← Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs
Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs
How Designers Keep Their Creativity in an AI World
00:32:21
Creative director Tina Touli reveals how she uses AI, Dell Precision & NVIDIA RTX to boost output without losing her creative voice.
Loading summary
Transcript30 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and Nvidia where innovation meets real world impact in high performance computing.
- [00:20]
B
Welcome back to another episode of Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Max and Nvidia RTX GPUs. I'm Logan Lawler, your host. Today we have a very special guest very much out of my wheelhouse. So that's why I have my partner in crime, Cindy here to help lead it. We're here to talk about our guest, Tina Tooley. So Tina, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
- [00:40]
C
Hello everyone, it's lovely to be here. Thank you very much for having me. It's going to be a really exciting chat here.
- [00:46]
B
I'm excited. So my one part of contribution to this episode, take a minute or two Tina to tell us a little bit about your background, where you located, kind of what you know, your kind of career journey and what kind of softwares you're using and then we'll just dive right into it.
- [01:02]
C
So I'm Tina Dooley and I'm a London based creative director and graphic communication designer. I work in a kind of like range of design fields all the way like from print to digital, from like branding, typography, graphics, 3D motion, so literally almost anything you can imagine I would say. And yeah I'm running my studio in London, a multisciplinary studio and collaborating with a great range of clients, smaller ones as well as well known brands. And yeah I've been located in London already now 12 year but I'm originally from Greece where where I did like my first steps in design, studying design here and yeah moved to London where I started my career and I developed my career. You will see also quite a lot of activities on like the education kind of like side of things, running workshops and teaching like short courses as well as like one off sessions, doing mentoring opportunities. So I always love like to be involved in the community and try and push the young generation to learn and get better and better. Also collaboration is the key for me. So you'll often see me collaborating with a lot of different artists, designer, sound designers and most of my projects. So every time collaborating with whoever I feel like could be the most suitable person to work with. And that also comes to the fact that I working so many different fields of design, if that makes sense that require also different skills, different both technical and in terms of knowledge kind of skills all the way from 2D design to 3D where also comes where we need more powerful machines and better equipment. If that makes sense and motion. So kind of like a range of design applications and in terms of like software is again the vari all the way like from the classic like Adobe Creative Suite to like Maxon products for like 3D applications as kind of like I would say as my main ones and touching as well on to like kind of like some of the AI bits to explore and see where I can push things. My work is also quite known for this kind of blend between like analog and digital and kind of like more artistic perspective where I tend to play around with different materials all the way from creating like paper sculptures to like anything that comes to your mind, like little foam spheres or ribbons. And quite a lot of liquid experimentations where I mix like oil based and water based materials, creating all those kind of like mesmerizing compositions and capturing them with my camera and then digitally editing all these footages to create something out of it, something a bit more fun and yeah, including one of my latest projects like an installation that it was premiered at Paradiso Festival. It was full LED floor of like graphics with sound design on top and yeah. So expanding no kind of fields.
- [04:23]
A
You're not just kind of, you know, a digital artist. You've got so many different mediums. So how did you get into art? Is this something you always knew you wanted to do? You know, I, I have no creative, you know, chomps at all and so I just am so amazed by artists ability to just work across so many different mediums and. And I mean your art, I love your art and. And you're so modest because you're also, you have a huge following on social media. Um, and you've got this very well known brand. Um. So yeah, tell me about where this journey began for you.
- [04:53]
C
Yeah, it's quite interesting because my original like kind of creative background was on the side of music and not visual design. So. And it's funny because I'm actually at the moment remotely from Greece. So you can also see that's my little piano behind me. So I, I studied in the music school so I was playing like various musical instruments. My main ones were like piano and violin, but they were like tons of others including singing and everything. So it was a very creative school that art was like we were spending most of our days and it was including also visual art of course. It's as part of it even like acting and any kind of form of art you would imagine. So since I was very little I was really involved into art from a different side of things though. I Used to spend time with my father while he was building all kind of things. He was working quite hard, long hours, so he rarely had time to play with me. But I was always his little assistant, bringing him tools, helping him out, carry things all the way to ending up designing things that he would build. And that would be anything you can imagine, from furnitures to the stool for my piano, to, like, a dollhouse for me to play, to, like a little car to just drive around the garden. So literally anything you can imagine, even, like, renovating, like, the whole house itself, fixing the electric. So I was kind of like, I grew up, like in a family that making was a thing. So I was always involved in, like, carry tools, like, doing little things. And already, like, as a teenager when I was at the university, I remember I was like, designing all these things that I wanted to create and drawing them. The hood and my father would help me cut them out, creating the sculpture that I wanted or whatever it was. So it started working, like, as a little collaboration that I would design everything and then we will have, like, all the plans and measurements and everything ready so we could actually produce what we wanted to create.
- [06:52]
A
So it's like you could have gone down the path of engineering or architecture or something. And then you and art, there's so many, I guess there's so much cohesion between the two, I think.
- [07:04]
C
But I think they are all kind of, like, connected in a way. Because when we are talking, for example, when I'm creating paper sculptures, it's all about the engineering of how you create. So it's always like all those mechanisms are used as the basis in my designs, if that makes sense. And it's interesting. So it's like I love creating my hand, so I have a massive kind of library of materials and things that I feel like could be useful. And it's all the way from nice pieces of wood to, like, colors to, like, fabrics. Anything you can imagine. It's like what I call my treasure boxes or a collection of rubbish, however you want to call it. I collect anything that I feel like could be inspiring and useful, something that they could transform and use as the basis of my kind of, like, artwork or as like, part of the process or just inspiration sometimes.
- [07:54]
A
That's very cool. So I want to focus kind of on the. On the digital art component. Can you tell us what you're currently using? What. What Dell product and I would love to know, kind of having used other products and you don't have to name names, what have been the big differentiators between our products and other products that you've used.
- [08:12]
C
Yes. So currently using the dell promax, the Precision 5690, the laptop, which I really, really like. And one of the features that I love the most is like the touchscreen. Once I got used to that, it's like every other laptop. I'm just touching is screen and I'm like oh no it's not. But it's also the performance, especially when it comes like to 3D or when I was creating the footage for my installation for example, which is like really high res 4k videos shot on the camera and it's like we're talking about 20 minutes overall footage. You really need a powerful computer to manage to preview the things on kind of as much as possible real time. Also like exporting all this footage. So for me it's really, really important to have like a powerful machine that can do this and really save me time and make my workflow way easier and smoother. And also, yeah, you want to have a machine that's kind of like reliable. And yeah, I usually like, I travel a lot so I'm working very often remotely. So it really helps me the fact that I have like a laptop. Well on my setup in the studio I pair it with the ultra sharp laptop like carved monitor which I find like really amazing because then I can like split everything and have like half on my laptop and then on the massive like monitor everything else and design there so I can see like everything in detail. So yeah, for me it's like an amazing kind of like pair of equipment that it's so powerful that it allows me to create anything without having like any technical difficulties while creating which is what I guess all of us as creatives we really hate.
- [09:50]
A
That's what I love about that machine. It is so thin and light, but it has that really robust graphics card. And that's not something that you see often to have something that's so portable yet so powerful and with a great battery life.
- [10:02]
C
Yeah. And especially nowadays that more and more creatives, we tend to work remotely. We definitely need that.
- [10:08]
B
Let's talk a little bit. Let me first ask. The first question is that I always love to ask creatives this. You know, from all the ones we've talked to, I think they think about AI in one of probably three buckets is you have on. It's, you know, you have one that's like very, very anti. Like there's not a place for it in my workflow. There's people that have fully adopted it and Then there's people kind of in the middle that are like, hey, I can kind of see some value, but I also see some bad. Where do you kind of fall on that spectrum of AI usage, you know, within your workflows today from hey, I'm not doing anything, do I fully adopted or I'm somewhere in the middle.
- [10:49]
C
I think I really like it. It really makes my life easier. And when I'm talking about, I like usually like creatives especially the ones that they're against are they are like, oh, is it going to replace my job? Or something like this? And it's, it's not working like that and I'm not, it's not the way I'm using it. So there are so many like different ways to use. For me it's like another like very, very powerful tool that we have at the moment and it's up to us to find like the creative like original way to use it rather than just asking for a prompt and getting like a nice, whatever it is, composition. That is something that almost everyone can do. So that's not for me the power of it. It's nice, but it also comes of. It doesn't really have a character that makes sense. You see an image created in AI and you're like, oh, it's created in AI. So for me it doesn't have the personality and the character on it, which is what we as creatives produce and where the highlight is. But for me it's like really important like from like very, very simple things that it allows you to like extend your graphic. So if you designed it smaller and then you need an application with like extended. Very, very simple. If you create it or you film something in low res, how easy is to scale it up? Like something that we were dreaming of years ago, right? So for very simple things like that, it's amazing. It really, really saves time. But also on the other perspective, what I tend to do, especially when I'm designing full campaigns or whole branding projects, it really helps me produce additional assets on, on the style that I already defined. And what I mean by that is that I might gonna present to the client like three routes. And on those three routes, perhaps I would manage to create one or two visuals for each. But now with AI, what I can do is create my first kind of like graphic, visual, whatever it is by hand. So get it where I actually want to have it or almost there and then I can feed it in on the AI, ask for like the specific style that I already defined and get like 10,000 different variations of that. And I feel like that's amazing because you don't need to design every single asset. You can just feed in what you created and then it recreates what you created so it gives you more of that, so you save so much time. But for me, it's not even like stopping there because again, when I feed it in, it's not exactly my style, what comes out, it's close to, but not exactly. So most likely I will use it as the basis to recreate the image, the graphic. I got to make it my very own. But that already really saved me time. Instead of like creating, let's say if it's an abstract composition of shapes, instead of creating one by one the shapes, the colors, and trying to figure out how it's going to work, you just create one and then you feed it in and you get 10,000 in no time. You can pick which one you like or which parts of couple of them you like, collage them back together and create a new graphic. So it really helps. I feel like it's kind of like if I would have like a second me, an assistant that would roll out what I already start creating, if that makes sense. I feel like it's really, really powerful and helpful. It's just a matter of like all those tools to figure out how to use them on your workflow so they can still like allow you to create things with personality, with character, that they really feel unique and different out there, rather than just creating like another AI prompt that looks exactly, exactly like an AI outcome. So you really need, it's another tool that you need to bring in your personality, if that makes sense. Else it's just a tool.
- [14:25]
B
So, Tina, I mean, I absolutely love that you're using AI, you know, in your kind of workflows. Let me ask kind of a follow up question and there's a couple, several questions I'm going to ask kind of in a rapid fire. So I want to get through them because I think they're important. Especially if someone kind of in your stature who's, you know, with the work portfolio, the work product that you produce. I think it's very interesting for other creatives out there to hear kind of how you're using AI. So you're talking about how it's an assistant. It speeds up my workflows. What are the two biggest AI applications? Whether it's embedded in something like Adobe Substance or it's running like Foundry Nuke or Copycat, like what are the two big ones that you use? Currently that are your main go to is either from a machine learning or AI local ISV application standpoint.
- [15:11]
C
I would say from AI it would be like Topaz for upscaling and then Runaway for like AI compositions as well as Adobe Firefly. I'm using quite a lot, especially because it allows me to quickly and easily like feed in kind of my work and get variations. So I would say those are like the top ones I'm using. And I think one of my favorite features is like in Photoshop that you can just extend your canvas. I think I love that one. It saved my life so many times.
- [15:42]
B
That's great. So we, we know Topaz well, we, we partner with Topaz and I mean it's a great local tool. I mean whether it's the upscaling or video fix or you know, Gigapixel, which I've used to, and I'm not creative at all. You could probably tell because I'm wearing a sweater vest. Well, not really a sweater vest. It's more of a like a blue vest. But you know, a co worker basically had a video or a photo that they wanted to, you know, get edited, remove people in the background. So they did it. But whoever did it for them kind of shrunk the photo down and they needed it bigger so they could print it kind of on a canvas. Right. And it was already after work, Cindy comes to me and is like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. And I was like a la Topaz and Gigapixel knocked it out. So, you know, Adobe Firefly is great. I mean, I think you said Adobe Firefly, Runway. Runway is great with video is like within those applications, obviously Topaz is really the last mile, right? Like is the, the, the salt coming down your arm, sprinkling into the dish. But you know, from run. Are we using Runway? Let's just use Runway. For example, are we using Runway as a, hey, this is kind of a storyboard ideation kind of tool or is it, hey, I know what I want and I'm trying to get something that's 0% to 80% pretty quickly. And then I go from there, like, how are you using, Is it more of an iteration tool? Is it more of a production tool? How are you using it?
- [17:06]
C
I think I'm using it more as kind of like initial sketches, if that makes sense. I remember for example, like a branding project I was working on and we had like very, very limited amount of time to work on creating some detailed kind of like etching style illustrations. That normally it was impossible. It takes so much time to draw one by one. And it was so easy to just get prompts and get like quick sketches of what we needed so we could afterwards quickly trace some of them or even use them as they are. So I would say, yeah, I use Runway more for kind of like initial kind of like sketches and kind of like mood boarding. And yeah, I don't use any of the AI as final outcome. So most of them are part of the kind of like workflow part of the process of creating. I would say on the Adobe Fireflies, where I use the kind of. I don't remember the name of that is just like the function that allows you to upload your work, to use it either as a composition reference or as kind of like style reference. And that is like one that I really like. Because then once I had like the first illustration as I wanted it, I uploaded it and I asked like for, hey, can you create me also like a teacup or like a phone or whatever I needed? So I had like no time. Like so many like variations for everything. And then I could go back and recreate them like in Illustrator, so like drawing them on top in order to get exactly the image that I had in mind.
- [18:39]
B
In your work, if you're using it for a lot of ideation, how often do you find that? Let's just keep using Runway as an example. But let's say any AI kind of assisted tool I'm trying to get, like, I'll give you a perfect example is I. We have this hibiscus in our yard. You know what a hibiscus is? It's a big flowering plant. It's super pretty and it's flowering because we didn't kill it this year during the winter somehow, which is shocking. But it's blooming. It's got a huge bloom. And I was like, huh, I wonder if I could take this. And I did the same thing. I kind of ran through Comfy. I did it locally though, but I ran through Comfy and I was like, can I make this look like it's windy outside? It was a still photo and I was able to do it and it was pretty cool. And it kind of, for me, a non creative mind. I was like, check, check the plant swaying. But if I gave it to you, you would be like, well, Logan, this is trash because of this and this and this is not great. So when you get kind of that ideated bit, how close is it to where you want to be? Like how, like, what's the typical times that you would come back and say, oh, I don't like that. Let me change this. Like, how many times are you ideating? Because I think people have the misconception that you just go and you type in AI and you ultimately get. You're like, hey, I want a car commercial for a big national soda brand that has this actor in it and it better be funny. And then it just pops out. And that's not the case. So how many times do you iterate with AI prompting or, you know, using reference images or whatever to get something where you're like, hey, this is a great starting point. Point.
- [20:08]
C
Well, sometimes it's quite quick, but not as quick. But I usually do spend, like, at least, like, half a day, for example, like, just playing around to get, like, variations to see what I want. And even though, as I said, I'm not using it as an outcome, so it might be that I'm chopping parts of, like, 10 different kind of, like, prompts and outcomes to put them together to get where I actually want to be. So again, this is like, for me, like, AI is just a tool. So it's not going to create what you have in mind unless you put, like, the right prompt prompt and guide it there. So it's like having like, another kind of like, designer or something as a director. You have to know how to direct it to get where. Where you actually want to be. It's the same kind of process. So it might be like 50 or 100, like, different versions where I'm gonna pick, like, couple of them from, and then I'm gonna most likely start over and recreating it. So it's just gonna be the reference. I'm not gonna be really using it as a final outcome. So it's very, very rare because as I said, I really don't like the fact that you can still see that they all look very similar. You can see. And it's like, oh, create it in AI. You can point it straight away. So for me, that is, like, missing, like, character and personality, which is very, very important.
- [21:24]
B
Agreed. I mean, and you're right, like, and I think that's what ultimately, and once again, not a creative. More of a technical guy, but I think that's what creative people bring, is that authenticity, the personality, the uniqueness, their own style, where it's something that's hard to replicate and capture. When you are training a stable diffusion model or a video diffusion model, it's very hard to capture the essence of that. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, how do you, you know, train something to be conscious? Like, you can't. It's kind of a human. Right? Like, I mean, it's a human, human thing. Here's the point is that I think, you know, with AI in general, people think it just kind of pops out and it's like, it is a very powerful tool in the hands of people that know how to use it. Like, for example, the fact that you can hop in an airplane, which I'll be doing shortly here at the time of the recording, going up to Seagraph here in a few days. It's amazing that we can hop on an airplane and go to a different country and fly six, seven hours or however long it is, or go over to Europe. And that wasn't possible a couple hundred years ago unless you wanted to hop on a boat and it took forever and you might get scurvy. So. But you had to have. My point is, is that only certain. Even though that plane super powerful, only certain people can fly that plane, right? Only certain people are licensed. All our friend Sam that works with us, Adele. But only certain people have. So in the analogy, how did you get your pilot's license for AI? What did you do to kind of learn how to prompt? Was it trial and error? Did you take classes? And then how did you work in the creative aspect of what you wanted into your prompting?
- [23:04]
C
For me, I would say, like, I'm always, like, very curious to, like, learn new things. It's more like as a personality kind of thing. So I always love when it's like, oh, a new software, new tool, something that comes up. I really need to check it out myself. And I'm usually just with a very, very simple technique of just clicking everywhere to understand how everything works. That's my first kind of like, very initial approach and everything. And then, of course, like, it comes, like, to, like, you start creating, like, a specific project or something, and you start having questions. And nowadays it's super easy to ask, like, ChatGPT for everything, or, like, look at YouTube or anywhere online and find a tutorial to show you. So, yeah, for me, it was kind of like one of the things that I didn't even notice that I started learning and start creating, if that makes sense. It started as, like, a quick test, and then there was like, a project that I needed to upscale everything. I'm like, oh, okay, I heard of that. Let me go and kind of like make it work. And then it just happened, like, out of need, if that makes sense as well. So it just happened that they had like the projects that I could see the potential of using AI on. Yeah, I just used it. And it's usually also like when you don't have enough time. That's what forced me because I remember that branding project I mentioned that I had to create like a whole library of illustrations in just a couple of days. It was impossible. There was no possibility I would get that style of illustration that we needed, that amount of assets on the exact, the time and budget we had. So it was like, okay, I need to find a solution here. And that was a solution. So for me it's like more like I love challenging myself to learn new tools, new techniques, try like what is out there new in technology. It's kind of, I feel like it's kind of like a must to make sure, like you don't need to follow and use everything. But it's important for me at least to try and be aware of what exactly is out there. Because I know, like, it's not for everyone that they would love using AI or they would love using like different techniques and things, but it's always good to know that they exist. And if it's not your thing and it's needed later, you can always hire the right person to help you with your project and use this tool for you. But it's good to be aware of what's out there.
- [25:23]
A
So, Tina, I have a question. So take like, you know, a project you did, like shifting symphonies or something. You have this amazing ability to kind of create just words or letters and turn them into art. Like you've got this unique kind of marshmallowy looking kind of board type style. I would love to understand what that workflow was, you know, using that as the example. Like, where did you start, what software did you use? You know, if you use AI and then what the end kind of result was and you know how it was received.
- [25:52]
C
So yeah, I love typography. So you see quite a lot of my work is based on the typography all the way, like from hands on to like 2D to 3D, which I love. And especially when it comes to motion as well. So that one was created. I'm always like, first of all, like creating mood boards that kind of like sketching out the idea of what is going to be represented on those. And it was like a very kind of like challenging project because it was about showing like how transition can affect our lives and what does it mean in general. And it's like a subject that is so Broad and can be visualized in so many different ways. So I was trying to think of different elements that they would represent transition. And it's like all the way from the DNA, a very classic thing that is transitioning from one person to another. And it's transitioning over time and it's changing and all the way to kind of transition as kind of like a mechanical power. And one of the pieces, for example the come and go is inspired by belts on gears of engines that they just move and transition the power from one to another. So very often my inspiration is also like from things that they see around me. And for example, that one, the inspiration was from like an engine I saw like at the BMW museum in Munich. I love that one. It was like so many like interesting things that can just spark the inspiration. It doesn't have to be the final outcome or anything. So for me, yeah, usually the inspiration can be something really random or just an idea. So I always start like just writing down any kind of like ideas I have without like looking what's out there online. And yeah, I just want to stay as much original as I can. And I have like also this library of pictures of things that I feel like could be interesting and I could use potentially in my work. And it's like from my trips from like treasure boxes that I said so similar to my physical treasure boxes but in a digital way in pictures, textures, things I feel like would be useful. So once I put together a couple of ideas, the next step was bringing it to life. And that's where I jumped in the digital world on my Dell laptop and worked in Cinema 4D to develop the graphics. And most of them are like quite simple, kind of like geometry kind of approach and just using like strong typography, interesting messages and carefully like applying like texturing and lighting in order to get the final outcome. And yeah, of course like rendering everything in order to put everything together later on to create the full campaign. And that project was actually quite an interesting one because all the kinetic type explorations were projected in a massive kind of building in Rome during the Videosta Festival. So it was very interesting to see all the way from a render on your computer to just seeing a massive kind of projection. And this was challenging as well because we needed quite high res files for everything. But yeah, it all worked so nicely and smoothly to develop, render, get the outcomes, compose everything later on in after Effects as well. Very exciting project.
- [29:14]
B
So Tina, this has been fantastic. I mean I love the ability. Well one, I mean you are obviously very talented at what you do. And I love the ability, how you've been able to kind of keep your personality, your style, your flow and then work in AI to, you know, help you ideate but also to, you know, help you speed up the task like up resing and other things that probably weren't your favorite task to begin with and were time consuming. And I love that. So kind of final thing, let's pretend someone's just watching, started watching or listening at this moment. Give everyone like a 30 second overview of what they should take away from this episode, from our conversation, from your perspective.
- [29:54]
C
So for me the most important is always to be open minded, to always be curious, to explore new things, challenge yourself, learn new tools, experiment and try to push things forward. And even if it's something like scary, and I understand how AI can be scary in a way, it's a new tool, a new possibility. And I understand also like if it's not your thing, it's okay not to follow it. But firstly you have to try it in order to decide that it's not your thing. So always be open minded to try new tools, new techniques and then yeah, select the ones that they suit you the best possible way or also find the way that you would use them on your very own workflow to help you to be more like efficient to make things faster and easier.
- [30:45]
B
I love that. That was a great answer. That'll definitely be a social clip for sure. So with that, Tina, do me a favor. Tell everyone where they can find you, you know, website, where they can find you on social media.
- [30:56]
C
Definitely. So yeah, you can find me anywhere. It's always like Tina Tully either on my website tinatulli.com or on social as Tina Tully, the handle. And I'm always like happy to find a chat. As I said, I love being part of this creative community, so always feel free to reach out.
- [31:13]
B
Well, with that, you know, I think today was really interesting, right? Being able to talk through some specific AI workflows as well as some other workflows that kind of showed that AI is not super scary. Like, I mean, yes, it takes a learning curve. You have to be willing to put your foot out there and kind of take the first step. But even in a base there's the ability to save yourself time with upscaling and you can start using it to ideate and using it for production. So I think Tina was a great example of that. Really appreciate her coming on. Thank you, Tina. So with that we're going to wrap it up. This is reshaping workflows, Dell Pro Max and Nvidia RTX GPUs. Until next time, keep your workflows running locally and we'll see you on the next one. This podcast was produced in partnership with Amaze Media Labs.