The Transits are an indie band working remotely between New Zealand and South Africa. With a growing global fan base, especially in Brazil, they see music videos not just as a way to reach their fans but as emotional extensions of their songs. For their new track Dancing With Shadows, they wanted a visual narrative that could express the depth and metaphor of the lyrics: a journey through darkness, emotional collapse, and the return of hope.

But producing high-end, metaphorical visuals across continents and with limited resources is a creative challenge.

The Approach

Directed by Arthur Machado (Paranoid BR), the video was built entirely using generative AI. It enabled the team to design impossible visuals: liquid shadows consuming entire environments, metaphorical spaces collapsing under emotional weight, and characters navigating surreal transitions.

The process was collaborative from the start. The band gave Arthur full creative freedom, and with Dom Antelme (frontman and ECD at Bastion Shine) involved in shaping the narrative, the project became a fusion of music, storytelling, and technology.

The Brazilian fan connection added another layer. With over 70 percent of The Transits’ engagement coming from Brazil, teaming up with a Brazilian director based in Aotearoa and backed by Paranoid BR, one of the leading production companies in Brazil, felt culturally and creatively aligned.

The Result

The final video is a poetic, visually rich film that expands the song’s emotional message through metaphor and mood. It showcases how AI, when used responsibly, can empower artists to tell bigger, bolder stories, regardless of geography or budget.

The video was featured in international music and creative media and was the subject of an interview on CNN Brazil.

(Seamless hair transition from 3D demo to live action shot with A.I.)

Project Snapshot

In three regional cuts, a single strand of 3D-rendered hair blossoms into live-action locks, delivering an “impossible” macro-to-model reveal for Sunsilk / Elidor’s global push.

Challenge

Droga5 São Paulo and VFX studio Voodoo House needed a way to link a conventional CG product demo with a photoreal transition that would hold up across varied hair types and markets, all under a compressed post schedule and budget. 

AI-Driven Solution

We began by re-texturing the hero 3D strand adding fresh cuticle detail, natural sheen, and subtle colour variation to read as perfectly healthy hair at macro scale. From that point, the camera “pulls” outward in a single fluid move: the digitally perfected strand seamlessly expands into the original live-action wide shot. The same pipeline was tailored to three hair types and model plates, ensuring culturally specific beauty cues for an international campaign.

Outcome

All three master films exceeded creative expectations and were delivered on schedule and under budget, enabling Sunsilk to launch simultaneously across territories with no additional shoot days required.

Credits:

AI Artist: Arthur Machado

Agency: Droga5 São Paulo

VFX: Voodoo House

(Playful AI-crafted launch film)

Project Snapshot
A vibrant spot that drops viewers straight into the magical worlds of Chingu Café, turning a delicious iced drink into a portal of day-dreamy adventure for Gen-Z across Southeast Asia.

Challenge
AsiaFoods asked Rabbithole AI Studio to create a fully AI-generated commercial that would speak fluent K-pop to a younger audience while remaining true to existing brand comms. Creative Director Blair Vermette, the legend behind the viral Adidas Floral ad, brought in Arthur Machado to lead the charge from creative concept to landing photoreal packshots, believable liquid pours and three flavour mascots without losing character or location continuity.

AI-Driven Solution
The overall look was set in Flux, then honed mascot and character fidelity in Midjourney to guarantee on-model consistency. Luma handled the close-up pour shots, Runway was used for extending the frame for a native 9:16 vertical format, while Kling, Hailuo and Hiuggsfield supplied fluid animations from real-world streets into colorful fantasy worlds. Adobe Generative Fill for fine tuning and product pack compositing; Premiere carried the edit; After Effects layered motion-graphic supers.

Outcome
The film racked up more than 280 k plays on the brand’s TikTok channel within the first 48 hours.

Tech Stack
Flux, Midjourney v6, Luma Dream Machine, Kling, Runway Gen-3, Hailuo, Hiuggsfield, Adobe Generative Fill, Premiere Pro, After Effects. 

Credits

Client: NutriAsia

Product: Chingu Cafe

AI Production Studio: Rabbithole AI

Creative Director: Blair Vermette

AI Film Director: Arthur Machado

Sound Design & Mix: Jonny Pipe

Modern-day Venice and Rio de Janeiro rarely share a frame, yet Polenghi’s new “Brasiliana” brand film opens with a vintage wooden cargo boat gliding down the Grand Canal before docking in Guanabara Bay, an impossible sequence in the reality of that production, conjured entirely through AI. The shots celebrate Polenghi’s century-old cheese heritage while underscoring the rising role of generative workflows in high-end commercial production.

Challenge

Director Rog Souza wanted a solid Venice-to-Rio establishing sequence, without the cost of overseas shoots or time for heavyweight VFX. The vision also had to stay open to client and agency tweaks on everything from hull details to location time period, and deliver high production value cinematography.

AI-Driven Solution

We designed an iterative generative pipeline that let the agency, director and brand adjust every detail in the images. Once those were locked-in, animation studies began generating multiple animated camera paths: overarching crane moves, aerial drifts, cutaways and transitions to live action footage were generated and previewed in context, letting Souza pick the perfect assets to blend into live-action footage.

Outcome

Scenes were delivered on schedule, with options for the edit and transitions to blend with the live action shots and no requests left unattended, successfully showcasing the historic voyage that established the Polenghi brand as one of the most traditional and beloved brands in Brazil.

Credits

AI Artist: Arthur Machado
Film Director: Rog Souza

Production Company: Tropical Film
Agency: DPZ&T

Project Snapshot

For Canopy’s Pack4Good campaign, creative studio People’s Television, with teams in New York and Washington, D.C., set out to dramatise how packaging choices impact forests through a quirky rom-com storyline featuring “Sweetfella,” a chocolate-bar hero, and Flora, a forest guardian. 

Challenge

Although People’s Television is renowned for festival-calibre documentaries like Minted, which premiered at Tribeca and now streams on Netflix, this was their first project built primarily with AI. They had narrative and motion-graphics talent in house but knew unforeseen hurdles could threaten the immovable Valentine’s deadline. To de-risk the schedule, they invited Arthur Machado to join as AI consultant, having seen previous work in the same space and knowing it would help them achieve their goals within the time constraints of the project. 

AI-Driven Solution

Drawing on prior experience with similar AI productions, Arthur mapped a pipeline flagging and bypassing likely roadblocks before they surfaced. Together with director Cutter Hodierne, the team set a clear cadence for review sessions and made astonishing progress in-between. When the biggest issue arose, keeping Sweetfella’s friendly expression and signature chocolate-shaving texture perfectly consistent, Arthur jumped on the tools himself to train a custom LoRA model.

Outcome

The campaign video launched on Valentine’s Day and headlined Canopy’s call for “forest-free” packaging, with the article praising Sweetfella and Flora’s love story as a fresh way to visualise complex supply-chain issues.

Credits

Client: Canopy Planet

Executive Producer: Nicholas Bruckman & Ryder Haske

Director & Editor: CUTTER HODIERNE

Producer: Jenny Catherall

Animator: Ivan Kander

AI Consultant: Arthur Machado

VO Artist: Meghan Hoople

(Hybrid live action plus generative-AI production)

O-T Fagbenle, Emmy-nominated for The Handmaid’s Tale and familiar to Marvel fans as Rick Mason in Black Widow, teamed with his brother Luti Fagbenle’s London-based Osun Group to develop the comedy-action thriller Kill The Bedfords. 

Osun needed to extend the live action shoot into scenes that would be impossible, or painfully expensive, to film for real. Half the trailer was captured on location, while the other half relied on AI imagery that had to blend so perfectly viewers would never notice the join. To deliver on a tight pitch timeline, O-T brought on AI Artists Arthur Machado and Phil Langer, known for his gen-AI portrait project The Hybrids.

“Kill the Bedfords”.proof of concept trailer is currently out of the public domain, being pitched to the main streamers to secure funding for producing a hybrid TV series mixing live-action, AI and traditional VFX, a perfect use case of AI as an enabler and accelerator of great stories.

Credits

Production Company: Osun Group

Writer / Director: O-T Fagbenle (The Handmaid’s Tale)

AI Artists: Arthur Machado, Phil Langer

Executive Producer: Luti Fagbenle, Tara Ayeni

In partnership with São Paulo design studio MAAR, Arthur Machado acted as AI-artist on Nubank’s “Caixinhas” savings feature, delivering a library of brand-perfect images in record time. Forty core photographs, rendered in three formats for two product tiers, were expanded into 120 final assets, all exuding Nubank’s unmistakable purple and a sun-lit, aspirational mood. 

Project Snapshot

Nubank wanted iconography that would turn the idea of “putting money aside” into something people could feel. MAAR’s brief called for photographic visuals that looked shot on location yet could be produced fast enough to meet a looming app-update deadline.

Challenge

Each asset had to land instantly on a small mobile canvas, stay faithful to Roxinho (mass-market) and Ultravioleta (premium) sub-brands, and preserve icon clarity across three aspect ratios. All of this needed to happen without drifting from Nubank’s global brand system, anchored in its now-iconic purple palette and human-centred design language. 

AI-Driven Solution

LoRA models were trained on Nubank’s guidelines, allowing the use of generative tools to “photograph” perfectly centred objects under soft natural light, wrapped in subtle violet gradients. The healthy mix of human art direction and machine iteration meant textures, shadows and depth could be refined at speed, while LoRA kept every pixel on-brand across all 120 outputs.

Outcome

The asset pack rolled out inside the updated Nubank app without a single revision round, earning internal recognition as a benchmark for high-volume, AI-driven asset production.

Credits

Agency: MAAR.Company
Creative Direction: Fábio Simões & Pedro Burneiko.
AI Artists: Arthur Machado, Pedro Burneiko.

Brand Arena Nordic Group (BANG) Agency’s in-house creative team created a series of portraits showing shoppers so stunned by Coop Östra’s New-Year price drops that their hair stands bolt upright. To turn those static images into lively social spots, Creative Director Max Rossell brought in Arthur Machado to animate each character with quick, elastic hair jounces and facial expressions. 

The final ads rolled out across social media and digital OOH, ramping up week-one promo awareness.

Credits:

Client: Coop Östra

Agency: BANG Agency

Creative Lead: Max Rosell

AI Artist: Arthur Machado

Concept: Arthur Machado

Images: Midjourney

Animation: Runway Gen-2, Luma Dream Machine, PixVerse, Pika Labs

Original Music: UDIO

Lyrics: ChatGPT

Festival & Award Highlights

1. Best Musical Film (Short) – IMVA (Nominee)
2. Best AI-Gen Film – FFTG Awards, Grand Jury Choice 2024 (Nominee)
3. Special Mention, Concept – FFTG Awards, Grand Jury Choice 2024 (Winner)
4. Best New Media – Lonely Wolf Int’l Film Festival 2024 (Winner)
5. Best New Media &/or Episodic Series – Areas 1 Underground Film Contest (Winner)
6. Best Original Score – Areas 1 Underground Film Contest (Nominee)
7. Best Original Song & Music Video – Areas 1 Underground Film Contest (Nominee)
8. Award of Excellence (Creativity/Originality) – Best Shorts Competition (Winner)
9. Award of Excellence, Special Mention (Experimental) – Best Shorts Competition
10. Best Music Score – Berlin Shorts Award 2025
11. Best Art Film – AI International Film Festival 2024
12. Best Original Song – AI International Film Festival 2024
13. Best Production – AI International Film Festival 2024
14. Official Selection – AI Short Film Festival “Larissa Lumina” 2024
15. Official Selection – BAIFF Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival 2024
16. Semi-Finalist – New Wave AI Film Festival 2024
17. Shiny List Selection