Generative tech-fueled film and animation studio Asteria continues to grow its slate with the announcement of All Heart, a new animated short written and directed by Michael Govier & Will McCormack, the duo behind the Academy Award-winning Netflix short If Anything Happens I Love You.
The new nine-minute film tells the story of a father’s journey to visit a young man with an extraordinary connection to his late daughter. Combining hand-drawn artistry by illustrator Jimmy Thompson and AI animation techniques, All Heart is described as an exploration of grief, memory and the transcendent power of love. The short has already qualified for Academy Award consideration and will begin its official Oscar campaign this season.
The production process integrated custom generative pipelines with traditional hand-drawn designs and storyboards. Starting with Thompson’s original art, Asteria trained a custom AI model to help its team of artists create additional production assets in his style. This same technology was then integrated into a traditional animation process for keyframing and in-betweening. Traditional editorial, compositing, scoring and sound mixing followed, enlisting Los Angeles-based creative talent at each phase of the process.
“After If Anything Happens I Love You, we had a clear vision of wanting to continue telling intimate human stories through animation, and All Heart is the next iteration of this journey,” said Govier and McCormack in a joint statement. “By integrating AI into these films, we’ve not only unlocked more freedom to art direct the animation, but we’ve also been able to bring more of our artistic visions from an idea to a completed short with the amount of time saved.”
The project was produced by Govier and McCormack, along with Kimberly Dennison (Apple TV+’s Stillwater), Justin Lacob (the Academy Award nominated Ninety-Five Senses), as well as producer Carly Burgess (Sesame Workshop’s Helpsters), with executive producers Natasha Lyonne, Bryn Mooser, Matthew Cherchio, Benjamin Michel and Nick Confalone.
All Heart joins Asteria’s slate alongside the recently announced ChikaBOOM! from filmmaker c. Crag Patterson, featuring voices of Yara Shahidi, Natasha Lyonne, Daveed Diggs, Roy Wood Jr. and Tika Sumpter.
