Creating Animations With Generative AI Tools – A Day In The Life Of Leo

I decided to put my (lack of) natural creative skills to another test using Generative AI tools. I’ve always want to draw cartoons and animate, but lack the training and skill to do it…but GenAI can surely change that?!

After a bit of experimentation, I’m pleased to say that the final product wasn’t all too bad – you can see it below:

Here’s how I did it, if you’re interested in trying your own hand at this:

The Character and Script

Enter ChatGPT – I engaged in a dialogue about what I wanted to create e.g. the setting and theme, characters, style, plot and message/intent. We then went back and forth to create a 30 second cartoon, which I had to ask GPT to scale down in terms of ambitions, esp. with regards to the animation possibilities (see animation section). For the final script below, I specified the types of movements I was able to introduce and GPT adapted for it.

The Cartoon Character

I considered drawing my own…then remembered that GenAI tools could probably do a much better job, so enter Midjourney. I basically used the prompt below and created a model sheet with many characters:

And here’s the final chosen character (Leo) for our cartoon:

Creating the Animations

For this part of the process, I used Meta’s cool Animated Drawings tool, which allows you to upload kids drawings and animate them in very basic ways (if you haven’t tried this yourself or with your kids, I’d highly recommend it!)

The Voices

For this step, I used ElevenLabs and used two different voices…one deep older male voice for our narrator…and a younger, more upbeat voice for Leo, our main character.

Putting It All Together

For this last step, I followed the script created using ChatGPT and used a video editing tool to put the video and audio files together. You may already have a preferred tool you use (I like Final Cut Pro), but if not, here are some free recommendations.

There you have it! Easy as 1, 2, 3… Granted, the range of movements and possibilities is somewhat limited to what Meta’s animation tool could spit out, but overall for my first animation project I’m pretty pleased!

Leave a comment or DM/Tweet me if you give any of this a try (and do share your results!). Happy creating!