How to Make an AI Animated Short Film: Characters, Acting, Shots and the Edit

An 81-second 3D animated short film from one chat, with no camera and no animators. Seven steps: a hero picture for every character, a character sheet so the face never changes, four questions that make a character act, a 5-part video prompt, a cheap draft before full quality, and an edit where the joke lives.

I made a 3D animated short film, "Imaginary Friends", in one chat. No camera, no studio and no animators. A tiny dragon on the night shift in a call center, a monster who used to live under the bed and now guards a mall, and a tall rabbit in the stockroom of a toy store. Here is the whole way, in the same order you can follow tonight.

Start From One Question, Not a Prompt

The question was: what happens to imaginary friends when the kids grow up? They need a job. That became a mockumentary: each friend sits for an interview and says life is good, and then we see their real day. At the end, one quiet question turns it all around. An idea anyone gets in half a second is worth more than any effect.

Step 1: A Hero Picture for Every Character

Every character starts as one picture in GPT Image 2.6, and every picture is an acting moment, not a pose: Luna forces a customer-service smile while her eyes are completely exhausted. The same STYLE block closes all three prompts, so the three characters look like one film.

• One simple shape per character: Luna is round, Gus is a mountain, Button is long lines
• One special detail: smoke from the nose, lost things in the fur, a button eye
• Its own colors, so the characters never blur together

Step 2: A Character Sheet, So the Face Never Changes

One picture is not enough, because a video model forgets faces. So every character gets a sheet with every angle and every expression, built from the hero picture. Check the sheet face by face before you make one second of video. When the button eye went missing in some of Button's faces, the sheet was made again. If the sheet is right, the film is right.

Step 3: Two Pictures for Every Shot

Every shot in Seedance 2.5 gets two pictures. The first, the character sheet, says who. The second, the hero picture, says where: the desk, the lamp, the light. You build no sets, and the place stays the same place in every shot.

Step 4: Four Questions That Make a Character Act

A video model can move a mouth, but it does not know why. So before every shot, answer four questions, and only then write the shot second by second: where she looks, when she stops, what she says.

• What does she want? The interviewer must believe she is fine
• Why? So they will let her stay in their world
• What stops her? The truth: the job burns her out, literally
• What does she do? A big smile, and after every few words she checks his face

Worth knowing: Nobody wrote the pause in "Very... stable". It came from what the character wants.

Step 5: The 5-Part Video Prompt

• Elements: what each picture says
• Style: the same sentence in every shot
• Camera and light: one lens, one move or none
• Acting: the four questions and the second-by-second timing
• Audio: the room tone and how each voice sounds

Step 6: Draft Cheap, Then Choose

Every shot runs first as a 480p draft, at about half the price. Check the acting and the joke, and only a shot you love goes to 1080p, with exactly the same acting. Almost every shot in the film worked the first time, because the prompt knew what each character wants. The voices came from the video too: the prompt only said how each one sounds.

Video Models Do Not Show Children

A prompt with a child in it gets refused. So the story is told with no child on screen: in the toy store you only see a hand, and at the end a silhouette behind a curtain and a picture of the room with the Luna plush on the bed. That is what makes everyone understand who the three friends were.

Step 7: The Edit, Where the Joke Lives

Interviews first, then the real day inside the sentence: Luna says "Work is good", we see fire, then "Very... stable". Small subtitles, name plates with the years, and at the end one question with no music: "Do you think she still remembers you?" Three friends on a bench, and only then the lullaby starts.

Every Prompt Is Open

The full guide has all 19 prompts exactly as they ran: the three hero pictures, the three character sheets, the nine shots, the room, the voices and the lullaby. The YouTube episode shows the whole way inside Claude and Cadabra AI.

Where to go next

• The full guide: all 19 prompts of the film
• 105 image codes, and here they run
• 61 codes that turn a picture into a clip
• More guides on the blog