Author: Jeff Komarow

  • AI Today and Tomorrow – Creative Presentation

    Hello!

    Welcome to my video about AI today and tomorrow. I’m only going to talk about certain things about AI I’m not going to tell you how it works. I want to bring up some specific topics on AI.

    Chapter one: AI today.

    The question isn’t are we using AI? The question is how much AI are we using? A lot of the tools that I actually already use, use certain types of AI, like machine learning, like auto color tools, speech to text. These were created using machine learning.

    So we are already using specific types of AI for our creative needs. And there are two types of AI: Assistive AI that helps us accomplish the task, like the tools, and then generative AI, which creates content from prompts. Here are some assistive AI tools of tomorrow. These tools will help us greatly edit faster, better, and have far better capability of creating more content. AI is a basic term. It’s a blanket term, for a lot of different things or being rebranded as AI, that were just basic machine learning. And to not be fooled by sales, ask someone in simple terms how their AI is good and works and how it’s different than their competitors. And yeah, if you get, because it’s AI, then you know to run.

    Chapter two: The future

    I couldn’t find an exact example of a room of people doing graphic design, like at an ad agency. But this is a room of people doing AutoCAD, which is now all taken up by the computer AI has changed the world. The cat is out of the bag. at the turn of the century, 38% of the labor force worked on farms. By the end of the century, that figure was less than 3%. When Adobe came out,
    the old school agency guys were against using it. They thought you had to do everything by hand in order for it to be creative. Now, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t use software for creating any type of design.

    Now with that said, open your mind to this perspective: In the future say 200 years from now, we will look back at movies from today the same way we look back at classical music.

    Chapter three: The not so good news

    AI has no safeguards. you can download your own language learning model on your personal computer today. It is available right now. People can bypass any restriction out of sheer human determination and some of these people don’t value artistic content even though they can consume it. With AI, there’s an IP paradox whether or not they allow IP licensing. Your IP exists in the world, and users can ask their AI to use IP characters and worlds. So how is Disney going to make money
    and control their IP from being outside of this transaction?

    Chapter four: The good news

    you are a special and unique person and you have a beautiful imagination. AI cannot think up something
    that it can’t reference. It doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, and that’s where we succeed and create beautiful stories. We need to take the tools that these tech bros create and use them to enrich our lives. They created the Devil’s paintbrush, but only we know how to create a masterpiece. We don’t even know what human brains are if we cannot replicate a human brain.

    The AI will always be different. AI and human cognition will remain fundamentally distinct. And I say, at least for a few hundred years, who knows.

    Chapter five: The law.

    There are a myriad of problems with generative AI like IP and copyright infringement, misuse, harm, bias, regulatory compliance. There is a massive shadow war going on between media companies and tech companies. There are a dozen lawsuits right now that will set the stage for AI for many years to come. Now, with all these lawsuits happening, the AI community has come together to create the Content Authenticity Initiative Within Adobe you will create a piece of AI content and manipulate it using AI tools. And when you export it, the computer will translate that and someone will be able to upload your image to a website and be able to see what you did to create that image, and that it was created with AI. I think that there are many implications on this, and I also think that what if you create the image and then manipulate it further, would it still be caught in the system?

    Can you copyright generative AI? Yes you can, but at what extent? how much effort? you need to have a long, extensive, detailed prompt. You cannot include famous people or artistic styles. And after the initial generation of the image, create 100 revisions, manipulate it 100 times, and then you can basically argue human intent.

    Chapter six: Let’s dive into generative AI.

    Here are some questions that you should ask yourself before jumping in and using generative AI for your project. Is it cheaper? What value does it bring you? Does the AI understand the organization, internal workings, data and process sources? Here are the effective ways we use AI: to automate a task that has probabilistic behavior. Reduce dependency on human labor input, analyze customer data and generate content tailored to each user’s individual needs, and create engaging content.

    Now we have reached the best part the finale of this presentation, where I’m going to talk about how we will work with generative AI in the future. This first technique is something that I came up with, and then the second one is from someone who works at GitHub in machine learning. So here’s AI process one, which I believe will be quite popular, where you create basically a treasure trove of content that the computer will pick from. Like today, you can go and film and create renders and take photos, pump that all into your database, and then let the computer edit and manipulate and choose what content to deliver, when to your audience. This technique I found online from Tiferet Gazit which I thought really well exemplified the future process of using generative AI. And here’s my layout of this technique that the most important thing is that you examine the results and you iterate on those results, and then you revise again. After checking for bias and quality control.

    Chapter seven: Conclusion

    Assistive AI and generative AI parallels using any other valuable tool, it might not deliver the desired outcomes and could potentially lead to inefficiencies, and its effectiveness
    hinges on its appropriate application. And yes, I use the help of AI a little bit on this presentation. Thanks for checking out this presentation.

    Thank you!

  • Book Review: She: A History of Adventure By H. Rider Haggard

    Book Review: She: A History of Adventure By H. Rider Haggard

    I was looking for inspiration while writing a script and heard about this book so I downloaded it. It’s one of the most popular books of all time. The book is notable for having one of the first multi dimensional female villains. “She-who-must-be-obeyed.”

    No joke, It took me 5 years to read! Is that sad to me? No, the book is a very tough read since its over 130 years old and the grammar was insane! The words have a literal opposite flow with lots of “thou” and “thee”, its a different way of thinking and getting lost in the action was quite tough.

    It took so long to finish because, well, I never gave up! I read the first half in very little time, but the second half I would read a little bit every some odd month. I never forgot about the book completely because its one of few books on my google play books app. Some books are ok for reading on a smartphone, this was not one of them.

    The book has this third party perspective that works well to immerse you in the story, that supposedly the editor was given the manuscript to publish that it was another person’s journey. Overall the beginning is good, The orphaned son gets a nanny and says this line “You is ugly but you is nice” which I thought was very humorous. Then there are exciting elements in the middle with the swamp journey and the first tribe, however it lulls for a time when it comes to many transition moments.

    “She” is a 2000 year old immortal who rules a lost ancient city. The Femme Fatale falls for one of the adventurers who thinks its her lover, even though she is the only one supposedly to be immortal. When Ayesha kills jobs wife like that, it was expected and honestly how no-one had died in so many pages it was expected but still was wild and just placed in there after so much time passed in the cave. The ending is exciting and I love the descent into the immortal fire pit.

    The only times I actually got sucked into the story was when you get to the canoe action scene, when they are escaping the cannibal tribe, and the ending.

    I can understand the cultural and historical significance of the book, but do I recommend this book? Only if you can handle 100+ year old grammar then sure!

  • 2025 Website Redesign

    I have redesigned my website and have left elementor for wordpress only. The new block editor is fantastic and matured. WordPress is still a product that takes a LOT of getting used to but its really solid many websites run it so it’s the go-to choice.

    I have to thank elementor for years of good use being a great no-code block editor however I no longer make such complicated websites, and no matter what you use to make a website you run into issues and headaches that take a lot of troubleshooting, and I don’t need to have a plugin then I will ditch it.

    Also after using elementor for many years one year I decided to get the pro version which was something crazy like 200 a year and actually didn’t find I needed the pro features so I cancelled it. The non pro elementor is quite robust.

    So here is my redesigned website that should be faster, more mobile friendly, and a cleaner design overall.

    I think that since twitter kind of died a little it made me think about a home base for my internet presence, it should first and foremost be self hosted. No platform should rule over that main persona and here is mine. I have a YouTube for videos, an instagram for art, a twitter for microblogging, and JeffKomarow.com is a place for connecting that web. I think next update will be to take my instagram art gallery and host that here as well. See you then stay tuned…

  • I upgraded my Prius to a Nexcell Lithium Battery

    Here is a review of a new hybrid battery in my 2012 Prius. This video I thought would be interesting in that there wasn’t that much content out there on this, and wow yeah I have gotten 1.5k views and over 60 likes in three weeks which is amazing, I just throw the vid up and sail it off into the algorithm. I also got a conversation going in the comments that is also super interesting, some people say they are sold out of the battery, that they enjoyed the video, that I am in trouble… well we shall see but after 7 months the battery is doing just fine.

    I didn’t plan on making this video, but when I arrived at the shop, forcefully (the car kept yelling at me), well I just started to record and thought this would be interesting to share. I love technology and this battery is very interesting in many ways, especially that its not from “The Man” It’s from someone who felt they could do it better with newer tech and upgrading what we already have to be better, and saving my car!

  • After Effects Tutorial Sharpen with a BLUR?! Best way to SHARPEN your Footage!

    I made up a new way to sharpen footage with After Effects by combining two proven methods, and the effect is incredible, really!

    I learned how to sharpen using a blur from pixImperfect about two years ago, and I use it ALL THE TIME ITS SO GOOD. Using the built in sharpen is not good enough, you need this technique, but then I was like, what if I want to use this on video?!

    I brought the technique over into After Effects, instead of using grouping I use pre-comps, and the technique transfers over between the two Adobe programs, very very cool. In addition to the ability in photoshop, within after effects you can play around with the order of the effect which can produce different results.

    The technique goes like this: Duplicate layer 3 times. Top layer Blend mode- vivid light. Add invert. Add gaussian blur, put it between 3-8. Pre-comp layer 1 and 2. change pre-comp blend mode to overlay. Boom, done.

    It was once complicated for me, but after doing it a hundred times I have finally memorized it. Also in Photoshop I have a action button setup for this process, what a life saver automation!

    Then I learned about how astrophotographers sharpen images on wikipedia, they stack sharpening with increasing levels. This is where my idea goes further than pixImperfect, we are now stacking the same effect with increasing intensity, 4 times. So I tested this theory and it works, it works so well at sharpening with gaussian blur technique without introducing artifacts and digital noise.

    What is happening here, is the inverted blur is focusing on the light signature of the image, and brings out the true edges. Where I believe the built in sharpening tools work more on the contrast of the image and do something more funky. I am not saying they don’t work, but they don’t look as good or as effective. Also AI sharpening is good for some uses right now, but has a long way to go and also some AI sharpening tools are adding what it thinks should be there, its a whole different topic.

    With this sharpen technique you can save even super blurry footage and make it at least somewhat passable. This effect is great for my current workflow of taking old MiniDV SD footage and bringing it up to 1080p, I do a detail preserving upscaling and then slap on this effect after that. The end result has the ability to truly bring new clarity to older footage. Check out the tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u5aRv95vpo

  • Unity Live Event Lighting Tutorials

    This tutorial series gets you up and running on how to create and use lights within the Unity game engine for live events. You can design your lighting setup to see how it would work before building in the real world.

    This 10 part series has practical demonstrations and insights into the tools and techniques used in Unity. Create a light, turn it on and off, change the intensity, and build a 3D stage!

  • Unity Virtual Production 8. Control a Virtual Camera with iPhone or Android Gyro Sensors!

    Our phones have powerful Gyroscopes built in, and Unity lets us harness that power for Virtual Production. In this episode we are going to write a simple script that connects the real world with the virtual world. 

    The first step is to setup a mobile device. Plug your mobile device into your computer, whether it be mac or PC, android or iPhone. Note- you will need a Mac to control a iPhone. 

    On your device, download an app called Unity Remote. Open the app and Unity, and play the Unity Scene.

    Next follow along to the rest of the video.

    Now, all that we are controlling here is a square, this is not creative enough, we should be more creative, so lets have this representation of a camera look more like a camera In the next episode we are going to create a 3D object right here without leaving Unity. Check it out! 

  • Unity Virtual Production 7. 12 Reasons Why I switched to iPhone after 12 years of Android

    Why I switched to iPhone after 12 years of android:

    1.​ The camera hole. Apple design is better.
    2.​ The lidar camera, scanning and autofocus use.
    3. The three camera design. Same as canon pioneered back in the day, hmm canon, should you look into this “revolutionary design” in front of your eyes?!
    4.​ The ability to record multiple inputs at the same time.
    5.​ I wanted to switch it up.
    6. ​The screen is really really bright, and really really big, epic.
    7.​ 10 bit on a phone is a first I think, beats everyone else.
    8.​ AR tech is something apple cares about a lot right now.
    9.​ Filmic pro is a good app.
    10. Screen mirroring is easier and sometimes better with apple.
    11. Sensor is optically stabilized and digitally stabilized- can turn on and off.
    12. The best camera is the one on you.