NCAD AI for Artists Workshop · Week 05

Motion Design

Boards, Style Frames, Scripts, and Production Assistants

Motion-heavy room today; graphic design + animation welcome.

60-second recap

The deal

AI for friction, humans for meaning.
Raw output is never finished work.
Verify before trusting. Disclose where it matters.
Skepticism welcome when specific.

Standing recap.

Today

Today's promise

A complete professional preproduction pack for a 15-second piece — the document chain studios actually ask juniors to produce.

"Treatment, shot list, style frame, task list. By 4pm, yours."

The week in one line

AI is your production assistant.
Not your animator.

Board-worthy.

Deliverable

You will leave with

A 15-second motion treatment pack:
treatment (edited by you) · shot list (audited by you) · style frame or frame brief · AE task list (producer's cut)

Show the prepared pack example from demos/week-05 for 20 seconds.

Today's map

Today's map

  1. Where AI sits in the motion pipeline — 40 min
  2. Video generation: the honest state — 15 min
  3. Demo: tide pools, concept → production plan — 35 min
  4. Lab: one prompt, three treatments — 70 min
  5. Pitch your pack — 40 min
Breaks protected.

Part 1

Where AI sits in the motion pipeline

~0:10.

The stakes

Motion design lives or dies in preproduction

A weak treatment buys you forty hours of After Effects misery.
A strong one makes the animation almost inevitable.

Anyone who's animated a bad brief is nodding right now.

The map

The pipeline, star-rated

Pause on animation ★: "Stays yours — nothing else takes direction at that resolution."

Why preproduction

The model's home turf

Treatments, shot lists, timing tables, asset lists, task breakdowns:

structured, checkable documents.

Generated video is the headline. These are the paycheck.

"Junior motion roles increasingly = 'can you run preproduction fast and well.'"

Part 1, continued

The treatment

120 words that decide everything

~0:20.

Treatment anatomy

The five slots

  1. Visual approach — territory language (Week 3 vocabulary)
  2. Pacing logic — builds, holds, cuts, breathes
  3. Type behaviour — type is a character; say how it acts
  4. Palette — named, limited
  5. Sound feeling — even one line changes everything
"Type behaviour is the slot students forget. Does it assemble? Resist? Breathe?"

Compare

Weak vs. five-slot

Vibes

"Energetic and modern with bold typography"

Decisions

"Type assembles from debris on each beat; holds 2s on the verb; palette rust/bone; sound: dry clicks, one swell"

Left one is real (students write it constantly). Right one can be animated tomorrow morning.

The move

The edit-two-lines move

AI drafts the treatment.

You rewrite the two lines that matter.

After that, it's yours — and you'll feel the difference.

This move appears in the demo. It's also the integrity answer for treatments.

Part 1, continued

Shot lists

Structured, checkable, slightly wrong

~0:30.

The table

The shot list

Shot # · duration · action · camera · type on screen · asset needed · transition out

Prime AI territory. Audited by you.

Show the prepared example briefly.

Reliable failure #1

The maths

You asked for 15 seconds.
It produced 17, in a confident table.

It does arithmetic-shaped output.
You do arithmetic.

The calculator on the desk is a bit, but it's also not.

Reliable failure #2

Fantasy shots

It will cheerfully specify the fluid sim you cannot make by Friday.

Killing those shots isn't failure. It's called producing.

"Every kill gets a replacement spec'd to your real toolkit."

Memorize this

The 60-second timing audit

  1. Sum the durations column — by hand
  2. First 2 seconds: does something earn attention?
  3. Breath: one hold ≥ 1.5s, or all churn?
  4. The out: resolve, or just stop?
This audit runs in the lab on every pack.

Week 4 bridge

Style frames

Brief-shaped prompt · type zone reserved · kill round · repair.

Generate the world. Comp the type yourself.

Models still mangle letterforms; type in motion is the craft anyway.

Break

Break — 10 minutes

Back for the part everyone asks about.

Stage the Runway research page tab.

Part 2

Video generation

The honest state, mid-2026

~1:00. 15 minutes, critical not dismissive.

Credit where due

What it's good for

Mood reels · pitch previs · abstract texture ·
image-to-video on YOUR style frames ·
"what might this feel like" tests

Real uses, real studios. Not nothing!

The catch

What it's bad at

Continuity across shots · precise art direction ·
type · anything a client approves frame-by-frame

And: credits cost real money.

If you have your own clip + cost story, tell it here. "This 5 seconds cost €X and N tries."
Live tab

Critical viewing

The vendor's best case

Runway's own Gen-4 demos — examined critically:

What's controlled here? What's lucky?
Watch the hands. The background. The type.

Live tab: runwayml.com/research/introducing-runway-gen-4. Their marketing, our rubric.

Outlives every tool

The evaluation pattern

Control · Continuity · Cost · Rights

Gen-4, Veo, Kling today. Sora's consumer app already died once.
Tools rotate. The pattern doesn't.

Board-worthy. The transferable skill of the section.

Demo

Tide pools: concept → production plan

~1:15. Prompts from DEMOS file. Four moves.
Demo · move 1

The treatment

20-second title sequence, tide pools doc

Five slots, 120 words.

Then: I edit two lines, live.

Actually edit — sharpen the pacing line, replace one generic image. "These two edits are where it becomes mine."
Demo · move 2

The shot list

7–9 shots, exactly 20 seconds

Hardest two shots flagged.

Sum the column out loud with me.

It'll likely be wrong → recount live. The room enjoys this more than it should.
Demo · move 3

The task list

Then the producer's edit

Pre-comp setup · assets · animation per shot · finishing.

Watch what gets crossed out, merged, halved.

Do 3 edits live; show the full "AI draft vs producer's edit" page from demos/week-05.
Demo · move 4

The style frame prompt

Shot 3, in the treatment's territory

Type zone reserved in the lower third.

Generate the prompt; only generate the image if Firefly is warm and time allows.
Demo

Tie-off

What just happened

Four documents in 35 minutes.
Every one checkable. Every one edited by a human.

The chain reuses for any motion job you'll ever have.

Tie-off before break.

Break

Break — 10 minutes

Lab next: your pack.

Standing message slide staged.

Lab · 70 minutes

One Prompt, Three Treatments

3 treatments (15) → edit yours (10) → shot list + audit (15) → style frame (15) → tasks (10) → pack (5)

Standing message: "Slow down — Dublin moves better when it breathes"

Parts + times on board.
Lab · step 1

15 min

Three contrasting treatments

  1. Kinetic typography — type is the only performer
  2. Product/object spot — one hero object, real light
  3. Abstract title sequence — texture carries the feeling

Pick one + write two sentences on WHY.

The pick rationale is assessed thinking. Circulate: "What does your pick say about your taste?"
Lab · steps 2–3

25 min

Make it yours, then audit it

Edit: rewrite the two most load-bearing lines in your own words.

Shot list: build it → sum durations BY HAND → kill fantasy shots.

Spot-check three students' sums personally. Celebrate caught errors loudly.
Lab · steps 4–6

30 min

Frame, tasks, pack

Frame: generate (Week 4 discipline) — or full frame brief + thumbnail sketch.

Tasks: generate → producer's edit.

Pack: treatment + shots + frame + tasks.

Zero-gen frame brief = the professional document version. Say so.
Always available

Alternative

Zero-generation track

The entire pack except the frame image is text.

The frame becomes prompt + sketch —
studios literally call this a frame brief.

Equal credit, professional document.

Share-out · 30 min

Pitch your pack — 90 seconds

Read the treatment. Show the shot list. Name the fantasy shot you killed.

Check one timing sum publicly per pitch — fast, friendly, relentless.
Every week

Integrity check

This week's four

  1. Which two treatment lines are now actually yours?
  2. Did you verify the timing maths yourself?
  3. Planning docs → process note; generated frames → disclosure
  4. Generated scratch music? Rights are contested — check first, never client work
Four beats.

Reflection

Write 4 lines

Two quiet minutes.

Next Wednesday

Animation and Story

Characters, worlds, continuity — and why the model sheet matters MORE with AI, not less.

Bring a character idea, however rough.

End on time; corridor questions after.

Tonight, optional

Go deeper

Final slide stays up while people pack.