AI in Practice · A Living Design Laboratory
AI in Practice
Experiments, finished work, and behind-the-build thinking about AI-assisted design—with human judgment at the centre.
FORMAT
Living portfolio
FOCUS
AI-assisted design
WORKING MODE
Experiment → evaluate → refine
SELECTED WORK
Tough Guy · Lunetta · W2W
DESIGN PRINCIPLE
Human judgment
Why this section exists
Not an AI showcase. A design-practice showcase.
These projects document what happens between an AI-generated possibility and a finished learning or media experience: the purpose, choices, experiments, failed attempts, revisions, and final human decisions.
Featured projects
Start with the work that has a story behind it.
Two personal experiments in AI-assisted storytelling. Each one shows the human choices behind what the tools produced: what to keep, what to cut, and why.
Featured project
Tough Guy & College Boy
Tough Guy & College Boy
AI-assisted character comedy and micro-video production. Concept, writing, synthetic characters and voices, live-action reaction, editing, sound design, iteration, and the judgment behind what stays and what goes.
What's here: three short videos
Featured experiment
Lunetta
Lunetta
A 17-second experiment in giving synthetic media a human reason to exist. The character may be generated, but purpose, pacing, selection, and meaning remain design decisions.
What's here: the finished 17-second piece
Client project · 2025
Woman to Woman: Let’s Talk
A short promotional video for Dr. Sophia Palahicky’s W2W Let’s Talk, a passion project that brings women together in small circles to reflect, connect and inspire one another. Sophia and I collaborated on the script and storyboard. I then generated the visuals with AI, revised each scene through her feedback, and edited the final piece in Camtasia.
Shown with the kind permission of Dr. Sophia Palahicky.
AI-Generated Media, Human-Led Design
Every element in this video, from the people and settings to the narration and music, was generated with AI. My part was direction and judgment: deciding what to generate, rejecting what didn’t fit, and shaping it all into a piece that matched Sophia’s vision.
The first storyboard used illustrated mock-ups. Sophia’s notes asked for photographs, a simpler opening and a sunlit garden scene, and every one of those notes shaped the finished video.
“Gary Bartanus expertly applied multimedia design principles to bring my vision for the Woman to Woman (W2W) promotional video to life. The final product was engaging, professional, and effectively inspired viewers to become part of a transformational initiative. I was very pleased with the outcome and highly recommend Gary’s work.”
Dr. Sophia Palahicky
Former Executive Director, Online Learning · Ministry of Education and Child Care
See how the storyboard became the video
Draft storyboard, client review notes from Dr. Sophia Palahicky, and the finished scenes.
Explore by theme
A structure that can grow without becoming a wall of case studies.
Video & Storytelling
Characters, scripts, pacing, visual generation, editing.
Interactive Learning
Storyline, scenarios, AI conversations, learner response.
Voice & Performance
Synthetic voice, character direction, timing, lip-sync.
Sound & Music
Keyboard, rhythm, electronic drums, stings, atmosphere.
Tools & Workflow
Comparisons, experiments, failures, production choices.
Design Principles
Purpose, accessibility, judgment, ethics, human-in-the-loop practice.
Design principle
Human judgment is the point.
AI can generate options, voices, images, dialogue, and responses. The learning designer still decides what problem is worth solving, what belongs, what fails, what gets revised, and why the final experience should exist.
Working case-study grammar
Challenge / Opportunity
My Role
Tools
Design Decisions
Process & Iteration
Result
What I Learned
Built to evolve
Featured work up front. Experiments underneath. No demolition required.
This first structure is deliberately additive: it can live beside the existing Quick Tour and current case studies, then absorb new work as it earns its place.