The new 2D/3D series explores implications of new technology with humor and curiosity, wrestling with topics ranging from AI to kidney donors; screens November 6 at the Bilbao Seriesland Web Festival.
From the eradication of mosquitoes to developing artificial wombs, the five-episode animated series Ada, from Elizabeth Cox, CEO of Should We Studio, covers a lot of ground as it promotes productive and entertaining conversations about some of the wildest current topics in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
“Before I even started the studio, I had been interested in doing a series where every episode explored the ethical implications of a different emerging technology,” shares Cox. “My major in college was an independent track I created called Neurobiology and Mental Health, supported by the Science and Technology Studies department. I was looking at the interactions between scientific and social issues and tackling conversations like ‘Should we do X, Y and Z, just because we can?’ That was probably the first seed that led to Ada. The actual form this series would take was something I pretty much entirely figured out after securing the funding and during pre-production.”
Screening at the Bilbao Seriesland Web Festival on Wednesday, November 6, as well as next month at Dances with Films in New York, Ada explores the ethical and social implications of new technologies with humor, vibrant settings, and, above all, a willingness to engage with the weird. The series’ main character, Ada, wrestles with questions on topics of AI, kidney donation, and the apocalypse as she heads to the first day of her new job at the public library. She soon realizes her daily reality – mundane duties, a grumpy boss – is completely at odds with the urgency she feels about the pressing problems facing humanity.
Ada struggles to balance this reality with the future she imagines, where she explores her big ideas with anyone who will listen – her boss, her grandmother, or an unsuspecting visitor to the library.
Check out the trailer here: www.shouldwestudio.com/ada
“I just love animated shorts as a format and medium,” says Cox, whose illustrative 3D project, while a series, is also compact. “It might be my all-time favorite. It’s the perfect venue for weird, wacky, beautiful, and delightfully comedic. In the world of independent animated projects, there’s so much creativity and ingenuity that’s wild and mischievous. I don’t think people realize the variety of artistry that can be in this medium and that idea has always been exciting to me.”
She adds, “Creative freedom has also always been important to me, and I’ll seek out any way that I can maximize that.”
Each episode of Ada features two visually distinct worlds: Ada’s reality and the future she imagines. Each episode’s imagined future showcases new environments, color palettes, textures, and character designs that reflect the episode’s topic.
“That was definitely a challenge because each world had its own art style,” notes Cox. “Of course, there’s Ada’s home world in the library, where she works. Every episode starts there and then the middle is a big journey through Ada’s imagination, which has another art style. But we switched up the art direction for that imagined world for every episode. Each one was unique. We kept some rules, like the performance of the characters needed to stay cartoony, the shape design stayed exaggerated, and the colors were more vibrant in the imagined future, while the real world contained a more restricted palette. Outside of those rules, we left lots of room for change. On the timeline we were working on, that tactic was a challenge, but it was something that everyone on the team was excited about and had fun with.”
Previously employed at TED-Ed writing, editing, and pitching scripts that would become their educational animated shorts, Cox now works full time at her Should We Studio alongside a regular project staff of roughly 12. Ada’s production required an additional 25 to 30 crew members.
“Managing the business and leadership side, as well as the creative side of things on work like this took a learning curve for me,” says Cox. “Initially we wanted the real world to be 3D and the imagined world to be 2D. And, in Episode 1, in the imagined world, it is 2D. But then we realized that wasn’t going to be sustainable for the pipeline and budget we had, even with these additional people. So, we switched the imagined world to a 3D pipeline, which meant we had to redesign everything and figure out implications for rendering.”
Cox continues, “I think a lot of people underestimate how technical the animation process can be. I think people’s mental model of it is that people draw pictures, and the pictures get animated and go on screen, which is very much not how it is. There are a lot of steps in the pipeline that are very tedious.”
In Episode 4, “Biblionimus Maximus,” Ada, after being fired for snooping in the archives, returns to the library to work on job applications. When the same AI tools that help her update her resume leave her discouraged about AI replacing jobs for people like her, Ada imagines a future where she can steer the future of AI instead of getting left behind – and get revenge on her old boss while she's at it.
Cox wants episodes like this to empower animators, artists, and other creatives worried about the repercussions of AI and show that it’s more of a tool that needs to work for artists and not the other way around.
“It’s just another tool in the same way that computer animation became a tool for 2D, and AI actually makes it possible to do way more ambitious projects as a small team because you’re not spending hours on the little things,” notes Cox. “I went into this series with the mindset that it would do for other important topics what films like An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change. Trying to get these important but under-discussed topics to become mainstream is the goal I had in my head.”
The list of topics that the show discussed, initially, was much longer than five episodes. Cox says she and the team narrowed down episode subjects by focusing on levels of importance, levels of neglect, and whether there was a rich landscape of unanswered questions that, she clarifies, “were not so unanswered that we couldn't say anything meaningful about them.”
“I love all my children equally, but I was really excited to dive into the topic about the possibility of paying organ donors,” shares Cox.
In Episode 2, “The Ministry of Transplantation,” Ada finds out her favorite teacher needs a kidney donation and must find a way to help – and confront her reluctance to donate her own kidney. She imagines a world where the government solves the kidney shortage by paying every donor $100,000 and imagines how her life – and society – would be different if she had this option.
“I think there’s a lot of very interesting ethics questions in there,” says Cox. “I also have a personal connection to it because my grandfather was on dialysis for five years. Having seen how torturous that process is and learning about the suboptimal system of supporting people who need kidney donations while struggling to find a donor, my grandpa was definitely on my mind during production on that episode.”
One might argue every one of us has a connection to every episode of Ada by the simple truth that we are all members of society. We all have a role to play and an opinion to offer up and Cox believes in Ada’s ability to not only get the conversation rolling but promote real action.
“The technologies that will shape the future are all of our business,” says Cox. “Everyone alive has a stake in this. And the whole aesthetic of the show, this really vibrant and illustrative style, is created with the goal of reaching all people. Our future is often discussed through a subset of lab voices and that’s very off-putting to people. I wanted to offer up a lush, handmade alternative vision for the future with every creative decision made with the intent to move people.”
It seems to be working. The show won Best Animated Series at both the Raw Science Film Festival in New York and at the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology. At Bilbao, Ada is potentially looking at its third award as it’s been nominated again for Best Animated Series.
“I hope people will see Ada and, if they don’t have it already, develop an open-hearted and exuberant spirit of inquiry, with a willingness to engage with weird questions and find unexpected answers without fear of what might initially seem off-putting,” says Cox. “And I hope they also learn something they didn’t already know about the subjects themselves.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
