'The Vale - Origins': AI Through the Lens of Grief and Creativity

Artificial intelligence is a hot-button topic these days. It's a subject that, for some, is too hostile to even broach. But author Abigail Hing Wen (Loveboat, Taipei) is starting the conversation from a deeply human and personal place: grief.

The Vale - Origins, which had its world premiere at San Diego Comic-Con last month and marks Wen's directorial debut, is an animated/live-action hybrid short film prequel to Wen's bestselling novel The Vale. The film's story focuses on five-year-old Bran Lee, who, at the beginning of the film, is looking forward to becoming a big brother. But tragedy strikes and his unborn baby brother passes away, leaving Bran, his mother, and his father in deep grief. He retreats into his drawings, creating a magical world filled with blue forests, castles, and an elf named Gnomly. When his parents discover the depth of his imagination, they begin transforming his sketches into an immersive, AI-powered, virtual reality experience, finding a path toward healing through the world their son has created.

For Bran, The Vale is both an extraordinary invention and a deeply personal refuge. For his parents, it's a chance to give Bran a light in the darkness. Animation is directed by Emmy Award winner John Aoshima (Gravity Falls, Ultraman: Rising), with animation production design by former Pixar artist Neil Blevins, whose credits include The Incredibles, WALL-E, Up, Toy Story 3, and Brave.

Check out the trailer for the film, screening next at San Diego International Kids Film Festival on August 22 and Portland Festival of Cinema Animation and Technology on August 23:

"I actually wrote The Vale in 2015," shares Wen, whose book takes place eight years after Origins, where a 13-year-old Bran enters The Vale into a major invention competition to help his family, who have fallen on hard times, only to discover dangerous glitches and a betrayal that threaten both the virtual world and the real one beyond it. "It was my creative thesis in my MFA program. And at the time, I was working in Silicon Valley in the heart of the AI revolution. I saw this powerful technology being pumped into the world and nobody knew about it. So, I wanted to write about it. But I couldn't publish the book. My agent at the time was like, 'No one knows what AI generation is. No one's going to read this book.' And she was absolutely right. So I shelved it for 10 years."

Now, the book is a New York Times bestseller. But when it came to creating a short film and adaptation, Wen saw it as a chance to explore the family's history and talk about her own.

"I made the movie Love in Taipei, which was an adaptation of my novel Taipei, and I was meeting with a lot of producers at the time and one person at Netflix told me he worked on hybrid films," shares Wen. "That got me motivated to pull out that old novel. The story of why The Vale began is a flashback in the novel and had originally been the opening. It felt like a discrete enough story that I could tackle as a short film. My family and I had also known the same grief. We had a really hard time having a second child and know that loss well."

Wen, now a mother of two, has also brought her family into the production of The Vale - Origins, with her 19-year-old daughter Andromeda Wen scoring the film. Andromeda also designed the original Gnomly when she was eight years old.

"I think when you create, it's a way of giving yourself some psychic distance from the things that you're struggling through," says Wen. "And I think all of art is that way. All of art is processing the life that we live and the struggles that we've been through. Being an Asian American second-generation immigrant, there were so many things that I went through growing up that I think come through in my other works. And The Vale is a story about learning to live in the real world even when the world can be hard. But, as kids, we do find friends in books and in the stories that we make up."

Animation director Aoshima could certainly relate to Bran as well, and it was a big part of his pull to the project. "Having a single parent and being home alone a lot, I did find my art as a form of escape, creating my own imaginary world and stories, letting my imagination help me get through some of those hard times," he shares. "The world of imagination and escapism is such a powerful thing. And the fact that I now get to do it as a profession is incredible."

He continues, "So, when working on the animation with this project, I dug in and thought about the meaning behind the story and what Bran is doing. It's really about managing or facing grief and helping his parents get through it. And it's about Bran's imagination. That's the human connection. He's informing that virtual world. Anything we create, if it's coming from us as humans, there is a soul to it. If it's generated only by AI, it's not a true soul. It's very artificial. And in a medium like animation, even though we're creating it artificially on paper, I think the human instincts are coming through our hands and into the tool. And I think that's where the soul is, going through the system and making things come to life. It was important to me that Bran's virtual world went through the same process, showing that AI is a powerful tool. And it can be a positive."

While no AI was used for the making of the film, Wen and Aoshima wanted to make sure the fantasy virtual world they created for Bran looked like it was powered by AI but generated through Bran's original work and drawings. His creativity had to be at the center.

Working with Indonesia's Studio Shoh Entertainment, the production team used Maya for the film's 3DCG animation and modeling, Houdini for its VFX, and Nuke for compositing. Aoshima says he approached The Vale's virtual world not only keeping in mind the limited budget he and Wen were working with, but also the limitations Bran's family would have had. "This world is being built in front of us in the film, so we wanted to lean into that limited quality and play into it," says Aoshima. "Then the world slowly starts to become more colorful and more lush over the course of the story."

Wen adds, "It really fit into the story because this was version 1.0. And there's a line in the show too, when Bran's parents pull out the helmet and it's wild and crazy and they're like, 'Well, it's version 1.0.' That gave us some space to be a little bit more rudimentary."

But The Vale doesn't stay rudimentary for long. Soon, this virtual world fills with light leaks, texturing, shading, and an expansive color palette that shows Bran's incredible attention to detail and unique way of designing something like a sun framed with pearls or twisted-up tree trunks.

"There are a lot of little Easter eggs in The Vale that show how our imagination is inspired by the world around us," says Wen. "That sun is actually in the real world, on a purse that's carried by a little girl. And the red bricks he's using to build the castle in the virtual world are inspired by Bran's actual Magna-Tiles. We were trying to find ways to show the links between the two worlds. Some of Bran's stuffed animals also appear in The Vale."

Aoshima adds, "That castle is actually a matte painting. We were digging into the tricks of the trade, trying to expand the world of The Vale to create something very volumetric and dimensional within the means that we had. It was the first hybrid project for me. My background has only been in animation, but I'm a storyteller at heart. So, this was a great opportunity to learn and understand how animation can work with live action, how we can mesh the two mediums together in a seamless way."

The Vale - Origins has a lot of layers. It's about the ethics of AI, how creativity can be a sanctuary, and about loving the child you have in the midst of grieving the one you lost. And those are just a few of the topics. But the real point of the short is merely to open up the door many have shut and try to have conversations about things that can be uncomfortable.

"The reason I wrote the book in the first place was because I wanted to equip people to take advantage of this tool because it's here to stay," says Wen. "It's very powerful. And there are people who want to use it to replace creatives, but it has to be the other way around. Creatives actually have the power because we are the ones who generate the original IP, the original stories, the original designs. We're the ones who can take advantage of this to multiply and enhance the work we're doing. The novel itself covers both the potential and the pitfalls of the technology. My hope is that, in the right hands, with good people moving into the space, that we'll be able to use it as a force for good."

Though Wen was initially terrified to present at SDCC, fearing the room of nearly 900 seats would be empty, the experience was the opposite. Every seat was filled. With those who supported the project, not filled with malice.

"There's a real human message here," says Aoshima. "We're showing a positive approach to creativity and how it gets made, coming from the right place, from the human soul, and connects with people. It's about this family, about this boy, wanting to ignite imagination and get through the grief. That's what I want everyone to walk away thinking about."

Other screenings for The Vale - Origins include Long Beach Film Festival (August 29-30), Manila International Film Festival in Los Angeles (September 3-6), and Los Angeles Comic-Con Film Festival (October 30-November 1). Those wanting the latest updates can follow along at abigailhingwen.com/the-vale/.