Adrian Elton Creative

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Finally saw The Odyssey last night and figured this would have been a fun topical ad for Specsavers :)
30/08/2026

Finally saw The Odyssey last night and figured this would have been a fun topical ad for Specsavers :)

Just wanted to share this recent project that involved developing the key concept and hero imagery for an important new ...
05/08/2026

Just wanted to share this recent project that involved developing the key concept and hero imagery for an important new musical called, 'After The Flood', which was written by the incredibly talented Ari Jacob and Josh Gurgiel.

The key image features the show's lead actors, Deborah Conway and Simon Starr, standing waist deep in a home that has been inundated with flood waters. Deb holds a crushed origami dove as a rainbow inexplicably arcs over them. Their facial expressions and the body language was intentionally devised to capture the rising tension.

The final image was created via a long and circuitous road of exploration which involved producing 20 x different concepts that each interpreted the libretto in a different way. Across the project 676 x images were generated using ElevenLabs, Higgsfield, Luma, Magnific and Topaz.

The likeness of Deb and Simon was first created by generating new studio portraits of them using a variety of reference images that they supplied. Those outputs were then used as references for the final 'fauxtographic' tableau. This was then upscaled with Magnific and Topaz before final colour grading in Photoshop. The finished image was A0 size. Importantly, both Deb and Simon had sign-off on the imagery before anything proceeded further.

This was an enormously satisfying project to work on as it called on something quite different to be able to interpret a complex script with a level of nuance and sensitivity that rarely comes into play with the pure advertising work.

30/07/2026

Super chuffed to have just finished my entry - made together with the inimitable Marcus Byrne - for the .

We created our submission for one of Runway's fictional products: Vero Blood Orange Soda.

There were twists. And there were turns, as we refined our workflow and debated the merits of every shot and frame. In fact, you might say the final cut was truly the product of blood orange, sweat and tears.

The best part, of course, was finally getting to work on a project together, bringing our shared love of advertising and AI into the same creative space.

Now we're excited to turn our hands to the real projects that seem to be coming our way.

Super excited to be able to share this photo of myself with Swinburne University of Technology's outgoing Vice-Chancello...
03/07/2026

Super excited to be able to share this photo of myself with Swinburne University of Technology's outgoing Vice-Chancellor and President, Pascale Quester.

The photo, taken by Peter Ingamells at Monday evening's unveiling, captures the moment just after Pascale and I revealed the portrait that I was commissioned to create to commemorate the completion of her tenure.

The portrait celebrates Pascale's love of oration, her passion for the Children's University initiative, and her fascination with the universe and nebulae. The children are shown throwing their mortar boards into the air in front of the Latelab building, one of the key projects Pascale championed during her time at the helm.

It's incredibly rewarding knowing that the portrait will ultimately hang alongside the oil paintings of Swinburne's previous Vice-Chancellors.

I'm thrilled to finally be able to share this project.Six weeks ago I was commissioned by Swinburne University of Techno...
02/07/2026

I'm thrilled to finally be able to share this project.

Six weeks ago I was commissioned by Swinburne University of Technology to create the official portrait of the University's outgoing Vice-Chancellor and President, Pascale Quester.

This was to be a portrait with a difference however as the brief was to create the University's first official Vice-Chancellor portrait using AI-assisted creative workflows rather than the traditional oil painting that had been the medium of choice for every previous portrait.

The project involved nine rounds of development and the generation of 371 images before further refinements were undertaken to composite the final artwork. Part of my obsessive attention to detail included photographing every previous Vice-Chancellor portrait and using the AI platform Luma to derive a collective colour grade that could then be applied to the final image, helping it sit more cohesively alongside the University's existing portrait collection.

All of this activity culminated in jointly unveiling the finished portrait with Pascale at a special farewell function on Monday evening that was attended by Victorian dignitaries as well as the University's senior leadership.

As a Swinburne alumni and sessional lecturer in the School of Design and Architecture, it was an additional privilege to be entrusted with such an important commission. It constituted a fascinating opportunity to explore how emerging AI tools, combined with traditional creative direction, photography and extensive post-production, were able to be used to create a finished artwork for permanent display.

My sincere thanks to Pro Vice-Chancellor, Nicki Wragg and everyone involved at Swinburne for the opportunity, trust, and collaborative spirit shown throughout the project.

After all, it's not every day you have the opportunity to create a portrait that will become part of a University's history.

Thanks also to Matte Image who printed the artwork, and to Chapman & Bailey who framed it.

Below is a photo that I took of the final framed artwork in the framing workshop.

We had the artwork printed and framed both at full size, as well as at a smaller size so Pascale could have a 'take home' version too.

For the final peak under the hood as to how I made my unbriefed RACV speculative AI TV ad, I thought I'd share the 'look...
08/05/2026

For the final peak under the hood as to how I made my unbriefed RACV speculative AI TV ad, I thought I'd share the 'look frames' that define what the different 'actors', 'extras', 'props' and 'locations' look like. Once these are locked down, they can be used as recurring references which means all of the keyframes and video sequences that follow are also locked down. That's pretty significant as you'd otherwise have to describe each character and element, time and again, every single prompt. The impact of that would mean that you'd be subject to constant drift; meaning things would look completely incoherent from shot to shot. Not ideal. Unless you wanted that for comedic effect.

Anyway, if you wanna learn how to do this for real - I can be engaged for a modest king's ransom :)

06/05/2026

Drilling down into how I made my unbriefed RACV 'Antique Roadshow'-inspired AI TVC, I think it's really important to underline how far off the process was from being able to input a magic prompt that spat out a finished spot.

To that point, I spent one entire month trying to get the key shot of the host sneezing and accidentally dropping the priceless porcelain figurine.

God knows how many credits and dollars I burnt through, moving from platform to platform, and model to model, trying to get it?

Because it didn't matter how many times I tweaked the prompts, whether through my fair hand, or via Chat GPT, absolutely nothing worked.

Quite simply, it couldn't simultaneously generate the host experiencing a sudden and uncontrollable sneezing fit, which in turn was the cause of him reflexively drawing his arm up towards his nose, which in turn was the cause of him losing control of his grip on the priceless porcelain figurine and dropping it.

Instead it was one absurd sequence after another, most typically featuring his nose spraying explosively, which was then followed by him violently hurling the figurine down.

As this shot was the crux of the whole TV ad there was no 'near enough' that was going to constitute 'good enough'. It had to look like a terrible and shockingly believable accident.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that this level of nuance was beyond what models like Google's Veo 3.1 and Seedance 1.5 were capable of in January 2026. It was only finally nailed once Kling 3.0 was released at the beginning of February. I ran the self-same prompt, once and once only, and 'voila', it was done.

The relief was palpable, as was the sense of vindication that I was completely on the money that the previous generation of video models weren't able to grapple with that level of behavioural/performance based complexity.

That being the case, I thought it'd be pretty funny to cut together a blooper reel of some of the most absurd sequences that the AI generated on route to finally hitting pay dirt with Kling 3.0.

Process-wise, it really isn't that dissimilar from being a director on-set with actors who may, or may not, nail their lines. Sometimes the mistakes will be unexceptional. But sometimes, the mistakes will reduce everyone to tears.

So too here!

Enjoy :)

04/05/2026

In follow-up to the AdNews article about my AI ads, I wanted to throw the spotlight today on the genesis of the second of my two live-action style AI TVCs.

This one is an unbriefed, speculative spot for RACV home insurance.

I was over at my parent's place, mid-January, and they were watching 'Antiques Roadshow'. As I watched the host delicately handle a priceless artefact, I suddenly thought how shocking it would be if he accidentally dropped it. A nano-second later I thought it would make for a pretty funny ad scenario. And a nano-second after that I thought it would work a treat for an insurance group like RACV, spruiking cover for valuables that leave the home.

Once the circuit was complete I knew it would be a perfect subject for exploring AI video for the purpose of creating TV ads.

To move from a neat idea to a produced ad though, I first had to write the idea up as a script. While the blank paper scares the bejesus out of many people, as the idea was so fully formed it was far less intimidating. That said, there's still a moment of truth, when you need to dive in and fine tune from there.

The process forces you to think through how the story is going to unfold as a series of shots. And whereas feature film writers might end up with a wall of post-it notes to externalise the narrative structure - a 30 second TVC rarely requires that level of complexity.

The first step to bringing it to life with AI was creating 'look frames' for all of the key characters - so the host and young woman - as well as the group of onlookers - followed by the mansion itself, the appraisal table, and finally an extra detailed reference image of the fictitious 17th century porcelain figurine.

There were also closeup reference images generated for the host and young woman's faces. These were created using the Nano Banana Pro image model inside of the Leonardo AI platform.

These were drawn upon to create the keyframes for each shot. These became the first frames of the video sequences that were mainly generated with Google's Veo 3.1 video AI model. The key advantage is that Veo 3.1 can generate the dialogue in the same pass.

Across the production of this spot I experimented with ElevenLabs, Freepik, Leonardo AI and Runway ML.

I edited the final sequences in Adobe Premiere, using Topaz Video AI to upscale before grading it with 'Film Nitrate Convert' which added analogue grain.

While I could have generated the music too, I was committed to doing it sans AI. I wanted to amplify the fuddy-duddy world of the ad with music that evoked the string quartet from Fawlty Towers. I composed and recorded the original soundtrack in my home studio. While the violin, viola, cello and French horns were performed with virtual instruments, I played the bowed double-bass.

It ultimately came together in a way that proved how potent this technology is going to become as it continues to improve & cross the final threshold of photorealism.

In the spirit of getting under the hood of how I made my speculative, unbriefed, Woojer AI TV ad, I wanted to shine a sp...
01/05/2026

In the spirit of getting under the hood of how I made my speculative, unbriefed, Woojer AI TV ad, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the first step, assuming that you've developed your own concept and written the script.

Basically, in the same way that you'd have a casting agent send through headshots of actors for consideration, before you generate your video sequences, you need to first establish what the characters look like. In some ways you get to be more granular and specific than if you were casting for real.

And then you do the same for the locations and any key props.

Fundamentally you're trying to get high quality reference shots (AKA look frames) that can then be used as references for generating your keyframes which bring the various elements together to represent the various scenarios that have been established, shot by shot, in the script.

These keyframes typically become the first frame of the video sequences that are generated using the keyframe as a locked visual reference.

Obviously getting the characters right comes down to the clarity of your vision and what you'll settle for. You also need to define what the characters look like on different angles. The minimum requirement is a full body image showing what they're wearing. And then a facial closeup.

Once you've got the keyframes sorted, it's time to get out the buttered popcorn, and to dust off the director's chair, because you're about to experience your movie-making debut :)

28/04/2026

As promised, just sharing a bit of the background process for the making of my unbriefed spec AI TVC for haptic audio brand, Woojer.

There's a popular assumption in the peanut gallery that you press a single button, and out pops a perfect piece of AI video. If you're producing an advertisement with a specific script however, then it's far more likely that you'll be writing and refining your prompts many times over before you've generated 'the shot' that absolutely nails it.

As such there are endless misfires that end up on the digital cutting room floor. Sometimes they fail to make the grade for very boring, perfunctory reasons. But sometimes the outputs are profoundly wrong and unintentionally hilarious.

That in mind, I assembled the funniest misfires from my Woojer spot and created this little bloopers reel. These sequences were generated care of AI platform Weavy. The weird thing was that these used the self-same prompt that I used on a variety of other platforms, with the self-same video model, Google's Veo 3.1. For some reason though, on the Weavy platform, it treated my prompts as helpful suggestions to which it added its own interpretive dance. Specifically, all of the explosions and crackling lightning were never asked for or even hinted at. When you realise that these are the AI's independent enhancements, it underscores the exasperation of seeing these sequences pop out of the machine. These ones in particular left me clutching my sides such was the magnitude of their ridiculousness.

Hope it duly amuses 🙂

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