"The Bends" is a visionary animated film written and directed by Tiffany Lin, is a groundbreaking research and development project by the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). On this project, Ben Abergel served as Co-Head of AI Technology and Production alongside Khayyam Khan. Together, they led the integration of artificial intelligence across nearly every stage of the pipeline, shaping an innovative workflow that blended human creativity with advanced AI tools. Ben’s role focused on achieving studio-level visual quality and photoreal animation while leveraging AI throughout the creative and production process, all while preserving the film’s artistic vision and emotional depth.