Lucasfilm has hired a YouTuber named Shamook after the latter enhanced a scene from "The Mandalorian" using deepfake software.
Luke Skywalker's CGI face has been largely criticized by fans and critics alike. Fans like Shamook tried to fix this problem and ended up outdoing the studio itself that he gets hired on the spot.
Shamook's YouTube Following
Shamook specializes in creating YouTube content on which he improves bad CGI effects that are seen on movies and shows.
Another interesting thing he does is that he puts other actors who were not in the film on the characters, such as Robert Pattinson as Batman in Christopher Nolan's film. The YouTuber did such great work with his deepfake videos that he was offered a job in Lucasfilm/Industrial Light & Magic just a few months ago.
By using his deepfake skills, he was able to create a more realistic visual appearance of Mark Hamil (the actor who played Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy), which landed him the job.
His other notable achievement in the realm of deepfakes was that he was able to put Princess Leia and Tarkin in the Star Wars spin-off, "Rogue One."
His New Role
Shamook said in a letter that his official title is called "Senior Facial Capture Artist."
Engadget also followed the story that came from IndieWire and confirmed that the recruitment was definitely legit.
"Over the past several years ILM has been investing in both machine learning and A.I. as a means to produce compelling visual effects work and it's been terrific to see momentum building in this space as the technology advances," the studio said in a statement following the hiring of the YouTube personality.
Shamook currently has a following of over 74.5k subscribers at the time of writing, and has garnered millions of views on his videos to date.
Shamook's Previous Projects
YouTuber Shamook has had many projects so far in his channel, and he continutues to use deepfake technology as his trade.
He started posting deepfake videos over a year ago on his channel.
His very first post was that of Will Smith as Neo of the popular franchise "The Matrix," who looks believable enough if you haven't seen the trilogy yourself. Over time, his work only improved, and he started creating more realistic deepfakes of popular movies with different actors.
There are a lot of ways to spot a deepfake, such as using an A.I. to detect the eyes, as we have previously covered.
However, it's nice to know that Shamook uses his deepfakes solely for entertainment and not nefarious means as what other people do with the technology.
Lucasfilm is sure to use his technical know-how to make sure that any CGI related faces will now be more realistic on the big screen. Nevertheless, being part of Lucasfilm still hasn't stopped him from posting videos on his YouTube channel, so his fans would definitely still have something to look forward from him.
His most recent one was only posted two weeks ago, so it appears that he still plans to keep the channel alive on top of his commitments.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Alec G.
