Two Magical Book Trailers

After thinking about it for quite some time, I finally tried to make a short film using AI. After testing the full text of our children's book, Magic, as a prompt on a few platforms, I decided to go with the coincidentally named MagicLight because their anime/manga-style options seemed most appealing.

It's not perfect, of course. In fact, some of the "mistakes" were quite horrifying. It wasn't until the video was uploaded that my brothers pointed out, too late, the completely unironic conjoined limbs between Zoe and her best friend in one scene.

Anyway, here are two versions of the "Magic" book trailer.

Version 1. My original illustrations, with some animation.

I attempted to "animate" the illustrations from our original book. Some of the images simply didn't come to life at all, cost me credits to just zoom in or out or left or right, which is free anyway. Guess AI can't really understand original human art sometimes.

Version 2. Embracing the AI...mistakes and all.

There was certainly a learning curve here. It costs credits to try to tweak a scene or fix "mistakes," and sometimes it just gets more screwed up. The AI will not hesitate to decapitate or amputate a character in an overzealous attempt to follow your instructions if you fail to be ridiculously specific, and even then, it's a gamble. If you regenerate a scene, you may end up with different characters. Or a different genre altogether (all of a sudden horror, vampire, photorealistic...)

My initial response was to delete the horrifying mistakes, including a short animation of Zoe and the black cat named Magic mouth kissing (I did download it for my own private horror and evidence). Then I decided to embrace at least some of the mistakes, because some were so bad they were almost good. You think your cat is muscular? You ain't seen nothing yet...