When AI meets art: bringing my little robot character to life
I was blown away by how AI video generation tools brought my static drawings to life. Every experiment I have with AI reveals new creative possibilities. How fun!
During this October's Inktober challenge, I completed 31 days of drawing. Inktober is an annual drawing event on Instagram where participants create one drawing each day based on 31 different prompts throughout October. In previous years, I would simply draw whatever came to mind based on the given keywords. This year was different – I created a little robot character who became the main character of all my drawings. I wanted to see what stories I could tell through this robot's adventures.
What started as a regular drawing exercise, similar to my previous years' participation, took an unexpected turn when I had an idea: Could AI make these drawings more interesting?
I was blown away by how AI video generation tools brought my static drawings to life. Here are five of my favorite AI-generated videos compared with my original drawings (you’ll find the full version later in this article).
The AI injected vibrant personality into my little robot: In one drawing, the robot is just putting on a boot, but in the animation, it becomes a chatty character mumbling while struggling with the boot. In another, my scarecrow-posing robot gets caught by two mechanical birds and puts its hands on its hips, talking back to the birds. The static violin-playing robot transforms into a swaying musician, performing a silent melody. These subtle movements and expressions turned scenes that existed only in my imagination into something tangible and magical.
In my search for the right AI video generation tool, I tested four well-known AI video platforms, each with several of my drawings. My AI prompts were simple: describe what the robot was doing while asking to maintain my original black-and-white art style. While three platforms produced inconsistent results that didn't match my vision, Hailuo AI stood out by generating the effects I wanted with minimal prompting.
Hailuo AI creates 6-second videos for each image. Though each clip is brief, when all 31 videos are combined into a three-minute sequence, viewers can easily understand the robot's life and character: it's a brave explorer venturing into unknown territories and discovering exotic creatures; sometimes it sits in front of a smoking factory, gazing at the sky and thinking; it can be a gentle musician or a playful troublemaker.
I was amazed by how AI interpreted the content of my original drawings.
Since the emergence of AI image generation tools, they've significantly impacted the artist community. As a hobby artist rather than a professional, I might not feel the impact as deeply as full-time artists do.
From my perspective as an amateur artist, the act of drawing itself hasn't yet been fully replaced by AI's ability to quickly generate beautiful images. Instead, AI has become an unprecedented source of inspiration. When I struggle to accurately draw what's in my mind, I consult AI or use its generated images as references for my own drawings.
I've created simple animations before. Meticulously modifying each frame was time-consuming. Using AI to animate my drawings this time dramatically improved efficiency. Of course, I don't consider the AI-generated videos as final products – they're more like animated concept sketches created by my AI partner based on my original artwork. When the AI doesn't generate exactly what I want, I refine my prompts to better describe my desired outcome. This back-and-forth process reminds me of using AI for for my programming projects – I directed the vision while my AI partner assisted in getting me closer to my goal.
Every experiment I have with AI reveals new creative possibilities. How fun!