Henry Daubrez 🌸💀
@henrydaubrez • 60,214 subscribers
Artist, Resident Filmmaker and Creative Director at @googlelabs. Founder at @thisisoddkid In Progress... "Junkyard King and The Light Within"
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Five months after wrapping it, OVERGROWN 🌱 is finally out. My longest film to date. A 13-minute allegorical drama about living with cancer and chronic illness. Six months of work. 300+ shots. Every shot started as an image before becoming video. I’d probably make it differently today but AI moves fast. Stories stay. Full film in the first reply. 👇
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀21,504 görüntüleme • 3 gün önce
Well… this got real. A-list producer conversations around the feature film adaptation of The Light Within continue this week as I keep building the world visually and assembling the pieces needed to bring it to life. The goal hasn’t changed: 🎬 Feature film ⚙️ Hybrid production pipeline (and traditional CGI) 🎭 Theatrical release ✨ 2027
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀111,953 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
KITSUNE 🦊 💫 When I embarked on this project a month ago, I didn’t expect it to consume holidays, evenings, and far too many nights—but here we are. From the first scenes, I knew I had something special, and I don’t want audiences to watch an “AI film”—I just want them to watch a film, and hopefully, a good one at that. ( Sound On 🔈) 👇 KITSUNE is a tale of love between two souls separated by everything except their shared feelings of loneliness. I grew up in front of beautiful cartoons, from timeless treasures like those of Don Bluth, which I watched again and again to the point of damaging my VHS tapes, to early 90s anime, and later, of course, plenty of Studio Ghibli. And yes, before you ask—I know Hayao Miyazaki would disapprove of this film 100%, but then again… I’m not (only?) seeking approval. I’ve had goosebumps many times while reviewing the evolving states of this film, and I hope at least some of you will feel the same. Another famous director (Guillermo del Toro , I see you) recently said AI could create “semi-compelling screensavers,” and I see this as a step toward proving him wrong. Because you’ll ask: under the hood, there’s been tons of writing, re-writing, and switching directions mid-way. All shots were generated with Google’s text-to-video hashtag#VEO2. I faced countless challenges and hoops to bring my vision to life, finding ways to prompt and structure within the limitations of text-to-video despite VEO’s excellent prompt adherence. So, is VEO magic? No, not really—and the 1,700+ curated sequences on my hard drive (out of an estimated 5,000–7,000 total generations) are proof of that. What impressed me most was the global consistency, adherence, and how I could achieve tweaks by simply adjusting a few words. But what mattered most to me was creating something warm, nostalgic, and full of heart, avoiding the cold, clinical feel of so many films leveraging AI. Also, I’m a 40-year-old kid who grew up in front of the TV, has been creative his entire life, and has been designing professionally for nearly two decades. The more time passes, the more I know I can relate to what Nick Rubin said in that now-famous interview, where he mentions having no technical knowledge but trusting and building his own taste. If you like this film, this isn't just "Oh, AI is magic." You need to steer the damn ship. Then there’s MMAudio for sound effects, regular good old stock sound libraries, music on Udio for this version (yes, there’s a second version—more on that later), and tons and tons (and tons!) of editing, sound design, and small post-processing touches. Is this exposing risks for animators? Perhaps. Or it could also be their greatest companion, because once again, this is the worst it will ever be, yada yada yada.... No, it isn’t perfect, and if you look close enough, you’ll find defects and variations, but this is a film I’m proud of, not just an AI one... Enjoy. Wanna see a clean uncompressed version?
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀1,000,469 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce
THE LIGHT WITHIN A concept trailer powered by Nano Banana Pro 🍌 I haven’t been impressed by new AI tools lately but this one swept me off my feet. The kicker? I used Google Flow and a few wild tricks to get perfect consistency. Here's a step-by-step full breakdown 🧵 #1/15
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀148,593 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce
I rewatched Home Alone with my son today and it was funny to notice how many inconsistencies, raccord issues, and tiny broken details are in a film considered a gem of the 90s. We never cared. We were in the story, so our brains let the imperfections slide. What struck me is how different the standard feels when using AI. I obsess over every tiny continuity mistake, every aesthetic shift, every micro detail, because I know any small flaw will immediately be used by the anti-AI crowd to discredit the whole thing. Putting both side by side, it is insane. Traditional filmmaking is full of human errors and nobody cares because the story carries it. Meanwhile, I am pushing for an even higher level of technical perfection simply to avoid giving people ammunition to dismiss the work. And here is the spoiler. Even if the story was flawless, even if the rhythm was right, even if the continuity was perfect, the conclusion would still be “it is stolen content” or “I don’t like AI.” At the end of the day, the story is what matters. The rest is noise.
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀131,411 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce
ODD KID • SHOWREEL 2026 🔊 A quick showreel of what I’ve been building over the last twelve months with Odd Kid The first building blocks of larger worlds like The Light Within and Junkyard King but also some bits and pieces of Electric Pink, Kidd-0, Kitsune, etc. They all have one thing in common: a fascination for storytelling and a belief that new tools should expand our imagination, not replace it. After fifteen years of building studios and creative companies, it felt like the right time to start something of my own again. Odd Kid is an original IP label and micro-studio focused on developing new worlds, packaging original stories, and collaborating with exceptional artists, filmmakers, and technologists to bring them to life. This is just the beginning. More soon. ⚔️✨
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀20,415 görüntüleme • 28 gün önce
KILL YOUR DARLINGS One of the hardest skills to develop as a storyteller is learning to kill your darlings. Whether it’s a character, a design, a shot, or even an entire sequence, the fact that something works doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best version of itself. I often see people using AI and falling in love with the first or second iteration because it’s already impressive. The tools have become so good that they make it incredibly tempting to stop there. I try to do the opposite. The Light Within has already gone through countless visual iterations, and I’m sure it will go through many more before it’s finished. Every new pass is an opportunity to ask a simple question: Is this really the version I want to spend years of my life bringing into the world? Sometimes the answer is yes. Quite often, it’s no. This is one of those earlier screen tests. Looking back at it reminds me how much the project has evolved, and why falling in love with the process is far more valuable than falling in love with the first idea. PS: also never say never.. as I rewatch this iteration there js a lot I still very much like.
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀13,856 görüntüleme • 18 gün önce
WHITE RABBIT A glimpse into a new world 1-minute screentest. How this came together 👇
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀45,937 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce
Junkyard King - Ep. 0 | MAKING OF ⚙️ HERE’S HOW I MADE THIS, STEP BY STEP 🧵👇 1/14
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀41,592 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce
So, Google said, "Hey, wanna make a film for #GoogleIO ? You have Carte Blanche." 🤯 For a brain that’s been mainlining animation and questionable VHS tapes since forever, that kind of freedom is both a dream and a mild panic attack. To be honest, until recently I never really thought film making was in the cards for me. Life happened, and although I ended up being a designer, film was more of a distant dream of a young version of myself. Following the unexpected attention and warm reception for Kitsune earlier this year, Electric Pink came out as my own self-administered therapy session: a coming-of-age story that’s basically me trying to figure out my own creative wiring, from the fuzzy nostalgia of childhood to the full-on HD chaos of the present. Turns out, the path to making stuff is paved with a lot of self-doubt and sudden left turns. I’m hoping this film can build on the connection Kitsune fostered. For this project, focused on exclusively using a lengthy process involving leveraging Imagen 3 to create the base of still frames (Imagen was amazing at iteratively enabling me to lock art direction) which I would then heavily retouch and prepare to get them as perfect as needed. Then each scene would be run through VEO2 to get animated clips based on those images (and then a very obvious bunch of sound design, voice design, editing, post-production and what not). Now, what's been amazing as I was nearing the end of this project, is to see individual separate tools converge towards becoming "Flow": Google's AI filmmaking tool built on DeepMind's brilliant tools (Veo, Imagen, Gemini). I must say it’s been fascinating seeing how this tech can translate the random noise in my head into something… well, film-like. It felt like a real step forward in allowing creators to iterate and refine their vision without getting bogged down in organization, and for example having an opportunity to use a first-frame to last-frame interpolation proved to be extremely useful as I could fully control the action I was aiming for. Now in its current version, Flow offers even more features such as the scene builder to easily expand storylines, or ingredients to control character, object, and environment consistency...can't wait to dig more into those possibilities...they definitely would have made my life easier during the creation of this film which I hope you will enjoy. Read more here: And there:
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀51,222 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce
⚡️🌸 JUNKYARD KING Episode 0 ⚔️ Studio quality is getting closer than people think...
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀19,907 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce
Born in a small town in Belgium. Studied computer graphics. Started in games as a 3D artist intern. Graduated with honors. Taught myself digital painting. Then taught it to others, before YouTube was even a thing. Started as a Flash animator. Moved into web design. Became Creative Director at 24. Became partner in a digital studio. Co-founded a graphic design collective. Won design competitions. Built a second-hand clothing startup that gained traction. Became partner in a new studio in Belgium. Opened an office in Chicago. Then Paris. Then Amsterdam. Helped grow it into one of the most awarded studios in the industry. Designed permanent interactive installations seen by millions every year (including one at Navy Pier in Chicago). Became CEO. Led the studio through acquisition. Spoke about design and culture in Tokyo, New York, Barcelona, and beyond. Exhibited work around the world. Sold AI-assisted art at Sotheby’s. Dove into GenAI. Released Kitsune. Opened a new door. Now working in film. Signed with Google Labs as Filmmaker in Residence. ⸻ I’ve been a Flash animator, a web designer, a developer, a 3D generalist, a character modeler, a digital painter, a teacher, a producer, a business developer, a CEO, a head of design… …and I’m still figuring things out. Don’t let where you’re born dictate what’s possible for your life. And don’t let people who know nothing about you, your path, or your work call you talentless or tell you to “pick up a pencil” because you’re using AI. You know who you are.
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀13,102 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce
VEO 2 by Google DeepMind : MY CHEAT SHEET Alright, so after 500h-ish spent on VEO and giving birth to both "Kitsune" and "Banished", tons of people asked for a making-of. Instead, I decided to give you what I actually know of VEO 2 to this day. Please share! it's made to be spread around! 1/ If you're not using a LLM (Gemini, ChatGPT, whatever), you're doing it wrong. VEO 2 currently has a sweet spot when it comes to prompt length: too short is poor, too long drops information, action, description etc. I did a lot of back and forth to find my sweet spot, but once I got in a place I thought felt right, I used a LLM to help me keep my structure, length, and help me draft actions. I would then spent an extensive amount of time tweaking, iterating, removing words, changing order, adding others, but the draft would come from a LLM and a conversation I built and trained to understand what my structure looked like, what was a success, or a failure. I would also share the prompts working well for further reference, and sharing the failures also for further reference. This would ensure my LLM conversation became a true companion. 2/ Structure, structure, structure Structure is important. Each recipe is different but same as any GenAI text-to something, it looks like the "higher on the prompt has more weight" rule applies. So, in my case I would start by describing the aesthetics I am looking for, time of day, colors, mood, then move to camera, subject, action, and all the rest. Once again, you might have a different experience but what is important is to stick to whatever structure you have as you move forward. Keeping it organized also makes it easier to edit later. 3/ Only describe what you see in the frame If you have a character you want to keep consistent, but you want a close-up on the face for example, your reflex will be to describe the character from head to toe and then mention you want a close-up...It's not that simple. If I tell VEO I want a face close-up but then proceed to describe the character's feet, the close-up mention will be dropped by VEO... Once again, the LLM can help you in this by giving it the instruction to only describe what is in the frame. 4/ Patience Well, it can get costly to be patient, but even if you repeat the same structure, sometimes changing one word can still throw the entire thing out and totally change the aesthetics of your scene. It is by nature extremely consistent if you conserve most words, but sometimes it happens. In those situations, trace your steps back and try to figure out which words are triggering a larger change. 5/ Documenting When I started "Kitsune" (and did the same for all others), the first thing I did was start a Figjam file so I could save the successful prompts and come back to them for future reference. Why Figjam? So I could also upload 1 to 4 generations from this prompt, and browse through them in the future. 6/ VEO is the Midjourney of video Currently, no text-to-video tool (Minimax being the closest behind) gave me a feeling I could provide strong art directions and actually get them. I have been a designer for nearly 20 years, and art direction to me has been one of the strongest foundations of most of my work. Dark, light, happy, sad, colorful or not, it doesn't matter as long as you have a point of view and please...have a point of view. Recently watched a great video about the slow death of art direction in film (link in comments) and oh boy, did VEO 2 deliver on giving me the feeling I was listened. Try starting your prompts with different kinds of medium (watercolor for example), the mood you are trying to achieve, the kind of lighting you want, the dust in the rays of light, etc... which gets me to the next one 7/ You can direct your colors in VEO It's as simple as mentioning the hues you want to have in the final result, in which quantity, and where. When I direct shots, I am constantly describing colors for two reasons: 1. Well, having a point of view and 2. reaching better consistency through text-to-video. If I have a strong and consistent mood but my character is slightly different because of text-to-video, the impact won't be dramatic because a strong art direction helps a lot with consistency. 8/ Describe your life away Some people asked me how I achieved a good consistency between shots knowing it's only text-to-video and the answer is simple: I describe my characters, their unique traits, their clothing, their haircut, etc..anything which could help someone visually impaired have a very precise mental representation of the subject. 9/ But don't describe too much either... It would be magical if you could stuff 3000 words in the window and have exactly what you asked for, right? Well, it turns out VEO is amazing with its prompt adherence, but there is always a moment where it starts dropping animations or visual elements when your prompt stretches for a tad too long. This actually happens way before the character limit allowed by VEO is reached, so don't overdo it, it's no use and will play against the results. For info, 200-250 words seems like a sweet spot! 10/ Natural movements but... VEO is great with natural movements and this is also one of the reasons why I used it so extensively: people walking don't walk in slow-motion. That being said, don't try to be too ambitious on some of the expected movements: multiple camera movements won't work, full 360 revolutions around a subject won't work, anime-style crazy camera movements won't work, etc... what it can do is already great, but there are still some limitations...
Henry Daubrez 🌸💀30,841 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce