Hello.

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Kai Tattersall is a Japanese-English filmmaker, animator, and visual artist. A founder of Artificial Animation, he has created films that combine elements of film and animation, blending live-action performances with stylized animation. Tattersall won the International A.I. Film Festival for his film Heaven (2022), but later distanced himself from generative A.I. due to ethical and aesthetic reservations. His work was exhibited at new media festivals and galleries in Munich, London, Seoul, Toronto, Madrid, Tokyo, New York, Milan, Lombardy, Salt Lake, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles.

Born in the Okinawa prefecture of the southernmost Japanese islands, Tattersall toyed with various compositing software in school and expressed interest in 2D animation from an early age. During his upbringing in the capital city of Naha, Hayao Miyazaki’s films, Spirited Away (2001), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), sparked his interest in environmental storytelling and helped form his philosophy on film.

Tattersall graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a degree in Film and TV Production. Throughout his academic career, he worked with Mike Patterson, a pioneer in animation, developing a unique approach to rotoscope animation that combined traditional techniques with cutting-edge digital tools. Before the release of Dall-E and Stable Diffusion, Tattersall began incorporating open-source generative A.I. into his animation workflow to help speed up the time-intensive elements of animation. Further experimentation with A.I. led to his award-winning film, Heaven (2022), which utilized Stable Diffusion to stylize actors and backgrounds. Filming took place in the Santa Cruz forests with support from the Digital Scholarship Symposium.

Following the film’s completion, Tattersall started Artificial Animation (ARTI) to produce mixed media animation with A.I. taking less of a presence. ARTI created concert visuals for electronic and acoustic performances before beginning work on a limited series, Miko Was Here, which utilizes cyanotype printing and minimal A.I. processes.

Tattersall’s works are characterized by their focus on single-character stories and the recurrence of themes such as liminality and rituality.