Sam Tung

@stung.art

3559 Followers 2449 Following

Union storyboard artist for film, animation, and videogames (The Odyssey, Twisters, X-Men '97, Metroid Prime 4, etc) Into knights, dinosaurs, and tabletop RPGs Writing and directing Fighting AI for workers He/him // https://linktr.ee/samtung

Selfie of Sam Tung and Ray Chou at a coffee shop
Graphic from the 7/19 Dodgers/Yankees game where a Greek ship with the Dodgers logo sails toward a Greek building with the World Series trophy behind it, promoting The Odyssey
Photo of the German edition of Escape From Dino Island ("Flucht Von Dino Island") and a carnotaurus toy. The book has orange and red text on a black cover.
A salamander on a road
Photograph of tabletop RPG “Escape From Dino Island” with a Jurassic Park Carnotaurus toy
Photo of people at a movie theater
An image of Melina from Elden Ring with the overlaid text, "However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not?"
Group photo of supporters for AB-412 in Sacramento
Photo from an airport bar of a passport, vodka tonic, and a copy of Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine.
Photo of me and my kid walking through Dodger Stadium holding hands
Photo of a kid wearing Dodgers gear and eating a hot dog
Photo of Director Sam Tung and First AD Teddy Pryor on the set of Knights & Relationships in 2024
Little kid in a dodgers hat looking at donuts in the grocery store
A young woman with dark hair in black armor with silver trim holding a thin sword walking through a field of grass on a cloudy day.
Statement from The Art Directors Guild, IATSE Local 800 on Martin Scorsese’s recent promotion of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): "Mr. Scorsese, The Business is not in flux. Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese is turning his back on the human artists who throughout his career have helped him create his most memorable works. In the recently released Black Forest Labs video promoting their generative AI product FLUX, Mr. Scorsese asks the question, “how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew?” He claims the solution is the use of this generative AI program to do the jobs that are rightfully the jurisdiction of Art Directors Guild Local 800 artists and designers - human artists and designers who have been successfully collaborating with directors to visualize their films for decades. Mr. Scorsese's promotion of a generative AI product circumvents the input of Art Directors Guild Local 800 art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists, set designers, and other talented Union professionals. Generative AI is only capable of producing this type of “cinematic intelligence” by ingesting large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency. The skills of Art Directors Guild Local 800 artists and designers bring the highest level of value to any film or television production. To think their professional contributions can be mimicked or outshone by generative AI, which is built on work likely stolen from them and many other artists from around the world, is a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema."
Information about the 6/8 hearing on CA AB-412
Gym selfie in a knight t-shirt
A still from the short film Knights & Relationships, with a Gen Con Film Festival 2026 laurel. Text explains that the film is playing on Thursday, June 30, at Gen Con in Indianapolis.
A comparison of a storyboard frame and the final picture from Citadel season 2 episode 05: a woman takes a man with a bag over his head down the London tube escalator
Selfie at Busch Stadium
Two knights in armor sit in a forest at night lit by firelight
Pen and marker drawing of a blue and gold LA Dodgers hat, on a background of a blue field and gold star
Photo of Sam Tung in Renaissance Faire costume
Holding a viking-style helmet
Photo of a family at the Renaissance Faire
Screenshot of Letterboxd reviews of Knights & Relationships
Photo of a defunct castle-themed novelty restaurant once called Magic Towers in Pomona, CA
A photo in a movie theater of people watching KNIGHTS & RELATIONSHIPS. On screen, a medieval knight in a yellow hooded cloak stands in front of a tree lit by firelight at night.
Rodolfo DaMaggio storyboard for Hidalgo: a layout for a desert town
Photo of Art Directors Guild and Animation Guild Union cards
Purple-themed image of a drawing of a knight, viking warrior woman, and demonic figure with the title "WE ARE ALL LEGENDS"
An illustration of a wide shot of a knight riding on a horse toward camera on a desolate pink landscape. Behind him is a massive black figure with horns and expanded wings. The image has VHS scan lines and a “Play” icon in the upper left corner.
Pink-purple-turquoise sunrise
Actors Krystle Martin and Brandin Elmore, director Sam Tung, and editor Josh Hayes in front of a Pasadena International Film Festival backdrop
Storyboards from TWISTERS (2024)
Photo of Sam Tung on the red carpet at the 2026 Riverside International Film Festival
Photo of Sam Tung and Roma Murphy in front of an AFL-CIO sign
Line art poster for a sci-fi underwater tabletop roleplaying game campaign, loosely inspired by the Lego Aquazone series from the 1990s. The poster features the tagline, "No air, no rescue, no problem," and is titled "Deep Pressure."
A still from the short film Knights & Relationships, with a Riverside International Film Festival Official Selection laurel. Text explains that the film is playing on Saturday, April 11th at the Box Theater in Riverside.
Screenshot of the Laemmle Theaters website for tickets to the Pasadena International Film Festival, showing Block 26 on Tuesday, April 14, 2026
A pen-and-marker drawing of Shohei Ohtani swinging a baseball bat. "Let's Go Dodgers" is in blue cursive on the side.
Gym selfie in which author is wearing vaporwave shorts: tropical gradient with VHS Scanline effect
Screenshot from Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet (1964) of the Ghost - a knight in armor silhouetted against a cloudy sky with a large billowing cape. The sunrise serves as a secondary light source illuminating parts of the bottom of the cape.
A crayon drawing of a knight in purple with a green panache
A still from Knights & Relationships with a Pasadena International Film Festival laurel overlaid and information about the screening (Tuesday, April 14 at 3:40pm at the Laemmle NoHo 7). A medieval knight in a yellow robe sits against a log in a forest at night and reads a book by candlelight.
Cover of Pilgrims of the Murk Dome: a weird guy on a horse holds a lantern
Dorrian Hawkins red carpet photo
Photo of me holding QNTM’s novel“There Is No Antimimetics Division” in the library
Photograph of a graphic of a cartoon dragon wearing a police officer uniform in a ring that advises“Stay Innocent”
Pen and marker drawing of a knight’s helmet with the visor lifted to reveal a skull. It is digitally colored with a green to purple gradient and rainbow stars on a black background.
Photo of a cast iron skillet, filet knife, and three books: Blood in the Machine (Merchant), Good Game No Rematch (Drucker), and Making Movies (Lumet)
A screenshot from Knights & Relationships: a knight in medieval armor sheathes an arming sword. There is a laurel for the Forbidden Worlds Film Festival and information about the date and time of the screening, Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 11:30am in Bristol, UK.
Photo of the cover of Tobias Capwell’s book “Armor of the English Knight”
Scruffy Boston Terrier mutt
A small group of people standing and smiling on a motion capture stage
A screenshot of the knight struck down by lasers in the desert from The Never Ending Story
A pewter wizard figurine with a 3D reflection hologram of a dragon
Today, we find ourselves in a situation in which technology has become conflated with capitalism, which has in turn become conflated with the very notion of progress. If you try to criticize capitalism, you are accused of opposing both technology and progress. But what does progress even mean, if it doesn't include better lives for people who work? What is the point of greater efficiency, if the money being saved isn't going anywhere except into shareholders' bank accounts? We should all strive to be Luddites, because we should all be more concerned with economic justice than with increasing the private accumulation of capital. We need to be able to criticize harmful uses of technology—and those include uses that benefit shareholders over workers without being described as opponents of technology. Imagine an idealized future, a hundred years from now, in which no one is forced to work at any job they dislike, and everyone can spend their time on whatever they find most personally fulfilling. Obviously it's hard to see how we'd get there from here. But now consider two possible scenarios for the next few decades. In one, management and the forces of capital are even more powerful than they are now. In the other, labor is more powerful than it is now. Which one of these seems more likely to get us closer to that idealized future? And, as it's currently deployed, which one is A.I. pushing us toward?
A pen-and-marker drawing of a closeup of a knight with his helmet visor lifted, revealing a skull. The image has been colored with a gradient of green at the top, to blue, to purple at the bottom. There is a sparkly star overlay
Screenshot of Katamri Reroll: the King says, “That storyboard was quite interesting.”