The First Artist

The call

A platform building a home for AI-generated content saw our work and asked if we had any ideas.

A kid's textbook was open on the desk to this page.

It was mesmerizing. The first artist ever. The person who put the first figurative drawing on a cave wall. We wanted to tell their story.

Building the world

We went to Shot Deck and pulled reference frames from films to build the visual language. Not to copy, but to study. Last of the Mohicans for the feeling of moving through a primordial landscape. Our Planet for the light. Jurassic Park for the awe. Kubrick for the precision. These references shaped the prompts, the color palette, and the pacing of every shot.

We researched the real cave drawings and learned everything we could about Sulawesi 35,000 years ago. Andy Goldsworthy kept coming up. He only uses natural materials and makes these beautiful things. When we thought about the first artist, his work felt like the right reference point.

First person

We had just made another AI video in first-person perspective, and that was fresh on the brain. We decided to do The First Artist the same way. You never see the protagonist's face. Only their hands, their view, their world.

First-person POV became the defining creative decision of the film.

The battle

We made 4,000 images for this piece and used 62 of them. Mistake after mistake after mistake, then something clicks. That was the process. Generation after generation, refining the prompts, pushing toward the vision.

Professional foley

The foley was recorded in a backyard. A kid smashing rocks together, phone pressed close. That audio made it into the final film.

The sounds of stone grinding against stone, 35,000 years later, made by a kid in a backyard.

What it opened

The First Artist opened a door that doesn't close. The same production method scales to any historical subject, any time period, any story worth telling.

The AI stack

Every stage of production used AI. Not one tool bolted on. The entire process.