Fantasy figures are fun to come up with but they can be challenging to animate. Maybe a writer envisions an elf queen in a winter wonderland, a video game developer needs a concept for a dragon-rider character or a fantasy roleplaying fan wants a visual for a quick character intro.
An AI video generator makes it easier to try out such ideas with a simple prompt (or sometimes a sample image) and then generates a short video. But these generators are far from infallible. The most reliable results will come from a workflow where you prompt, then review and edit the output.
What Are AI Video Generators for Fantasy Characters?
AI video generators produce short video clips from text prompts, images, or both. For fantasy characters, you might prompt for description of the character, costume, environment, activity, lighting, and style: a young sorcerer in a blue cloak standing under floating candles.
While most are text-to-video AI generators, some AI video generators work better with an uploaded image of the character. Often you want a watermark-free AI video generator from text prompt if you just need the video in a draft, post on social, or for your character design in concept phases.
Why Fantasy Characters Are a Popular Use Case
Fantasy video is a perfect use case because many of the images involved are hard or costly to film on a practical level:
- glowing magic runes
- mystical woods
- fantastic beasts
- outlandish wardrobe
- out-of-this-world environments
A simple character reveal can entail costumes, sets, effects, and compositing in traditional filmmaking. With AI, we lower the cost of entry and enable the discovery of a character’s visual language and emotional tone.
What People Often Expect from Text-to-Video Fantasy Tools
Typically, there is often an assumption that users will get film-like results. Imagine a user just wants to type in one sentence, and the results that pop up is a perfectly produced video of one consistent person, same character with their exact armor and same background.
They don’t have smooth motion, dramatic lighting and action. They have consistent movement across the video and same facial features. The reason why I feel people are expecting that, is because that’s all the results we are shown online.
But this isn’t necessarily true for all users. It may be true for a user but for another user, they will end up having an issue with an imperfectly created character. Let’s say one user may have a really awesome video, but with weird lighting or background. Another user may have a perfectly produced video, except for the characters.
Or, a user may have a video where the character has a different face in every frame, the sword is bending, or the character doesn’t match the prompt. I think we can infer from this that AI tools, while good at providing atmosphere, mood, and style, are not yet good at fine-grained details and specific motion.
What the Process Usually Entails
Most usable clips require several iterations. You start, evaluate what succeeded in the first draft, adjust, and try again.
Keeping things simple and targeted tends to be more successful. Try a quick cut of a hero walking up, or perhaps a mage raising an arm, rather than an entire war scene.
What AI Fantasy Video Generators Are Actually Good For
The biggest thing is rapid visual iteration. It allows you to experiment with tones, outfits, moods, and settings in a short amount of time. AI clips can serve as a reference point to determine if the character seems noble, mysterious, dangerous, or playful before you commit to a single vibe.
Some artists are looking to push the tone or style even harder. They might want to lean more into the drama, romance, or visual impact. The best description for that need is an AI video generator capable of crafting stylized videos, yet it is crucial that you look into every platform’s terms of service, content policies, and copyright restrictions before posting.
They can also assist with script development. An AI video can act as a catalyst to generate new ideas, whether it be an accessory for the main character, a specific color scheme, a backdrop, or a new plot point. In social media contexts, a short fantasy video can double as a book trailer, a game idea visual, a character profile post, a campaign ad, or an atmospheric teaser post.
Where AI Video Tools Still Have Limits
There are several remaining disadvantages of AI video generators, such as character inconsistency. This is where characteristics like hairstyle, clothing, body form, accessories, faces, weapons, and symbols are inconsistent from generation to generation. Even though reference images and character control aid in reducing character variation, they are not guaranteed to provide consistency.
Additionally, AI video generators typically struggle with intricate actions such as combat, spellcasting, flying, dancing, or riding large creatures, so simple motions work better. In certain situations, prompts are imprecise; as an example, “emerald armor with silver leaf patterns” may instead generate green armor with weird metallic patterns.
Finally, AI-generated videos are often short and typically still need to be edited. You might need to remove bad frames or clip together parts to cover up the flaws. In addition, you can overlay text or sounds to cover up the flaws. Even though there is an AI video generator with sound to add atmosphere, many people still like to add music, voiceover, or sound effects afterwards to better customize the final video.
How to Write Better Prompts for Fantasy Character Videos
Keep your prompt clear, precise, and to the point.
First, detail your character: their role, race, outfit, and most prominent visual qualities. Next, layer in the location, movement, lighting, atmosphere, and shot angle. Try something like: “A peaceful elven queen clad in white armor is standing on a snow-covered balcony. Her silvery hair is swept by the wind, under gentle blue moonlight, using a slow-moving cinematic close-up shot.”
Stick to one main movement instead of cramming five conflicting actions into a single prompt.
Using Reference Images and Style Guides
Reference images and style guides can be very helpful if you want to ensure a particular look. If you supply your portrait, sketch, or character sheet, it can be fed as an image and will allow the AI to understand your character’s appearance a bit more compared to the prompt alone.
Another suggestion would be to create a style sheet with the basic colors, clothing, insignia, weaponry, or even personality traits of that character. You can also make use of a mood board for more specific lighting, style architecture, color, or atmosphere.
Here’s the practical part:
Come up with a character, a setting and one specific mood or action you want to convey. Don’t rely on the first response you get, but create several, then go back and adjust your prompt based on what works.
Now, once you have the clip, trim any dead air, overlay audio or text and cut multiple clips together as needed.
When AI-Generated Fantasy Character Clips Work Well
These are great for:
- Making character concept previews
- Inspiration
- Doing character reveals
- Social posts
- Setting the scene of an RPG
- Showcasing an early game idea
- Advertising books
- Sharing visual ideas with other people
- Creating character art
They’re not so good for:
- Longer scenes
- Specific dialogues or actions
- Animations requiring specific scenes
- Projects that require continuity
Ethics and creativity
As always, don’t copy or mimic the styles of artists that are still living and don’t steal work that is protected by copyright, and certainly don’t claim you made it yourself. Check the terms of your license to see if you are allowed to use the work commercially.
Tips for Getting More Realistic Results
Realistic videos don’t always pop out of AI, and when they do it’s due mostly to what you feed the machine. The secret ingredients for the highest quality AI generated videos include:
- using easy actions
- providing descriptive prompts
- keeping all elements consistent in each clip
- sticking to short durations
- trying more than one
- choosing the best one
- using reference images where possible
You shouldn’t expect individual clips to be finished pieces on their own, and the best strategy is to produce music, add captioning, and edit them together later.
Bottom line
An awesome creative tool, not a quick-fix solution. AI video helps fantasy authors move concepts from the page to the screen with relative ease. It can help with mood boarding, brainstorming, concept work, and short teaser trailers.
The best results come from a cycle of prompt/criticize/edit/refine/adjust while bringing your own humanity to the project. Sure, you can’t ask AI to pull a photoreal 3D character out of thin air with a prompt, but it can be part of a process to bring a character in the writer’s head closer to the real world.
