Join Antibody CD Patrick Clair as he walks Stash fans through his thoughtful title update for season 3 of HBO’s sci-fi mind-bender Westworld including imagery generated using AI and machine learning.

Patrick Clair: “For season 3, we thought a lot about fate and freedom. Each new element is somehow related to the idea of being free or the nature of free will.

“The new eagle takes flight, inside a wind tunnel of sorts but like Icarus, flies too close to the sun and burns up. The petals of a daffodil drift aimlessly on the breeze, giving way to the form of a gigantic superintelligence that reduces fate to numbers and vectors, an AI without a soul. A figure searches for her true nature, leaving part of herself behind as she ascends towards a new plane of existence.

“We’ve made sequences for the show a few times now, and the pipeline is well tested. Of course, we always want something NEW in the mix.

“I’m fascinated by Artificial Intelligence so for this season, we wanted to explore the creative potential of Machine Learning. Antibody collaborated with the talented team at AI Fiction to create ‘machine dreams’ of seasons past.

“We fed a neural network with imagery from the first seasons of the show and then used the trained algorithm to create ‘hallucinations’ inspired by visual patterns it discovered in the material.

“The resulting imagery in the title sequence for a brief moment, abstract landscapes of the park. It was a very satisfying process to explore the contemporary potential of actual AI on a show all about the potential of AI in the future.

“The final element that was fun to play with was color. Our previous sequences for the show have ended on very muted or monochromatic scenes… this year, considering the events of the story, it felt right to indulge in something a bit more violent and dramatic: a rich blood red and a faceless drone host.”
 

Client: HBO, Kilter Films

Production: Antibody
CD: Patrick Clair
Lead animator/compositor: Raoul Marks
Animator: Kyle Moore
3D modeler: Jessica Hurst
Storyboard artist: Lance Slaton
EP: Carol Salek
Managing partner: Bridget Walsh

Neural networks: AI Fiction
Team: Dr. Pinar Yanardag Delul, Omer Kirbiyik, Enis Simsar

Music: Ramin Djawadi