Alex Patrascu

Photoshop in 1998, apps on Dribbble

Alex Patrascu grew up in Romania and lives in Bucharest^[3]. His career started in 1998, when a friend gave him a copy of Photoshop; Flash and 3D Studio Max followed, then Premiere Pro and Final Cut^[3]. "I've worked in the creative industry since 1998, from making websites and apps, to branding or music production," he wrote in 2025, and the Leonardo.Ai case study describes more than 25 years as a graphic designer, product designer, illustrator and creative director^[7][3].

On AI LIVE he told the story of an early break: an invite to Dribbble from its co-founder Dan Cederholm at an event in London, around 2010^[1]. He filled it with self-initiated iOS app designs, spec work nobody had asked for, and says those posts brought him client work for the next ten years^[1]. It is the same habit that drives his AI career: make the thing first, and let it find the client.

Online he goes by Max: @maxescu on X, Instagram and Threads, and @supermaxai on YouTube, where the channel carries his own name^[5][6]. He has been on X since March 2008 and has about 40,000 followers there^[5].

2023: the first AI films

In June 2023 a client project needed a style that Midjourney and Stable Diffusion could not hit, so he tried Leonardo.Ai and trained custom models on it^[3]. "Leonardo is the first tab I open each day when I start working," he said a few months later, describing a routine of thousands of images and videos a day, with whatever he still loves at the end of the day becoming a short film, a trailer or a client pitch^[3].

His first AI short, Nexus: Hive Mind, made with Runway Gen-2 and Midjourney, went up in July 2023 and became his first viral post, with more than 200,000 views on X according to Japan's CGWORLD^[13][22]. A run of films followed within months: POLARIS for Runway's GEN:48 short film competition, the amber sci-fi trailer THE OUTWORLD, IT'S TIME, and AI NORWAY, which he called his most ambitious project at the time^{[26][21][38][13]}. THE OUTWORLD, with its orange flight suits, glowing saucers and spaced-out title cards, is still one of the most watched videos on his channel, with about 58,000 views^[21][6].

2024: a feature plan, VFX and remasters

In February 2024 Leonardo.Ai published a case study on him, "Creating a Feature Length Film Using Leonardo.Ai", in which he announced plans for his first full-length AI movie^[3]. The same month he entered the second GEN:48 with ALEX MERCER: THE GOLDEN MONKEY, and in March a second trailer for an AI series, THE OUTWORLD: CHRONICLES, went up^[27][6]. A feature has not been released as of October 2026.

When Runway released Gen-3 he used it as a VFX tool rather than a film generator, laying AI paint, ink and neon slime over live-action footage; "Runway's Gen-3 is the new VFX king" passed 32,000 views^[20][19]. In December 2024 he remastered Nexus: Hive Mind and AI NORWAY shot by shot with Sora's Remix feature, and CGWORLD covered the result^[13].

The video models are evolving so fast that it's impossible to keep up as a solo AI filmmaker.

Alex Patrascu^[12]

He said that in January 2025, releasing the first episode of The Blackwell Paradox unfinished, a story he had written a year earlier^[12].

2025: fake news and MASSIVE Studios

Speed became the strategy. Within 48 hours of Google launching Veo 3 in May 2025 he posted Google Veo 3 Fake News, a run of photoreal TV newsreaders who do not exist; at about 135,000 views it is the most watched video on his YouTube channel^[18]. Wild Veo 3 Street Interviews followed the next day and passed 53,000^[35].

In October 2025 Topaz Labs' series Spotlight on AI Filmmaking featured MASSIVE Studios, describing it as one of the first fully AI-native production companies in Hollywood and naming Alex as a co-founder alongside Reza Sixo Safai and Mike Ewing^[4]. The studio later made The Hollywood Reporter, in a story about it teaming up with "Garfield Movie" writers and producer Todd Garner on AI animated short films^[34].

2026: Seedance, a tuxedo and a $10 ad

In February 2026, while Seedance 2.0 was still only available in China, CapCut asked its global ambassadors to show the model off, and Alex was one of them^[1]. Over ten days he released an AI film trailer for MASSIVE Studios made entirely with Seedance 2.0 in CapCut, The Ultimate Seedance 2.0 Showcase, and Seedance 2.0: But AI Will Never Be Able To Do This, a comedy built from every sceptical comment he had been sent, made in a single day^{[23][36][16][1]}. A week later came a one-minute truck ad made in about 30 minutes for under $10^[17]. AI LIVE reviewed it on Episode 111: Chris Branch said $10 had bought "a minute's worth of usable clips here that all work together"^[2].

At the end of February he announced he was an ambassador for the World AI Film Festival, whose 2026 cycle ended in Cannes^[11]. In March he made NIGHTCALL, a music video with LTX 2.3's audio-to-video running on a home GPU, in eight hours; "$30,000 used to be the minimum for a music video," he wrote^[9][1].

Then came 3PM WEDDING, his first full short on Dreamina Seedance 2.0^[15]. It began with a mistake: testing his likeness from wedding photos, he forgot to prompt his outfit and Seedance put him in a tuxedo^[1]. The finished film sends him through history in black tie, politely asking for Oak Street on his way to a wedding: a mammoth, Newton, Tesla, the Wright brothers, Jesse Owens, D-Day, an astronaut, aliens^[15][1].

I forgot to prompt the attire, so it rendered me in a tuxedo in one of the shots.

Alex Patrascu^[1]

On AI LIVE

The day after 3PM WEDDING came out, Alex joined AI LIVE as special guest on Episode 115, co-streamed through his own YouTube channel, and the episode took its title from his film: "He Used AI to Crash D-Day in a Tuxedo"^[1]. Chris introduced him as one of the first members of CapCut's Creator Partner Program^[1]. Over two hours he shared the tricks behind his Seedance work: asking ByteDance's own Seed 2.0 Pro why a prompt is blocked, writing global rules at the top of a master prompt, and prompting a British accent he does not have to keep a voice consistent^[1].

Weeks later, in Cannes, Marco Magario spotted Alex at a hotel table on his first night, walked over and showed his work to the group, as Marco recalls on Creator Sessions #8^[25].

Seedance 2.5, alternate history and agents

Since May 2026 his channel has run a "what if" alternate-history series, starting with Modern Tenochtitlan 2026: What If the Aztecs Won?, alongside Seedance 2.5 films for Higgsfield such as the 16-minute THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS and a MASSIVE STUDIOS trailer, INFERNO^[29][31][32]. In August he posted FOUND YOU, a Seedance 2.5 short following the Bad Luck Brian meme across Europe, with his full workflow; it passed 6.5 million views on X, against 1,690 for the same film on YouTube^[8][24]. His caption asked why AI movies are not everywhere yet: "Because nobody is financing them. Yet. The technology is ready"^[8].

He told AI LIVE he keeps a Mac Mini running agents overnight to research what to make next^[1], and in October 2026 he published a horror trailer, GREEN WEEK, directed and edited by Claude Code^[28].