I’ve been inspired recently to bring story elements from my books, such as, “Ave Molech Journals Volume 1“, to life using some of the new AI tools now available to me. To do this, I wanted to create an image of a Tiefling adventurer, Aisha, and combine it with synthesized speech to create an animated video that would capture the essence of her story. This way I could use the tools to create, read, and listen to a new story of hers every day if I wanted too.
Here’s how I created the above fantasy video using these AI tools:
- MidJourney – I used this to create an image of the Tiefling adventurer. I chose MidJourney because honestly all the images I’ve tried to make with other tools such as Mage.Space turned out less than good. I’ve found MidJourney to be a great image generator even with all the silly “banned” words that it constantly complains about.
- ChatGPT – To bring the story elements to life, I needed a script. I used this tool to generate a short video script based on the story elements from the book. I wrote a short summary paragraph and let ChatGPT do the rest for me. I did have to add a few tweaks to give Aisha a more curt tone, but in the end I was happy with the result.
- ElevenLabs – To add voice to the video, I needed a synthesized speech from text to speech. I used ElevenLabs with the Bella voice and a Stability of 70% to convert the script into speech.
- D-ID – This was what I used to combine the image with speech and animate it together. The tool allowed me to create a seamless animation that brought the Tiefling adventurer to life. However, I had to shave off her horns because D-ID couldn’t animate those with her head and it looked even worse than the fuzziness does now.
It’s worth noting that I used the free versions of the above tools and had to limit the speech to a shorter version of the story. The video I created was a fun and creative way to bring the story elements from the book to life, and I’m honestly pretty happy with these results. To the point I think I want to do more of these little adventures and see what happens with Aisha and her journey through the world of Ave Molech.
In conclusion, the world has a slew of new AI tools at it’s disposal now with MidJourney, ChatGPT, ElevenLabs, and D-ID allowing me to bring my creative vision to life. If you’re looking to create an animated video, I highly recommend giving these tools a try.
The actual costs of these “Free AI” tools
Something to note is that if I want to continue to use these tools in this way I’ll need to pay their subscription costs. So here is the basic, entry level, pricing plans for each below. Assume each has a discount whe pre-paying for a year at a time.
- MidJourney: $10 Monthly
- ChatGPT: $20 Monthly
- ElevenLabs: $5 Monthly
- D-ID AI: $6 (5.99) Monthly
- Total Subscription Cost: $41 Monthly
Kudos to Prompt Engineering for the step by step guide on this.