Canadian generative video startup Viggle AI, which specializes in character motion, has raised $19 million in Series A funding. Viggle was founded in 2022 on the premise of providing a simplified process “to create lifelike animations using simple text-to-video or image-to-video prompts.” The result has been robust adoption among meme creators, with many viral videos circulating among social media platforms powered by Viggle, including one featuring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker mimicking the movements of rapper Lil Yachty. Viggle’s Discord community has four million members including “both novice and experienced animators,” according to the company.

Viggle trained its foundation model, JST-1 to have “a genuine understanding of physics, enabling the creation of realistic character movements” in 3D space for video, the company explains in a funding announcement.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Viggle CEO Hang Chu emphasized that his company has distinguished itself among generative AI video providers in that Viggle provides a simple way for users to direct character motion.

“Other AI video models will often create unrealistic character motions that don’t abide by the laws of physics, but Chu claims Viggle’s models are different,” TechCrunch writes.

“We are essentially building a new type of graphics engine, but purely with neural networks,” Chu told TechCrunch, adding that “the model itself is quite different from existing video generators, which are mainly pixel based, and don’t really understand structure and properties of physics.”

The model has become popular, Chu says, as a visualization tool. “The videos are far from perfect — they’re shaky and the faces are expressionless — but Chu says it’s proven effective for filmmakers, animators and video game designers” who want to generate a visual guide.

Presently, “Viggle’s models only create characters, but Chu hopes to enable more complex videos later on,” TechCrunch reports. The new funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from additional investor Two Small Fish, will be applied toward doing so.

Chu, who Cartoon Brew says previously worked at Nvidia, Autodesk and Facebook, has “recently launched the Viggle Creator Program,” with members getting “a Viggle Pro subscription, an additional 1,000 credits (equivalent to 250 minutes of video), early access to new features, and opportunities to connect with other creators through an exclusive community channel.”