Roxanne Ducharme: The Soul of Animation in the Age of Machines
Bringing Human Vision to Generative Art
“I don’t think artists are going anywhere. If anything, they’re more important now. We’re the ones giving the work its voice, its timing, its madness… its soul.”
— Roxanne Ducharme
In an AI-native landscape often defined by speed, scale, and efficiency, Roxanne Ducharme stands out as a powerful example of what’s possible when generative tools are guided by human storytelling, artistic collaboration, and deep emotional intention. With over four decades of experience in animation and illustration—including Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated work—alongside extensive commercial roots, Ducharme brings an exceptional level of artistic maturity to a new generative medium.
Her films, like We Try Not To Think About It Now and FOSSiLS, are visually arresting, but it’s their emotional impact, narrative clarity, and human vulnerability that linger long after the screen goes dark.
For Ducharme, generative AI didn’t replace creativity, it unlocked it. It allowed her to give form to long-held visions and surreal worlds she had never been able to fully realize. She embraces these tools as collaborative partners, using them to access moments, characters, and textures she’s carried in her imagination for years. Her approach is not only visually daring—it’s profoundly personal.
In this Spotlight, Ducharme reflects on the future of creative work, the evolving meaning of authorship, and what it means to collaborate with machines. She shares how generative AI can be a creative awakening, revealing a medium where technology is merely an extension of human imagination and emotion.
Q: After decades in traditional 2D animation, what inspired you to explore and integrate generative AI into your creative process?
A: At the beginning of 2023, I suddenly found myself out of work, and I wasn’t the only one. The entire entertainment industry had come to a halt, and animation was no exception. I was applying for jobs like everyone else… along with tens of thousands of other animators.
After a few months of that, I started getting bored. I needed to do something creative again. I was curious about AI, so I thought, why not try it?
After spending decades working on other people’s projects, I had always dreamed of making my own films someday, maybe as a retirement project. I’ve had these strange, surreal ideas in my head for years, filled with bizarre characters and otherworldly scenes, but I never had the time, budget, or opportunity to bring them to life. Suddenly, this felt like my chance.
With AI, it was like someone opened a door in my head, and everything I’d been holding back could finally spill out. It was a huge moment for me. Honestly, it felt like a liberation.
And it still does.
It’s almost like therapy.
Q: Collaborations, such as your music video with Sukie Smith, highlight the fusion of AI with other art forms. How do you navigate the collaborative process when integrating AI into projects with artists from different disciplines?
A: For me, collaboration has always been intuitive. It’s about instinct and trust.
When I worked on the music video with Sukie Smith, everything started with the song. Her voice, her lyrics, the mood. It gave me the entire atmosphere. I approached it visually, like building a dream. Something surreal, cinematic, and emotional that would reflect the feeling of the music. I used AI as a way to explore and test ideas I might not have thought of otherwise, but always with the goal of staying true to her tone.
With FOSSiLS, the process was different but just as collaborative. That one was built around the text. I worked with a writer, a narrator, a composer, and a sound designer who handled the mix. Everyone brought their own emotional layer to the piece, and I saw my role as holding it all together visually, using AI to tie those layers into a single, cohesive atmosphere.
Because I come from traditional animation, I understand rhythm, pacing, and visual storytelling in a very hands-on way. So when I use AI, I’m not letting it take over. I’m directing it. I know what I want emotionally, and I use the tool to help me get there, sometimes in unexpected ways.
It’s a balance between control and surprise. But when it works, it really does feel like discovering a new creative language with others.
Q: “We Try Not To Think About It Now” offers a kaleidoscopic journey through distorted realities. How did you conceptualize this narrative, and what role did AI play in achieving the film’s unique visual style?
A: Sukie is an old friend of mine from back when I was living in London, about 25 years ago. She’s an actress, musician, songwriter, producer, and also the singer and performer of the song for the music video. I’ve always loved her music. It has this surreal, atmospheric quality, and her voice is beautifully haunting. So for me, creating a visual world to match the music and lyrics came very naturally. In fact, they were the spark that shaped the entire visual world. Everything started from there.
When Sukie gave me a brief about the song, she told me it was inspired by a few trips she made to LA, and how those experiences felt surreal, almost dreamlike. So I leaned into that feeling and reimagined LA as a kind of fantasy world, with a whimsical, quirky atmosphere and bizarre, otherworldly characters.
What made this project so special is that she gave me complete freedom. I could really let loose creatively. She didn’t even see a rough cut until the film was almost finished. That trust allowed me to push the visuals in a really personal and unconventional direction.
I used Midjourney to generate about 95% of the images. But not the latest version. I mostly worked with 5.2 because I was not really going for realism. The newer versions of Midjourney are great for commercial realism, but for fantasy-driven projects like this, 5.2 gave me that dreamlike, offbeat texture that I wanted.
Most of the scenes were animated using image-to-video, with a few exceptions that were done with text-to-video—like the more abstract moments that feel like a continuous hyperspeed FPV shot through tunnels of jellyfish, flowers, and greenery.
Q: In “FOSSiLS,” you delve into themes of time and human legacy. How did AI tools enable you to explore these concepts, and were there specific challenges in translating such abstract ideas into visual form?
A: I was really lucky to have a talented team from Quebec who generously contributed to FOSSiLS. The text was written by my cousin, Johanne Tremblay, a certified translator (English to French), blogger, and writer based in Quebec. She writes beautifully, and I wanted to make a meaningful and emotional film, so I asked her if she could write something for me.
When she sent me her text and I read it for the first time, I was listening to Yann Tiersen’s Porz Goret, and I got completely choked up. It just hit me.
That’s when I decided to approach the film as more of an internal reflection, guided by narration. My good friend Kim Bubbs, a Canadian actor based in Los Angeles, gave a beautifully heartfelt performance. Her voice brought so much depth and emotion to the narration. With Johanne’s words and Kim’s narration, the images started taking shape.
Translating abstract ideas into visuals wasn’t easy. I actually brainstormed a lot with ChatGPT while developing FOSSiLS, asking questions about the future and what traces of human existence might still remain millions of years from now. Some of the answers were fascinating… others were unsettling.
Johanne made it clear that she didn’t want her text to paint a gloomy picture of the future. She wanted something with a hopeful ending. I agreed completely. But after all those existential conversations with ChatGPT, trying to find visuals that weren’t dark was a real challenge. I’ll admit, I had to cheat a bit.
I also felt the film needed music with real emotion and thought only a human composer could truly do it justice. Daniel Scott, an award-winning composer for film and media, created a beautiful score that fit the mood perfectly. And Roger Guerin gave it the final touch with sound editing and the re-recording mix.
Everyone brought so much heart to the project, and I’m incredibly grateful.
Q: As someone with such deep commercial experience, how do you see AI artists making a sustainable living today? What current opportunities are actually working, and where do you see the biggest untapped commercial potential for this new medium—whether in entertainment, advertising, licensing, or beyond?
A: That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially coming from decades of commercial animation. I’ve seen entire industries shift, and this one’s moving fast.
Right now, I think the most immediate opportunities for AI artists are in advertising and short-form branded content. Brands are curious; they want visuals that feel fresh, weird, and surreal. And AI is perfect for that. Music videos are another strong space. Indie musicians and smaller labels are open to experimentation, and AI allows for rich visual storytelling on a tight budget.
What’s also exciting is how AI has the potential to help the animation process itself. It’s not replacing it, it’s supporting it. Every step is getting easier: concepting, storyboarding, motion tests, and even clean-up. It’s giving solo artists and small studios the kind of power that used to require a whole team. For someone like me, who’s worked on massive productions and now loves working independently, that’s incredibly liberating.
And there’s so much untapped potential, especially in licensing. AI-generated characters, scenes, textures — these could be repurposed for virtual worlds, immersive projects, packaging, fashion… you name it. Artists can now build entire worlds that could be licensed across all kinds of platforms. And I think interactive and personalized storytelling is just getting started.
Q: As generative AI tools become more powerful collaborators in the creative process, how do you think about authorship and originality? When you’re co-creating with a machine what makes the final work uniquely yours? And how do you see the role of the artist evolving in this new creative paradigm?
A: That’s a big question, and honestly, one I think about all the time.
For me, AI is part of my creative toolkit now. I don’t see it as taking over but more like a responsive tool. Something I can push, guide, provoke… but it doesn’t move unless I move it. What makes the final piece mine is the choices I make along the way, the tone I set, the images I choose and manipulate, and the emotional thread I’m following. The machine can generate, but it can’t feel. That part still belongs to us.
To me, authorship is all about the why. Why I chose that prompt, that moment, that shift in mood. Originality isn’t about inventing something totally new. It’s about creating something only you would do that way.
The role of the artist is changing. It’s not always about doing everything by hand anymore. It’s about curating results and guiding the process toward something meaningful. It’s still creative, maybe even more so, but in a different way. It’s more conceptual. And honestly, I find that really exciting.
In the end, I don’t think artists are going anywhere. If anything, they’re more important now. We’re the ones giving the work its voice, its timing, its madness… its soul. AI is a tool, but artists with a strong visual identity and a solid sense of timing and storytelling will always have something unique to offer. It's just a matter of showing people what that looks like now.
I really hope we start seeing more talented women artists coming out of the AI space. It’s still very much a Bro world out there. I mean, I literally get called “Bro” sometimes…
Q: Fast forward 10 years: How do you think AI will have changed the creative industry?
A: It’s pretty clear that AI is going to be a bigger and bigger part of our workflow. AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. There’s no way around that. But honestly, that’s happened with every major technological shift in history. It’s part of how things evolve.
In filmmaking, you’ll still need people, just… not as many. Teams will be smaller, more agile. And those who start adapting now, who start learning how to work with these tools, are going to be in a much better position than those who resist it.
But not everything disappears. A lot of jobs survive by changing shape. I’ve seen that firsthand. When the digital revolution came along (computers, internet, smartphones) a ton of old jobs vanished, but others just evolved.
Film editors are a great example. Cutting actual film is gone, but editing didn’t die. It turned into non-linear digital editing, sound design, and now even directing or using AI in the process. Same with writers; traditional publishing shrank, but writing for web, games, UX, etc, all exploded. And now a lot of them work alongside AI.
So yeah, the tools evolve. But the need for creative thinking, taste, and storytelling…that doesn’t go away. If anything, it becomes even more important. To me, that’s what it means to adapt through creativity.
I think the future of filmmaking is going to be a hybrid mix of live action, 2D and 3D animation, VFX, and AI. Right now, I’m working as an AI Creative Director with Pascal Blais, an Academy Award–winning producer and animation director from Canada, who recently launched a new studio called AI Visionaries, and that’s exactly the direction he’s shaping.
Q: Which genAI art or artists have inspired you recently?
A: Aze Alter – A Canadian artist I just discovered, and honestly, I was flabbergasted. I’m fascinated by his work. His creativity completely blows my mind. Not just visually but also through his soundtracks. The mood he creates is incredible… often unsettling in the best way. I love when I watch something and it actually makes me feel something.
His short film “AGE OF BEYOND: If Humans & AI United” is a mind-blowing piece of futuristic sci-fi
And I’m also obsessed with his uncanny retro-futuristic work: “Happy Anniversary”.
Check out his Instagram too.