How Mermay Redefines Creative Communities

Summary

Podcast Summary: Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs

Episode: How Mermay Redefines Creative Communities
Date: April 28, 2026
Host: Logan Lawler (with Cindy Olivo)
Guests: Whitney Paulette (Founder/CEO, Pixel Studios, Mermay Host) & Lauren (Character Designer, Co-Host Mermay)

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Overview

This episode spotlights Mermay, a global online drawing challenge, and explores how creative workflows are transforming through technology—particularly with Dell Pro Precision workstations and NVIDIA RTX GPUs. Host Logan Lawler and co-host Cindy Olivo speak with Mermay’s leaders, Whitney Paulette and Lauren, about the evolution of this creative community, the impact of new hardware and software, and how artists are navigating the arrival of AI in their field.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. What is Mermay? (01:00–03:16)

• Mermay: An annual online art challenge each May, started by former Disney animator Tom Bancroft in 2016, where artists worldwide draw and share mermaid-themed artwork daily.
• Purpose: To reignite creativity, foster community, and provide prompts that inspire daily artistic practice.
• Growth: From a viral hashtag to a massive global event involving judging, prizes, and industry partnerships.

Quote:
“My passion project is Mermay…an online drawing challenge where millions of artists participate and draw mermaids every single day for the month of May.”
—Whitney Paulette (01:04)

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2. The Origins and Growth of Mermay (03:17–05:03)

• Founder Story: Tom Bancroft, inspired by his daughters and a pun on “May,” created Mermay as a response to missing out on animating The Little Mermaid at Disney.
• Prompt lists were introduced to spark creativity.
• Community-driven: Artists from all over world, with categories for animation and illustration.

Quote:
“It’s just to get people going and get their creative juices going…that’s why Mermay.”
—Lauren (02:29)

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3. The Renaissance of Disney and Its Influence (05:03–06:41)

• Contextualized Mermay’s roots in the Disney Renaissance era, marking the resurgence and global popularity of animated films like “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
• Highlighted the era’s celebrity voice talent and the rise of character-driven storytelling.

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4. Creative Work & Community Impact (06:41–10:06)

• Lauren’s Work: Known for engaging the online community through projects like “Coffee Draws” and “Pets to People,” transforming follower content into artwork.
• The community element: Buying and displaying fellow artists’ prints; support across online and real-life networks.
• Burned Out Betty: Lauren’s only original character, reflecting the reality of creative exhaustion during intense periods like Mermay.

Quote:
“My tagline is I’m a fartist because I make fun art—or fart, the way I like to say.”
—Lauren (07:14)

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5. The Scale and Logistics of Judging (10:06–11:31)

• Submissions: Tens of thousands each year, necessitating separate hashtags by year.
• Judging: Each judge independently selects favorites, with overlap revealing clear winners.
• The challenge and reward of reviewing vast artistic output.

Quote:
“Even though we have so many submissions, there are every year, like, four or five people cut through…we can all find the same people.”
—Whitney Paulette (10:58)

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6. Technology’s Role: Dell Pro Precision and 3D Innovation (11:31–15:03)

• Whitney’s Journey: Transitioned from 2D to 3D, leveraging a Dell Precision 7680 and NVIDIA RTX GPU to sculpt and 3D-print characters like “Lily.”
• Workflow Transformation: Hardware power made it practical to learn and create professional-quality 3D models.
• Collaboration: Whitney and Lauren designed a mermaid character/pen-holder as a community symbol and product.

Memorable Moment:
The story of the first 3D-printed prototype breaking at TSA, complete with a customs note.
—(13:36–14:30)

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7. 3D Ecosystem & Software Tools (15:03–16:29)

• Whitney: Utilizes Maxon ZBrush for sculpting, Adobe Photoshop for painting, and Adobe Substance for texture work.
• Lauren: Primarily uses Adobe Photoshop, aspires to add sculpting to her arsenal.
• Partnership with Maxon developed after seeing Mermay projects.

Quote:
“This introduction to all these new softwares…all started when I got the Dell Precision. It was like this great catalyst.”
—Whitney Paulette (15:56)

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8. AI in the Creative Process: Opportunity & Caution (16:54–21:41)

• Mixed views on AI:
  • Pros: Streamlines collaboration; clients can convey style and mood more clearly and quickly.
  • Concerns: Fear of skill devaluation; anxiety that creativity could be “outsourced” to AI, reducing hands-on artistry; questions about ethical data use.
• For Mermay, AI-generated art is not permitted—prioritizing celebration of human creativity.

Notable Quotes:

• “When there’s AI-gen art used for inspiration, it can be really helpful…But the fear I have is that people aren’t going to feel like they need to be creative anymore.”
  —Whitney Paulette (17:55)
• “I’m worried about the value of our skill. I’m worried about it being devalued…But with AI, maybe they [clients] can come to me with something more clear, which saves a lot of time.”
  —Lauren (19:41)

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9. The State & Future of AI in Studios (23:13–26:16)

• Cited real-world examples of studios adopting AI ethically:
  • Brown Bag Studio and Animag partnership: Training AI on in-house IP to accelerate storyboarding and animation in a way that augments (not replaces) artists.
  • Disney investing in such technologies via incubator programs.
• Vision: AI as a tool to increase production speed and creative output, not just to cut corners.

Quote:
“Instead of having an artist do every single drawing of every single angle…this will then go ahead and just get like, say, half of that work and then fill in all the holes. So it would be a huge time saver.”
—Whitney Paulette (25:36)

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10. Closing: Why Mermay Matters (26:46–27:40)

Each guest summarizes Mermay’s importance and invites listeners to join the movement:

Whitney Paulette:
“Mermay…is an online drawing competition…millions of submissions of artists who are all so passionate, so incredible, who love mermaids. It takes place in the month of May.” (26:46)

Lauren:
“A drawing challenge that happens primarily on Instagram during the month of May where we all draw mermaids…see you on the Internet.” (27:16)

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Notable Quotes

• “My tagline is I’m a fartist because I make fun art—or fart, the way I like to say.” —Lauren (07:14)
• “This introduction to all these new softwares…all started when I got the Dell Precision. It was like this great catalyst.” —Whitney Paulette (15:56)
• “When there’s AI-gen art used for inspiration, it can be really helpful…But the fear I have is that people aren’t going to feel like they need to be creative anymore.” —Whitney Paulette (17:55)
• “I’m worried about the value of our skill. I’m worried about it being devalued.” —Lauren (19:41)
• “Mermay…is an online drawing competition…so incredible, who love mermaids. It takes place in the month of May.” —Whitney Paulette (26:46)
• “A drawing challenge that happens primarily on Instagram during the month of May where we all draw mermaids…” —Lauren (27:16)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:00–03:16] — Introduction to Mermay & Community
• [05:03–06:41] — Disney’s Golden Era Explained
• [07:04–10:06] — Lauren’s Creative Community & “Burned Out Betty”
• [11:31–15:03] — Whitney’s 3D Workflow Evolution with Dell Precision & NVIDIA RTX
• [16:54–21:41] — AI: Tool or Threat? Artist Perspectives
• [23:13–26:16] — AI in Animation Studios & Studio Example
• [26:46–27:40] — Final Summaries & Mermay Invitation

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Episode Tone & Style

Lighthearted, community-focused, and candid. The guests use humor and anecdotes to demystify technology’s impact on creativity. The conversation weaves technical detail with personal experience, creating a relatable atmosphere for professional artists and enthusiasts alike.

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For more, follow Mermay on Instagram and catch their next appearance at Adobe Max!

Transcript

[Whitney Paulette]

Foreign. Welcome to Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and Nvidia, where innovation meets real

[Cindy Olivo]

world impact in high performance computing.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Welcome back to another riveting episode of Reshaping Workflows and with Dell Pro Max Nvidia RTX gpu. I'm telling you, this is going to be a rough episode. I never have Cindy on because she's absolutely disruptive to my creative process. And we're here. So today we have special guests, Cindy's partners. I will let. I'll probably won't do much of the talking, but we're going down an M and E path today, talking about creative, artistic, design, things that I completely don't understand. So I don't. Can't think of anyone better to have on this episode than Cindy and her partner. So, Cindy, please introduce your partners and kick it away.

[Cindy Olivo]

Hi, Cynthia Olivo, and I'm here with the lovely hosts of mermay, Lauren and Whitney. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about Mermaid?

[Whitney Paulette]

Okay, so I'm Whitney Paulette and I am a host for Mermaid. I'm also the founder and CEO of Pixel Studios. We work in toys and animation, concepting and prototyping. And it's really fun. But our passion project is mermay, which I'll get a little bit into, but Lauren can really nail it. I'm so bad at explaining what it is, but basically it's an online drawing challenge where millions of artists participate and draw mermaids every single day for the month of May.

[Lauren]

I think you hit it like that's. That's the bare bones of it. That's what it is. It's an online community where we all draw mermaids and share our love for creation and mermaids and mystical things.

[Cindy Olivo]

So why mermaids? I guess is my. Why mermaids? Is my first question. And then like, who. Who's the brainchild behind this?

[Lauren]

Oh, okay, well, mermaids. Why mermaids? Well, we gotta start at the beginning. Who started it? Because that kind of explains why Mermaids, right with the creator. The founder of Mermaid is Tom Bancroft. He is an ex Disney animator. He's the creator of Mushu, and he did all of the cool renaissance Disney animated movies back in the day. But he didn't get to work on the Little Mermaid. He was an intern. I, um. And he missed that one. So later on, years go by, it's 2016 and he decided he wanted to draw mermaids that were inspired by his teenage daughters. And it went viral in the time and it happened to be in May and then he decided to make it a challenge. He's a teacher. He teaches animation at Lipscomb University. And so just teaching is in his. In his nature. And so he thought, let's make this a challenge. Let's invite the community, the art community of the world to draw mermaids. And then he created a prompt list, which is essentially just a list of words that can inspire artwork. And there's one for every day. And you can draw mermaids every single day if you want to, but you don't have to. But really, it's just to get people going and get people, you know, get their creative juices going. And, yeah, that's why Mermaid Mermay, I think it happened in May, and it was just like a punny type, like a title of May, like mermaid just bit.

[Whitney Paulette]

It's so cute. I remember the first time I saw the hashtag. I immediately, as an artist was like, oh, I want to do that. You know, And I saw everybody just drawing mermaids. And it made sense because it was like the beginning of summer. We're all like, you know, getting excited to go to the beach. So it just was, yeah, such a magical time. And then years went by and everybody was doing it. It just. It just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then Tom started his own animation studio called Pencil Ish. And he was having a hard time keeping up with it, you know, because it really did require a lot of reposting. And we had a few partners at the time that were gifting prizes, and we were also finding judges that were really, really incredible in the animation industry. And they would then, you know, look through all of the work that was being shared online and ultimately vote for the ones that were really standing out to them for various reasons. But we had an animation category and an illustration category. Tom was like, this is amazing. I love it so much. I just can't keep doing it. So he asked me and he asked Lauren to host it. And so we've been doing that for the last four years, I'd say. And then we brought. Well, we didn't bring. Cindy came in. Cindy, you have been such a huge supporter. Dell has been such an amazing partner for Mermaid. And honestly, it's been so much stronger and so much more exciting since you guys joined us. And it's also helped us so much, too, because you guys have introduced Dell into our workflows. And it's actually kind of changed, for me, at least, like, the way that I design toys. So it's just kind of like, holistically helped us in so many ways. But in the world of mermaid, it's been really inspiring. So thank you, guys.

[Lauren]

Thank you.

[Cindy Olivo]

We are happy to help. It's one of my favorite activations that I support. Lauren, you said something really interesting. You said Renaissance Disney. For the listeners, explain what that is. How is. What is Renaissance Disney versus today Disney? I guess. What is the golden age?

[Lauren]

The golden age of Disney? Well, there was a point in Disney history where the animation studio was not as successful as the parks. Is that what it was? I can't remember. It wasn't.

[Whitney Paulette]

I think they kind of like took their eyes off of animation.

[Lauren]

Yeah. And then he came in and he did that.

[Whitney Paulette]

Oh, oh, Katzenberg. Yes, Katzenberg.

[Lauren]

Thank you. My gosh. Okay.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yes.

[Lauren]

We got there originally. We got there eventually. Yes. But Hetzenberg came in who. Who originally did live action films and then was turned off by animation. And then it kind of. He fell in love with it and really took the cinematic live action approach to things. And like, his involvement in the work that was being made during that time changed how we made movies. And that was the popular. What we think of, like Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, those movies. Lion King, Mulan. I could go on and on. All of those movies that I guess people our age remember. We remember that as the golden age of dating.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, Renaissance.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

When it came to Aladdin.

[Lauren]

Aladdin, yes. Yeah. The introduction of celebrities doing voice acting work was. That was during that time too, which was like a new ish sort of thing.

[Cindy Olivo]

So you're a toy designer, Lauren. You've got this huge presence online. You do all of your fun draws. I would love to kind of have the audience learn a little bit about what you're doing. And I see a lot of your work behind you. So if you could kind of tell us a little bit about some of the stuff that you.

[Lauren]

A lot of other work there's all over my ceiling, too, but I collect your ceiling.

[Whitney Paulette]

You added it to the ceiling.

[Lauren]

This one. I have it on this. Yeah. It's because I have so many friends now that, like, send me work. And I always. Because Mermay, I'm so involved in the community and I really want to help artists. I will buy a bunch of prints that really meant a lot during that specific mermaid. So I have, like a bundle of mermaid prints every May that I buy from artists and put in my office. But I am a character designer and illustrator and I am chronically online. That's what I like to say. And I just fart around on the Internet a lot. And that's why my tagline is I. I'm a fartist because I make fun art or fart is the way I like to say. And originally I just started. I really wanted to engage with my community. And so I would draw one of my followers every single day. And I would do it in the morning while I drink my coffee. And it became this thing called coffee draws. And I did that for 200 days. So. So a lot of these pictures you see on the back of my wall here are my followers. And so I did that and then I. I started drawing their pets and I started turning them into superheroes and I just really engaging with my community and seeing what they liked. And then I one day decided to draw my followers pets as people. What would they. What would their person characters look like? So my series Pets to People blossomed and that kind of went crazy all over TikTok and Instagram and I'm still doing that. I work as a character designer and illustrator. I'm a Disney Lorcana artist for their trading card. So is Whitney. And I worked in kids media, like children's television, concept art. And I worked with Excel on a couple of fun toy projects. So I do kind of a lot of everything. But. And, but Mermaid is like my. The. My happy place.

[Whitney Paulette]

I'm waiting for you to bring back

[Cindy Olivo]

burned, Burned out Betty. Because she was like. I think everyone resonated with Burned out Betty.

[Whitney Paulette]

Whenever she comes up, I'm like, oh no, is Lauren okay? But also I love her. We have all been her.

[Lauren]

Yeah. I don't have so a thing on the Internet. A lot of digital artists will have original characters and I don't have a lot of original characters. I have one original character and she only comes when I am burned out. And her name is Burnout Betty. And the song Johnny Walker. What is it?

[Whitney Paulette]

I think it's called that one.

[Lauren]

It's like Dreams, Dream Walk or something by Johnny Walker. I can't remember that song. But it's always that song. Like

[Whitney Paulette]

you're just like in a daze.

[Lauren]

Yeah.

[Whitney Paulette]

Like, oh my God, what day is it? Yeah, yeah. Usually she makes an appearance midway through Mermaid usually because again, we have like a pretty bag. Burnout. Oh my God. Thousands of posts. Like if you go to the Mermaid hashtag and we had to change it up. So instead of it just being hashtag Mermaid may we did Remy 2018, 19 2021. You know what I mean? So like we had to separate it by year because everything was just kind of getting lost. And you can look at, like, what, 20, 25 we had. I can't remember how many we had.

[Lauren]

I don't remember either. We can.

[Whitney Paulette]

It was a lot.

[Lauren]

Tens of thousands.

[Whitney Paulette]

Tens of thousands. Yeah. And we're trying our best to see them all. Cindy knows because she was a judge. Log here.

[Cindy Olivo]

And this year, my eyes, I. I saw mermaids in my sleep. Leap. Everybody's number one fan. It was great.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, your eyes do go cross. You know, like, it was a time where I was just constantly scrolling so much that I felt like my.

[Cindy Olivo]

My.

[Whitney Paulette]

You know, my world was like, also

[Lauren]

just kind of going up the tunnel. Whitney and I always talk about how. Whitney, I always talk about how every May, we're like, we have seen every mermaid. Every mermaid that could possibly.

[Whitney Paulette]

There are new ones out there, but

[Cindy Olivo]

a couple that I'm still like. I mean, there was that manatee Harry mermaid this year that I think it was my favorite.

[Whitney Paulette]

I remember this room. Some of them really do stand out.

[Cindy Olivo]

Like, they're vivid.

[Whitney Paulette]

Like, even though we have so many submissions, there are every year, like, four or five people cut through, and it's. That's how we find the winners and all of the judges. We don't talk to each other. We just save our favorite ones. And at the end of the month, we submit our top five. And there are always duplicates and people who participate. You know, there are some people who are like, how do you. How could you possibly pick a winner? And it's like, it's just. It's just the dupes, you know, like, we're. We can't help but feel connected or drawn to somebody. And then it's just really funny how all of us can all find the same people.

[Cindy Olivo]

So, Whitney, you have been on this, like, 3D journey. So when I first met you, you know, you mentioned that was something that you were looking and you were more interested in kind of getting into. So tell us about that. Tell us kind of where you started with it, kind of where you're at now and how. I guess Dell helped you with that.

[Whitney Paulette]

Oh, my. I'm so happy to tell you about it. So I'm a. I'm a toy designer, and I work in toys and animation. And, you know, oftentimes it's like the. Say the showrunner will come up with a script and say, here's this script for this new show that's coming out. Can you design some characters and then make them toyetic? And toyetic is a word we use the toy industry to make it, you know, good for play, you know, how would a. How would a child play out this character in their everyday life? So I'll come up with a concept design for those characters and for the toy, and then I'd usually hand it off to a 3D artist to then sculpt it. And I went to school for digital media. I learned 3D, and I just hadn't really used it in the longest time, so I just didn't really have to. And then when Cindy presented us with The Dell Precision 7680s, it was, like, totally jacked. Like, this computer's, like, so, so, so loaded, and I'm like, how could we ever demonstrate the power by, you know, just drawing, you know, like, maybe there's something that we could do that's a little bit more intense. I thought, let's sculpt something, you know? And so Lauren and I collaborated on this idea where she'll design a mermaid and I'll sculpt it, and then I'll 3D output it, and we can see it in real life. And it would be just a really great way to, you know, try out how powerful this computer is. But also, you know, I got to relearn how to sculpt again, which is something that I had been really, really wanting to do. So we did that, and it ended up becoming a way bigger project than we ever expected. You know, the. The. The character turned into a pen holder with this, like, really great base and her arms over here like this, and she can hold your digital pen. So it kind of worked really well for our mermaid audience, since we're. A lot of us are digital artists. But also, she can hold your paintbrush, pencil, whatever it is. I have one somewhere. I'm gonna go bring her over.

[Lauren]

Oh, I have one of the. I have one of the prototypes. Can I bring my prototype?

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, yeah, grab the prototype, and I'll grab the resin. One. Hold on. I'm. Two seconds. It's right here.

[Lauren]

My prototype is my favorite, because this one had to go through TSA pre check, and they took it apart and broke her.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

No way.

[Cindy Olivo]

Yes, dude.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

They're monsters. Monsters.

[Whitney Paulette]

I know.

[Lauren]

She had it all wrapped up beautifully. And then TSA Pretty PreCheck had a little sign telling the story when he was so depressing.

[Whitney Paulette]

Oh, yeah. So I brought the first prototype. It was the first output that I ever had. I have a 3D printer in my office over there, and I was so excited to give it to Lauren, given that she was the original designer of Lily. And I opened my suitcase and the latches that, like, you know, attach inside are broken. And I'm like, oh, no, what happened in here? And then I pull out Lily and she's broken in half. And I'm like, oh, no, she broke. And then I see this little paper that's also in my suitcase, and I'm like, how'd this get here? What's this? And it says customs was here. Yeah, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, no drugs in here, but we thought maybe.

[Lauren]

Yeah.

[Whitney Paulette]

Oh, yeah.

[Lauren]

She didn't have hair at this point.

[Whitney Paulette]

Mine does.

[Lauren]

Yeah. This is a prototype. This is the beginner one. We're trying to figure out how heavy she, you know, she was and stuff. Which, by the way, just now, I wasn't sure what I just said. Did I say TSA Pro pre check?

[Whitney Paulette]

TSA pre check. Did I say that? Tsa. I don't know.

[Lauren]

I am not.

[Whitney Paulette]

Wait, wait. So it was tsa. We knew what you meant. Yeah. So anyway, this is Lily. This is what she ended up becoming. And she had two interchangeable hairstyles. It was cute.

[Cindy Olivo]

She's adorable. What software did you use to sculpt Lily? And, you know, I know that you were using, you know, some other hardware beforehand, and then you got the Dell, and. And I think it was really that GPU that allowed you to kind of start this journey and kind of getting back into 3D. But what softwares are in this 3D kind of ecosystem?

[Whitney Paulette]

So I fully use Zbrush, Maxon Zbrush, who then eventually became a partner also because they saw the Lilly project and they're friends with Cindy, and Cindy's amazing. Just this great collaborator, so. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Collaborator. Yep.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, that's right, Logan.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

That's right. Nailed it.

[Whitney Paulette]

So, yeah, we use the brush and I don't know, I can't think of anything else, really.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Well, you obviously use Adobe, I'm assuming.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Did you go to Adobe, Max?

[Whitney Paulette]

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Adobe Photoshop to paint.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Okay.

[Whitney Paulette]

And to design. And then trying to think of the. The painting program that I've been using recently that I used on a later, Lily. It's Adobe Substance. It's sick. I'm really enjoying it. But, yeah, I would say that, like, this introduction to all these new softwares that I've been wanting to use and explore all started when I got the Dell Precision. It was like this great catalyst, so it was cool.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Hey, Lauren, Whitney, you did a great job going through the softwares you use in your workflow. Do you use anything? Use the same stuff that Whitney uses. Software wise, do you actually do you employ other softwares. Which one's your favorite and why?

[Lauren]

Adobe Photoshop is what I would use. I don't sculpt. I'm hoping to get into that and learn how to sculpt. I'm real beginner, though, so I have to start at the very, very, very basic right now. But I'm just Adobe Photoshop at the time.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Just Adobe Photoshop.

[Whitney Paulette]

She's Hitler in Adobe Photoshop. Truly the most incredible illustrator. And she's so fast, you guys.

[Cindy Olivo]

Lauren, I can definitely help you with the unreal stuff. So let's talk about that. You know, the outsider and looking in and kind of, you know, this EM world and all of the fun things that we do now. I know that AI and you're our AI guy. AI is still kind of a touchy subject in this space. You know, Laura and Whitney, how do you guys see the future?

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Let me ask you, first question is that obviously you. You both are way more creative, way more got it going on, like, creatively than I. I just don't have that skill. Right. I don't have the skill. What you guys do cannot be replicated. I totally get and appreciate it. Now, with AI, you mentioned kind of Adobe substance, right? It does have some AI bits in it, I guess. First question, in creative process, what is your kind of opinion on AI? We'll start there. We'll start with Whitney and go, lauren, what's your thought about injecting AI into the creative process? Do you think it's a help? Do you think it's a hindrance? Do you think it, you know, is kind of depends on the user itself and how they're utilizing it? Where's. Where's your opinion?

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, I mean, there's so, so, so much to get into. I'll say dig into because it's like on the surface and if you go in or it's like, oh, my gosh, like, you know, how does this affect so many artists and, you know, scraping the Internet to find the style to then, you know, generate this, like, it's. It's scary, you know, And I think, like, on the top of it all, on the surface, it's like a really great inspiration tool, you know, And I think that, you know, when clients send me AI generated reference and they say, everyone internally has already really agreed that this color palette's great and they like this general style, you know, but can you interpret it in your own way using, you know, X, Y and Z? And I'm like, oh, cool. I'm so glad that we didn't have to go back and forth so much. Now you guys have a general idea and of course I'm going to completely redo it, but I have, you know, a vibe. And so I think that when there's aigen art that's used for inspiration, it can be really helpful and time saving. Having said that, the fear I have and have been having lately is that people aren't going to be feeling like they need to be creative anymore, you know, And I'm seeing a lot of people just, you know, jumping straight into AI, you know, whether it be ChatGPT or Gen AI to just get everything going and then that's what they end up using. There's no interpretation, you know, and I'm scared for the future. Like, I personally absolutely love creating and I, I do it for therapy. You know what I mean? I always have as a kid, so I don't think that's ever going to go away. But in terms of my work and what I do, you know, creatively and career wise, I don't want it to overshadow and overtake, you know, the work that we do. So I am a little leery, I'd say.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Okay, Warren. I'm assuming thoughts are similar.

[Lauren]

Yeah, no, I have the same value. I'm worried about the value of our skill. I'm worried about it being devalued. I do agree with Whitney. My, my one positive, I guess. Not one positive, but just a positive. I will repeat what you said was that clients are very clear about what they want now. There was, you know, before, maybe you would spend a week or two weeks on a project and, and now it's much more concise, like two days, three days. I'm getting a lot of day jobs which I hadn't had before. Um, my first job was like six months and then I'd be on like commercial projects for like a month. And now they're a week, four days, two days, like a day. It's not great when it. But I mean, the. But the more it means more, right? Like if, if the client can create more and has more time, then they can come back for more. Um, but it's, it is, it makes it less frustrating in the process of knowing what your client wants, right? There's always that point in the beginning when you're working with a client where maybe the client doesn't quite know what they want yet. And you kind of have to go back and forth for a long time and iterate a lot. Just throw spaghetti at the wall until something hits. But with AI, maybe they can come to me with something more clear, which saves a lot of time.

[Whitney Paulette]

This just reminded me. So I actually got a client that sent me so much AI generated reference that I had no idea what it was.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

That's hilarious.

[Whitney Paulette]

So it's like, I guess it just depends on the client because, yeah, sometimes too many options are still a problem, you know?

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

That's true.

[Cindy Olivo]

Yeah.

[Whitney Paulette]

It's a wild world out there. And I really appreciate this question. I'm glad that we got to answer it. And I think we could talk about this forever. But I would say that for Mermay, in regards to that we don't allow AI because again, it's a celebration of creativity and the artist behind the art.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

I might sneak in an entry, an AI entry next year and see if we can catch. See if you can catch it from some random person. No, I'm kidding. I, I'm not artistic. I, I agree with you. I think ripping off content and stuff like that, but from where my angle, where my head is at, is that it was interesting. The point about how the clients come to you with like, AI generated stuff. And it's like cutting out that, you know, couple of weeks where it was like the iterative back and forth brainstorming, you know, type thing where they have a more formed idea. That's kind of interesting. I, for me is it's still. And I don't know if you've used tools like comfy and other things, but to get a. I'm not artistic, I get out a bad prompt because I don't know, line density, shading, color gradients, all these fancy things that you all know, like, I don't know it. So when I get something out, it's still junk. But when I have like my partner Julian, when he prompts, he's an artist, very good stuff. And it's interesting because I kind of work with an animation studio where they were like, hey, can you take our collective book of work that we've done animating over the last 25 years and do the characters and then train a lore model for us to be able to storyboard very quickly?

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah.

[Cindy Olivo]

Yes.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

So I, in that type of use case, I think it makes sense. But no. Should people be stealing your work to train models and stuff? Absolutely not. But for a way to kind of get started and like accelerate the process and allows you to be a little bit more creative. Yeah, we'll see. But you're right, it, it, it just depends on how you use it. It's like any tool at the End of the day, you know, a butcher knife can be used for good cutting meat.

[Cindy Olivo]

What does the future look like? What. I mean, obviously AI is not going to go back in the box. So what's kind of the happy medium? You know, what, what is. What is good going to look like

[Whitney Paulette]

for artists in the future?

[Lauren]

I have an answer for this because I just read an article about this before, like 30 minutes before we had this chat. There's a company called Animag that at. Do you remember that company? Whitney and I went to Kids Screen last year. It's a conference for kids media and there was a Brown Bag Studio. I think it was. Was it Brown Bag Studio and Animag had partnered together as a startup. I think it. It. I'm. This is all rec. I'm recalling this from our trip at the beginning of the year. So take this with a grain of salt, but an imagine Brown Bag did a panel discussion about their partnership together and Brown Bag has invested a lot of money in animagine working with them and trying to feed their models the style of artwork that they've been producing to streamline their pipeline, like their workflow. And similar to the work that you were talking about, Logan, about being able to storyboard and eventually they want to be able to do storyboard to animation, like sketch to animate is what they referred to it as. And they had all of these, you know, great things that have. That have already been developed with the software. When you're training using IP that was developed in the studio and working with an AI augmented company like animag, like working in conjunction that way, I think that it's ethical and interesting. At the time of Kids Screen, I don't think that it was reaching its full potential at that time. The models were still learning to be consistent. And I don't remember, I don't remember the specifics of it, but I did just read an article that Disney has partnered with them now. So it's not just brown.

[Whitney Paulette]

They had like an incubator program. So they chose like three companies to invest in and that's one of them. So they truly believe in it. Brown Bag and now Disney are exploring this. And I, I've seen it, I've seen it and it's actually very cool. So like say an animation studio does a orthographic of their character. It's like front or even the front. It's like here's just like a front and a side and then they plug it in and 2D entirely.

[Lauren]

Just a 2D front.

[Whitney Paulette]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so instead of having an artist, you know, do every single drawing of every single angle and then you hand it off to a 3D sculptor, they go ahead and do the sculpting and then, you know, everything's like, you know, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak until it like kind of looks right. This will then go ahead and just get like, say half of that work and then fill in all the holes. And so it would be a huge time saver. And yeah, I think it would be amazing to be able to crank out, say like five incredible shows a year rather than one every two years. You know, I think that's, that's really exciting. That's really interesting. I just think as long as there are the right minds behind it and they're creating really quality content that is beneficial to especially children, I think it's really interesting stuff. Yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

That's a good question. I mean, I, I'll throw out my services. I'm pretty good with AI. If either one of you wanted to create a Lora model of all your past work to help iterate your creative process, I would be more than willing to do it for you. We're getting kind of close to the end, so Whitney, Lauren, and I'll give you both each a minute. Let's pretend that someone hasn't watched the last 33 minutes. You know, give them kind of the one minute spiel about Mermaid, what you do and why it's important and why they should follow you.

[Whitney Paulette]

So, yeah, thanks for listening. If anyone's just joining us right now, I'm Whitney Paulette. I'm a toy designer. I work in animation and toys. I also am a host of Mermay and Mermay is what we're all here 4. It's an online drawing competition and we have millions of submissions of artists who are all so passionate, so incredible, who love mermaids. It takes place in the month of May. We will all be at Adobe Max this year. So please come and join us. And yeah, that's me. That's that on that. Go ahead, Lauren. Sure.

[Lauren]

Okay. Thank you for listening. And my name is Lauren. I'm a character designer and illustrator in the animation industry. And I'm also a host. Host. Co host of Mermaid, the drawing challenge that happens on primarily on Instagram during the month of May where we all draw mermaids during the month of May. And yeah, that's us. We'll see you on the Internet and we'll see.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

See it on the Internet and see it. Company Max. Yeah.

[Whitney Paulette]

Thank you so much for having us.

[Lauren]

Of course.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

No, this was great.

[Cindy Olivo]

Lauren Whitney, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of It's

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Max.

[Cindy Olivo]

There you go. I'm really excited about all of the future mermaids and all of the things that we're collaborating on. You guys have been an absolute dream to work with. So really excited about what's to come.

[Lauren]

Oh, thank you. So we love you

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

with that. Thank you for watching. This is Reshaping Workflows with Delpro Max and Nvidia RTX Pro GPUs. Till the next time, keep your workflow close running locally on Dell Pro Max and Nvidia rtx and we'll see you on the next one.

[Whitney Paulette]

Do what you want. Do what you want.

[Host/Interviewer (possibly Cindy or another host)]

This podcast was produced in partnership with Amaze Media Labs.