Electric Sheep, a startup looking to replace green screens with AI, has closed a £400,000 pre-seed round.
Film and TV shoots currently use a procedure called rotoscoping when removing the background in footage. This is where the subject of a video is isolated.
However the problem with this, according to the company, is that every second requiring rotoscoping takes roughly six hours.
London-based Electric Sheep says its AI is “360x faster” and capable of processing one second of video in under a minute. Its software creates editable layers, known as splines, which are required by VFX artists to make changes.
The startup’s pre-seed was headed by Dasein Capital, with further support from Spatial Capital and Look AI Ventures.
“Electric Sheep’s cutting-edge cloud and AI platform is poised to revolutionise several core VFX workflows,” said Steven Sullivan, partner at Spatial Capital.
Sullivan was previously the senior technology officer at LucasFilm.
“They’re taking a smart and pragmatic approach to accelerate some of the most tedious post-production tasks,” added Sullivan.
Gary Palmer, CEO of Electric Sheep, said: “Flawless background removal negates the need for onset green screens, empowering creatives to capture the energy of the scene without compromising the final image.”
Venture capital firm Mercuri in July raised £50m for its media tech fund.