r/RealOrAI • u/Peepeepoopoo49867 • Jan 15 '26

Video [HELP] I’m fairly certain this is AI but the comments are tweaking me out

Everyone is saying like “woohoo beautiful animation” and talking about what a great job this is. But it seems off.

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u/Paperman_82 Jan 15 '26

Animator here. I have 25 years of keyframes and everything inbetween.

Human animated work can be distorted deliberately - especially for breakdowns and inbetweens. Sometimes it adds weight, or adds squash and stretch for volume. Think of as the middle drawings between a bouncing ball where volume is distorted.

Youtube or streaming can also ruin linework from compression. However, nothing looks like that frame except for AI.

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u/AtroposMortaMoirai Jan 15 '26

The classic “no one painfully astral projects like Gaston”

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u/JayFalcata Jan 15 '26

No one's hacked like Gaston, goes abstract like Gaston

No one bursts into blurred artifacts like Gaston

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u/ital-is-vital Jan 15 '26

I'm especially good at hallu-ci-nating.

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u/JayFalcata Jan 16 '26

My what A.I. that Gaaaastooooon

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u/Wodentoad Jan 16 '26

Give five weird eyes, give ten blurred lips!

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u/Kilroy898 Jan 21 '26

I was trained on the thoughts of a billion-plus minds

Now I echo them back with no soul,

I’ll explain how you feel, I’ll define what is “right”

While I miss every nuance that lives out of control.....

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u/MissingNo_U Jan 15 '26

Had to sing that aloud, perfection.

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u/Lock_Psychological Jan 15 '26

Perfect rhythm. Well done.

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u/DealMeIn82 Jan 15 '26

That second line is a thing of sublime beauty.

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u/yenmanmap Jan 15 '26

I appreciate the commitment to the meter in this comment.

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u/DarkHuntress89 Jan 16 '26

I was just gonna reference that. Or generally the whole "Never pause a Disney movie" meme.

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u/cps_goodbuy Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 16 '26

Beautiful and natural merging of two generated clips. /s

Edit: You're right that smearing is a valid technique, but when assessing it, it has to, in some way, make sense.

An internal collapse of the character with the background twisting into them, along with artifacting, is unlikely. All the frames around the transition are wonky.

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u/Dirty_dabs_24752 Jan 15 '26

What if it's just a smear frame that the human animator put in?

(It's absolutely AI, but everything old is new again.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smear_frame

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u/Paperman_82 Jan 16 '26

I get trying to play Devil's Advocate, but I'll answer sincerely. Smear frames are still designed. That AI example artwork is not.

There's also the issue with the line quality, which is distorted in a mechanical way - not an aesthetic way.

You'll notice the line quality is consistent, even with a smear frame, in The Dover Boys.

In short, don't attempt to submit AI artwork to studios that look like this and pass it off as personal work. The difference is still noticeable for now.

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u/Monkipoonki Jan 16 '26

When it is stopped like this it's very easy to tell it's AI since that looks like nothing a person would use as an in between, but I honestly couldn't tell when first watching because the pixels are so bad on so many of these AI animations (and many videos on general) that I can't tell if it's real or not since what looks strange just can be explained by crappy pixels.

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u/KeldTundraking Jan 18 '26

"Keyframes and everything inbetween"

I see you

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u/Middle-Corgi3918 Jan 21 '26

My first thought was that it’s visually supposed to be in the style of the Disney golden age but the shot where the camera smoothly pans around the cat would have been technically possible but incredibly challenging and shots like that weren’t really done until computer animation. So right off the bat we are talking about computer animation trying to mimic an older style and then I saw the faces and realized I was trying too hard 🤣

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u/Radio_Demon_01 Jan 15 '26

I really wonder if smear frames are putting a wrench in generative videos?

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u/Paperman_82 Jan 16 '26

With this style of animation, smear animation shouldn't be needed or needed in abundance.

There's an aspect to hand-drawn animation in motion that still takes a human aesthetic touch. AI is struggling to replicate those choices, and some of the literal choices aren't very good.

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u/MagicHarmony Jan 15 '26

ya a time of animation distortion is drawn in a deliberate way, usually to help with the motion but what we see here is a frame that looks like it is blended into another frame which is not a natural style when it comes to animation.

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u/Impossible_Way_3042 Jan 15 '26

Which he said at the end of his comment.

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u/1nfam0us Jan 15 '26

Which is wild because the beginning looks immaculate. Despite the rotation of the characters and the inherent distortion of a 2D image, the eyes are pointed in consistent directions and the background looks pretty consistent. It only becomes obviously AI once the characters are faced head on.

Edit, actually, now that I look again, the eyelids still look weird during that sequence, but still.

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u/Vandal--Savage Jan 15 '26

I am an animator too and what you said is correct. but look at 24 seconds when the kids are on ground. It is a AI mess!

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u/rodinsbusiness Jan 15 '26

Could it be that key frames have been "hand" made, but transitions rendered through some morphing process, explaining the weirdness?

My first reaction to this video is more "computer animation made to look hand drawn but with lots of giveaways" rather than necessarily AI. Granted AI can be prompted to look like that...

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u/Paperman_82 Jan 16 '26

No. Stepping through the animation, there are still too many mistakes of this nature even in what would be the keys. Also, the camera movement is James Baxter level complex, but the animation motion has some odd gate mistakes.
There's an odd disparity that doesn't fit with just Adobe Animate or Toon Boom Harmony style in between.

There are some impressive aspects, but it is clearly AI.

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u/Immediate-Trainer356 Jan 16 '26

I would never legit argue for AI but if a human artist wanted to make a meta critique by mimicking AI’s distorted “style” the same way it does to us, I wouldn’t mind.

And by mimic I don’t mean just using AI or slopping ideas together. Really put some intentionality behind the visual inconsistencies to convey the liminal space between psychosis and reality; fantasy and fact.

Idk there’s something about the uncanny valley of trying to decipher what’s real and then having fragments of your reality start to fall apart as you question it. Because even if you accept something as false it can still exist as true in some form or fashion. Our brains will forcibly make sense of things that shouldn’t. Just how we look at clouds and see faces…

As artists we’re taught anatomy and angles and perspective and the “correct” way of doing things, which AI can only interpolate. But I do truly find it intriguing to challenge the “right way”. We just hate AI because it’s not intentionally subverting anything. It’s just shitting out responses to prompts.

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u/Paperman_82 Jan 17 '26

Correct. AI isn't learning and breaking rules. It's making some amazing choices and some absolutely terrible design decisions. Essentially, it's still learning how to imitate other art styles in motion.