Meet the Mind Behind Viral A.I. ‘Mary Sue’ Animated Clip

Josh Daws made peace with never becoming the filmmaker he dreamed he might someday be.

Until A.I. technology gave him a second chance.

Daws, a former Disney software engineer, is the creative force behind “The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue.” The 90-second animated clip uses A.I. to showcase a young, physically slight heroine who learns why she can’t pick on men twice her size.

Or, in this case, a dozen times her size.

The humorous clip took off on X, generating nearly half a million views on the platform in just days.

The secret sauce? On paper, it’s Artificial Intelligence. But there’s so much more to Daws’ clip than that. It’s why HIT reached out to the filmmaker to learn more about the clip, the early reactions and why A.I. isn’t always what we think … and fear.

HiT: What inspired ‘The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue?” Was it a general frustration or a specific film or show that made you want to mock the term?

DAWS: It was a bit of both.

For the last 10 years or so, the same girlboss character has dominated Disney, Pixar, and most big-studio films. The arc always lands in the same place. She discovers she was awesome all along and learns to believe in herself.

She reaches the end of the hero’s journey without shedding a single one of her false beliefs because those beliefs are protected by plot armor. She never has to confront the reality that would break them.

When I saw the latest trailer for Disney’s “Hexed,” it looked like another version of that exact same character, at least from what you can judge from a trailer. I’d already been experimenting with AI filmmaking and had made a few shorts, so I thought it would be fun to play with this.

The concept was simple: take a character with all the false beliefs of a girl raised on all these movies and put her in contact with reality, and let those beliefs start to crack.

I made the first one as a 15-second proof of concept, threw it up on X, and was really pleased with the response. Once that proved the idea struck a nerve … Someone in the comments had asked if her name was Mary Sue, and I just went with it because it made sense.

I released the second one on Sunday with the title “The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue,” and it blew up.

HiT: What has been the initial reaction to the video short? Anything surprising in those responses?

DAWS: I’ve been blown away. It’s been overwhelmingly positive. I think people are starved for stories like this, with a protagonist who actually has to face the fact that she isn’t awesome. It’s almost a character rediscovering the real hero’s journey.

You don’t start out great. You have to learn, you have to struggle, and the beliefs you came in with don’t survive contact with reality once there’s no plot armor protecting you from the truth about the world.

There’s been some criticism that it’s AI, but overwhelmingly, people don’t seem to care. They want a good story and a character they can root for. That portrayal was a deliberate choice. Mary is a sweet girl who happens to be full of false beliefs that need to come down, but underneath it all, she’s likable and good-hearted.

There are a lot of talented filmmakers who’ve been shut out of the Hollywood system for years

When you set out to poke fun at these characters, there’s a real temptation to give them their comeuppance. I actually had people telling me I should have had her beaten to a pulp. But nobody wants to watch that. I want you to like this character. I’d rather watch her learn. So I put her in a situation where the only thing getting dismantled is her false beliefs, never her.

It’s also opened some doors I didn’t expect. I’ve had people reach out about potentially investing in what comes next, so there’s a lot of interest building right now, and it’s been a thrill to watch it all take off.

But my favorite response, and the one that surprised me most, has been from parents. I’ve gotten messages from so many of them saying their kids love it, that they’ve watched it over and over, and are begging for more.

One dad even sent me a video of his little boy asking me to make more.

HiT: Can you break down the basics behind the creative process? How much input do you need to make this a reality, and is it hard to work with the A.I. tools employed here?

DAWS: For me, everything starts with the story. There’s a misconception that generative AI is an easy button, that you type “make me a movie,” hit generate, and you’re done. You can actually do that, and you’ll get some dazzling images and video out of a simple prompt. But you won’t get a story that connects with anyone. That part still has to be human.

That’s where someone who knows what they’re doing brings their own expertise and creativity to these tools.

So I start with the concept. From there, I generate character sheets and work on the character designs. I found a few art styles I liked in Midjourney and used those as style references, then built out reference sheets for the characters.

I bring all of that, along with the script, into a platform called inVideo and work with their agent.

The agent functions a lot like a cinematographer. It helps me work through a shot list. I describe the look I’m after and how I want each scene lit and staged, and it can generate more references from there. It has access to all the different image, video, and sound models and runs on a credit basis.

And it knows how to prompt each of those models to get good results, so when I’m generating the shots I need, I can focus on performance, action, and what I actually want to see, without having to know all the prompting techniques for something like Seedance.

the chance to create entertainment that says things Hollywood never would is almost more exciting

In many ways, it’s very similar to the traditional filmmaking process. The difference is that instead of using a camera or animation software to capture footage, the AI models generate it. Everything after that is basically the same. You’re still cutting it together, and I edited this one in Final Cut, did the sound mix, the color correction, all of it. It really is just a new form of filmmaking.

HiT: A.I. promises to give incredible power to the Everyman. How do you see it playing out from a creator’s perspective?

DAWS: Overall, I’m excited about it because it makes filmmaking accessible to people who never had a way in. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my years making films in the real world for anything. I learned the craft and the storytelling, and what actually makes something work.

But I’d hit a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore, and now I can again. That’s phenomenal.

For truly creative people, I think these tools are thrilling. You look at them, and you’re captured by everything they suddenly make possible. For people who already fought their way in and secured a job inside the industry, I think it’s frightening, and understandably so.

This isn’t only a tool for outsiders. The studios are going to use it too, and they’re going to use it to cut jobs.

My honest read is that embracing these tools is the best chance any creative has to survive the disruption that’s coming, whether you’re on the outside trying to get in or on the inside trying to hold on. The experienced artists who really understand composition, story, and the craft of the trade will be able to do incredible things with this.

Their skills don’t go away. They get amplified.

So I’m bullish overall, but I won’t pretend it isn’t going to be disruptive, for good and for bad. What has me most excited is the experimentation. I’m watching creators like Captain Hahaa put out these weird, wonderful things that would never get greenlit at a studio in a hundred years.

There’s a feeling in this small but growing AI filmmaking community that anything is worth trying, and it’s really inspiring. I’m seeing things every day that push me to think more creatively, and it’s a thrill to be on the ground floor of something like this.

HiT: Some artists instantly recoil at all things A.I. – from comedians to filmmakers. What do you say to those who reject what A.I. offers? Do you harbor some of those concerns yourself?

DAWS: I do harbor some of those concerns, at least on the jobs side. The disruption to people’s livelihoods is real, and I take that seriously. But a lot of the loudest critiques, the ones worried this is going to strip the humanity out of art, tend to come from people who have never actually sat down with the tools or learned how they work.

The major companies building these video tools are building them for creative professionals. Even the cost right now is more than your average person is going to spend casually, so these really are professional tools. The more real artists pick them up, the more they’ll start to see what’s actually possible.

Mostly, though, I’m just excited for the creativity all of this is going to unleash. You get to try things you’d never spend a production budget on, ideas that suddenly make sense to try just to see what kind of response they get. And it doesn’t even have to be a finished piece you show an audience.

If you’re a screenwriter, you can generate a promo that helps people actually picture your story, and that’s a powerful thing to send around with your script.

HiT: Is there monetary potential here? Or do you see a clip like this as having more cultural impact than anything else?

DAWS: I think the monetary potential is really a function of where the technology goes and what it can produce. And it’s already at the point where you could make a truly compelling TV show or movie with it. So yes, I think there will be real opportunities to make money here.

But as much as I’d love to make a living at this, the chance to create entertainment that says things Hollywood never would is almost more exciting. There are a lot of talented filmmakers who’ve been shut out of the Hollywood system for years, and this gives them a way to make movies for audiences that Hollywood has long ignored.

To me, that cultural impact is worth far more than what any single project could earn.

HiT: Conservative thinkers and creators are often kept outside the Hollywood walls. They don’t have access to the tools, technology and funding that their liberal peers do. Do you see A.I. as a great equalizer, of sort, or is it more complicated than we think?

DAWS: I’m not sure I’d call it a great equalizer, but I do think it gives conservatives the biggest cultural opportunity we’ve had in my lifetime. For a long time the right has been locked out of Hollywood and the entire cultural machine that comes with it.

We haven’t had the access, the technology, or the funding that the left has always taken for granted. AI knocks down a huge part of that wall.

You no longer need a studio’s permission or a studio-sized budget to make something people actually want to watch.

That said, I think a lot of people on the right have looked at this technology and decided Hollywood is cooked. I’d pump the brakes on that a little. This is a real opening, but it’s not an easy button. It’s still going to take taste and talent and the ability to actually tell a story.

And it’s not like these tools only exist outside the system. Hollywood is going to be using all of it too.

So yes, it gives outsiders a real chance to make things we never could have made before, but competing with Hollywood will still take talent and investment. The difference is that the investment is a lot smaller than it used to be.

That means an investor who wants to take a real swing at the system, who wants to bet on something made outside of Hollywood, isn’t risking nearly as much to do it. The downside of taking a shot just got a lot smaller. I really do think we’re heading into a golden age of creativity, and I’m excited about every bit of opportunity it’s opening up.

HiT: Given the initial reaction to the animated short, is this something you’d like to expand in some fashion? How?

DAWS: I’m definitely planning to do more with this character. I’ve already got a handful of ideas for more bite-sized shorts, and I’m using those to explore what it might look like to eventually give her a full feature. I wouldn’t move forward on something that big until I had a story I really believed in, though.

A feature lives or dies on the story, and I’m not going to rush that part. But people have fallen in love with this character, and I’m going to do everything I can to give them more of her.

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