Animate my children's book with AI, with the same character on every page - RefVid

Why the character changes from page to page, and how to stop it

• An AI video model redraws your character in every frame. Given one page, it has to guess the side view, the back and the outfit below the frame, and it guesses differently each time, so page 3 and page 4 end up with two slightly different children.
• The fix is to give it the same pictures every time. In RefVid you save the main character once, from your own illustrations, under its name. Every clip you make afterwards is drawn from that set, so the tenth page still matches the first. We made our cartoon series GuaPi this way: four characters, four pictures each, and the same faces in every shot of four episodes.

• GuaPi: the cartoon series made with the same saved characters→

What to upload from your book

• Use your own art, cut into clean pictures of the character alone. The best set is a front view, a three-quarter view, a side view and one close-up of the face, all in the same outfit and the same drawing style. Three to five pictures are enough; one character takes up to 10.
• Leave the words out. Crop away the text, page numbers and speech bubbles before you upload: the model reads everything in the picture as part of the character, and video models still garble small text. If your book has a character sheet from the illustrator, cut it into its separate views.
• Save the other characters the same way. Up to 3 saved characters can share one clip, so a child, a parent and a dog can appear on the same page.

• How to cut a character sheet into views→

Children's book illustration to video, page by page

• 1. Pick one spread and decide the one thing that moves on it: the dog jumps, the boat tips, the child looks up at the moon. One event per clip works; three events in one short clip usually gives none of them.
• 2. Use the page's illustration, without its text, as the first frame, so the clip opens on your exact drawing. Draw or choose the moment just before the action, not the result: the model can only move forward from the first frame.
• 3. Write one or two sentences and end with "Keep the drawn style." The prompt we used for the GuaPi explosion shot was: "The little fan sparks and bursts with a pop: a thick cloud of black smoke explodes out of it, the blades jam and stop, the umbrella jolts; Henry's grin turns into wide-eyed panic. Keep the drawn style."
• 4. Generate, watch the clip and keep it or try again. Then go to the next page. Each clip is 3 to 30 seconds depending on the model; join the clips in any video editor to make the animated book.

Animated kids book: what works and what does not yet

• Works well: simple, readable actions (a wave, a jump, a turn of the head), soft camera moves such as a slow push-in, and flat or painted styles, as long as the prompt does not ask for another look. Crayon stays crayon and watercolour stays watercolour when the pictures are drawn that way.
• Harder: text inside the scene, hands doing small precise things, and many characters crossing each other. Add the book's words as captions in your editor instead of asking the model to draw them.
• Sound: the free clip is silent. A clip with sound on Kling 4 or Kling 3.0 Omni can include a short spoken line; to narrate the whole book, record the reading and lay it under the joined clips.

• Making a series with the same characters→

What it costs to animate a children's book

• Your first 3-second clip on Kling 3.0 Omni is free, with no card and no watermark. After it, a single video costs from $2.99, a one-time credit pack from $9.90 and a monthly plan from $10; credits never expire.
• For scale: GuaPi Episode 1 is 40 seconds and 14 shots, made from 24 generated clips for about $10 of video generation on Kling 3.0 Omni at 720p with sound off.