Former Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has started a new company called Sun and Thunder to focus on AI characters and interactive storytelling. And today he’s teasing a new character with the company’s first short video dubbed Yellow dove – disbeliever.

We don’t often write about video entertainment. But Abovitz’s track record and his interest in creating “synthetic beings” caught my attention, and I told him both about his big ambitions in the years to come as well as what he’s starting to tease. with video. You might be wondering what this is about, but it’s quite intriguing. And it’s no good that Abovitz created and performed the song Disbelieving in the video itself, although he attributes the work to his virtual character.

When you think about the long term, Abovitz told us earlier this year that the company represents a fusion of technology, intellect and art. The goal is to create “synthetic beings” and tell stories in worlds made possible by “space computing,” or the kind of mixed reality experiences that Abovitz tried to create in his former company Magic. Leap.

While Sun and Thunder will work across all mediums, including space computing, the company is not part of Magic Leap and is not yet necessarily tied to a single platform, Abovitz said. And these movies may seem small now, but Abovitz is hoping they’ll be part of something really big.

Magic Leap Legacy

Magic Leap brought in former Microsoft executive Peggy Johnson a year ago to lead the company as it moved into manufacturing mixed reality hardware and software for businesses. Abovitz remains on the board, but is free to start his new business in a very different segment than Magic Leap. In 2018, Magic Leap launched its Magic Leap One mixed reality headset.

Magic Leap has grown huge and raised over $ 1 billion on its promise of space computing or connecting visualization hardware with real-world locations. Abovitz estimates that it may take around 15 years before the company can achieve its ambitions.

Most recently, Magic Leap raised $ 500 million and Johnson announced that the company will launch its Magic Leap 2 AR glasses next year. This means that the enterprise version of Magic Leap is launched.

“Remember when Star Wars Episode Seven came out, they had this set of trailers. They were very, very enticing, but they weren’t too long, Abovitz said. -what’s going on? “But they were really, really cool. And that’s kind of my benchmark for what we do. How can we make you want more?

Short film

Above: Yellow Dove – Misbeliever is Sun and Thunder’s first short film.

Image Credit: Sun and Thunder

Abovitz said there is a lot of experimental work going on that could change what the company is doing. He sees this phase of the business as a “supernova”, or an explosion of creativity.

The company is working on short films that show people what they are experiencing. Some of the concepts seem to come out of science fiction. For example, Abovitz wants to create AI characters with real intelligence, and he then hopes to use those smart characters to help the company with its work. The business is not there yet.

Sun and Thunder is heavily influenced by early Disney, Lucasfilm, Studio Ghibli and the eclectic island record delirium of the Chris Blackwell era. At the same time, exploring the physics and science of reality and creativity will be a sustained focus, said Abovitz.

“I expect the next decade to be filled with lots of fun and cool releases,” Abovitz said. “And we’ll open up and reveal a big picture of what we’re working on when the time, the creative work, and the technology are ready.”

Yellow dove – disbeliever is Sun and Thunder Studios’ first animated short, produced in collaboration with Pukeko Pictures and the Oscar-winning Weta Workshop. Yellow Dove is a character in a larger and original SNT Storyworld project called Hour Blue, Abovitz said.

The story and world-building of Hour Blue has been slowly developed over more than a decade, with thousands of pages of writing, music, art, design, and character development. The first short is a very small glimpse into the world of Hour Blue, and the first step in a series of releases across a range of media and technology (art, publishing, film, music, web, physical, Xverse, beings synthetic).

Yellow Dove – Misbeliever had her physical debut in August 2021 at the Roxy Cinema in Wellington, New Zealand. GamesBeat has the digital premiere of the short film. (It will only be released here for a short time, and then it will be replaced with a trailer).

Jako Vega

The first AI character to appear in the film is Jako Vega (also known as Yellow Dove). Abovitz said he’s like Woody Guthrie, a wandering singer who moves through space and time. The first film is in production.

“Yellow Dove is a member of the Sun and Thunder team, co-creator and traveler through a number of Sun and Thunder’s interconnected narrative worlds,” said Abovitz. “He’s a musician and the first artist on Sun and Thunder Records. We’re trying to put the character in the world and we’re building the underlying technology. At the same time, I will say this that it is part of a much bigger thing.

Abovitz said Jako Vega is a synthetic being and will actively participate in the development of the company’s own technology, dubbed the TREX101 technology platform. For now, Jako Vega is just the character who plays the guitar in this movie. The film is the starting point, but Abovitz hopes to integrate it into other space platforms later.

“Everything we build is like food for the tech platform,” he said. “It’s like food for the building technology platform,” Abovitz said. “It’s a synthetic being or a creative intelligence platform, and it’s going to take time. We’re building a mythology and a story, and all kinds of movies, music, art and stuff. We are bringing this into an engine that I call TRex101.

So the platform ingests what is made and what it is supposed to do, and then it will teach its Xverse and synthetic being what to do, Abovitz said.

If you understand this, good for you. But it is interesting. As for the character, he’s overloaded in the video and passed out, and the next fill will be about what happened to him, Abovitz said.

The world of Blue Hour

Above: Sun and Thunder’s Jako Vega is on the ground.

Image Credit: Sun and Thunder

The Hour Blue world is an original mythopoeia that is created by a mixture of people and technologies, and over time will be largely co-created by unique Sun and Thunder technologies, including what the company is building to enable man-made beings. . Yellow Dove can be considered the Pinocchio of the company, and the design and production teams are Geppetto in his workshop.

“As we cut its strings, we aim for a seamless transition to become something new and unseen – and we’ll quietly build and iterate technology that can be considered our Blue Fairy platform,” said Abovitz.

The larger view of the Sun and Thunder (many years from now) is the creation and development of an Interconnected Sun and Thunder Universe (SNTU). Abovitz is working on the very early design, experimentation and architecture of the platform to be synthetic, TREX101, and an Xverse platform for our Storyworlds, which is currently called Wyreworld. Sun and Thunder aims to synthesize art, film, literature, music, philosophy, science and creative innovation, with the hope and vision to enable and create Storyworlds that have the breadth, depth and richness to combine them all.

The Kyoto test

Above: Sun and Thunder’s Kyoto test.

Image Credit: Sun and Thunder

The Sun and Thunder Kyoto Test is a marker the company hopes to achieve.

As for what that means, Abovitz said the ultimate goal is for you to experience a Sun and Thunder story and make it look like you’ve just spent three days immersing yourself in Kyoto. It’s a bit like the Turing test, which tests for human or artificial intelligence, he said. He wants every part of the world and the character to have “almost infinite depth.”

I asked Abovitz about his writing and his interpretation of the song. He said: “It’s the blurry line between Geppetto and Pinocchio. But let’s say we’re getting very fuzzy there. We are testing and using a lot of things right now to love. I think the line between the puppeteer and the puppet sometimes becomes blurred. “

He considers Jako Vega, the synthetic being, to be an employee of Sun and Thunder, and he plays a character named Yellow Dove.

“We really try to make a character appear to come to life from a storybook or a movie. And we want this transition to be smooth, ”said Abovitz.