makeitrad is a Los Angeles based designer and pixel manipulator whose work explores the organic beauty of nature within a world shaped by technology. He works primarily with artificial intelligence and machine learning, while also embracing randomness and noise to shape his final forms.He came to art from a career in commercial design, discovering AI art through other artists on Twitter before posting a VQGAN animation on Hicetnunc.
Early guidance from the artists TormanJeremy and unltd_dream_co helped steer him in the right direction, both ethically and technically. His process often layers multiple AI tools, generating thousands of images in a text-to-image model, training a custom model on the results, and feeding that back into StyleGAN for further interpolation. He taught for many years at CalArts, and draws inspiration from students and colleagues in the motion-graphics and design world.
Structures explores his interest in architecture and the memories buildings hold, tracing how perception shifts across different perspectives. The series evolved from a static collection into its current animated form using animateDiff and Stable Diffusion.Evolution's Echoes, a Mirage Gallery curated collection of 150 looping animations, was built from custom models that fuse StyleGAN and diffusion to depict evolution and the passage of time.Organic Fusion, trained on more than 10,000 curated images in StyleGAN, morphs biological forms, blown glass and coral reef color into a single continuous animated sequence.
In 2022 he made the collaborative series LCD with the artist Chris Trueman and sound designer Eliot Lipp, producing 3D video sculptures built around the screen as a threshold between the physical and virtual. The work was shown in a digital exhibition at Winston Wächter Gallery in Seattle.With director Paul Trillo, he animated the short film Etherea using ComfyUI, blending live-action dance footage with AI-driven visual effects.The film screened at the USC School of Cinematic Arts' 2024 Flux Festival.He also worked with Trillo and artist Paul Flores on Cuco Love Letter to LA, a collaboration with the musician Cuco that reimagines Los Angeles as a kaleidoscopic, Chicano-rooted dreamscape.
