GUEST · EP 011 CHRIS BRANCH
Chris Branch
Founder of creative agency Seedily; runs the Artificial Inspiration LinkedIn community (~200,000 members) and co-hosts a separate AI podcast
On Fast Hours September 22, 2024
The Next Gen (AI) Toolkit for Creatives feat. Chris Branch
ft. Chris Branch
Episode 11 welcomes Chris Branch, founder of creative agency Seedily and the 200,000-member Artificial Inspiration LinkedIn community, as Fast Hours' first-ever guest. Branch traces getting free Midjourney access at version 1 in 2022 after the company's Discord mod cold-emailed his agency, and explains how a speculative Coca-Cola concept post went viral and became a paid agency partnership. The trio also cover Runway's Lionsgate deal, Suno versus Udio, and an AI art show with the Frida Kahlo Foundation.
- Chris's early break: a Midjourney Discord mod personally emailed his ad agency free V1/V2 access in exchange for professional-grade feedback most users couldn't give.
- Run speculative pitches like Seedily does: spend 15-45 minutes daily generating concepts for dream clients and post them publicly instead of cold-emailing them.
- A speculative Coca-Cola concept post, boosted when design influencer Chris Doe engaged with it, put Seedily on Coca-Cola's radar and led to an ongoing paid partnership.
- Style or character training that used to need 5-50 images now takes one, says Chris: Midjourney's personalization and character reference work from a single reference.
Chris Branch, on the record
“All he needs to do to open that up is open the API so someone can build it on top. But he's not even doing that … it's very short sighted again to leave that on the table.”
“Comfy wires beyond me … it just looks like connecting nodes between random objects, and that's no longer art direction for me.”
“There are so many pseudonyms being used by major Hollywood directors that don't want to be known for their AI stuff. And that makes a lot of sense.”