AI/machine learning experts Dr. Hubert Tsai and Dr. Wei-Cheng Kuo, and Rideback co-CEOs Michael LoFaso and Jonathan Eirich.
The company, which currently has a production pipeline in beta, has reportedly raised tens of millions of dollars from investors like Greycroft and Point72 Ventures.
Cheehoo is already being used to work on several projects, which will be announced at a later date.
Final Render: So, what does Cheehoo do? It helps build proprietary LLMs for studios and streamers, so they can use generative AI to optimize workflows — whether that’s creating assets with a “unique artistic style and consistent identity,” streamlining asset compatibility across formats like animation and gaming, or ensuring copyright protection. That’s a lot of nuts and bolts, but it’s the type of stuff that takes a lot of billable hours.
If the platform helps get the same number of animators working on more projects, it could be a tool artists will embrace as much as producers.
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